This Sunday, February 16th, The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park plays host to "Give Love: A Benefit Show for Australia." The all-day event starts at 2pm and goes into the night. Bands slated to perform are The Cold Seas, Lyons, The Tide Bends, and Yawn Mower (who will be doing some Men At Work tunes). In between sets, DJ Foggy Notion and DJ Jay Insult will be spinning some of their favorite tunes by Australian artists. Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in a silent auction featuring items donated by local businesses and artists. All proceeds from the show will benefit the WIRES Australian Wildlife Rescue Organisation.
Event organizers Jenny Vickers and Amy Malkoff of Lyons and and Tori Paxton of Paws & Anchor said, "We were so horrified about what was happening in Australia and wanted to do something about it. As local musicians, we thought we could bring together some of our favorite bands to perform and help raise funds for the victims of the fires and drought. We appreciate Wonder Bar lending their support for such an important and time-sensitive cause."
You can grab advance tickets for the show here, and RSVP to the event here. And, as you get ready for the show, you can check out some music from all the bands.
This is definitely the most immediate reaction I have ever given to a concert in my life. It has been only a couple hours since the Lydia Lunch Retrovirus stepped off the stage at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney, Australia; and I am still blown away. Lunch, who has been active with music, poetry and acting since the 1970s, has made a career out of pushing buttons with critics and audiences alike. One must wonder whether someone who started such antics in their youth can keep that up over 40 years later. Not only does Lunch manage to continue her antics with a setlist that spans over the entirety of her career, but she also does so in a style that makes these songs feel brand new.
Now it must be said that such a feat could not be accomplished without the stellar band that is playing her tunes. The all-star cast includes bassist Tim Dahl (Child Abuse), Bob Bert (Sonic Youth & Pussy Galore) and Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers). Weasel, in my opinion, is the real star of this show. One of the most noticeable things about Lydia Lunch's career is the great guitar players with whom she has surrounded herself; Rowland S. Howard, Nels Cline, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez are a few that come to mind. Weasel Walter continues this trend in the most energized and mind-bending way possible. Dahl and Bert create a strong enough backbone in the rhythm section that it gives the guitarist free range to go absolutely nuts over these older songs. Add in his frenetic stage energy and Lunch's deadpan jokes about sex, fascism and Australian goths, and you have a top tier performance.
Lydia Lunch has stated many times in the past that she does not want this show to be looked at as a nostalgia trip. She said it again tonight. I do not think anyone who goes to see Retrovirus will be able to even tell that some of these tunes are well over 40 years old. Talk about an older artist showing the new generation how it is done. DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW IF IT COMES TO A CITY NEAR YOU.
Finding the Australian Music Scene, Part 1: Lost and Found
By Ken Geiger
It’s hard for me to write single show reviews at such a pace as other writers on this site do. Part of the reason is my awfully forgetful nature. Another is simply that I have been going to so many shows since arriving here that it is so hard to put into words how unique the music scene is in Sydney. Still, I can attempt to explain it.
Let's start with what some would consider the established acts of Australia, or the "hometown heroes" (not Midnight Oil or Men at Work). On March 9th, I witnessed two legends of Australian underground music grace the stage of The Manning Bar on the University of Sydney campus when Ed Kuepper of The Saints rolled through to rock out with feedtime. My initial interest in the event came out of my love for feedtime, the Australian noise rock band who have been playing on and off from as far back as the late 1970s. Some more notable musicians who have listed the band as an influence over the years include Kurt Cobain, Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Jersey's very own Tim Cronin of The Ribeye Brothers (Tim was the one who actually turned me onto the band).
It's easy to see why the band managed to impact a variety of lives outside of their own home country. Their approach to music is totally alien to anything that was happening around the time of their formation. Bassist Al Larkin's style mixes chugging basslines with slide solos that you just do not see from many four string players anymore. Rick Johnson chooses to play his guitar in open tunings most of the time, rather than opting to play in standard, as most punk bands from their time did. His use of the slide is equally as impressive as Larkin's. Most impressive of all, though, may be drummer Tom Sturm, who gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "physical endurance." His drum setup was barebones, notably lacking the presence of rack toms and any cymbals besides the hi-hat. However, his ability to pound the audience into the ground with simple, driving beats was astounding.
Despite listening to their records plenty before going to see them, feedtime presented me with a sound that is just so radically different from anything that came before and after it. Larkin explained to me in a brief chat after their set that, "There was just no real musical basis for us to go off of when we first started. We liked the idea of the speed in punk music, but that was really it. We just tried out our own thing and hoped that it worked." Well, mission accomplished. It's damn near impossible to find anything that sounds like this Aussie trio.
Ed Kuepper is the founding guitarist of The Saints. The group might be known over in the states for the fact that Springsteen covered their song "Like Fire Would" back in 2014, but that song was written without Kuepper. Before that era of the band, The Saints were ripping up the Australian musical landscape with their own brand of punk rock, a brand that many claim helped to pioneer the genre right alongside acts like The Sex Pistols and The Ramones. But we are not here to discuss The Saints tonight. That band still goes on today in an entirely different lineup. The point here is to embrace that pioneering punk era Kuepper helped to bring about.
His backing band for the evening was appropriately called The Aints. The band ripped through a 20+ song setlist that just made the crowd go insane with every note. The audience was mostly filled with people who had probably spent their youth listening to The Saints, and they all tried to convince me to forget my American knowledge of punk. "This is where punk all began," they cried. "New York didn't have shit on Sydney. No way," chimed in others. I do not think I could bring myself to agree with them on that last statement, but I will give credit where credit is due. Rarely do I care much about an artist's set after seeing it if I did not know them beforehand. The Aints were an exception. I listened to their tunes the whole way back to the train station.
This trip has given me some cultural insights I did not think I would end up gaining while here. I continue to attend shows on an almost weekly basis (some of which I even perform at under the KPG name). Certainly, I am far from being done reporting on the happenings in this country. I have just accumulated too many good stories here to stop after two write-ups.
Contributor Ken Geiger is spending a semester abroad in Sydney, Australia. Ken loves going to shows, and he'll be seeing a few over the next few months abroad. This is his first dispatch from Down Under. All photos by Ken.
Sonic Annihilation in Sydney
By Ken Geiger
I cannot speak for everyone, but I can imagine that anyone who goes to a concert in another country must have some first-time questions similar to mine:
"Is the headliner as well known over here as they are back in my home country?"
"Are the fans here cool?"
"Will the local openers be any good?"
Needless to say, all of these questions I posed were met with very positive responses as I attended California death metal outfit Cattle Decapitation's Australian Extinction Tour in Sydney this past Friday night.
People here sure do love their dose of heavy metal, which was evident by the clearly over-capacity audience that packed into the Bald Faced Stag. I made my way into the line about 30 minutes after doors, and there was still a line that nearly extended around the block. The fans I talked to on my way in were all beyond excited for the lineup of the evening. They had been patiently waiting several years for the return of Cattle Decapitation to their country. They treated me with respect and kindness, striking up casual conversation and asking about life back home in comparison to Australia. As I found my way into the room where the bands would be playing, I could already feel the temperatures rising. This heat would only continue to rise as the night went on.
The first band of the night was Sydney-based Daemon Pyre. I found out earlier that evening that the band was having a fill-in on vocals for the night, as their regular singer had recently made the decision to leave the band. In fact, they had only done a couple of rehearsals with the singer prior to this show. To me and the rest of those in attendance that night, it did not really matter who was up there singing; Daemon Pyre delivered a fantastic set of blistering melodic death metal. Anyone who is a fan of bands like Lamb of God or At The Gates would love these guys.
Daemon Pyre
Next to go on was Psycroptic, the main support to Cattle Decapitation for the whole length of this tour. Their specialty is in technical death metal, with a tinge of hardcore in there for good measure. I would soon find out from these guys that it did not matter whether or not I knew who they were, because every Australian in the crowd certainly did. All the words were sung by the crowd. Moshing went down for every song, and people were trying to rush past the security outside just to catch these guys. It was the truest representation that I could think of for the metal scene out in Sydney.
Psycroptic
Psycroptic
Last but not least was the mighty Cattle Decapitation. This band has come a long way from its early grindcore roots as a Locust side project to turn into the death metal institution that they are known as today. Most of their set was comprised of a mix of their last two releases, The Anthropocene Extinction and Monolith of Inhumanity, which made for an amazing and blistering set that just spanned a little over an hour. Singer Travis Ryan noted multiple times how he was sorry they did not make it over here sooner but was happy they finally made it all. The crowd clearly agreed with him as they ate up every song and riff with ferocious singalongs or wild applause.
Cattle Decapitation
Cattle Decapitation
If I were Cattle D., I would make sure to come back here first on their next album cycle because, damn, do these Aussies love their metal.
