Archive for the ‘mooosic’ Category

Birthday Augie March

9:40 pm, October 31st, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local, mooosic, photography, traaiiiiin by Liz

As Jarod pointed out, we went to see Augie March at the Metro for my birthday. It wasn’t really for my birthday, it just so happened that the only night they played in Sydney was on my birthday. And thus, they played for me. Right?

I wasn’t sure if I should take my camera as the last thing I wanted was to be told I wasn’t allowed in, but caution into the wind and home a 10 minute taxi ride away, I decided why not.
At the door I was asked ‘Are you a photographer?’ to which I replied ‘Yes’, partially out of habit, and partially because, well, the question wasn’t all that specific.
I only took the 50mm & 30mm (1.4) anyway, so I wasn’t about to take sellable photos without pit access.

We arrived in time to see Dan Kelly & the Ukeladies start. We managed to just make it to the front row, albeit in front of the left speaker stack, which Jarod was kind enough not to complain about.

Early on in the night, I met a certain Mad Cat Lady from the Augie March forum. Well, to be precise, she came up, held out her hand and said ‘Sillykitty?’
Now, that hasn’t happened to me in almost a year (strangely, it did used to happen quite often).
I’m used to random internet encounters, so was quite happy to put a face to the name. The hilarious part was when she turned to the boy and said ‘And you must be Jarod!’. Insert Jarod’s first ‘recognised from the internet’ experience here, because of the overexposure on my photostream. And perhaps this blog. Train also got a mention, so she can’t feel left out.

And so, the Augies came out and the crowd went a little bit mental. I’m not sure if I missed something vital, but Dan Kelly played with them for most of the gig. They also had a three piece (interchangable, it seemed) brass section, which came out for all the appropriate bits.

I was quite disappointed initially, they played a bunch of songs from Watch Me Disappear, all sullen and grumpy, no banter or hello to the crowd. Glenn wasn’t having the best night, and did stop a few songs altogether to try them again.

Here is the set list:

Watch Me Disappear
Lupus
Pennywhistle
Glenorchy Bunyip
Cold Acre
Mugged By The Mob
Farmer’s Son
The Devil In Me
The Slant
Owen’s Lament
Vernoona
Thin Captain Crackers
The Baron of Sentiment
One Crowded Hour

[Encore]

Dogsday
Drowning Dream
Brundisium
Train
There Is No Such Place

Around the time they got to Cold Acre, they’d loosened up a bit, acknowledged the crowd and things seemed to go a bit better, despite the worsening technical and memory difficulties.

When I realised they were playing Owen’s Lament I squealed like a fourteen year old. But, oh, it was worth it. Even if Glenn did mix the lyrics of the first and second verse. He certainly looked embarrassed about it.

One Crowded Hour turned into a sing-a-long, whether the band liked it or not. They kept up their part while everyone else seemed to try and overpower Glenn’s voice. Didn’t work.

Drowning dream was absolutely delightful. The way they all were in their own little music-y worlds with their eyes closed in the middle of the song reminded me why I like them so much.

Brundisium reminded me of when I saw them with Antz in Perth with WASO. Just awesome and overpowering and brilliant.

Train was, well, hilarious. Every time Glenn yelled ‘Traaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn’ I got an image of little terrible Train in my head and it made me giggle.

There Is No Such Place was the perfect song to end the night with… but Glenn kinda ruined it for me. It was so beautiful and still, and he came to the end of the song… and forgot the lyrics. There were a bunch of people in the crowd already singing along, so it ended with an soft, girly chorus of
‘Just a can upon the sill
To catch the tears
To feed your garden…’
But instead of letting it go, Glenn made the point of mentioning he’d stuffed up, spending a moment remembering the lyrics and then singing them, and the moment was well over by then.

But, enough rambling. Overall it was a great great great show, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Oh, and I was allowed to take photos. I was very very cautious, and had a security guard right in front of me, so I figured I’d rattle a crappy shot or two off and put it away, but they were completely fine with it, despite the ‘absolutely no photographic or recording devices’ signs.

And so yes. It was wonderful, and I need to catch up on sleep.
(Photos are in the photo section up the top.)

Augie March Live in Sydney

1:31 pm, October 31st, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, local, mooosic, photography by Jarod

As a part of Liz’s birthday festivities, we headed into the Metro to see Augie March last night. Being my first time seeing them live I didn’t know what to expect… suffice to say I was more than blown away.

That is a blatantly stolen photo from Liz’s 40D. I didn’t even kid myself about taking the D200 as it’s low light capabilities aren’t quite up to scratch.

Anyway, this is just a short note to say that the gig was awesome and I’m properly addicted to Augie. Tis sad that I was only introduced to them now, given that they might not be around much longer.

I’ll be badgering Liz to do a proper writeup of the said awesomeness. In the mean time check she’s got a whole bunch of photos in her flickr stream.

Watch Augie Disappear?

8:57 pm, October 25th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in girlthings, internets, mooosic, traaiiiiin by Liz

I stumbled across an article online at SMH (here) about Augie’s latest release, and some comments from the band. By the sound of things, things are a bit rocky…

In separate long conversations Glenn Richards, the band’s singer and songwriter and resident Eeyore, and Edmondo Ammendola, bass player and self-described “glass half-full” man, reveal a band in flux. A band still recovering from a bruising recording experience with producer Joe Chiccarelli, who arrived with very strong ideas and imposed himself more than any other producer had with them before. A band uncertain if their new writing and working methods have worked and not certain if they like or dislike the new album.

“We’re not communicating as well as we should be at this point in our career within the band,” Ammendola says. “The music has got more focused, the production has got more focused, as individuals we’ve all sort of honed what our sound in our head is to the point where we think it’s being clearly represented on a record. But yet the other stuff, like hooking up a rehearsal and making sure everybody turns up, has gone by the wayside. There are factions and fissures within the band that are their deepest yet. I don’t mind saying that. I don’t think saying that sort of thing is detrimental.”

Are these differences reconcilable?

“I think so but at this stage a lot of things are quite difficult,” he says. “That’s not necessarily a negative thing. What’s happened in the past is that, regardless of what’s going on outside the band or how people are feeling, the will to play good music is still very much at the centre.”

… (later on in the piece)

It’s also true that no one is more likely to say about this album “it’s not that good, we’ve stuffed it up” than Richards.

Hearing this, Richards laughs knowingly. “That’s pretty much where I’m at. Not the kind of thing I’m supposed to say, though, is it? I think it’s a good collection of songs. I know where they could have gone and, as often happens, they’ve gone somewhere else. But it’s a nice album.”
It is more than that, of course; it is a very good pop album. Which isn’t necessarily something that people would have thought of with Augie March before.

“Um. Well, look, I’m getting from the unlikeliest of places favourable commentary and I didn’t expect that, so that’s made it a little more interesting to me,” Richards says, not entirely convincingly. “I don’t know. I grew indifferent to it pretty early on. For another three years to elapse [since he wrote the songs for the previous album] and only 11 songs to come out of it is always a bit heartbreaking for me.”

Aww, guys. C’mon.

While I don’t think Augie’s latest album is their best one yet (Sunset Studies is still my favourite), it’s still a good album.
I also hate trying to sound like I know things about music, when I mostly just know what I like… and I like Augie March. A lot.

In case you didn’t know already, Train was actually named after This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers from Strange Bird, mainly for the way Glenn sings ‘Traaaaiiiiiiiin’ at the start of the song.
My sister also happens to have an Augie tattoo on her wrist. Clearly, she’s a little more dedicated than I.

I’m glad that I’ve got tickets to see them when they’re playing in Sydney, because it sounds like perhaps it may be longer than normal before that happens again.

Fingers crossed that their latest album title isn’t a sign of things to come…

Congrats Antz!!

10:39 pm, October 15th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, girlthings, internets, local, mooosic, photography by Liz

Huge congrats to Mr. Antz of musopantz for winning the Best Festival Photo Award in the 2008 Fasterlouder Festival Awards.

They even flew him over from Perth for the awards ceremony!

Very well deserved.

Go check out his flickr stream, too.

Augie March’s New Album Watch Me Disappear

4:07 pm, October 14th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in boythings, internets, mooosic by Jarod

I’ve listened to Augie March’s new album Watch Me Disappear about a half dozen time since Liz got it in the mail yesterday. A few days late cause it’s got a few scribbley signatures on it, but better late than never.

Augie March - Watch Me Disappear

The best way I can describe it is old school Augie, with a bit of a country theme running through it. There are a few tracks I’m skipping cause they’re just same old, same old’y, but the kick ass tracks (I’m looking at you Pennywhistle, City Of Rescue and Farmer’s Son) truly make up for it.

My predictions are that Augie March will do rather nicely in next January’s Triple J Hottest 100, and that Liz will eventually get around to reviewing Watch Me Disappear better than I just have.

Two things

7:56 pm, October 7th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Posted in comedy, girlthings, internets, mooosic by Liz

Firstly, sometimes our stats make me giggle:

(clicky the image for bigger)

Secondly, I didn’t realise that the Doug Anthony All Stars were back in fashion? I mean, yeah, I loved them back in the day (albeit 5 years after they disbanded), but I wasn’t sure it warranted a DVD in 2008?
Linky for ezy dvd pre order
Linky for those who have no idea who the Doug Anthony All Stars are/were
I almost want to get it. Almost.

Waking up to AM

10:47 pm, October 3rd, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local, mooosic by Liz

Waking up in the morning is hard enough. I was brought up on the wake-up-to-a-very-annoying-beeping-thing, and never used to be able to wake up to the sound of a radio playing. It was way too subtle for my sleepy ears to tune in to.

Jarod, on the other hand, wakes up at Train nibbling on biscuits. So the compromise is, we play the radio at a medium level, and Jarod is in charge of waking me up. This generally means we lie in bed and listen to the radio anywhere between 5 minutes and, well 45 minutes, depending on how sleepy we are and what day it is.

Until recently, we’d been listening to Robbie, Marieke and the Doctor on JJJ. We both like JJJ’s music (most of the time), lack of ads, and most of the time not annoying hosts. But, there’s only so much of RM&D we can stand. They have this amazing ability to ignore each other and keep talking, even if they all end up talking at the one time.
This means less lay-in time, and a quicker out of bed time so the radio could be turned off. This, clearly, is not something I enjoy.

We tried various other stations on the FM band, but their ability to play a million ads and talk like idiots made for a similar situation.

So, we’ve gone to the side of AM. While we expected similar reactions (for different reasons), we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of ABC Sydney’s 702 AM Breakfast show with Adam Spencer.
We both liked Adam back from his days on JJJ, so it’s a familiar voice, too. Plus even better news coverage, and no annoying gits.

Not bad

6:20 pm, September 24th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in girlthings, mooosic, photography, roundups by Liz

Pinky Bee and the White Russians…

8:30 pm, September 22nd, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in girlthings, local, mooosic, photography by Liz

Were wonderful. Go out and buy yourself their new album ‘Somethin’ Somewhere Better’. And then regret not going to their album launch at The Annandale.

So many musicians take themselves a little too seriously, so it’s nice to have a break from the pretentiousness once and awhile.

I haven’t taken gig photos in awhile, due to lack of time and inclination, so I figured all my shots would turn out to be horribly wrong and out of focus, but I also forgot that I’d upgraded cameras since the last gig, so was pleasantly surprised:

Hurrah!

The White Russians

11:46 am, September 21st, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted in local, mooosic, photography by Jarod

This is the concise review, I’m sure Liz will post a better wrapup soon.

Pinky Beecroft and the White Russians rock out. Yep, that should do.

Augie March’s New Single!

10:07 am, August 31st, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Posted in boythings, internets, mooosic by Jarod

Very much anticipating the new album, should be a corker.

To tide you over til the album’s October 11th release date the single ‘Watch me Disappear‘ is available for free download. Grab it from the AugieMarch.com, or from somewhere in the depths of the TripleJ website.