In this issue: Day of the Meerkat, COG, Foreign Dub, Matt & Kim, Yppah, Wagons, Bluejuice, CODA
Ok, so we’re a little late this fortnight but at least we have a good excuse this time. IT’S OUR 21st BIRTHDAY!!! Hip Hip! Hooray! It’s been non-stop in the office this issue as we’ve had a steady stream of exotic dancers, shifty South Americans with moustaches you could (and will) lose children in and a veritable menagerie of farm animals coming through as we try to push the boundaries of human excess to their logical limits. What were our results? Let’s just say we found the limit and it was somewhere around free-basing oven cleaner while double-penetrating a calf, then slaughtering it and serving it up as veal schnitzel.
If you’re still reading after that I may as well tell you that I’m pretty fucking wasted right now. We just invented a new drink which we have affectionately nicknamed The Bon Scott Bomb. You take a shot of Red Bull and bomb it in a pint of Red Wine, Gin, Whiskey, Milk and Raspberry Schnapps (for the sheilas), then you inject the whole vile mixture straight into your stomach through your bellybutton, then black the fuck out for a few hours and wake up next to a cheap trick named Ralph.
I suppose I should mention something about the issue, but before I do let me balance out some of the hate filled ranting in this letter with a few words on what’s been keeping me from acting on the suicidal impulse to knock the toaster off the side of the bath.
Grizzly Bear. I never wanted to like this band. So many trendy-hair-styled circulation-halting-jeans-wearing indie-rock douchebags have raved to me about this band that I never wanted to even consider that they might make decent music.
I think this is because by having good taste in music these scene-obsessed hipsters would somehow demonstrate that their brains aren’t made up entirely of shit, and that is something my brain isn’t quite ready for yet. But ready or not it seems to be the case as Grizzly Bear’s new album is fucking amazing. It’s not out for a few more weeks yet so I can’t publish the review but keep your eyes peeled for both the review and the interview we have coming up.
Well I guess it’s time I mentioned the issue. As I am sure you have deduced from the cover, those warehouse-rocking, girl-next-door knocking, rockabilly mountain men Day Of The Meerkat swung into this issue, fitting when you consider the amount of homoeroticism that was flying around during the making of this, our 21st issue. Set to launch their EP, Dirty Tricks On Sinking Ships, at The Gaelic Club on May 22nd, the boys are understandably eager to end their months of studio-bound exile and return to doing what they do best, rocking the fuck out.
Also this issue we have a swag of stories from the increasingly manic pneumatic writing machine Jesse Hayward (we had to get him down off the roof with a broom handle the other week because he accidentally took my cat’s constipation medicine thinking it was, well, the cat meds they actually were). He catches up with Wagons frontman Henry Wagons getting the low-down on how he breaks fast of a morning. Wolf & Cub had a quiet word as did ForeignDub, Rudely Interrupted, Parades and probably a few others, I’m not sure, he’s been doing so much writing it’s hard to keep track.
Amelia Schmidt gets all moist with Jake Stone from Bluejuice as he gives us a few tips on what moisturisers to use and what it was like running around like a madman on the Bacardi Express.
Thomas Mitchell climbs a mountain of esoteric nonsense with Cog drummer Lucius Borich and I blast off to planet CODA to catch up with the lovely Naomi Radom ahead of the bands set at ProgFest this weekend.
We also talk to Megastick Fanfare, We Say Bamboulée, Fergus Brown, Spikey Tee, Yppah and Rapids while in the photographicalogical department we have shots from The Drones, The Basics, Fuji Collective and One Flew East’s shows from the past few weeks.
Before I leave you I would like to say something about Swine Flu. Who fucking cares?! We’ve had a whole bunch of swine in the office and aside from being rubbish kissers they haven’t bothered us at all. It seems like every year or so some virus makes a leap a little further up the food chain and every time it does people flip the fuck out like a Christian in a Natural History Museum. We’re still here aren’t we? We’ve managed to beat Bird and Horse Flu, not to mention SARS and the many other far worse epidemics such as Smallpox and The Plague. Why then is it always such a big fucking deal when a new Flu mutates? Sure it could be dangerous, but so is flying, driving a car and sleeping with toothless streetwalkers, but you don’t see me glued to the screen every time a herpes ad comes on TV.
While on the topic of the Flu, how many of you out there have been stricken down with the usual Autumnal mucus flood? I have and I’m fed up. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t cure the common cold!? What the fuck? I’m sure this is a global conspiracy orchestrated so that pharmaceutical companies can sell us clinical speed. If the elimination of the runny nose is somehow beyond our reach I will not only be surprised but genuinely confused as to how we as a race can leave the gravitational field of our own planet,. To quote Gob from Arrested Development, ‘COME ON!’
Anyway, that’s pretty much done; it’s back to calf for me, well after this one last Bon Scott Bomb.
Mikey
Music Feeds Baby! Tighter Than A Nun’s Schedule
