'canning it on' some more

'canning it on like mongrels' part two

early morning flight back from adelaide today. a little groggy i am. got it together in time to see 'public bizare' open melbourne's laneway 2008. a perfect beginning to a perfect day. below are some photos taken from this glorious day. musical highlights were 'still flyin', 'cool kids', 'violent soho', 'red sun band', 'gotye', and of course 'bss'. and if you've been to past laneway's, you will notice how they've expanded the capacity to close off a major melbourne street this year. it's only gonna get bigger folks.  still pissed about having to wait in line just to get into sister bella's. i mean, come on, the only thing you'll find in there is the owner sitting there 'canning it on like a mongrel'. good times. 

'canning it on like mongrels' part one

like i said, i went to adelaide the night before the laneway festival. and jesus, our hotel was miles out of town. actually, it was right next to the aami stadium where the adelaide crows and port melbourne power play their afl games. no games this weekend.  supposedly, the 'revheads' were in town for some big car race. i guess that's why the hotel was miles out of the city. some of the bands playing laneway were holed up in some bavarian village half an hour out of town, so i guess i was lucky at least to be closer than that. the show the next day was cool. the site wasn't the best, but as a fan being that close to such great bands should've been enough. no pix from the show, but broken social scene, clap your hands say yeah, and bridezilla were all amazing. i didn't hang around for the last few bands, had to get back to the hotel and down a few coopers. 

ladies and gentlemen, this next song goes out to "spiral stairs"

well, i lied... i didn't check in the next day after the sonic youth show as planned. sorry...

my annual australia visit has been a whirlwind. lots of music, travel, food, beer, and of course all my good friends entertaining me. i'll try to give you a gist of what's been going on over the next few days as i try to remember the good times had. 

the sonic youth show was incredible. the scientists opened the show and holy shit, they still rock. kim salmon looks demonic after all these years. i love that old australian psych stuff. when the youth arrived onstage, they indeed played all of 'daydream nation' front to back. i forgot how long that record really was. it took em 45 minutes just to get to side 2. seeing and hearing those songs brought back so many memories. not only were sonic youth one of the reasons for pavement starting a band, but the fact that early on we got the pleasure of touring with these legends helped us to see what it was to be a band. and sonic youth are still doing that today. mark ibold was in town as well playing bass on the encore. mark had a broken toe and was gingerly walking around, but still had that round smile we all love. we got together the next day for some lunch at peligrini's in melbourne. and then went and checked out the nick cave retrospective, which can i say... is pretty unbelievable. it chronicles nick's life from childhood through his 'boys next door' and 'birthday party' years all the way up to today. there are insights on how he writes his songs and included were books from his library and numerous journals written over the years. pretty damm impressive! 

 

i got to see this all over again, at least the scientists and sonic youth shows, in adelaide a few days later. they played the laneway venue and we all came up the night before to hang in 'radelaide'. some people will differ with me, but i like this city. maybe it's the climate or the mountains coming down to the sea, but it just appeals to me. oh wait, i know. it's the home of coopers. and let me tell you, i had a few that night.