GO PUBLIC PLAYING OUT
Go Public, a band drawn from various NZ and Australian punk and underground bands, is doing a limited run of shows in and around Sydney. Comprising John Lawrance (vocals), Boris Falovic (guitar), Johnny Volume (guitar), Joe Kennedy (bass) and Des Hefner (drums), Go Public began life in Melbourne in 2003 as Loudhailer before copyright issues forced a name change. But their history goes back way further.
John Lawrance had played cornet on a Dead Can Dance session. DCD had formed from the remains of Marching Girls, who’d started out as New Zealand’s original punk band The Scavengers (whose song “Mysterex” was covered by The D4.) It was at this time that John Lawrance met Des Hefner and Johnny Volume. A songwriting team was formed out of which came legendary St Kilda band Permanent Press. Throughout the ‘80s and 90s, they continued playing and writing together with other and separate projects such as Black Sun, Scenic Railway and The Brotherhood of John Lawrance. Permanent Press became Loudhailer after an email claiming ownership of that name. Beginning again, Go Public will be playing gigs during August 2008 playing songs from their new CD,with Chris Gormly (ex Local Product, Steve Lucas and The Groody Frenzy ) deputizing on drums while Des Hefner is on paternity leave. More information here.
Thursday 7th August at Hotel Gearin, Katoomba, with support The One Bollock Peep Show
Friday 8th Aug at The Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills, Sydney, with supports Leed Fiends and Kettle Of Fish
Saturday 9th Aug, The Great Northern Hotel, Hunter/Scott St, Newcastle, with support Kettle Of Fish
VISITORS RETURN TO EARTH WITH SYDNEY, WOLLONGONG AND MELBOURNE GIGS
Legendary in death but now walking the earth again, The Visitors are playing a select series of Australian gigs in August and September, including their first-ever Melbourne show.The Visitors arose from the ashes of Radio Birdman in 1978, providing a musical outlet for that band's guitarist-songwriter Deniz Tek, keyboard player Pip Hoyle and drummer Ron Keeley. The original lineup featured Radio Birdman sidekick Mark Sisto, on vocals and teen prodigy Steve Harris on bass
The band left behind a self-titled EP - drawn from demo's - that drew rabid reviews and now changes hands for $500 on eBay. The full sessions were later released on LP by Australian label Citadel, and remixed/remastered on CD by Red Eye/Polydor Records.
The Visitors returned in 2005 for shows in Newcastle and Sydney. Two more sightings occurred in February this year, including a Brisbane support to American punk-and-soul sensations The BellRays.
Tek, Hoyle and Sisto remain at the core of The Visitors with former Tumbleweed and Deniz Tek Group drummer Nik Rieth and ex ME-262 bassist (and teenage Visitors fan) Andy Newman now filling the engine room. Saxophonist Jack Shanley (Vindicator Smooth, Detroit Actual) is part of an expanded line-up.
To mark the Return to Earth Tour, the band's original long-out-of-print
album will be re-issued on Citadel.And in a special coupling, ex-Screaming Tribesmen band leader Mick Medew will join one of the bills with his Brisbane band, The Rumours, for his first appearance in the Harbour City in nine years. That show - Saturday, August 30 at The Empire in Annandale - will be the only city gig for The Visitors and The Rumours and will be opened by locals 25th Floor.
I-94 Bar presents
The Visitors
"Return to Earth 2008"AUGUST
9 - Oxford Hotel, Wollongong
+ Leadfinger
+ The Relics of Ong
15 - Caringbah Bizzos
+ Southern Preachers + Life Adjustment Disorder
30 - The Empire, Annandale
+ Mick Medew & The Rumours + 25th Floor (co-presented with Barfly Promotions)SEPTEMBER
5 - The Espy Front Bar, St Kilda
+ Legends of Motor Sport + tba
HITMEN IN BEIJING BLITZ AT ANNANDALE HOTEL, 08.08.08
Chris Klondike Masuak (Radio Birdman, Hitmen, New Christs, Screaming Tribesmen, KN40) has just finished mixing THE HITMEN featuring Niagara "St Valentines Day Massacre" Live in Sydney February 2008! Chris just got back from Melbourne where he mixed the tracks with Michele the owner of Staticattack Sound, who recorded the songs live to a full house on February 22nd this year at The Crest Hotel Sylvania. They've done an amazing Job... so raw and powerful. It's one of The Hitmen's best live recordings. NB The new live CD won't be available at the next show - more news as we receive it.
The CD will contain all of Niagara's songs performed that night plus three from The Hitmen - "LA Woman", "Death by The Gun" (Chris singing) and their new one "Another Lost Weekend". A DVD Live performance of the show will also be released as a bonus ( they 're editing now! thanks to Boris and Catherine). Distribution offers from Europe are pouring in and the release will most likely filter back into Australia later in the year via SHOCK Records, the distributors for Savage Beat and all of the Hitmen's reissues.The Friday 8th August show at the Annandale Hotel (presented by Lenny Flotzki and the I-94 Bar) is a special one off warm-up to The Hitmen's October Australian Tour and December Euro Tour through El Beasto Touring agency in Spain. The band will be performing a bunch of old favourites from their first two albums , songs that were missing from their last Australian Tour . A new original is also in the works! Tickets are on sale in advance from www.annandalehotel.com or Ph 02 9550 1078 or at the Venue - In advance $22 + BF or $26 on the night. Be early, tickets going fast! Leadfinger have just been confirmed as the opening support with one more special band to be announced!! So, avoid the Olympic Games opening Ceremony on TV , DO THE BEIJING BLITZ and get your ass down to the Annandale Hotel and Shake Some Action with the hardest working band in show business!! Doors Open 8pm. The band will stick around after the show for autograph signing of Limited edition T Shirts, posters and CD' which will be sold on the night.
STAY TUNED FOR 2 MORE BRILLIANT RE ISSUES later in the year THROUGH SAVAGE BEAT/SHOCK OF THE HITMEN'S "MORONIC INFERNO" album recorded in Houston Texas with Radio Birdman tech Andy Bradley and their Classic Live album "TORA TORA DTK" from their rare ABC - 2JJJ LIVE Recordings!!
Tired of traffic congestion, public scourging and crucifixions? Fed up with being pious, sober and bored to tears? It’s time to wash that Pope right out of your hair! Prove once and for all that wine, women and song (a.k.a. sex and drugs and rock and roll) beats abstinence, confession and prayer meetings any day of the week. Of course, there’s no better way for Sydneysiders to celebrate the departure of His Holiness at the back end of World Youth Day by getting on down to the Bald Faced Stag on Sunday July 27 for an All-Star, triple headline bill of Rock and Roll excitement.Making their debut performance will be the Dead Rabids. Featuring Bob Short (ex Filth, Urban Guerrillas, Blood and Roses, Full On) and John Gunn (ex Last Words, Urban Guerillas, Associates, Gunn Sound), this band promises maximum power old school punk.
The Men from Uncle are enthusiastic exponents of Cold War spy pop. Their exciting sixties garage sounds have been absent from Sydney’s gig scene for way too long and here is your opportunity to catch up with what you have been missing.
Rounding off the bill is a rare performance by DF5000 featuring Gas Wylde of pub rock legends Gas and the General and Jill Adams from the Fyreflies.
It’s going to be a popetastic night hosted by his Unholiness, Pope Bob of Dulwich Hill. Now go ye forth and sin again.
ED KUEPPER & THE KOWALSKI COLLECTIVE return to live performance this August for the first time since their triumphant appearance at the inaugural Don't Look Back concert series in February, a concept that saw the band performing the Kuepper classic, Honey Steel's Gold in it's entirety.Performing those shows to a sold out audience along the East Coast prepared Kuepper for his next move, a support to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on a tour that took in Denwark, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Serbia, Italy, Greece and France and sold out audiences of 2500 - 7500 people each night.
Kuepper performed the shows with drummer Jeffrey Wegener and the duo were joined on occasion joined by Bad Seeds members, bassist Martyn Casey and violinist Warren Ellis, for a rendition of the Laughing Clowns classic Eternally Yours, and the haunting Demolition from Kueppers latest opus Jean Lee & the Yellow Dog. While in Athens, Herr Cave himself lead the chant for an encore and invited Ed and Jeffrey up for the Bad Seeds encore. In fact, so well did the reduced mode Kuepper Collective go down with the Bad Seeds audience, that plans are now underway for Kuepper to support the Bad Seeds on their US leg of the Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! tour.
Back home, though, Kuepper, Wegener and bassist Peter Oxley have rejoined forces for a short national run taking in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne in an effort to reconnect with the local fans and also, to introduce a brand new live CD titled, appropriately enough Ed Kuepper Live, taken from a radio broadcast in Melbourne in 2006 and featuring solo Kuepper classics like: La Di Doh, Little Fiddle and Honey Steel's Gold alongside Clowns' favourites Eternally Yours, Collapse Board and more. The CD, released on Kuepper's own Prince Melon imprint, retails for just $10.00 and will only be made available at local shows or online from Amazon MP3, eMusic, iTunes and Napster. The new live CD promises to be the first of many to be drawn from the Kuepper archives and made available on Prince Melon.
Tickets for all ED KUEPPER & THE KOWALSKI COLLECTIVE show sare on sale now:
August
Saturday 9th: Sydney, The Vanguard
Tickets $23.00 includes bf available online from www.moshtix.com, Phone bookings: 02-9209-4614. Also available at all Moshtx.com outlets.Sunday 10th: Sydney, The Vanguard
Tickets $23.00 includes bf available online from www.moshtix.com, Phone bookings: 02-9209-4614. Also available at all Moshtx.com outlets.Friday 15th: Adelaide, The Gov
Tickets $25.00 + bf available at The Gov 8340 0744 and Venue-tix 8225 8888 www.venuetix.com.auSaturday 16th: Melbourne,. Northcote Social Club
Tickets $22.00 includes bf available from the Venue at 301 High St, Northcote (Mon-Fri 12-8), Phone 94861677 and
online at www.northcotesocialclub.com
DEVO: THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS
There are less than four weeks remaining until new wave, post-punk, electro-icons DEVO, return to our shores for their first national tour since 1983. That first (and only) national tour was a complete sell out and coincided with the release of DEVO's no.1 mini LP DEV-O Live. The tour also included an appearance on national TV chart show Countdown, with live footage taken from one of the band's four sold out shows at Melbourne's Festival Hall. This time around, DEVO will headline Byron Bay's Splendour in the Grass Festival (already sold out) as well as performing concert hall and theatre shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth - a sure sign of DEVO's enduring popularity.More recently, DEVO have been bidding their time between performing at festivals around the world including: Primavera (Barcelona), Vilette Sonique (Paris), and the McCarren Park Pool (New York) and also suing hamburger multi-conglomerate McDonalds. The fast food chain recently released a series of American Idol Happy Meal toys in the US based on a range of music genres, including Disco Dave, Country Clay, Rockin' Riley and Soulful Selma. DEVO's complaint relates to New Wave Nigel, a toy kitted out in an orange jumpsuit, pink shades, and DEVO's "energy dome" hat. The band also allege that the toy plays a "Devo-esque song". Bass player Gerald Casale said the band were taking legal action against McDonald's for using their copyrighted hat without permission:
"We are in the midst of suing them," Casale told AAP. "This New Wave Nigel doll that they've created is just a complete Devo rip-off and the red hat is exactly the red hat that I designed, and it's copyrighted and trademarked. They didn't ask us anything. Plus, we don't like McDonald's, and we don't like American Idol, so we're doubly offended."
Word of the McDonalds incident may or may not be raised by Australian journalists when interviewing DEVO but the theory of DE-Evolution and it's frightening reality is sure to get a workout when the highly entertaining founders of DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald V. Casale, appear on the 7.30 Report, 2BL, the Austereo network, Triple J and many more radio networks once landed in Australia. Be prepared!
Tickets for all show are on sale now. Don't miss this unique chance to see DEVO with special guests Regurgitator, live!
Thursday 31st July: Melbourne - Festival Hall
Ticketmaster: Online - www.ticketmaster.com.au , phone - 136 100, Festival Hall Box Office - 288 Roslyn St West Melbourne
Ticket price: $93.40 (includes GST and booking fees - some transaction fees may apply).
Special guests: Regurgitator and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.Friday 1st August: Sydney - Hordern Pavilion
Ticketek: Online - www.ticketek.com.au , phone - 132 849
Ticket price: $93.65 (includes GST and booking fees - some transaction fees may apply).
Special guests: Regurgitator and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.Saturday 2nd: Splendour in the Grass Festival *
* Splendour has already sold out.Monday 4th: Adelaide - Thebarton Theatre
VenueTix: Online - www.venuetix.com , phone - (08) 8225 8888
Ticket price: $88.50 (includes GST and booking fees - some transaction fees may apply).
Special guests: Regurgitator.Wednesday 6th: Perth - Metro City
Moshtix: Online - www.moshtix.com , all Moshtix outlets (Jumbo Entertainment, Galaxy Entertainment, Mills Records, Planet Video and Rockeby Records). Also available at BOCS: Online - www.bocsticketing.com.au , 78 Records: Online - www.78records.com.au
Ticket price: $85.00 + booking fee.
Special guests: Regurgitator.
