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Jackson Firebird
publisher Zo Gay editor Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo subeditor Sean Gleeson proofreader S andra Goldbloom Zurbo contributing writers Allie Voyage, Billy Geary, Dante Gabriele, Dave Drayton, Janey Umback, Jervis Dean, John Dean, Joshua Kloke, Nick Manson, Patrick Donovan, Raul Sanchez, Sarah Thompson, Stephen White,Tal Wallace, Zoran Ilievski contributing photographers Andrew Briscoe, Daniel Marsh, Ian Laidlaw, Kane Hibberd, Philip Morris, Richard Sharman
Track L ittle Missy Composed by Brendan Harvey and Dale Hudak ℗ 2012 Jackson Firebird © 2012 Jackson Firebird y kind permission of Warner Music B Australia Pty Limited and Jackson Firebird www.facebook.com/jacksonfirebird
inhouse photogrpaher Zo Gay interns Angus Evans, Robert Michael Geary, Thomas Lutrov typeset and design Damage Design printer Print Graphics vinyl United Record Pressing advertising info@verilive.com.au enquiries info@verilive.com.au distribution Integrated Publication Solutions, Eight Point Distribution and veri.live veri.live publication and its entire contents, including print, electronic and online material, are protected by the Copyright Act of Australia. veri.live is owned and published by Versus Hub Pty Ltd. No use or reprint may be made of or from any part therein without prior and formal written consent from Versus Hub Pty Ltd. Views expressed in veri.live are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher, publication or its staff. veri.live name and logo is a registered trademark. veri.live 7” vinyl is part of veri.live magazine and may not to be sold, traded or given away separately.
King Of The North Track Ride Composed by Andrew Higgs and Danny Leo Mixed and mastered by David Briggs ℗ 2012 King Of The North © 2012 King Of The North By kind permission of King Of The North www.facebook.com/kingofthenorthband
veri.live 7” vinyl exclusively available with print editions of veri.live. cover K imbra: The Palais photo Z o Gay veri.live PO Box 573 Preston VIC 3072 Australia Phone: +61 3 9484 9174 info@verilive.com.au www.verilive.com.au ABN 27 150 205 897 ISSN 1838-8094
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presents
12-13 SEPT 2012 FORTITUDE VALLEY BRISBANE www.bigsound.org.au
Violent Soho / Eagle & The Worm / The Paper Kites / King Cannons / The Cairos / Oliver Tank / Kira Puru & The Bruise / The Trouble With Templeton / The Preachers and 110 More to be Announced! $69* 2 night pass
$45* 1 night pass
*plus booking fee
Alpine
Debut Album A is For Alpine Out AuGuSt 10
Ball Park Music  Photo: Andrew Briscoe
contents page left Ball Park Music Photo: Andrew Briscoe SNAP Competition entrant snap competition Go to the veri.live and SNAP Competition web sites for the latest news and updates. www.verilive.com.au snapcompetiton.com snap competition sponsors
letter from the publisher
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live reviews The Tea Party Kimbra Gruntbucket The Brian Jonestown Massacre Entertain Us! Angry Mules Bad Aches The Temper Trap Andrew W.K.
16 34 36 38 42 44 46 48 50
interviews Heather Shannon: Jezabels Useless Children Serj Tankian Nick Baines and Simon Rix: Kaiser Chiefs
18 32 78 82
editorial features Melbourne Music City
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In Terms Of Style Alex Maas from The Black Angels and Angus Andrew of Liars talk about logistics, recording, rampant experimentalism and, of course, Harvest Festival.
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Big Time Big Sound feature, including interviews with Violent Soho’s James Tidswell, The Preachers’ Isabella Manfredi and QMusic Executive Officer Denise Foley.
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regular features flow — visual art by the artists Mick Turner: Dirty Three
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snap — photographer’s choice Daniel Boud
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cd reviews
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food 78 Shanghai Street Dumpling links
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Bugdust   Photo: Zo Gay
letter from the publisher Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I received a phone call from my mother. “There’s a Mozart concerto playing at the Arts Centre. I have tickets and guess what? You’re coming!” Sure. Sitting there, with mum and her friend Susan, I felt uncomfortable. This was not Public Image at the Ballroom or The Birthday Party at the Prince. I had no idea where to look, how to sit, how to behave. As these thoughts spun through my head I turned to see Susan, soft smile on her face, eyes gently closed, just letting the music wash over her. It was then that I realised that it doesn’t matter how attractive or spectacular things may or may not look, the genre or where you hear it, the music, and what it brings, is all that matters. Zo Gay – Publisher
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the
tea party The Palais Theatre S aturday 14 July 2012 On their 13th Australian tour The Tea Party have no problem filling The Palais, even though they haven’t released a record in eight years. The Tea Party’s frontman, Jeff Martin, an individual with whom the word ‘modest’ has never been associated, indulges in the first of many guitar solos of the night. After a minute or so, the rhythm section, comprised of Jeff Burrows on drums and Stuart Chatwood on bass, guitar, keys, mandolin, everything else, begin with ‘The River’. Martin indulges in the audience’s adulation and himself. Moving towards the front of stage he says, “Are you all standing up?”, unaware that I am seated in the front row of the balcony near a sign that reads “Due To Safety Regulations Strictly No Standing”. But such advice can’t contain the audience during ‘The Bazaar’. “Seven years apart? Check. Band gonna stay back together forever? Check. Recording our first ever live album here in Melbourne? Check,” Martin tells the audience. “Melbourne, we’ve known each other for such a long time. Tonight’s about losing your mind.” During ‘Shadows on the Mountainside’ Martin sports a double acoustic guitar, something I didn’t know people even made. The song stands out in the set due to its odd rhythm and metaphysical lyrics. Martin prefaces the song by explaining that he had consumed a specific type of mushroom before he wrote it, literally, on a mountainside. The opening verse of ‘In My Time of Dying’, their ode to Led Zeppelin, smoothly transitions into ‘Sun Going Down’. Annoying fuzz persists throughout
the first half of the song. Martin is visibly irritated by this intrusive noise – he is, after all, currently recording an album – and stops the show to ask the sound guys to sort it out. Burrows maintains the song’s rhythm with the high hat, Chatwood plays along with muted guitar strings and the audience accompanies them with hand clapping. As the fuzz disappears they pick up the tempo and pull off one of the best recoveries from near disaster I have seen. Back on the electric instruments, Martin plays his guitar with a violin bow for the introduction of ‘Save Me’, which – continuing in the vein of unexpected musical homages – includes a verse of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, and a bowed guitar solo, of course. ‘Heaven Coming Down’ and ‘Temptation’ see the band to their encore. After a brief instrumental aside, ‘Sister Awake’ closes the set. A bongo drum occupies Martin during the percussionheavy bridge. Then, he re-acquaints himself with his guitar and gives us a verse of ‘Paint It Black’ before the set ends with him yelling “Awake!”. After more than two hours of performance the house lights come up and The Tea Party pose together, their backs to the crowd, for the obligatory live album photograph. Their popularity in Australia hasn’t dissipated during their absence and nor has the trio’s musical rapport. As Martin said earlier, Australia and The Tea Party have known each other for a long time. It’s a relationship doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon. John Dean
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The Tea Party Photo: Zo Gay
The Jezabels   Photo: Zo Gay
heather shannon the jezabels “You’re on a bit of a delay. It must be because you’re overseas.” I’m speaking down a crackling phone line to Heather Shannon, keyboardist from Aussie four piece The Jezabels. The band are three weeks deep into a monthlong tour of the United States. Heather has called me just a couple of hours before they are due to perform at The Crocodile in Seattle. We played at this same venue last November when we supported Hey Rosetta!, but now we’re back and doing our own show. It’s around quarter to seven here and I think we play at 11. We just had a sound check. We had a night off last night so we went out to a bar. Today we’ve just been hanging out and having a look around the city. “We’ve driven all the way from New York and will end up in San Diego in around a week and a half,” she explains. “We play in Portland tomorrow night so we’ll be driving there bright and early in the morning.” “Does the band just get around in a van or do you get yourselves one of those luxury tour buses? How do The Jezabels travel these days?” I ask. “We’ve got a van, a nine seater. There are only five of us so there’s plenty of room. I think we will have ended up driving around 7000 miles on this tour. It’s been a very long trip.” “Do you end up driving each other crazy?” “We used to drive each other more crazy but now we’re used to it,” Heather says without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re pretty much like family now.
When we first started touring it was kinda hard but you get to the point where you realise that if you’re having an argument it’s probably because you’re tired and you get over it pretty quickly.” Although it may feel like a long journey, the group seemed to find almost immediate success after forming while studying together at Sydney University five years ago. The band released a few of EPs (The Man Is Dead, She’s So Hard, both released in 2009, and 2010’s Dark Storm), which garnered them a substantial amount of airtime, at home and on college radio in the US. Over the past five years, they’ve built up a reputation as one of this country’s hottest musical exports. The Jezabels’ distinctive sound layers emotive ballads with thundering drums, juxtaposed against an elegant backdrop of strings, guitar riffs and keys, each element driving home the band’s captivating charm. With their debut album, the Australian Music Prize-winning Prisoner, released last September, and new single ‘City Girl’, released in May, The Jezabels are well and truly taking the musical world by storm. I ask how the United States has been responding to the music.
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“Really well. We’ve had some good feedback and the audiences have been awesome. We’ve sold out all of the big city shows: Toronto, New York and LA … We’ve been playing venues ranging in size from around 200 to 600 people.” Right now the band is gearing up to play the British summer festival circuit. “It’s really exciting!” Heather says, and then she talks me through the band’s upcoming schedule. “After we finish up in the US we go to the UK and play a couple of concerts there, and then we’re back in Australia for a month and play a couple of shows there before it’s back to the UK and the US again. We’re touring all over the place.” It’s an itinerary that would leave many people exhausted and it’s little wonder, then, that they are yet to start work on the much anticipated second album. “We find it really difficult to write or record while we’re on the road so at the moment we’re just playing tracks off the current album and our older EPs,” Heather says. “We probably won’t get together and start writing new material until early next year. We all go off and write our own stuff, and then when we come back together we’ve got lots of ideas to go through. We’ve spoken about what we would like to do with the second album, in terms of recording, and where we would like to do it and what we would like to do differently from the first, so we are talking about it – Oh, hey…” Briefly distracted by someone she knows walking past, I say it’s probably about time I end this phone call and let the musician get back to work. “Thanks a lot. To be honest, I don’t really have that much to do now, so maybe I’ll just go and relax for a while.” With the band’s killer schedule, who can blame her for wanting a rest. Janey Umback
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The Jezabels   Photo: Zo Gay
melbourne music city
an endangered species This is an edited extract from a paper delivered to the recent Monash University Conference, Popular Music, Industry and the State. Melbourne’s thriving music scene is the envy of the world. We have more venues than the selfproclaimed live music capital of the world, Austin, Texas. Here, you can experience a diverse selection of contemporary music seven nights a week. According to the recent Access Economics report into the contribution made by the small venue industry, there are approximately 370 live music venues in Melbourne, far more than in any other city in Australia. Collectively, these venues constitute a cultural infrastructure that supports the live music industry. Victoria’s live music industry is also economically significant; it contributes over half a billion dollars to the state’s economy and employs over 17 000 full time workers. More people attend gigs in small venues than AFL home and away matches. And if you add the figures from the Live Performance Australia report into larger events and festivals, these figures almost double.
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With most artists struggling to generate sustainable income from album sales, their focus has turned to live shows and merchandise sold at venues. Some of the best contemporary artists from all over Australia and New Zealand, including Paul Kelly, the Drones, Dan Kelly and Kimbra, have moved to Melbourne for the live scene. So much so that we currently have an oversupply of musicians. This is great news for the fans, but for the bands, it’s a case of survival of the fittest. The goldrush certainly helped. Pubs were built on every second corner in the inner city from the 1870s, but it wasn’t until 100 years later that innovative musicians and promoters would realise that the ladies’ lounges and bistros could double as functional band venues after dark, and licensees discovered that music was a brilliant way to sell alcohol. This set off the sometimes fraught dependency between the alcohol and live music
AC / DC Photo: Philip Morris