Ladyhawke, San Fran bathhouse, Sunday 1 November

Blogger back in the hizouse.

Some people have been desperate for my triumphant return to blogging. Others were indifferent. But me, I've just been waiting til I got an iPhone I could blog from while in a taxi on the way home from a gig. That plan was, however, foiled due to getting a lift home for free.

Anyway, ladyhawke! Let me say I am not a huge fan. I mean I walk with a spring in my step when Paris is burning comes ony iPod but that's about it. So tonight I was more excited by the company I was keeping than the prospect of masterton's favourite daughter. So with delight I award the night a 7.5 out of ten.











I have to admit the second song: dusk til dawn is my least Fave ladyhawke song but it went off. San Fran was packed and I had the ledge of the booth seating to stand on, which is partially responsible for making the middle part of her set drag. But by the time she finished with Paris is burning I was right back in to it.

For the encore it was covers city. The best was message to my girl, which made the people next to me wonder whether it was an indication of solidarity for Phil Judd. It left me thinking that split enz music is so iconic I cannot hear a cover without thinking it is fundraising for *something*. Like greenpeace. Anyway I sang along with everyone else. She finished with my delirium and it was the highlight of the show.

In short it was worth the money, which is all I ask in these tough economic times.
-- Posted from my iPhone

the killers, vector arena auckland, 8 april 2009

i am prone to hyperbole. which is part of my charm. but honestly, it is a serious personality flaw when it comes to finding the words to tell you just how lifechangingly awesome the killers were on wednesday night. the greatest night of my life.



every detail is important. we arrived at vector arena about eight, in time to get some lukewarm fries before the checks went on stage. i thought the checks were awesome. energetic, getting me in the mood. and accepting that the (few) people were there for the killers without getting all bitter about it.

the checks ended and i admired my perch - a judder bar of sorts half way into the general admissions area. it gave me an extra two inches in height, which made all the difference. that plus the fact i had a man on crutches in front of me and a man on crutches behind me, effectively acting as a forcefield.

after about half an hour the lights dimmed and out blares HUMAN. and i catch my first glimpse of *brandon*. now, i've seen the killers before. and i thought i wouldn't possibly feel that way again. WRONG.


i still think brandon (here pictured beside the drummer) sounds better in real life. i still think that the killers write the best song (in my favourite style: narrative). the camp vegas styles still delight me (fake palms!). and i would still, definitely, turn mormon.

during bling (confessions of a killer) as brandon pumped his fists i just about passed out from awesome. then as he dedicated a song to all the sexy ladies i started to fantasise about what pick up lines i would use on brandon (hint: they were all embarrassing).

i've found day and age a grower and awesome. my brother on the other hand claims the killers are dead to him now. so i texted him part way through to tell him he is entirely wrong. the new stuff was awesome live. the sax solos were the icing on the cake. he remains unconvinced, but then he's a loser.

it was all so good and i could seriously talk about it forever, like how for the encore they asked us if we wanted to hear losing touch. so fucking endearing. i said yes, but secretly wanted to know if this meant no neon tiger. which i think it must have because, hello the only stink thing (apart from the fact that it didn't go on for eternity) was that they didn't play my favourite song from the new album. in fact they didn't play my favourite song from sam's town either (this river is wild). but then all of this is just helping to justify me seeing them again at some point. when i've calmed down. which at this stage i don't think will ever happen.

anyway, the encore. mr brightside. i nearly cried....




me for brandon flowers forever. and ever. and ever.

kings of leon, tsb arena wellington, 27 march 2009

this year i have been pretty lucky. first i turn thirty, then i get to see kings of leon FOR FREE.

we arrived about eight thirty at the tsb, and didn't have to wait long for the opening act to finish. then kings of leon opened strong and in a way that totally satisfied their long time fans. those new to the band wagon (ie me) were just buying time until sex on fire. or in my case i was specifically waiting for revelry. have you heard it? you really should listen to it on repeat. for about a week. they played it. i took pause.


anyway mtv was at the concert and filming. and caleb, my new boyf and KoL lead singer, told us to let everyone feel jealous that they weren't at the tsb. and proceeded to play sex on fire. there was some singing, some blissing out, and some hard core clapping.


including from me if i am honest. anyway, there were some more hits. the show ended after about an hour. then there was a short encore. too short in my opinion. so that was the only downside.

so in summary: lead singer = hot. showmanship from band middling but lead singer was fairly engaging. and goddamn it sometimes you just need a hit of the ol' guitar music. 7/10. but if caleb asks you, they were the best band i've ever seen.








**** post script*****

the mtv filming was for a live cross to mtv australia's awards. you can watch it on the youtube here. i feel like part of history.

leonard cohen, tsb arena wellington, 20 January 2009

i have said before that hallelujah is one of the best songs of all time. but for me it was always about the jeff buckley version. so, when i was offered a ticket to leonard cohen last night even though it was sold out, i didn't realise that i am the luckiest son-of-a-gun there is.

leonard cohen

i arrived at the arena at 8 and leonard cohen was just going on stage. i'll hand it to the oldies in the crowd: they know how to queue. everything went super smoothly. until i just about passed out from the tsunami of adoration. leonard cohen is loved.

and i can see why. during bird on a wire i actually thought i might explode with sadness and affection. like when he sung "like a baby still born....i have torn everyone who reached out for me".

there was an intermission after about 45 minutes and i took a photo of the crowd. being its well behaved self....

leonard cohen skipped off stage and fifteen mintues later skipped back on. the word spritely springs to mind. his voice was powerful and shook me to my core. he survived possibly four standing ovations and a woman from the crowd doing a type of scarf dance to so long, marianne*. and he made seventy five look sexy.

the set list was similar to stuff i'd read on the internet (for example here) but he played chelsea hotel and famous blue raincoat. both of which have similtaneously become my favourite songs of all time.

9/10 - but more if i'd been the woman doing the scarf dance.

*ps this woman had so been waiting her entire life for that moment.

arctic monkeys, wellington town hall 13 Jan 09

keeping this blog might be the single most nerdy thing i've ever done. rejoice!

i know this because last night when i took photos at the arctic monkeys i looked around and the only people taking photos were total nerdburgers. needless to say, i was in fiiiiine company. and being a nerdburger is better than being a drunk chick trying to tell me how to get a better shot by feeling me up.

anyway, all this is just a rant before i get to my review...

arctic monkeys

due to conditions in fiji, zane lowe wasn't there to open the gig. to know what a loss this is you should check out zane lowe's website here. basically what i'm telling you is that he's a little bit adorable. but also it turns out that an opening act is essential in getting you warmed up for the headliner. so when arctic monkeys came on i simply wasn't ready. plus, when they came on it took me about five minutes to realise it was the band and not four piles of hair. these boys now all have real mop tops. i'm not a fan of the look.

anyway, i am a fan of the arctic monkeys though. have you heard the song mardy bum? how about when the sun goes down? or florescent adolescent? these are all excellent hits that zane lowe would probably call cinematic. and the reason i got tickets on the first day they went on sale.

the highlights were the songs you know. the songs that everyone knew and blissed out to. and it was bliss at times. they were all cute as buttons and alex turner attempted to engage with us and even did us the courtesy of introducing the new material. plus i thought they did a great job of looking polished even though it was their first live gig in a year.

and on the new material it is officially new zealand's greatest day as the debut of new material in wellington has made it to the arctic monkey's wikipedia page. my favourite was the dangerous animals song (it involves spelling the words dangerous animal and i think it also involves a toy piano) but on one listening amongst a crowd of sweaty white men in their 30s it is hard to tell right from wrong.

there were some down sides to last night. i've already mentioned the lack of zane lowe or a replacement opening act. the town hall might look quaint but i don't enjoy it as a concert venue (i know, i'm irreverent) and at times longed for the sticky floors of the tsb arena - mostly cos i would have had more space to dance my own secret air bass dance that i do to arctic monkey songs. also the new material, while interesting and historic and whatnot, apparently ate up the time that should have been spent singing mardy bum. that's right, they did NOT play it. and unless i passed out from bliss i don't remember fake tales of san francisco. so, i left feeling a little bit down heartened.

so, 6.5/10. but if i'm focusing on how awesome it was to actually see the arctic monkeys even for a second, i'd up it to 8/10. afterall, they have written some of my favourite songs (most of which reference simon lebon lyrics) and when his hair's a bit shorter alex turner is a total hottie.

**** post script**** i can't believe i forgot to give y'all this (especially lucie):

rhythm and vines - gisborne dec 29, 30, 31 2008

apologies for this, as it is so last year. but it was also so awesome....


day one: mud, mud, glorious mud!


i bought possibly the last pair of gumboots at number one shoe warehouse in gisborne. after months of drought, gisborne hadn't really prepared itself well. which is why not only $2 had sold out of disposable raincoats.

my first impression of the festival was that it was giant. i had a bit of a flu so was worried i would expire walking up the hill to the markets. but ever the trooper, me and my gumboots made it.

i spent most of my time at the rhythm stage (the main stage) but had a bit of a boogie with the young kids at the cellar stage. which, frankly, was the best looking of all the stages (i'll come to that a bit later on).

santogold

the first band i wanted to see was santogold. you should probably know i basically discovered Santi White. i saw her in NYC in 2007 (incidentally on her birthday) when she opened for bjork and the klaxons. and as i was watching them i just knew they were going to be huge. even though she didn't even have a record. that's me... talent scout.

fast forward to gisborne and there she was - wowing the teenagers. she even had a group of drunken male fans who had a sure fire way of getting her attention: throwing stuff on stage. i didn't actually see them doing it though. sadly. anyway, despite a sore throat (or something) on her part, she killed it. the highlight for me was her cover of the clash's guns of brixton. which she changed to guns of brooklyn and then to guns of gisborne. i was the only person in my area who knew the song. so i get extra points for turning into a music geek. choice.

santogold: 7.5/10

the kooks

this is the view from the hammock. luke pritchard is shown on the screen near the centre of this shot. to the left is one of my legs, complete with gumboot.

how much do you love a boy with floppy hair? same! there was a time when i could listen to naive on repeat for hours and not tire of it. plus i own konk, the kooks second album, and it isn't at all terrible. so i was amped for their r&v performance. so was every drunken school girl in the place. added to the rain, i found this performance hard to dance through so made my way at some point to the side hammocks. what a grandma.

anyway, the kooks were pretty good - but i'm convinced luke pritchard was a bit tipsy - or just amped by the gisborne crowd. either way it wasn't a flawless performance. one of the best moments was sway - from the konk album. and naive, obviously.

kooks: 6/10

franz ferdinand

i call the lead singer franz. even though i know this isn't his real name. but calling him franz makes my fantasy where he rescues me from my work-a-day life and we go and live happily ever after in some austrian castle seem more feasible.

franz was awesome. at some point some cock threw an empty cider bottle at him and even though it hit him right on the temple he just kept on playing, like it wasn't a thing. what a hero.

the band were good too. i danced like a maniac (when i wasn't avoiding the boys who were LITERALLY peeing next to me in the crowd), they played the fallen (my current favourite ff song) and it ruled. they also introduced some new songs (ulysses is the only one i can remember, but there were more) and did two encores. if they were any better i probably would have exploded with delight.

franz ferdinand: 9/10

day two: earache! and political consciousness!


day two brought more illness for me. so i had to sit back on a hammock the entire time. like an invalid. but who can complain when this is your view. i lay through cut copy and couldn't really tell you whether they were good or not. i was sickly after all and saving my energy for the night's headliners....

public enemy

um, this was pretty much the most awesome thing you could ever see. it started with a little dude in a skeleton hoodie/suit rarking up the crowd. but LO! the little dude was actually flavor flav!

surprisingly flavor flav seemed (a) cogent and (b) energetic. and he leapt across the stage with much more energy than i could muster. they played the entire "it takes a nation of millions to hold us back", including the intros etc... and i couldn't help but cursing not committing this album to memory in advance. but, public enemy are so sampled that basically thought i knew every song, and pumped my fists in approval.

flavor flav and chuck d gave shout outs to the maori people (and i responded, obviously). and even brought tolaga bay hip hop dancers on stage to perform. they were great. and flavor flave wore one of their tshirts. you can read more about the powhiri for public enemy here. i also think that chuck d called the gisborne crowd the 'whitest' he's ever seen. but as i have already said, i had earache. my hearing = not so good.

once they'd finished the 'it takes a million...' album they threw in a few old favourites. and i got to yell out the words i would only say in jest "elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me....". in a word, sublime.

public enemy: 9/10

dj nu-mark also played and i enjoyed it for about half an hour before retiring to my luxury lodgings in muriwai.

day three: goodbye two thousand and great.... hello two thousand and fine!

day three was a bit thin on the ground in terms of acts, if you ask me. but it was the busiest yet. all the girls dressed identically and the boys getting high on energy drinks. ah! youth.

anyway, you should probably know i love p money. so he was the obvious choice for me. before p money i went and checked out the cellar (where he was playing)...



it was a stunning stage. set amongst pine trees and at first not that busy. so i hung out at the futureshock stage and went and got my glowstick on....

p money

p money was as awesome as i'd imagined. he played to the crowd somewhat. and by the time i returned to the cellar the crowd had grown from around thirty to around two thousand people. and they were mostly nineteen years old. so there were party classics. but when it went off, it went OOOOOOOFF. and by that i mean it was gangsta mixed with some 1990s nostalgia. right up my alley. towards the end he played everything, which is one of my songs of 2008 and i enjoyed every moment of it.

p money: 7/10

after p money i went to watch carl cox. who was good. but not gangsta enough for me and i longed for more p money in the end. so i went back to my luxury lodgings to enjoy the rest of my new year's east coast holiday.