Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Hasselhoff Experiment Adelaide Tavern, Wellingon May 17, 2008

The long awaited reunion of New Zealand garage rock duo who Counting The Beat blog describes as a late nineties outfit about three years too early for the international boom in drums and guitar blues rock duos. These guys are hyped as possibly the noisiest two piece in the world and I'd have to agree with both those assessments of this band.

I purposely arrived late hoping to miss at least one of the two support bands but unfortunately luck wasn't with me on that count. I arrived before Auckland band Golden Axe had started. Golden Axe are experimental synth band trio with a drummer. I don't know who they sound like because I walked out on them because their music just didn't appeal to me at all. I tried listening to their myspace songs and like the Butthole Surfers and many other weird for weird sake bands I just don't get it. I came back and the band was still playing and had more of a rock sound going on.

Here's a crappy picture (it reflects my opinion in more ways than one) of them



Next up were Voodoo Savage and His Savages who are a three piece band with a singing drummer. They play beer soaked garage rock and therefore had more appeal (for me personally) than the first band plus they get bonus points for playing a Billy Childish song. Although their between song breaks were often longer than needed. I admire any drummer who also does vocals and no, Phil Collins isn't the exception to the rule. Below are a couple of photos of Voodoo Savage and His Savages.





Finally the Hasselhoff Experiment took the stage. I'd never seen them live before although I'd seen live clips on TV and just been blown away that a two piece band could be that good. Here's a couple of Youtube clips taken from the recent Wellington show that prove my point. I was bumped while filming the first one but it is still a good capture of the band.





1 comment:

Chris said...

Hey, thanks for the reference to Counting The Beat. You might also be interested in a couple of earlier episodes - one titled Nuclear Free New Zealand (mp3) that includes a Compos Mentis track, and True Crime Stories (mp3) that includes a Missing Teeth track titled David Bain.

Cheers

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