On Friday night, Johnny Rock and The Limits had a single launch of sorts at Revolver, and the theme was 80′s prom!  Johnny declared Neil and I prom king and queen, so here we are in our royal headgear.  Neil had a hard time getting past the bouncer because they don’t let suits in.

The Splendours were first support.  They feed well off good crowd energy, it’s just that at 10pm on a Friday in Melbourne, no one’s nearly had enough to drink.  For the last couple of songs, the really good ones, some girls came up to dance.  The girls need to be put in a music video or something, their moves were down pat and satisfyed all the right rock muses.  Nick and Co. are off to go write some new songs for the next month or so, hopefully they’ll be debuted soon.

Second band on were only there on a favour and were dead boring.  Ed Patrick was from Sydney and should’ve played first and let the punters loosen up.

Meanwhile, Neon Love are the best thing to come out of highschool recently.  Neil suggested that their music is fairly on trend at the moment, but it’s still dead exciting.  Their drummer had just come back from fairly major surgery, so they claimed they were short of practice, but you couldn’t tell.  They were tight, making lots of great beats and riffs for dancing to, and really made their set fly by.  I’m a big fan of short, fast, tight sets, but there’s no way I would’ve minded another song or two from them.  They’re Ballarat based and you can catch them at the Karova Lounge this long weekend coming.  The next time they play in Melourne will be at The Espy with Red Ink on the 10th of July and Ding Dong on the 15th of August.

As for Johnny Rock and The Limits, full of energy, groove and enthusiasm.  Anyone ready to decorate Revolver with pastel pink crepe paper and balloons has got to have a bit of go hard or go home attitude to rock ‘n’ roll.  They too are off to write and record some new material, so keep your ears peeled for that one, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

And, ever the fashion ready, thanks to Kasia (Ms Rock), for the lovely photo up there.

xoxo Nyssa on the 24th May, 2009 | 1 comment
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I used to go to gigs by myself quite often.  I would sit quietly with a pot of beer, groove a bit, thank the band afterwards and roll on out again.  Having Neil on hand means not so much going to stuff alone, which I’m very thankful for, but it does mean that if I want to go somewhere and he can’t, then I would probably stay home.

Last night, The Splendours were playing The Old Bar, but Neil had to stay home to do some baking for work.  I have promised main man Nick that I will come to see them so many times, so I was determined to keep my promise this time.  Besides, I do like The Old Bar.  Walking around in Fitzroy at night where I parked my car is still a little creepy, but that was okay, I was soon safe and cosy inside.

I met Nick through The Wellingtons, we’re both fans and turn up at the same gigs often.  The Splendours have just started playing pubs like The Tote and Revolver, due to their ages, which is exciting.  The crowd you find at youth festivals are completely different to those you find are drunk!  Rock ‘n’ roll, after all, is all about youth and enthusiasm, and the songs by The Splenours had that in spades.  They were fast and clumsy, although that’s not to say the band didn’t show lots of knowledge about how to craft a set.  They opened and closed with their best songs, the songs that were well put together and energetic, put the awkward ballads in the middle, and try to engage lightly with the audience.  The only downer was letting tech problems blow out the nerves.  I mean, as a muso, I’m guilty of these kind of shennanigans, I once cut a set short due to nerves and some flubbed chords.  They swore as some guitars and pulled some funny faces.  As a punter, I’ve been to a million gigs, and I rarely hear the tech problems that the band is apparently having (much like the band is often unaware of any shitty mixes).  But you can always tell if something is wrong if the band let it get to them.  My favourite incident was actually seeing the guitarist slap the lead singer, which lucky The Splendours didn’t have to do, but it was easy to tell something was wrong.

Speaking with Nick later, he’s got a small plan in his head to disown the songs someday and have some new ones.  And as I mentioned about The Hovercrafts earlier, that usually turns into something lovely.  Of course, that band I mentioned earlier turned out to be the Skybombers, and they just got paid $10k to go on an all expenses paid trip to Maylaysia only to have the gig cancelled.  Good news!

I have made a deal with Neil to go to the gym every day possible in April.  Neil broke his today.  I felt the burn!

xoxo Nyssa on the 2nd April, 2009 | no comments
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