OK, I really have to post this because someone sent me the link to the full gig filmed at the Metro in Sydney which is the last gig of the tour that finished last week so this is the last gig from The Drones for this year. I will not type very much because as you will see this is a very, very long video or it's a playlist but I'm going to just embed it in full just as you would be watching them live but off course it's not the same thing well, it's close enough. So thanks to Prettycrap for filming it all, cheers mate.
The setlist: The Best You Can Believe In I’m Here Now The Minotaur Jezebel Cold And Sober Luck In Odd Numbers River Of Tears Sitting On The Edge Of The Bed Cryin’ I Don’t Ever Want To Change Sixteen Straws Oh, Sister (Bob Dylan cover)
Right, I haven't done this in a while but here's some cool photos I found on Fasterlouder's website of his very last solo show, Gareth Liddiard at this festival over east. These photos are by someone calling themselves Dovers. Then I also found four new videos on YouTube by someone called Prettycrap. The songs, two from his solo album Strange Tourist with that title track and Blondin Makes An Omelette and two classic The Drones songs with Jezebel and Shark Fin Blues. Well, maybe it's not his very last solo show ever but it's the last one before The Drones tour next month, can I call it their comeback tour? Yes I think so, it's been so long. What is after that? I'm hoping for a new The Drones album being recorded after this tour and being released early next year, 2012 but I'm only guessing here. I really wouldn't mind if he did a second solo album too. So this festival is called Changing Lanes Festival in Sydney on the 17th September, it was just last week which looks kind-off cool but Gareth Liddiard is the best thing about it of-course.
Those flashing lights are a bit annoying but I would sit through anything to hear his songs again, again and again.
Here's a bonus track which is really interesting, on the same day it seems Gaz played or just had a really long jam with Damo Suzuki from the Japanese band called Can and the Sydney/Perth band The Holy Soul. The Holy Soul seem to have played with him before when I looked them up, I found at Repressed Record a $7 mp3 for a something called Dead Man Has No 2nd Chance which is a live recording from a few years ago and has Dan Luscombe playing keyboards on it on it too. The songs are A-side: A Stone Of Fortune and the B-side: Strangers In Blue, can you call mp3 downloads A and B sides? I don't think so but I just did, sorry about that anyway god knows what this song is called. It goes for over forty minutes I think it's pretty dam cool but I should warn you it's pretty weird too. By the way your really can't see a thing someone forgot to turn the lights on, maybe just to be even more freaky.
OK, I promise to get back my favorite 100 Aussie albums in my next post but I had to post these photos and videos because they are just too good not to.
Well, after last week writing hopefully we'll see some video recording of this gig here is two songs from the wonderful Mess+Noise, already. "Blondin Makes An Omelette" and "Strange Tourist", fingers crossed the rest of the show is on the way too but even if not these two are totally wicked. It does look like a bit of an odd gig to play watching these videos but it's way better that someone recording him on their mobile phone. I'm really liking this Vimeo as well, so much better than youtube. Plus since last time he's announced another national tour also singer-songwriter Dan Kelly will be the special guest on this tour, if you haven't seen the dates I've included them at the bottom of this page. We do have to wait until March or April to see Gareth Liddiard so if you haven't seen him yet, get a ticket and go and see him and Dan together, it will be great.
The Tour Dates: Friday 18 March - Brisbane Hotel, Hobart Saturday 19 March - Mossvale Festival, Mossvale Wednesday 23 March - The Maram, Canberra Thursday 24 March - The Factory Theatre, Sydney Friday 25 March - Lizotte’s, Newcastle Saturday 26 March - The Zoo, Brisbane Sunday 27 March - The Clarendon Guesthouse, Katoomba Friday 1 April – Jive, Adelaide Saturday 2 April - The Bakery, Perth Thursday 7 and Friday 8 April - East Brunswick, Melbourne Saturday 9 April - The National Hotel, Geelong
Top photo by Daniel Boud again, one I didn't include in the last post but from the same set of-course.
OK, my Gareth Liddiard obsession continues will another collection of photos from the last show he's played at the Lower Town Hall, the Sydney Festival on 13/01/11 just a few days ago. From two sources, the first three photos are from FasterLouder by someone who calls himself TheEnglishGentleman and the rest are from Mess+Noise the rest of the photos are by Daniel Boud. Below is a thirty second youtube preview of what the video looked like, fingers crossed someone pressed the record button and one day soon we get to see the whole show in all it's glory. Gareth Liddiard played in between Kram from Spiderbait playing mainly drums plus some guitar too and a hungover Sarah Blasko who was accompanied by a pianist. Sounds like a good gig but from what I can figure out each performer was only given 20 minute sets with four video screens which was turned into some kind of a large-scale video installation thingy, if someone who was there could explain what happened please do because I wasn't there. Anyway we are still waiting on the "new" Drones DVD so I guess we are not going to get a Gaz one any time soon but maybe someone could upload it to youtube because it would be better than this one below, thirty seconds but it's better than nothing at the moment I guess.
Well I'm back with another Gareth Liddiard and The Drones post. More photos I found of him from last months gig I saw him at on the 12/11/10, it was only just over a month ago now. All these photos are by Graham Clark which I've got from the FasterLouder website (this time). I'm getting sick of these sites you have to click through pages and pages just see all the photos so I've just put an edited half a dozen best photos all in one place. They're great photos too. I remember seeing these at the time but forgot about them and I do like to keep track of these things so I'm re-posting them here, I hope no one minds about this one too. It was a great night and these are great photos of that night.
One more bonus photo here which I've tagged on the end is of the crowd on the night at the show and I'm in it, the blurry guy in the the bottom left hand side which maybe doesn't need to be here but the six above it are wicked. I guess including this one gives a complete view of it all. I can't find any photos from the next night at Mojo's Bar but found a live video of my favorite song from the album and title track on youtube from the same tour, over east a few nights later.
So right at the very, very end of this post is the wicked video of Gareth Liddiard @ Oxford Art Factory, Sydney on the 20/11/10 (with almost perfect sound and pretty clear picture). This song has become my favorite from his new album which is the title track called "Strange Tourist". I've added the lyrics right below to go with the track below so you can read/sing along at the same as watching him, enjoy!
The "Strange Tourist" lyrics:
It was all falling down and a long way from cheap So tell me why did we live where we lived? Above the old fish shop where they served up slop And all the alley cats talked in their sleep
I spent a year there with B After I quit the Mitsubishi, Dragged my mattress up some stairs by the sea Then watched the old van rust in the gusts of the coast Ending its knightly expeditions for beer
B went psychotic in the navy and he wouldn't mend Something about a sunk junk and speed Well he couldn't shake the illness or endure the cure And there was no point switching treatments in the Timor Sea
I have never known someone who needed to talk so much Or even fool himself disguising a guess I just steered his bullshit through the next diversion Never bothering with reality checks
Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black What the hell could be the matter with you? Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting Anything that turns the colour blue?
B took his refuge in the open where it stings You think you'd seen him but he's gone in a blink Once those Stilnox hit their target don't trust nothing, No one And don't go believing anything that you think
He'd say, "I'm half way through But I don't know what I'm doing I ain't feeling much of nothing at all But it's my first time too, if that's a valid excuse I'm going to wait here for the engines to stall
I've seen the tracks of some giant, the smoke of some fire Fuse like hot sands in a bottleneck Does all of beauty lie in being dead and gone Or is all history made of chickens and their unhatched eggs
I've seen the specter of a frigate on a dry rock face A stone axe held together with an old bootlace Anything betraying the drift of dead headway You can shake it but it won't let go
All that so men can live like girls to keep their might pert Digging music made by millionaires for car adverts Save the whales, invade Iraq and have a hamburger I can't distinguish between the nightmare and the joke
I was in Tokyo once without any cash Koda Kumi sang a coda pink as sarin gas I took a trip to Nagasaki in a rented Mitsubishi Then went camping in the Jukai under Mount Fuji"
Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black What the hell could be the matter with you? Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting Anything that turns the colour blue?
But when his pension got suspended, Well that spelled the end And I joined his life of leisure in flight It's too hard to row a boat using a periscope Sometimes you gotta do wrong to do right
He got in trouble years back, I haven't see him since In a men's room in a night club in Madrid He sold some dexedrine or something to a plain clothes D Then raised a stink so bad they ended up deporting him
Then last I heard he was as free as a bird or into Scientology Or into Heaven's Gate or Sharon Tate Or in the Legionnaires Or gone to Georgia with the Mujahideen
And someone else was walking eggshells in his birdcage Someone else shared his unending lease on hamstrung rage He was someone else's problem, and that made me glad They can indulge him 'till he's ironclad
Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black What the hell could be the matter with you? Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting Anything that turns the colour blue?
I wound up working in a hospital Renting TV's to the bored and the blind Seems the DSS got sick of my BS And had my unemployment privatised
They made a date with me, some agency And I went down there like a fool in love They made a few phone calls, found a real cure-all Like I wasn't miserable enough
I was working night shift when he got there The first time I'd seen a coma on the ward The sister said he won't be needing TV now Probably won't be needing nothing at all
He was in Tokyo for once until he stabilised They flew him back here and the story unfolded They found him frozen in a hollow in Aokigahara forest Where those harrakiri weirdos go
He died a little later, and was wheeled away I'd blame his morbid fascination for it all And his doubtless, groundless faith In his outdoors manship He didn't kill himself, he didn't have the balls
Hope dies last in a hospital But has a habit of doing it next to you While you shit kick around with your eyes to the ground Like a bowerbird appropriating anything The colour blue.
The Gareth Liddiard @ Oxford Art Factory live video on youtube
P.S. I promise I'll get to the final five Nick Cave songs so it's all over and done with in the next post.
