Brian James De Rellas 100 Club, London Friday, August 23, 2019
While the Damned are busy touring Oz, Brian James, the band's co-founder and architect of their "Damned, Damned, Damned" album, is playing a solo band show at the 100 Club.
Now there’s too much academic analysis over who invented punk. Some people refer to The Sonics from mid ‘60s America as the first punks, or The Ramones; some (well from Australia. anyway) will plump for Birdman or The Saints. Who issued the first single is beyond debate. The Damned's “New Rose” was the first punk single.
Cradle of Filth + Hybrid Nightmares The Gov, Adelaide September 4, 2019
It's fair to say that most people who rock up to these shows won't be bumpkins like me, who completely missed all the advances and shifts in the metal throughout the 1990s and onward.
Almost certainly there were few folk attending who didn't know the latest LP backward. The friend I'm going with, Azhurn, knows the bloody lyrics. Now, we ain't talking Ramones here. We're talking pieces which don't repeat phrases, no choruses except musical ones, and a narrative series closer to a somewhat demented storyteller. Dani's voice is simply astonishing, shifting several times within a single phrase, and occasionally it appears he's singing two notes at once.
Here's some of the press release (slightly amended):
"When you talk about classic albums shaping genres 'Cruelty and the Beast' by Cradle of Filth sits proudly and menacingly at the top of the tree for extreme music. In 1998 'Cruelty and the Beast' showcased the band's hybrid of brutality and macabre romanticism, crafting a concept album based on the life of Hungarian mass murderer Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who tortured and murdered hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries.
“'Cruelty and the Beast' was both bombastic and grandiose, inflected with gothic touches, yet unquestionably rooted in black metal. In addition to the feral bludgeoning and the slower, more melodic keyboard passages, 'Cruelty and the Beast', featured three haunting, elegiac instrumentals filled with chiming organs, horrified screams and synthesised orchestra parts that enhanced the drama and split the presentation into three acts. No other band would have been capable of creating such an opus. As a concept album, it is executed with perfection … creative, intelligent, shocking, written brilliantly and played expertly."
Ed Kuepper leads his Aints! through their final show for a while.
Sedition 2019 The Aints! The Flaming Hands Shy Impostors The Professors Paddington RSL, Sydney Saturday, August 31 2019
It could have been an exercise in nostalgia for its own sake. It was anything but.
On paper, a bunch of bands digging into their own back pages is a fraught exercise. Things can never be what they once were; voices age and players who were at one time singularly focused on the musical here and now inevitably drift on or find new interests. Some pass on. Others fall out with each other.
Each of these bands come from a special time and a place that can’t be re-captured. Each was leaning, to some degree, on their back catalogues tonight. All were doing their best to be true to their own legacy without getting hung up on it.
The Dammed The Factory Theatre, Marrickville Thursday, August 20 2019 Photos: Monique Simmons
Culturally, Britain was so different to the USA in so many ways in the ‘70s, and that had much to do with distance. The US is a vast place with all sorts of cultures and entrainment influences. The south was different to the west coast and out was again different to the east. And that really showed in the disparate pockets of music that sprang up everywhere.
On the other hand, England was more centralised. Long before the ‘70s dawned, it had the ingrained tradtiion of music halls as its historical DNA.
Music halls were everywhere. At one time there were more than 200 theatres in London alone. They hosted events running for four hours and ranging from comedy, clowning, horror to seriousdrama. For more than a century, popular theatre was a staple for the working man and middle class alike.
Well, you may ask, what has this got to do with The Damned appearing live in Sydney on a Thursday night? I say, everything.A Dammed gig is like a trip through classic British pantomime and theatre, full of drama and packed with wit and slapstick.
Sarah telling Hermann from Fear and Loathing not to swear.
Fear and Loathing The Filthy Gypsies Lucy the band Swamp Kitteh The Federal Hotel, Semaphore, Adelaide August 24, 2019 Photos: Wayne Ridley
What a pack of bastards. The folk in the bands, I mean. I wasn't going to review this gig, partly because the sound wasn't as good as it could have been, I missed most of the first act's set (and they were damn good and deserve a better review), one of the bands was using a stand-in bass and extra guitar player and... well, I hadn't gone with the intention of reviewing anyone, just a couple of brews and some friends. And the bastards have asked me to review the thing.
If I could claim to have been too drunk, I would.
Oh, yeah, "full disclosure" as the Barman says on occasion, I know a lot of these folks. But you, I-94 Bar reader, may rest assured that I would never review a band unless I thought them worthy of your attention. All I will add is that I wore my latest and current favourite Chickenstones T-shirt.
Rob Younger at The Factory Theatre. Shona Ross photo.
Radio Birdman + Mick Medew & The Mesmerisers + East Coast Low Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle, NSW Friday, June 21, 2019
Radio Birdman + Mick Medew & The Mesmerisers + The Dark Clouds Factory Theatre, Marrickville, NSW Saturday, June 22, 2019
The Aints! + Colonel Kramer & The Eamon Dilworth One Man Brass Ensemble Factory Theatre, Marrickville, NSW Friday, June 28, 2019
Your own legacy is a hard act to follow. This is a tale of two bands.
On one hand you have Radio Birdman, a thoroughly re-tooled and different beast to its previous incarnations and still carrying a substantial reputation. They’re a prime reason why The I-94 Bar exists.
On the other, you have The Aints!, who are led by foundation Saints member Ed Kuepper and armed with a setlist partly planted in that band’s past, with the balance comprising songs that were written for the old band but never recorded.
The Schizophonics Grinding Eyes Sk8tergrrrl Marrickville Bowling Club Thursday, June 6, 2019 Photos by Tom Wilkinson
This gig was a bit of a big deal for Sydney’s spluttering live rock and roll scene. There’s an online buzz on San Diego’s Schizophonics, driven by their livewire videos and their reputation for spectacular shows. The Harbour City, however, was absent from their original travel plans.
A tour through New Zealand was being followed by just one Australian show - at The Tote Hotel in Collingwood, Melbourne - until last-minute intervention by a drummer in one of Oz’s most prominent bands (Russell Hopkinson of You Am I knows who he is) and another party who shall remain nameless.
So a side trip to Sydney was organised - for a Thursday night show at Marrickville Bowling Club. The night after a hurriedly organised, extra Melbourne show. Marrickville Bowlo has become a haunt for Sydney’s older rock and roll demographic. Lansdowne for the kids, Bowlo for the seniors. It’s a nice-sounding room with a great PA and friendly staff. The drinks are cheap.
Sand Pebbles John Curtin Hotel , Carlton Saturday, June 1 2019
I remember 2004. Living in a spacious weatherboard house in North Fitzroy, two small children, disrupted sleep patterns, fumbling through the fog of the embryonic years of parenthood.
Watching the Howard Years roll on. Mark Latham pushed his way into public view, tried to take up the fight with Howard. Toned down the more provocative aspects of his public discourse, held a press conference in front of a row of American flags, presented himself as the guy who understood the aspirations of the suburban demographic, but who wasn’t a product of an era that’d never return. Who’d have though 15 years later Latham would be a One Nation member in the NSW parliament? People thought Pauline Hanson was finished too. History is funny, innit?
"The Odd Night Out" Botanic Gordon + Leitmotiv Limbo + r.domain + Vomit of the Universe The Metro, Adelaide May 11, 2019 Photos by Somnambulist Dillinger
I'd never seen any of these outfits. Only heard of one of them, Vomit of the Universe (aka VoU), because my friends Adam Mondayitis (pictured right - sometime DJ at 3D Radio until they got gentrified, Hydrocephallus and Smallpox Confidentialist) and Jordy Dodd are VoU and ... well. You never know, do you? Might be dreadful. Might be wonderful.
The organiser wasn't sure what the order of play was until everyone more or less got there. So this is how the bands appeared on the FB event page (and yes, it's 'sic'):
Vomit of the Universe - guitar and drums duo plays slimey soiled rusty metal
r.domain - modular synths of megalopic proportions with a sea of wires
Botanic Gordon - formerly of the '70s organ synth, now renovating for future antiquity
Leitmotiv Limbo - clarinet sin storage, synth put aside, "just playing spring sculptures"
Cradle of Filth
Ed Kuepper leads his Aints! through their final show for a while. 
Tom Wilkinson photo.
"The Odd Night Out"