Royal Derby Hotel (17/7/2009)

So our grand plans to go to a new venue with a fun band fell through (not so much fell through as were based on lies), but we did manage to do exactly what we did the Friday before hand.... which was see Greasers at the Royal Derby. But.... just to make things interesting for the readers of this blog, management was kind enough to totally flip the furniture around, so the stage was moved, there were less couches...... but the songs remained the same.

The Cuckoos

The Cuckoos have a member of Little Red in them. They play music that sounds like it could be from a US Highschool prom. I presume all their songs are about girls in dresses. I have a dopey grin on my face when I listen to their songs. When I played lovely day on their myspace I was the 35th person to listen to it. They had an EP for sale on the night which I wish I had of bought.

The Hondas

The Hondas have a member of Little Red in them. They play music that sounds like it could be from a US Highschool prom. I presume all their songs are about girls in dresses. Except for the song I am a homosexual. I have a dopey grin on my face when I listen to their songs. The aforementioned song is super gay in the best way (Sans- Buttsecks). Song of the night.

Greasers

Greasers have a member of Little Red in them. They play music that sounds like it could be from a US Highschool prom. I presume all their songs are about girls in dresses. Except for the song Shelly, which is about a girl getting out of her dress. I have a dopey grin on my face when I listen to their songs. You can download their whole album for free here, which everyone should do... because it's better than listening to Lady Gaga or any other shit. Apparently Jet have a new CD coming out... fuck that off and download this instead. It'll save you some coin. Wolfmother have something coming out too... if you could tape over cds like you could casettes, I would buy the wolfmother cd and tape this over the top of it. Greasers, you're fun. So fun you made me agressive just now.

They've got one more week of their residency, so check them out 31st of July. No excuses please.

The Royal Derby Hotel (10/7/2009)

The Royal Derby Hotel  
Located on brunswick st, fitzroy. This place has a great selection of tap beers, armchairs and couches. Another cool thing we noticed was that each band's sound check played along to the venue music; this was much appreciated as the music was pretty decent and it gets annoying when it's jarring loud noises that interrupt the atmosphere. I almost forgot on fridays they have $2.50 pots of beer! Nice! The only thing going against this brilliant venue was poor acoustics and lack of a stage, but that could be seen as a good thing as you're always going to get an intimate show.

Madonna
A punky, regea band from melbourne, not the pop idol from the US as a certain gig website would have you believe (prints them as "Madonna (USA)"), luckily we were privy to this information and didn't have our hearts set on hearing 'like a virgin'. Their drummer was nuts (quite fast, he also requested that they stop playing while he tuned it: committed to the sound, like it) and their use of synth worked well.

This War
Played a slightly more regea style of music than Madonna and it's odd that I don't have more to say. Check this!

The Greasers
As I've said before, these guys are lots of fun to see. At the moment I'd say about half their songs are not all that special, but the rest are quite well written in my opinion; interesting bass lines, original riffs and one song in particular (I believe it's called "Shelly") is really fun. Catch them if you get a chance, they are well worth the outing.  Listen to them on the Triple J unearthed website.

Bootleg @ Cherry Bar (24/4/2009)

The band rating system I have devised is way too complex and I think it says even less than the traditional 5 star system, so I've tried it out but from here on I'm going to rate with stars.


Cherry Bar
Recently the cherry bar has sprung back to life after being closed indefinately and as far as I know is open on friday nights for 'Bootleg'. I cant compare the place to what it once was as this was my first time, but it felt pretty good to come in from the cold in to a toasty warm bar with reasonable prices. The sound was pretty loud, but no complaints; it was great! I do have to say something about the temperature, although it was nice and warm, once the band started it was boiling and airless. It also got a bit squishy around the bar once more peeps arrived.

Johnny Rock and The Limits

These guys have some real fun-to-rock-your-head-to tunes. I'd definitely see them again live, just to have a good head rock! But....I don't think I'd care for any recordings, mainly because the music is fairly simple and only a slight bit repetitious. The keyboard parts in the songs were very hard to hear, and made Jim and I both question the presence of a keyboard on stage! The only time we heard the keyboard was at the end of a couple of tracks making ridiculously out of place sound effects, but maybe I just don't get it. I could be way out of line here, perhaps in the 2 shows of theirs we have watched the keyboard has been malfunctioning, hence removing our confusion over it's necessity on stage and maybe the keyboard is that missing ingredient of complexity to their sound. I liked what they did with The Police's 'I can't stand losing', that was nicely done, in particular I love the bass line in that song and wouldn't have changed it for fear of messing immanent failure, but they did it well.

The Greasers

Being potentially named after the the gang in the outsiders it also makes them quite difficult to google! But check out their MySpace and listen/download their album here.

The first four-ish songs stood out as better songs ('how strong's my love' - excellent); that song 'Shelly' is pretty simple yet it's awesome live, must be because it says f&ck or something. I the last song was alright too. I like the way these dudes play and choose their song list etc. They are good live but there's just a little bit of magic absent in some of the songwriting but that was probably only noticeable because of the following act...

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Fearless Vampire Killers
...Rock! Another all star performance* from these guys. Tonight they told us that they were attempting to make a live recording. I think they wouldn't consider that attempt as a success; the crowd was dancing mentally yet they severely lacked the motivation to match their enthusiasm in noise making, then a bunch of guys made a mess of things (see "*" below). These guys have everything that The Greasers have in terms of gigging ability, except all their songs could be their best.

*At least it would have been if a dude from Little Red hadn't gotten all munted, jumped up on stage and staggered around disconnecting guitars and pedals, knocking over microphone stands and being a general menace. I got the impression from the looks that he was getting from the singer (Sean) that the guy from Little Red was testing the boundaries of their friendship.