YKB back in BRIS!

Well, well dear Blog the last week has been great, for the most part because I have reacquainted myself with my own bed (as opposed to floorboard, couches, other flat surfaces that don't have nails sticking out of them). The first gig night was in Byron Bay, the beach right? WRONG! Well, the beach was still there but not as you and I might know it... I arrived with a joyous smile on my face, wearing board-shorts, and my best singlet, towel draped over one shoulder only to be robbed of my joy and my body warmth by the bleak skies, bone chilling wind, and sleeting rain.


After I was consoled by my family, and close friends I pulled myself together just in time for sound check (not load-in..... i missed that because i got there too late, my apologies to my band members), anyway long story short, we played a rousing set to a small but excitable crowd who seemed to be somewhat 'medicated' but if gigging has taught me anything that can only be a good sign. Though I'm not sure what it means when your merch girl is so adequately medicated that she is rolling out of her chair, but who could judge her it was a thursday night, a night which we have dubbed the start of the weekend.

Back to Brisbane the next morning, after the inevitable quest for organic doughnuts in Byron. A gig in our home town, in our spiritual home of the Zoo, what more could you ask for? Well if it include making it out of the Valley Corner Chinese joint alive (even after the imperial king prawn), and that we recorded the show both audio and visual, AND people actually came (always a surprise to me i assure you), and they danced, and the merch girl was coherent at the nights end...... I think that makes for a pretty awesome night really. Oh yeah, and we made sure that Chris' drum riser was 2 feet in the air, he needed a step to get onto it!

Saturday night, playing a beach town at a really great venue the Coolangatta Ho, apparently a few weeks before us the matches played there and found a severed pigs head left behind after a heavy metal gig! Which boggles my mind considering that heavy metalers have always seemed to be the nicest most misrepresented people groups. I have been wrong before. Anyway, our house guys name was Mud. Some said (including himself) that this was because of his mixing ability, I chose to make a vague correlation between the pigs head and the name Mud. Pigs? Mud? I rest my case. We went to big chief burgers, WOW! Seriously good burgers, Charles led us along the street of Coolangatta, like some kind of mystic, crouched over and beckoning us with his gross shriveled hand and making gurgling noises which we guess were coming from sound kind of mouth. Anyway, unbeknownst to me Adam and Clark (our amazing sound and lights duo) timed me eating my burger, as they believe that i don't chew my food. I would like to say that I do chew my food, but that I feel excessive chew degrades the flavors and robs you of the joys of it. My time was 2:30, and I had been trying to eat slowly.

Last but not least, the Sol Bar at Coolum, possibly the most fun you can have on a Sunday night up the coast. From a bands perspective, free dinner, half price drinks (including really fruity cocktails you would never have ordered before because of cost, and because the other kids would laugh at you) and a tiny stage were you can quite easily be mistake for a crowd member. Well I have sad news for all of you who think that sounds fricken awesome fun. Its being pulled down to put apartments in. I want to go on record and say that apartments suck and that they kill every live music venue they can sink their hands into. So I choose to remember the Sol Bar for the good times we had, for the el tropico's, the white russians, the crazy looking blue drink that Meg ordered, and the red cordials that we all consumed. Goodbye Sol Bar, goodbye Blog, Goodbye my faithful readership consisting of my mum, Meg our manager (she edits out my jokes), and any poor soul who stumbles across this just like in Jumanji.

New York, a festival and getting to see one of my favourite new bands live up to all my dreams.

BY Jonathan Wilson

CMJ has been a bit of a head fuck to be honest and likewise for the city of New York in general. I've been working like a dog, mostly heading in and out of meetings for a new band I look after, who are amazing by the way. There have been a bunch of hyped bands at CMJ but none of them have really lived up to my expectations. I've done these types of festivals before, packed with thousands of hopefuls and I usually walk away with a handful of sounds in my ears and sites in my mind to plot some kind of future that is about to happen that I'd want to be a part of. So many bands with so many people touting them, the big hype acts Amazing Baby, Passion Pit, High Places, Crystal Stilts etc were good but I think we've heard it all before. Trust me though, you'll hear people the world over singing these bands praises before too long. Amazing Baby in particular have 'NEXT BIG THING' tag all over their cock rock meets The Killers swagger. They will be massive, I guess I'm just not sure what I think about personally... 

While I was disappointed with most of the stuff one band lived up to every hope I've ever had from a debut album in recent times. Next month I'm releasing the Alpinism's by a Brooklyn band called School of Seven Bells. They are comprised of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza who used to front the awesome On!Air!Library! and former Secret Machines guitarist Benjamin Curtis. Their set at the Fader party got off to a rough start, not musically speaking, they have no drummer you see and the sound guy took a little dislike to them as a result. There music is a little droney and very beat heavy with the most heavenly twin vocals from the sisters I've ever heard. While the record is the die for, once the live set got started it was something so intense and beautiful that I've been speechless since and don't think I want to watch another band for a while to savour the moment for as long as I can. 

Both Alejandra and Ben play guitar and the sound is just so fucking thick and heavy that it's a full on assault on your body, you feel it in your fucking bones. It has to be said Ben, who stands arched dead centre, is a complete machine on the guitar, I was blown away by the sounds made from just his guitar. Claudia plays additional key lines that are so much a part of the layering and could be making half the droney sounds that I think came from the guitars. It's hard to know where the sound is all coming from but one thing for sure is that it's dense, loud and thick! Then there's the vocals, holy shit there are amazing vocals. Claudia stage left and Alejandra stage right, Claudia with her eyes shut tightly as if she's closed in an intense moment at every breath she sings and Ale staring blankly, her 20 yard stare lost by the dim lights, singing from her soul. I can't even describe the power behind their vocals. The two harmonise with pitch perfect ease. It's beautiful, comforting and hot all at once. This band is perfect, I'm so fucking happy that I get to put their records out in Australia and if all goes to plan I'll get them down for some shows soon. So I guess in short, for all it was worth, SVIIB's saved my CMJ.

I'm in LA now, enough of the drooling, so I'm off to eat burgers, burritos and drink some Mexican beer with The Duke Spirit who are demoing for their new record. Killer huh! 

GO WEST

YKB journey west! Like Christopher Columbus setting sail for America! Like cowboys riding into the sunset! Or like the opposite of traveling to New Zealand! We boarded a plane for Adelaide! (So i guess that is more like South-South West or maybe just South West...)

This part of the Immaculate Confection Tour took us to Adelaide, Perth, Bunbury and Fremantle. The most exciting thing about this tour is that we are travelling to cities where we have never played before. So needless to say, we were keen to immerse ourselves in the language and culture of these foreign lands.

To my surprise we didn't need passports at the airport and check in was as usual as a domestic flight. We landed in Adelaide around noon on Thursday night and headed to our hotel. What! A hotel?? Crazy huh? We are used to sleeping on the floor at friends houses.
Sean had to double check if we did actually have rooms booked or whether we were just going to camp out in the lobby.

Thank you to all the Adelaide fans, we were pleasantly surprised with the turn out and i think we played the best gig of the tour so far. The next morning we flew to Perth at 6am. This is an unnatural time of the morning and it should be made illegal.

Perth is a lovely city, the people are nice, the streets clean and they have this falafel store called Maoz, its awesome, you have to go there! After a good helping of falafel, we played a gig at the Amplifier Bar in the city. Thanks to everyone who came along and especially to those who danced up the front. (Note - I just spent half an hour trying to find a Star Wars quote that was something along the lines of "we will meet again". And i came up with nothing. Please don't ask me why. I will never have that time back.)

Bunbury! or Funbury as we like to call it has an awesome bakery. It also has a lookout tower that Sean and I both climbed. I'll show you the photos some time.
I would like to thank the Holidays for being the majority of the audience at the gig. We actually had a lot of fun and got to play some old songs. Michael and I were keen to do an AC/DC cover, but Sean and Charles said no.
The best part of the evening was when we had to rescue Alex and Andrew, from the Holidays, who had managed to bog to tour van in a sandune. Please refer the attached photo. It was a serious bonding session for the two bands and i think we came out of the experience with better knowledge of each other, in particular - never let Alex and Andrew drive near a beach.



The final show was in Fremantle. That town is fantastic! I want to live there. It has a river, a beach and the Little Creatures Brewery. Fanntastic. We played at the Norfolk Basement, where it is rumored the Beatles have played.

Thankyou to Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!, Boys Boys Boys and Tracksuit for supporting us on these shows and also for lending us gear. Hope to see you all soon.╨
Thanks for reading. Im going to go find that Star Wars quote.

from chris and ykb

Music... the saviour whilst travelling

BY Jonathan Wilson

Travel, remembering I have an ipod and the love affair of not speaking or looking up whilst cramped next to an overweight old man smelling of London grime on the tubes...

Ahh, a week has passed and I've found myself sitting here and thinking about what, if anything I have to say that may be of interest to you out there in the internerd. Do people have time to read the opinions of nobodies these days? Do they even care? Fuck knows I don't. There are too many people laying claim, and usually in an uneducated way about their likes and dislikes in all forms of the creative world.

Hmm..., I probably should stop going down this path and let you know what's happening in London town. After something like 36 hours door to door I arrived at the house of Shrimps and we hit the town for some much needed coffee. It's been raining here all day everyday. The weather is horrible but if I think about it, really it's just English weather. We're kind of super lucky in Australia that it's sunny and warm all the time pretty much. So I've been belting all over central London doing the rounds so they say with labels, bookers, record stores etc and it's exhausting to say the least.
When you're travelling like a headless chicken on public transport you need two things, a decent book and an ipod.
I hate ipods, I really do, the music is compressed and sounds thin and bad all round. I'm a cd vinyl type of guy. I will say that my ipod comes in handy when I'm away because I need to have all my music at my finger tips when I want it. Who knows what mood will strike going from Spring to Autumn and so on.

So what have I been listening to... It's always a little strange coming here, I find myself filing through old and new albums to fill the sites just right. While sitting in London Fields on Monday morning I put on an old Glide album called Disappear Here and for that moment the weight of the rain and gloom was lifted from shoulders. Glide were Aussies from the early 90's that were hands down one of the most amazing pop bands to ever grace the face of the planet. William Arthur the main singer/ song writer passed away in 99 and I personally think he is and will always be one of Australia's and the worlds greatest song writers. Glide were better than the posies, fuck they were even better than Big Star. If you need a place to start look no further than the single What Do I Know?. That song is perfect start to finish, lyrically it moves and opens up some wounds that would later surface in a much more realistic way. Tangled from the same album, is all moody minor keys till it hits the most uplifting chorus. Why You Asking from the next record Open Up And Croon was almost an extension of What Do I Know and with a fuzzy pre verse that so thick and powerful and an outro progression that is probably the best 30 seconds off guitar pop music I've ever heard. What a fucking band. Do yourself a favor and search them out. They should be respected forever.

It got me to thinking, when will artists, like this that have come before us get the recognition they deserve? 

Everyone seems to make reference to the Saints, the go betweens, the church or the Birthday Party, the scientist blah blah blah. While I'll be the first to admit that those bands are hugely influential and are all amazing I'm still a little sad that the next generation of acts haven't yet or aren't being given the same props that they should be. Bands like the Underground Lovers, Gaslight Radio, The Paradise Motel, Sandpit all did it their own way and weren't running a game like any international acts. They stood apart with brilliant songs and powerful performances but it seems to be to no avail. No recognition really in the day and it seems none now either. Maybe it's too early, maybe people aren't interested in history anymore. I am... I have to go now and listen to Glide again.

p.s. I went out to dinner with a friend of mine who is about to sign a record deal for like a billion dollars and she'd just been hanging with Rick Rubin and Leonard Cohen. What a fucking small world.

YKB BAND ON THE ROAD!

Week One:
I have left this as late as possible to ensure nobody misses a minute more than they have to and so that nobody has to endure a minute more than it is possible to write at 3am in the morning.
We’re on tour with the Holidays at the moment. We went to Mona Vale, Canberra and The Filth at Beach Road Bondi, perhaps you were there? If not, where were you? And why didn’t you invite us? We invited you to our thing!
(Sigh)
Ok.
I forgive you.
Lots of interesting stuff happened though –
Charles gets up early. (GASP!)
We coerce a vegetarian into paying more than she could afford to enter a meat raffle that was rigged by a ring of sinocentric back slapping butchers that dupe us into parting with what scarce cash money we have. (Luckily Chambers had brought with them cheap champagne, consumption of which is at once a celebration and a penance, so after a time we could come to peace with it. The vegetarian could not though, as the champagne label announced it may contain fish products. I tried to cheer her up with an interesting anecdote I’d heard earlier involving a midget but that just led to several more anecdotes involving websites which just depressed everyone.)
Chris and I take coffee in a very strange theatre restaurant before being asked to leave.
Seans’ brain explodes and he plays Eddie Current Suppression Ring ‘Which Way to Go’ and Nirvana ‘Rape Me’ back to back in a dance club. (I make up for it by dancing effeminately with the coordination of a newly born giraffe.)
Grand final night - Part I: I continue my annual tradition of desperately trying and failing to hide my complete lack on knowledge or interest in football.
Grand Final Night – Part II: I continue my annual tradition of getting whole heartedly drunk despite my indifference.(which I consider a testament in equal parts to my openness to all that life has to offer and my indomitable enthusiasm for tying one on.)
I wake up next to a giant sheep’s arse and eat a country sized portion of baked beans. (That’s a lot of beans.)
So you really don’t want to miss out when we come to your town you see.
Hmmm…What else – Oh yeah - We had MEGA CHICKEN for tea, on recommendation of the Holidays.
Great guys – They’ve been playing great sets every night and are in fine form, modestly claiming not to be when we tell them so; shut up YOU OLD LUGS! We trade EPs. We win because we’ve heard ours loads of times and theirs is excellent. SUCKERS!
For us, each night is the first night that we go on with our new set of songs. To play them live is a nerve wracking and enthralling experience for us. Each night proves not just another show for but the proving ground for everything we have been working on recently. At the end of the month we will fly to Los Angeles to make our first record. Already we can feel the difference performing has had on them and get more excited and nervous about the whole situation.We’ve still got all your old favorites as well though in there such as “Running with the Devil” and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” so DON’T PANIC. (Stick around for our famously raucous joint band encore as well. You will regret not regretting you did.)
BREAKING NEWS: we have NEW T-SHIRTS as well! (They are black) The new songs and new t-shirts have been holding weekly support groups to talk about the issues they are facing.
THANKSto Trevor. We are indebted to the Stubbs and Trevor and to Tony of the Filth. I hope you will not mind me exposing my deep seated neurosis and no that I mean no offense when I say thank you for being lovely as opposed to axe-murderers. (I suspect almost everyone else could be axe-murderer, but I welcome you both to my inner sanctum.)
In a revolutionary change we do not go to the Big Prawn (in Ballina obviously!) for dinner on the way home. We begin to feel guilty at betraying the place that has always been so good to us and end up stopping there for ice cream, which in turn makes us feel evenmore guilty. Powerlessly trapped in a vicious cycle, we will stop again before the journey is out.

Thank you for sticking with the blog right till the end, I hope you enjoyed reading. Do stay tuned for our vivid accounts of our experiences in Adelaide, Perth, Bunbury and Fremantle. We are very excited to be off there as it’s our first time. Until next week, Seacrest out.
*Excerpt taken from M. Tomlinson’s’ recount of the unfortunate adventures of Sizzlebot, Cribble, Chong Choozler, Lord Hignett, NavMeg and the Booby Prize at the turn of the century.

Music u might not know about...

By Jonathan Wilson

Hey there levitylanders, this is the first of my monthly blogs for levityland. Please excuse the cursing, the overload of words, the sentences that trail off and overall mind vomit that you may read. If you know me (unlikely yes, I mean it is the fucking internerd right), this is how I speak and it's also how I write. Hopefully I'll offer you an insight into something new and something old at the same time. 

So It's Thursday morning and I'm about to lose my fucking mind, you see in two days I'm off to London again... always again and again to London. Hmmm, Again and Again great song by an even more fantastic band called Akron/ Family (www.myspace.com/akronfamily ). Anyway, I've lost my train of thought already...

So while I'm bitching and moaning about London (Rothko room at Tate, I will be visiting you again). I should note that I'm also lucky enough this time round to be heading over to CMJ at the end of the month in NYC. It's been a long time since I was last in New York, about 7 years. Fuck...come to think of it I'm pretty excited about it. My friend Cannonball Bob just came home from NYC ATP festival and he's pretty much been raving about My Bloody Valentine over and over for the last 3 days. He even bought me a Loveless T Shirt, it is awesome so I shouldn't complain. Everything I you ever need is in New York. Bring on Pop-eyes chicken, deli sandwiches as big as houses, cheap boutique guitar pedals, cool as fuck cloths and loads of drinking in lower east side bars till late late late.

CMJ will be great, I'm there with Cut Off Your Hands who I manage these days, they just signed to Syd from Les Savy Fav's label in America called French Kiss. Exciting times for them and me. I'll also be checking out some great new artist at CMJ which is always a treat. One band I'm particularly looking forward to seeing is School of Seven Bells. I've been chasing these girls and guy for Speak n Spell for a long time. Finally they have finished their debut album and I will be putting it out in Jan next year. SVIIB are made of Benjamin Curtis who was in one of my favourite bands of recent years called Secret Machines. Their second album Ten Silver Drops was fucking brilliant. Alone, Jealous and Stoned is the most amazing opening track. Also in the band, heading up the vocals are sisters Alejandra Deheza and Claudia Deheza. Some of you may recognise them from now defunct New York band On!Air!Library!. Their voices together are heavenly and Ben layers drones and beats so beautifully. Check them out on myspace (www.myspace.com/schoolofsevenbells ) and also look out for their album on Speak n Spell next year. Some other bands I can't wait to see are Crystal Antlers, Bear Hands, A Place to Bury Strangers, Beach House (They were so good at the Hopetoun recently) and about a million more names I'm be sprouting over the next few weeks. I'll be catching up with my friends the Duke Spirit in New York too as they're on tour there. Expect photo's, expect discoveries, expect extremes and extreme lows, expect a running commentary of burgers and fast food.

How good is ATP Australia going to be!!! M. Gira is coming. He was in Swans. Swans are the best band ever. Fact!  http://www.myspace.com/swansaredead.

His solo albums are fucking brilliant too http://www.myspace.com/mgira

One last thing, here's what I've been obsessed by this week...

Deerhunter - Saved By Old TImes
Jack Ladder -  Barbers Son
SVIIB - Wired For Light
Sad Waters - Listen Lovers
Salem - Snakes
Three Trapped Tigers - all their myspace songs www.myspace.com/threetrappedtigers
I don't swear nearly as much as this which makes me think I should swear more. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=RqtgfjkB6Pg
I've also been watching There Will Be Blood on repeat. "I DRINK YOUR MIlKSHAKE". try that line out on people, it really fucks with them.

laterz