Saturday, February 16, 2008

Nothing At All interview


This interview appeared in Subcide zine in the early nineties after Auckland band, Nothing At All's first New Zealand tour.

Subcide: Seeing as I know Sweet F.A. about you guys, could you give us a brief rundown of the history of Nothing At All

The Current Nothing At All which consists of Space Possum (guitar, vocals), Otter(bass, vocals) and Shottie (drums) has been together for about 18 months. We all met at school( Rosmini ollege ) and it all progressed from there. Originally we started out as a five piece but that lasted only a couple of practices. Things started for Nothing At All when we were put on to Frisbee Studios by our current manager, John Baker. We began practicing at Frisbee and hanging out and listening to great Frisbee bands such as S.M.A.K and Gestalt. Then we recorded our first single "Journey" with Z Bob. Frisbee began fixing us up with most of our shows, probably out of sympathy. But we began to play lots of shows. And about 2 or 3 months ago John Baker became the Nothing At All manager and has been great, organizing lots of shows, tours and that sort of shit.

Subcide: What were the high and low points of your national tour?

Good drugs, awesome crowds, heaps of friendly people everywhere, the Devo tape bought from Palmerston North which cost $4 and was thrashed everywhere we went.
Low Points - Fat Elvis' driving
- All getting violently ill
- Sleeping on cold floors with smelly people snoring and farting
- Very little poontang scored, beaver patrol points only scored from pecks and mastier.
- Couldn't find any magic mushrooms
- CRACKRASH!!

Subcide: Did you manage to salvage any of your dak after it got mixed with the shitty undies? Who shat themselves anyway? Did you find a hardware store? Did you find any 6 inch nails? Did anyone shout you dope after the Christchurch show?

No dak was salvaged from the shit pit. Fat Elvis shat them. Tarquin (Otter) also shat his sleeping bag. No, we've never been given any 6 inch nails but people often direct us to the hardware store. No, unfortunately we weren't blown out after the Christchurch show.

Subcide: I hear Black 'N' Decker aren't great fans of Nothing At All! Tell us the story behind that?

Just a cheesy publicity stunt that worked.

Subcide: Is punk dead?

Yes, it's become a transvestite that now works at a yeast plant, and changed into the sonic sound of tomorrow.

Subcide: Tell us about your cassette "Loophole"? How many copies have you got rid of so far? What sort of promotion are you giving it?

We got rid of quite a few copies of Loophole with the old "can't sell it so give it away" routine. We gave 100 copies away to the first 100 people through the door at the tape release party. However, funnily enough people are still keen to buy the tape and things are looking good. We've released the tape in Auckland shops and songs are getting quite a bit of play on BFM.

Subcide: What plans do you have for the future? What future can you see? Can you see a future?
Well, in the near future we're going on another national tour, this time with Dead Flowers and we're really looking forward to that.
After the tour we plan to record an album at some stage.

Subcide Are Nothing At All a P.C. band?

No, Nothing At All own no personal computers.

Subcide Last comments?

Blue meanies are great 'shrooms.

Graeme from Walk Among The Enemy blog recently posted Nothing At All's Busted demo tape which was later followed by a CD album release.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Sticky Filth Demo DVD

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Sticky Filth demo DVD. It's mostly live clips of the New Plymouth punk band with the present line up of Craig Radford, Chris Snowden and Boot interspersed with slides of gig flyers plus newspaper articles/reviews. There is however a copy of the Weep Woman Weep video which was interesting to view again after all these years. It is amazing to think that the Weep Woman Weep LP came out twenty years ago and that the band have kept on going despite having at least four different drummers over the years.

Songs featured on this DVD are a good mix of the band's old and newer material with Dig You Up, Too Deep, The Burning, Vodka(an old single recently reviewed in mysterex blog), The Devil and Me, Scrap Metal Man, Jahbullheboosay, Yorkshire Ripper, Spartacus, Weep Woman Weep, Somethings Matter, Maybe a Lover and Astronaut.

There is an extra with two early versions of the band practising and I believe features the earliest line up with Colin Long. I'm told that there will be more live footage and an interview with Craig Radford added to the final product.

More details about the DVD can be had by emailing Alex: alex@smack.co.nz

For those that have never heard New Zealand's punk band Sticky Filth here is an NZ punk classic song 'Weep Woman Weep' in downloadable MP3 format.

Slorder

After the previous surf guitar band post I discovered Stephen Egerton (Descendents and ALL guitar player has recently drummed on a few surf tracks. You can hear them here

Those who have actually been waiting for an instrumental ALL album like their homepage has promised for a few years might enjoy Slorder.




Slorder is Stephen Egerton on guitar, Brian Gorder on bass and Jay Clements on drums. They have a myspace page which features songs another video and a photo from the movie, The Philidelphia experiment, in which Stephen played the punk rocker.

Monday, February 11, 2008

The Mysterious Tapemen/Boss Christ/The Damned Evangelist at Bar Mode

After going to Hurricanes vs Brumbies Super 14 warm up game in Levin I headed to Palmerston North with the intention of seeing Boss Christ play at Bar Mode then take off and catch up with an old friend.

First up was a guy in a Boy Wonder type mask playing garage rock on a guitar. Pretty cool, really. I believe the guy's stage name is Bad Evil.




Next up was solo performer Boss Christ. This time he sang and played the guitar, snare drum and hi-hat cymbal sometimes all at once. He included a country song and seemed doubtful that the Bar Mode crowd would like the song. It was fine though. His set was too short for my liking and he had played an extra song in exchange for a beer. The Boss is without a doubt one of the best solo acts in the country. It should aso be mentioned that the Wolfman is now rocking a full beard.


The Damned Evangelist played next. They were a band I knew nothing about but they were awesome that nightan d played surf rock. Two of them played in motorcycle helmets and the drummer played wearing a wrestling (?) mask. Both the band's get-up and music reminded me of Man or Astro-Man?. The drummer played standing up and gave the drums a very tribal feel not unlike past Palmerston North bands The Skeptics and Lung.





These three guys walked into the bar wearing white shirts, bow ties with VHS tape wrapped around their heads and then The Mysterious Tapemen proceeded to rock surf style. Some metal bands were due to play afterwards but I didn't stay around for that. I was so impressed with what I saw of The Damned Evangelist and The Mysterious Tapemen that I went and watched them at the San Francisco Bath House in Wellington the next night. The Damned Evangelist didn't seem quite as good but despite breaking a string The Mysterious Tapemen seemed much better. The crowd was bigger and better too.

All photos on this post were not taken at either gig referred to in this post nor were they taken by me. However they were stolen from various places around the inter-web. No thanks to Harvey Norman.

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...