What's funnier than the 2020 summit?

Wow. Fancy a town run by old white guys getting a bunch of old white guys to sit down together and smear foi gras on each other and talk a bout how seriously important they are to the future of us. Pass the buttered goose, I feel a little moochy about climate change. Is it the worst possible decision to be seen hiring a soon-to-be-helping-with-inquiries "colourful business identity" and a Murdoch yes-man to oversee an important bringing together of divergent views and opinions?

NO! It's John Mellencamp and Stephen King combining their awesome talents to make a musical. "A little ditty/About Cujo 'n Carrie/ Too American kids growin' up in the pantr-y". This will GO OFF. Much more than the Carrie Broadway show. Which just stank...

I mean, hiring Cate Blanchett to head a discussion about the future of the film industry - at a time when she's got her own production to think of? Jesus, didn't we learn when they sent in Peter 'oops where's my balls' Garrett to be Environment Minister? This will suck more arse than Molly Meldrum when Elton John's in town.

Let's face it - whenever these shiny suited New Labor governments try and fix something cultural... ohhh let's just say the closing of Melbourne's inner city music venues due to the evil influx of mortgaged-to-the-eyeballs yuppies who don't like the sounds of people having fun in their streets for example... we get a) Punters closed, b) Rainbow closed and c) the Tote on the chopping block.

When will we learn? I'm just wishing there's some anarchists left in Newtown who'll do something interesting with this summit. Something with paint. And music. And funny. Anything but smoke a thousand bongs and talk about the conospiracy theory about the secret NSA base under the US embassy and the tunnels under the Parliament.... *sigh*.... a big 23 skidoo to tin foil wearers out there!

Show With No Name playlist Feb 26

Woulda put this up yesterday except Len and I found ourselves in the Royal Joke - a fine boozy venue in the suburb called South Central in Ballarat. Yes, hello you old skool rap fans. Bad news. A bunch of whitefolks in Commodores are prowling the streets of South Central and there's nary a cap busted in any asses... poor old Eazy-E's rotisserizing in his grave... but I digress.

After a lot of phone calls (none) and emails (none) we've decided to bung up the playlist each week. Maybe so you can get a taste of the awesome rock passion of our radio show. Maybe so I can keep track of what I'm playing so I don't end up sounding as crappily playlisted as Triple J... fuck can we hear that Pissy Huggins song again? And again?

The Return from Black Waves of Depression Special
Skyhooks - Every Chase A Steeple
ZZ Top - Enjoy and Get It On
Capsicum - Toe Tapper
Blue Oyster Cult - This Ain't the Summer of Love
Dirtbombs - Leopard Man at the C & A
John Zorn - A Shot in the Dark
Frank Zappa - I'm a Beautiful Guy
Blur - It Could Be You
Kinks - Shagri-La
New York Dolls - Jet Boy (live)
Ramones - She's a Sensation
Rose Tattoo - Nice Boys Don't Play Rock and Roll

7 O'clock rock set*
Slayer - God Send Death
Descendants - Everything Sux
The Bronx - All This Is
Misfits - From Hell They Came

David Bowie - Look Back in Anger
Sugarman 3 - Promised Land
Zoobombs - Belt Out Rock and Roll
Bellrays - Some Confusion City
Harem Scarem - Run On Down the Line
The Jesters - Cadillac Man
Nebula - Freedom
Stiff Little Fingers - Barbed Wire Love
Frank Zappa - Doreen
Bay City Rollers - Bang Shang A Lang

* where we aim to inspire serious window-down, hair flappin', sign-of-the-cow driving

I like geting virtually spastic

Hello Fans,

Look, I don't know whether any of you have heard of this Facebook malarky, but it seems to be bigger than ten speed bicycles and speckledy fruit tingles put together.

I used to hop on the Inter-ma-net and receive general "Hellos! from various friends holed up in various bunkers around the World, (receiving various messages from various Gods) and it was all jolly hockey sticks.
Now it seems I can't respond to various advertisements for long distance telephone rates or doodle biggery without having to donate a virtual rhubarb to some Vampire Slayer during a game of Scabulous.
And I'm not sure I feel happypants about it......

I'm old enough to remember when one simply opened one's letterbox to receive mail, instead of the bizarre dance where one has to find which one of "Friends" is currently researching Letterbox Opening Protocol for their PhD or having to take the "What sort of letter box opener are you?" test.

More to the point, the whole site seems to be filled with a strange, alarming positivism, which frankly grinds at me like a a kind of Mormon Mafia trying to beat you to death with fairy floss and suffocate you with icing sugar.

I have friends (somewhere in a box.... I think...I've just moved house...maybe they're in with the kitchen stuff....).
Although we get along most of the time, sometimes we don't.
I thought the whole idea of a friends was someone stupid enough to put up with you and laugh about it.
But everytime I look at the Facebook comments they are this continuos snootchy goo about how much love there is in the room.
I dunno...just seems a little one sided...I know I shit people to death sometimes.....and vice versa.....

Therefore, now matter how many you "roll deep" in compadres (really? people say that? "Roll deep"? Sounds like a Subway offer to me...) I'd like you to complete the following

The "How many Friends do I actually have and how many people are just people i met through someone else who said "Wow, you guys would really like each other", or people I have to get along with for work purposes or people that I would like to get along with but I'm sure if we actually met we'd hate each other?" Quiz.

1) A friend is

a) Someone who'll hold your hair back when you're spewing your guts up or who'll get in the driving seat when the blue light flashes because they've still got five points left on their license
b) Anyone who'll shout me a drink
c) Any soul from the brethren
d) That guy at the bus stop who knows the lampposts are controlling the weather

2) Your in big trouble. You need $1000 NOW!!! How many friends would pony up the dough?

a) I've got at least six mates who'd cough up the cold hard and shout me an icy pole
b) Are my parents technically friends?
c) Ohh no dude....not again...will you pay a $1000 dollars to have sex with me?...I'll do anything....no I won't take a cheque....no your can't have a test drive...gedda outta here ya bum...no wait...come back...I didn't mean it honey...I'm just feeling naaaaasty.......what all of your friends?....o.k...but one at a time...o.k ..two.....three at a pinch......
d) I don't get into trouble for just such reasons.

3) You've just busted up with your respective partner. One phone call will result in..

a) A mate with a van and a slab rolling around to getcha the fuck outta here and back into the arms of those who've always stuck by you
b) A novelty ringtone bouncing off the walls of a Pilates sessions
c) Another 25 cents into the coffers of Satan
d) a snivelling apology and a night on the couch at Aunty Gail's.

4) The best friends are

a) Honest, loyal and a bit crazy
b) Skinny but not so skinny as to make you feel fat
c) Able to admit that they have a problem and are willing to complete all 12 steps
d) Fuzzy animated sprites on your "My Fuzzy Wuzzle Doodle" page

5) You met most of your friends

a) kicking on and getting your freaky style a-movin
b) when I changed my name and moved state to get away from my previous debts and indiscretions with other "so-called" friends.
c) in the back of the divvy van
d) When I dropped 14 trips at The Big Day out while the Butthole Surfers were playing (or maybe maybe I was at home watching the tumble dryer...I dunno...)

6) The thing I'd wanna tell all my friends is

a) Thanks. You guys have made this stupid ball of confusion so much more fuckin bearable. Luv's ya guts's.
b) Stay away from Ryan. He's mine
c) I'm better now I've stopped taking Ice/Herion/Meth/HorseTranq/Etc.
d) Can I borrow $50?

7) At your funeral you'd like your friends to

a) Play your favourite tunes, have a party and say something genuine about ya.
b) be paroled
c) not steal your stuff
d) not share the crematorium. I'd hate to be saddled with you arseholes for another fucking life.

O.k.

I think you can draw any conclusions for yourselves.
Oh...just one more thing.....I'd just like to make it perfectly clear that I don't give a shit about vampires, slayers, icons I can't drink, stupid causes, heartwarming stories about dead spastics, virtual vegetable programs, icons that flash their boobs when you send them to 10,000 people, travelling fuckin bears/gnomes/nuns, tests that couch what a grumpy hoon I am in Fluff-Speak, anything to do with Dr. Phil, set lists of your terrible music taste, reviews of films I wouldn't see if they Tarzan gripped my eyeballs to the popcorn machine, compatibility test to see if we agree about b-grade actors from the sixties, shit from YouTube where some fool makes beeping noises at a toaster, cartoon fish/flowers/fannies (actually I'll accept the fannies now I come to think of it...) or anything other than a request to meet up somewhere and a have a beer and a laugh.

Til next time

Cheerio!

Mick "Keeping the real real" Dog.

Where's the bloody Greens when you need 'em?

Hello Fans,

I've just been reading Dr Le Skip's latest.
Huzzah says I!
It's only 9.00am in the morning but I'm already on my third Cognac to celebrate.

It is an interesting (if you're interested in that sort of stuff) question about the current crop of musicians.
There does seem to be a "You do it for me.." attitude as if the template of rebellion is rather like a check list to be completed before Mum lets you go on Scout camp (Tight pants- Check, Disillusioned eyeballs- Check. Band t-shirt from the 70's (coz lets face it, you're grandparents rocked) - Check. Bad piercing- Check. Dodgy pill- MUM! Did you wash these pants???????? (Why, yes Dear...)

Indeed I'm not sure you can blame it all on the Howard.
Lets face it,he was the Queen Victoria of rock, refusing to sign legislation to ban it because he couldn't comprehend it actually existed (Unless we're talking about that lairy fairy of boopa croon, The Farnham. I bet old Howie really let his hair down while that wild man of Rawk banged out a version of the national anthem with an electric drumbeat and a Kiwi bass player with a pony tail........heavens is it hot in here?......my pants seems awfully tight.......no dammit Jeanine I'll pull my socks up after he's finished singing...you knew I was a rebel when you married me...)

No, I think it's more to do with the fact that certain social strata and musical Wetlands ( or perhaps Wetspots is a better term) have vanished, places that were once the breeding grounds for new music.
As The Bald Avenger, P.Garrett would yell from Goat Island, you can't sustain the Bandicoot of groove if the poor bastard has nowhere to nest and risks getting run over by a fuckin' Rav 4 everytime he's crossing the new ring road for a slice of Missus.

I therefore submit several endangered environments that I'd put as nearly non existent and in desperate need of reviving

1) The Greebo Sharehouse.

Once these cheap houses in inner city suburbs/country towns satisfied the two essential requirements of the Musical types being that they were a) cheap and b) a house.
These places, with their rich mulch of discarded clothes, shattered underwear, posters of support acts, stolen road signs, empty pizza boxes and littered with various can based life-forms provided ideal shelters for your musical types.
Here the creative types could frot and dance and come home at al hours, eat some dry pasta from various parental care packages and exist in what amounted to large cubby style living, which as we all know, is vastly superior to a traditional house.
Experiments in all facets of modern living (Sexual, chemical, olfactory etc.) could be conducted, giving arty types what is technically known as the "The Creative Horn".
Risks with various utility payment could be undertaken. Various marathons of illuminating endurance could be undertaken (Televisual, Genital etc.) with no judgement other than occasional request by a fellow traveller on the road to the outside dunny for condoms, five bucks or a name on the door.

In this rich and freewheeling atmosphere creative types could meet with other creative types and root like cubist rabbits, popping kittens of new music out into the greater paddock of culture.

Unfortunately these habitats have almost vanished due to the fact a burnt out wardrobe in Nunawading is now $450 a week, by straighties slumming it in these areas so they can giggle about it on FA(r)CEBOOK and by the general smell of the joint.

2) The Local

Back in the day (and we're talking 80's money here) a pub was a place to drink beer.
There was no rooty tootery. (well that's not entirely true. It was more rootery than tootery unless it was Trad Jazz night. Then it was about 50/50)
But there was beer and if you were lucky and had a good lookin' sort on your arm the Barperson would show off their cultural expansiveness by hooking a bottle of Malibu off the top shelf (Blackberry Nip and Marsala having gone the way of flared trousers at the time).

Then one day, some usually quiet guy at the end of the bar looked up from his 26th pot (and second mushroom sandwich) and said "Fuck It's quiet in here. Why don't we get some music going? (the lingual hiccup, "Man" and it's American burp cousin "Dude" hadn't quite occupied Australia like a cipherous Cane Toad, so he might of just said "Mate" at the end....anyway that doesn't matter).

Glasses were dropped.
A piano player set up, played for a while and then stopped (admittedly missing his cue, but there was no music in Pubs at the time. A true pioneer.)
People looked at each other and laughed, this having been the biggest revelation since Gough Witlams "Pants down to Poo" speech of 1054.

So....
Transistor radios were stolen from Fathers sheds. Dust was blown off Hollowbody Matons and Japanese knock off drumkits.
Saxomaphones were shortened to the cooler "Sax" moniker and wild eyed singers fashioned microphones from the inside of a bog roll and the inside of the Sennheiser Grandpa won in war.
Bands of people who wanted to play music so they didn't have to talk about who was boonting who anymore, started yelling about how crazy things (and everyone they knew) were
The audience started off as relatives, then freaks, then freaky relatives and people who were relatively freaky.
But most importantly, the Pub still served beer and one inspired publican (who should be on the $20 note) came up with the revolutionary idea of giving free beer to people who played music (The Wright Brothers can kiss my ring. You can't get an aeroplane on your beer can't ya? Nuff said.....)
The whole thing became like a Tuesday Netball night on Friday or a game of night footy, where everyone could have a kick and it was better than watching Daryl Somers play the drums.
It started on Saturday night and ended on Sunday morning.
A bizarre cross between a kind of standing-still drunken sport, a kind of blasphemous immediate church and a free beer.
And..(and this is the important bit) you could say anything you liked coz you didn't really expect anyone to really listen.
That was cool. You could write and play whatever the fuck you liked coz the next day everybody involved in the evenings entertainment would be thinking either
a) My skull is about to explode
b) How do I get out of this bed and where the fuck am I?
c) I fucking truly hate working Sunday or
d) Dude, the wallpaper is STILL laughing at me,....

rather than deciphering your massive contribution to contemporary culture

However.....
Just like Sport, The Church (and beer) it's now all about the money, the profile, the Next step and Unit (loose and otherwise).
You can't just pop down the local for a Parma and a howl, because professional types who want to see themselves written about by terrible writers in cluttered phone books of music are launching a Cd so they can get a spot on Triple Q's "Flirt in the Dirt" program so they can apply for a grant to get to the "North by Northwest Fest" and get signed by DiscoPoop labels so they can tour japan with the "KIngs of the MuffinAge" and release a follow up album recorded in Botsilvania so they can establish a a fund for Aboriginal techno and get nominated in the "Most Organised" category at the Aria's.

Or, the Local has decreed that they want to Art, but could you leave the Artist at home?
Is there anyway we can have music but not have to put up with musicians, with their semen encrusted pants, staggering about the stage looking for another rape victim?
Is there anyway we can make gobs of cash to pay for our insurance, which goes up $200 every two days, without having to scrape people's eyeballs of the roof for them?
Hmmm...and older crowd.....with lots of cash and who are bored stupid with life.....if only there was some sort of machine we could entice them with....

So now, instead of the crazy, snuffly old wombat of anything goes The Local we have THE VENUE.
This means if you want to play music you can do it in THE WHITE ZONE only.
Everything here is regulated and the only surprises will be the one's we advertised.
The sound will be good. The drinks will be expensive. The tickets will be crisp. The band will finish at the appointed time. The Taxi ranks will be empty. The NIght will finish at 2am. The flirting will be done via SMS. The write up will appear next week. The Website can be visited at ww.letsplaynicely.com. The bouncer's will loom like guys too fat to fit in Stormtrooper suits. The bar staff will not know your name. The punters will demand value for money. The support band will be adequate. The band will play to people who know what they sound like. The Cd's will be for sale at next to the innocuous t-shirts. The real estates agents will sacrifice more children to their Dark Lord and bide their time.



3) The Party

O.k. here's the quiz.

1)When was the last time you went to a party, rather than just a bunch of dickheads standing around getting drunk?

a) Last night Dude! I was off my head! I whizzed in the fridge and everything!
b) Oh I don't know......a month ago..maybe...I'm a bit over parties..I've gained weight.
c) I heard about these "parties" and watched one on YouTube.
d) The Lord doesn't say anything about parties in Genesis.

2) When you think of the "A party" you think-

a) A band playing loudly, people flinging themselves naked down a homemade water slide, while knocking back pretty colored alchohols, dropping a something somewhere, and standing up at the end of the night saying "I'm alive goddamitt! I'm fucking alive!!!!!!!!!!".
b) Filling the chip bowls evenly and making sure people know they can't touch the good furniture
c) Everybody arriving on time, talking about things we can all agree on, drinking responsibly and going home to compose thank you notes.
d) Getting online and playing "FuzzyKettles non-stop Party House Karaoke" with Kenji and Vishwan (time zones permitting).

3) If money was no object what sort of party would you have?

a) I'd charter a jet, fully decked out with waterbeds and a Ferris wheel and fly around the World, kicking the fuck on, out of my skull until I was dead.
b) Look, to be perfectly frank if I had that sort of money I'd pay off the house and maybe invite some co-workers round for a drink
c) Ummm....I dunno...maybe.....get a cake or something
d) I'd get plastic surgery so I'd look pretty enough to have fun.

4) What's the best time for a party to end?

a) When the coroner signs the forms and they fire up the oven.
b) Around midnight. That's enough fun for anyone, for heavens sake already.
c) When you realise that no is going to turn up to your Bon Jovi themed Milo blow out.
d) When your Mum knocks on the door and says "Get off that bloody internet! I need to ring your Aunty to organise Christmas!".

5) The best party I ever went to

a) Changed my life, fired me up so I wouldn't become a soulless drone, got me spastic, a root and gave me a twinkle in my bloodshot eyes that's never gone away.
b) Had a pony and friends in pink dresses and I got Cinderella Barbies's magic Zucchini coach as a present.
c) was when our Pastor came back from the Sudan and we all fasted for 48hrs and I donated a Mars bars to Oxfam
d) was when I finally killed the dragon on level 68 of Fugnuggles Quest.

O.k

If you answered anything but a) to any of these questions then it's all over.
If you answered a) to all of these questions then I'm amazed your still here.
Kudos to you.

Til next time

Cheerio!

Mick "Off to blast my lats!" Dog

Gene Simmons. The sex tape.

This really has occured in the wrong year. It should have been in the year of the "Man Who Drove Too Fast For a Living Dies In Car Accident" and "Man Who Annoys Dangerous Animals For a Living Gets Nailed by Stingray" year.... But, nevertheless - the interwebs give you "Man Who Claims to Have Rooted Every Woman On Planet Earth Captured On Video In Average Sex Display."

Gene Simmons. Sex tape. 'Nuff said. Except for the fact he's suing to have it removed from the web. As they say... irony quietly collects its loose change from the bar and leaves via the side exit..

Although, there's rumour of a Ballarat-based edition of this kind of horseplay sourced from a very famous Ballarat music venue... more news at 11...

Married with skids

I've just been down to a modest little golf club at Rye to see my brother the Razzman get married to the gal we know as the Byron Princess... here's hope to all hairy metal drummers that they too can find a beautiful intelligent woman who'll forgive the terrible music they play in their bands and wed them till something shit we do part ... I myself made a marvellous speech crafted from the finest of song lyrics.. we started with Bryan Adams, passed though Tori Amos, Skunkhour, Rolling Stones, Ella Fitzgerald and the Beastie Boys, and ended with Europe - you getting the picture?

If you haven't been to Rye, imagine all the pointy-faced nasty white-people you've ever met and collect them in a place which once upon a time could be accurately subscribed as 'sleepy seaside town' - which now resembles 'suburban hellhole with a beach'.

The peoples of Doncaster, Bulleen, Balwyn, Warrandyte and Templestowe have colonised this place like some cancerous fifth column which still equates 'four wheel drive' to 'safety on the road' and 'money spent on add-ons to your Commodore/WRX' to 'sexual prowess'. Even better, drive up Boneo Road out back of Rosebud and see for yourself what the world would look like if we all were stockbroking money-sucking freaks obsessed with building temples to ourselves in which to crouch and complain that there's not much on telly... or better yet, villains in a James Bond film. It's fascinating. There's a secret underground of niceness there, holding out against the middle-aged suburban weekend holiday warriors jacked the house vales through the roof'... if you can break through their innate sense of 'fuck off, tourist' you can meet nice people.

Curiously, where there's a lot of fat white middle aged people collectively snarling at each other to get the fuck out the way of my serenity, there's not much culture. Which leads me to our dear old Ballarat.

While rumours of Def Leppelin playing at Kryal Castle continue to abound, what IS coming to town is the Monsters of Rock tour, sometime in May, we think.

Monsters of Rock? You mean, Kiss, Black Sabbath, Motley Crue and Guns n Roses? Are we talking about the biggest bands in the world? In our fair little vale? Kinda. It's the biggest bands in the world - a tribute.

All the best cover bands of Melbourne are taking it on tour - and coming to Ballarat, and I, for one, salute them. If only because I was forced to watch not just Wolfmother drag their scabby arses in and out of my radio and tv and then onto the hallowed stage of the Meredith Supernatural Ampitheatre, but Airbourne too - complete with the standard knob-licking compliant 'can I have half of that..and a t-shirt?' alleged music journalism that accompanied it.

Two bands who didn't just rape the legacies of the bands before they were long in the grave, they put a whole new twist on necrophiliac sodomisation. Wolfmother? Well, Sydney's always been a source of tryhard wankers with more money to spend on haircare. Warrnambool? You've got a lot to answer for. Not just Dave 'Holden means a lot to my bank account, please refer to the Bill Hicks Guide to Artistic Integrity' Hughes, but Airbourne, too. Pre-pumped and primed as the very rebirth of Oz Rock itself... these sad losers have faded like Bon Scott's cumstains...and were never anywhere near as potent. If I'm gonna get cover bands, give me the real deal. If I want someone to rip someone else's shit off and claim it as their own I'll go download some mashups.

And I like the crowds as well. Last time I turned out to see professional, dress-up cover bands it was at the home of tastless imitation of style, Crown Casino. To see all those 30 and 40-something nearly-balding heads party like it was 1989 - and the same, slutty chicks who worked the room back in the day of the Village Green and Hard'n'Fast do the same now, only now as roadkill-dressed-as-mutton-thinking-it-was-lamb, was pure gold.

I tried looking to the younger generations for some hope. In fact, it's just finished being O Week in Ballarat, and seeing all the uni students descend upon our fair educational institutions and apocalyptically party like it's the end of time rather than the start of their indexed to inflation HECS statements, really was something. For starters, the big gig was being held at 21 Arms. 21 Arms? The only underage venue where alcohol is legal? The venue where the private school kiddies get a little bit of public school rough? WTF? And as for the associated cultural events - the Iron Lung competition, the street party, the massive bangin' rave - what was there?
I'll tell you what. Karaoke.

Are we dealing with a whole generation of culturally retarded kids as a result of the Howard years? What's going to run out in Ballarat first - the water, or the nutritional goodness of seeing some decent live music onstage?

Beethoven was right.

Hello Fans,

I can't help noticing that despite my impassioned and articulate plea to end all of this "Music Industry" nonsense, the aural debacle still continuos, like the first rabbit to survive myxo, hopping along with it's laboured breath, destroyed nervous system and bloodshot orbs dangling from it's thoughtless furred head (Yes, Cosmic Psychos, I am talking to you).
In fact the only thing keeping life in it's zombified carcass is the sad truth that it's too stupid to die.

Indeed, I can't help but notice that some "people" are still encouraging this crank wankery, (much in the same way the British stuffed as much opium up the heathen Chinee's arsehole as they could ram in with a gunboat, just so they could sit down and have a quiet cuppa after a hard day of flogging the darkies.)

Case example- Have you ever sat down to enjoy a delightful slice of Jaffa Cake and a spot of caffeine without being assaulted by some dreadful ear stench wafting from the speakers?
Or gone on a date with someone who you think is a bit of allright and not had to endure Missy "Muffdivin''" Higgins moaning her imperceptible tits off about how it's all gone wrong before she turned 22? (My take on Missy's life- You are a dull corporate whore dressed up as the Casey Chambers we had to have. All you prove is Australians hate themselves . If you were on fire, I'd stagger full bladder up the road, leaking from the nostrils and relieve myself far enough away that you couldn't even roll in the damp patch. You are the worst thing to happen to music since the Synthesiser. Now fuck off).
Yet, everywhere one turns, there is the plaintive caterwaul of the Higgins, ruining my fuckin day and making me want to kill and kill again.

Was there a referendum that said "O.k. Who votes we get rid of silence and conversation? Who votes we stuff gobs of aural shit in your brain everywhere you go, at all times of the day, forever, until you die?".
If there was, my apologies. Democracy is the best. Just look at the Top 40 and tell me I'm wrong.

Or fuckin' John Butler. There is more fresh young talent in the fresh laid turd that popped out of some coma patient's arse this morning than in that self aggrandising, simpering luddite, with his beady fuckin rat eyes and his over wrought, over played and over here guitar onanisms.
Truly, I have heard rats with a belly full of plaster skitter to death with more groove than the ol' JB's sterile toons.
If 60's and 70's black soul was a funky, stinky plate of the French dairy horn, JB is about as funky as a Kraft single.
And frankly, that's being generous, because his his ditties are far more like the wrapping than the cheese.

I'll say it once and I'll say it again.
You take the sadness out of blues music and it's just some stupid cunt boring everyone shitless with the same three fuckin chords.
It's nothing but the Tupperware of music, dull unfeeling platitudes for people who like the idea of dirt, but don't really want to get dirty.
Truly, this jex headed smugmobile needs a beating. Or cancer. Or both.

But lets not forget those four chord personifiers of bland, proving you can actually take the music out of music without anyone really noticing, The Waifs.
Good God. (which simply isn't possible with existence if theses three inbred, nasal toned arsefuckers).
I have had the terrible misfortune of hearing many bands who actually possessed the wretched curse of being really good musicians and having something interesting to say.
Needless to say they all lie dead and buried twenty miles out into Bass Straight.
Yet here come a bunch of dick twiddlin' sand-gropers, whose only claim to fame is that they can make perfectly good air sound like cheap NQR Tofu and have enough contempt for humanity to do it again and again and again.
Is it because they are any good? Noooooooo! Heaven forfend...it's just that their brand of anti-music can be put on anywhere and be virtually ignored if you really try hard enough.
I believe their main claim to fame is that they have managed to turn Australian music into a kind of jingoistic retelling of something that never happened, so people who have no fuckin lives can pretend they've been somewhere that doesn't exist.
May you all contract brain herpes, you bastards.

What's more you can't escape it.
Indeed if it's not the infernal fweep squeaking of some googlehead who pushed the 'Electro" button on it's new Ipoodle or the earnest meeping of some fairy breathed prongoloid who learnt three chords and then got the fat girl in year nine to squeak out something moronically accompanying on a cello/violin/harp/accordian/pissflap or some albino inner city pants fondler playing the amplifier in a band of dribble dicked clit snorters, (whose raspy roars are yet to match up with their freshly descended testicles), or some bunch of "Love the World" faux-funk misrelites singing some upbeat dirge about how we should all get along as long as we never play anything but the first four bars of anything that well meaning Freddo Frog of Peace, Bob Marley, wrote, or some angry bunch of suburban dudes who looked up "Angst" on Wikipedia while Mum ironed their false eyelashes and took out their poor results for a Home Economics exam out on a op shop keyboard or ,worse yet, a bunch of pill brained, well meaning, neuvo guano fashion dandies heaving their vintage sound about like a fat Albanian prostitute who'd just been reamed in Sydney.

You just can't get away from it.
Sooky stranglings in Super market. Coma inducing croons in the cafe. Pubescent puerility in the Pub.

But lets not forget that the punishment doesn't stop there. Oh heavens no.....
You can now buy iArsehole, which is a small spiky device bunged up the clack so you never have to endure a private thought again without the frothy fanfares of modern life.
Rhumba while you root. Soundscapes while you sleep.
Every moment of your life given a B Grade soundtrack by a bunch of people you'd punch in the face if you had to sit next to them on the bus.

It's worse than heroin, AIDS, Global warming, Bird Flu and a constant itching ring combined. True dinks.

My advice is this.
Turns off your bloody thing and see how long you can stand the gentle creakings of your own skull.
Sit in silence for a couple of minutes and just see how long it takes you to run screaming over to the quadraphonic surround sound for another hit of hits.
Go for a drive and don't listen to the anal mutterings of any sort of radio. (They're all terrible anyway.)
Go find a place that has no facility for equalisation and have a bloody good groove to fuck all and just see how long you can stand it before you scream home with your car stereo on full blast, attempting to tie yourself off with your fucking iPod, until you can get home and roll around naked in your C.d.'s, you filthy fucking helpless pitiful music junkie, you.

Until next time,

Cheerio!

Mick "Deaf is the new Black" Dog.

Hello Fans,

I've just been stimulated by Dr. Le Skip's tremendous news that all you have to do in order to be famous in this country is to fall over at the tennis and show your undies (albeit 3000 times, if your undies are some electro pop ditty out on Kooyong Records) and the questionable closing of various venues about town,

Also let me make some musings on the whole idea of "Original music" (conditions apply- original is used here like one says "Original New Cornetto" , which makes it virtually the same as the Old Vanilla Drumstick which isn't too far from Ancient Ice Cream Scoops in a cone, which the Romans invented after they stole it from the Chinese.)
I put it to you (Mr, Speaker) that genuinely original music in original venues is still as frightening to the general populace as other such outlandish concepts like "getting along with brown people" or "putting on a condom".

If music were say, a form on combustion engine, Australia would still be standing around a pile of Redgum logs (or unsold albums) feeding then into the hotbox, until the pressure gauge allowed the single thumping cylinder of entertainment to drive some sort of hand carved flywheel, so we could all watch the wheels on the DJ go round and round.

I'm amazed that although the calendar, that was gleefully included in my last order of Cantonese take away, indicates that it's 2007 (although it is in Cantonese so it may by the Year of Half Past Grapefruit as I've been decoding important dates by cross referencing the symbols on electrical appliance warnings) that the following fundamental things still apply (as time goes by .....scooby doo...mellifluous croon etc) as if we were all still getting about on the Electric Trolley in Fedora hats.

1) Bands still exist.
Why? Really? Listen to some sort of listening device....every possible combination of guitar/drum/bass/keyboard/sousaphone has been done. No...this time I mean it....and that stuff about never drinking again..anyway...it's over. Finito. Done. The whole idea of getting anything you'd want to waste your limited goddamn time on Earth out of this wretched combo of strummable horror is up there with discovering alien life forms with four boobs and sexual organs that taste like caramel fudge.
It's over Goddammit. When you invent a fuckin time machine, go back and watch Dawn Fraser at Redding. But It's time to give this outdated crap the heave ho. (Thats not a rap reference either).

2) Bands Venues still exist
What? Huh? Why don't you just find a sympathetic Brazilian surgeon to turn your eyeballs around in your skull so you can look backwards forever? It would be a lot less loud and that way you'd be spared the scarring revelation that the only thing scary about Scary Spice these days is how much she looks like a heart broken, bisexual librarian.
Band venues, where a bunch a twitter-pated dingbats can parade around in tight trousers, while making Lion Nathan another billion dollars, getting unseemly pregnant amidst the Jager hurling chaos and chanting "Look at me! I'm part of a stupid idea in the first place!" really should be culled with the same emotionless duty that can only be matched with a Federal Cane Toad eradication virus.
Face it. The charming crocodiles of real expression are floating belly up our brains.
Close these filthy arm pits of poison and see if any body who isn't pilled out of their multiple skulls and who isn't stupid enough to descend into these crap holes, gives a flying fruit bat about your (conditions apply) music.

3) People still want to be in bands.
Come again? Really? Take your average band. Which is all of them really. Lets look at what actually goes on. First - Organise a group of organic photocopiers steal someone else's ideas under the guilt cleansing mantra that they stole it from someone else and that, in fact ,you can't steal from God, who invented it in the first place, in case he doesn't exist, in which case shut up and hand me my 67 Korean Telebucker that I bought on Ebay with the money Nan left me when she joined that cult in Port Moresby. (I'm sure we're all tired of hearing that old excuse).
Next- Lets pretend we are doing something useful and we matter. Okey dokey. I'm now going to write a song about how I had a girl, that met when she threw up on me, while my 15 yr. old cousin Ronaldo was trying to make a joint out of some leaf he stole from the neighbours stash mixed with pocket lint to make what He calls the Corduroy caboodle, (which as we all know is a scourge and a threat to clean pants everywhere. Not just your big cities. In the country as well.)
Now, with some sort of colored-in pencil case education in some disinterested state school, a masterpiece of modern literature will probably emerge (like a glistening ball of brain shit) like this-

Oooooh! My pants.
I wanna dance
Never agian (sic) ((fully sic))
I don't wanna
Love again
Na...oooooooh!
Are gunna eat that?
Who cares?
Not me
My head hurts.
Ooooooh!
Is there any beer left?
Shit.
I hate you.
You hate me.
Hate hate hate...
Love love love
Mum said clean up your room
But I said I wanna rock.

(Oooooh and writhe nervously to chorus)

Chorus
I hate being in love with you
I love being in hate with us
Being in love hate with someone
Was like sitting up the back of the bus (Cool!)

(Strum music thing wildly. Make face like you've swallowed your contact lenses. Look down at floor as if twiddling your digits for 45 minutes was more effort that completing the Paris to Dakar race on a flat tyred unicycle. Congratulate yourself on being a beam of social consciousness. See if there is anything left in the rider. Curse other band members.)

Ok.
Now lets look at the outcome of such frippertronics.
Have cancer been cured? (No, but we made the bald kiddies smile. We are sonic pethadine)
Has the indignity suffered by elderly citizens been rectified? (Old? I'll never get old. I'll keep on Rockin! Where's my Ventolin?....)
Will anyone give a shit? (No. But why do you always need one during the second set?).
Will it take a small army of promoters, publicists, photographers, pregnant partners willing to go the celebrity scrape, Dutch fill in bassists, hack journo's, bald venue owners, star eyed she-mongoloids and cretinous drug fuelled punters to make anybody believe our cacophonic 120db clang fest is anything more than a bunch of deficient, deluded and desperate dickheads, having failed at every other pursuit that required the ability to walk and talk at the same time who are now joining the endless cue of bat brained deafmongers who huddle under the skirts of "Rawk", are IN FACT the new voice of a generation that is sick of talking about it anyway? (Short answer- Yes. Long answer- You betcha).

So.
I'm glad that finally all of this nonsense is going the way of the Triple Necked Turkey.
Hopefully, something much more diverse and immediate will emerge. Maybe people will start playing music in Gardens, Hospitals, Schools, Bus shelters etc.
Maybe the chord will be thrown away. maybe people will start playing something odd, unpredictable and strangely refreshing.
Maybe punters will have to deal the same conflicting emotions that one gets when your new lover is giving you a reach around while poking ice up your arse and that will make then not only scream that the Emperor has no clothes, but his dress sense was always terrible.

Maybe new instruments with brave and exciting sounds in brave new exciting spaces will spring up and the notion of Twin Tower Rock God will be given a good old Taliban up the tailpipe.
Lets fuckn hope so. I'm bored shitless with all of this French polished turdige.

Til next time.

Cheerio!

Mick (The Curmudgeon of Fudge) Dog.

Regrets? I've had a stew

we were talking about 23rd elvis which is just as well as no one else was. we have a gig at the idgaff bar on the 29th of March, well, that's the idea at this stage and as all of you in the topsy turvy world of scum independence know these things can change with the blink of a "Can't make it I'm washing my neck". Wow this is fun isn't it? Imagine the possibilities? Why they're opening up in technicolor even as I type, like one who says "Have they no wrists?" Marvelous stuff. The chances of deep late night regret that once put on record, can never be taken away, are endless! 23rd of Elvis will be on tour during April with SilverFinger, though they probably aren't aware of this. If you have a deep and close personal relationship with any of "ver lads " from the finger please dont tell them as we've been saving it as a surprise! Much like the feeling when you're sure it's just a scratch til you put your hand to you're head and look in horror at the river of blood running down your elbow. "Get your dirty hands off my filthy arms" A lesson in discretion for us all. Happy Days.

A little song we couldn't play on the radio

Just tried watching 20 seconds of the Liberal Party doco on ABC TV... By that, I mean the How We Were Dumped from Office By the Aussie Electorate and Are Now Trying to Blame It On the Guy Who's Not Here For the Racist Scumsucking Lying Arseholes We Were for Ten Years show. I got a better idea... a public service announcement from Devil's Cabaret - and I'm sending it out to that racist dickhead at Recovery Records on Sturt Street, too...

Tomorrow the Show With No Name is back on the air... and after the last few weeks of pounding Iron Maiden tributes, we might even go a tad low-key and summery... what with all this hot weather and stuff. Now I just gotta think up some songs for a stinkin hot summer's day... I'm thinking of an old time number by The Cramps to start with...

How long can Karova survive?

There's a story about a man who runs most of the pubs in this town, and of an evil franchise who've just arrived... and of one podgy rockdog stalwart who stuck it out.

Stuck it out like an Anzac on the shores of Turkey, forever raising the middle digit, rigid and stiff...

Stuck it out in the pursuit of honest rock and roll, friendly barkeepers and a cold beer in a world of push-button plasma-screen wank videos with a dancebeat, fuelled by Bacardi breezers and underage drinkers high on faux-eccies and a sense of doing something naughty.

Despite being threatened, cajoled and flat-out outsold by the Forces of Bland, our man continued to book original bands and didn't screw the punters for their dough. That period has ended, and he's now sitting somewhere quiet with a book, enjoying this thing some people call 'daytime'.

Does life go on as usual at Karova? The quote about the new owner is that he wandered up to the bar and said "I've had a listen to that Triple J... some of it's not bad."

Be afraid... the Pseudo Echo tribute bands and Get Your Tits Out Tuesdays promotions are surely not far away...

How many album sales does it take to get to number 1?

I found out something interesting last night. Was dining with a character known as Systah BB over a sandwich and 8 or 9 litres of quality grape moonshine from a local still, and she asked me how many albums did it take to get to number 1 in Australia.

She asked me about the new Timbaland album - which zapped to number 1 on the Aussie album charts a week or so ago. How many albums did I think it takes to get to that esteemed level?

10,000?
20,000?

How about.... (old fasioned drum roll by Animal from Hey Hey, if you will)

3,000.

Yep, 3,000. In fact, if you could call a half-cold pie sold at the MCG during a crap footy match an album, we'd top the charts with 'D'ya want sauce with that' no probs....

And people are still questioning whether the music industry is viable... hmmm. Speaking of people who drip from their mouths, I was handed a DVD of classic Ballarat 80s band Tabu the other day. Nice one. We might just have to see if we can't get some of it on air for this coming week's Show With No Name. We think Lenny has been contracted by Britney's people to help the young lass deal with her insanity.

I'm guessing the answer will be "don't stop till you get enough"...

Hubbeda Hubbeda

Hello Fans,

First of all I'd like to thank Dr Le Skip for his sterling work vis a vie this fancy shebang. My Stars!.
I remember when I first started out in this Music caper, we still had to carve set list out of bluestone.
If you wanted more fold back, you asked your girlfriend to move her table closer.
Back when amplifiers required a permit and flying goggles.
When you had to ask your Mum if you could empty the rest of the Milo into a tupperware container if you needed something to close mic the snare drum during your bagpipe solo.

Back when a young Herbert J Hardware was just a skinny young kid with nothing to lose exept his the keys to his hillman and his virginity (footage available at www.hardypants@corpseeater.com)
When Len had just come back frome the now legendary "Never mind the Horlicks" tour, tired and phantomly pregnant for the third time.
Back when a young Vinnie Le Skip had just worked out if you plugged your Mr. Microphone into the toaster you could make the fridge sing "Fuck the Police" everytime someone went for a icypole.
My how times have changed.......

Yes, it has all changed.
Why, the other day I thought my neighbour was mowing away excess kittens, only to find the Australian music scene alive and well, with all these young hopefuls using their brand new DudeTools(Tm) software to play their enemas backwards.
Frankly, all I can say is I'm glad all of this "Learning to play an instrument" malarky has finally gone the way of other out-dated crap, like not videoing yourself rooting some slapper from the disco milk bar or going out speedless to collect the mail.

Yes, I'm all for this "getting to the point" style of music.
Lets face it, no matter how many Deep Floyd or Black Zappa albums you hoard in your mini van, you can only moan about your Wang Dang Doodle at various volumes for so long.
It's high time a bit of limelight was shone on these crazy teens who visionary perceptions about "My New Pants" and "No, You Shut up" are going to make all those tired, old, dead "Musical" fucksticks (cluttering up the so-called record stores) march back to their patchouli smelling graves where they bloody well belong.
Huzzah I say.

It's lovley now that instead of going to see some bunch of yowley bastards, shouting inflamitory rhetoric about freedom (an overrated topic if there ever was one) or cracking a "Joke" (a concept the smug French can keep to themselves, thank you very much) or, God Forbid, play music that couldn't immediatly be used to sell the new Corolla (Whats the point? We all drive. Music that doesn't move vehicles is hypocrital and frankly damaging to our industry).

I just feel lucky I've lived long enough to be able to download as much music as I like with the same ease I can order a load of scoria.
It's such a comfort not having to deal with all of this humanity cluttering up the joint.
So much nicer to be able to not really have to expend all that energy on caring what I listen to, a practice that was the bane of my younger years, inciting nothing but fripperous passions and some sort of misguided belief in a better world.
Yah boo sucks to that nonsense.


No more staying out with a bunch of naked characters dancing for pies at 6am.
No more driving up and down coastal towns to play for starry eyed hippettes, for whom spring had given a final teaty glow to their salty cleavage.
No more laughing like fools until you sank underneath your beer doona on some mate of a mate's couch, just as the Sun was coming up while the birds sang like feathered fuckwits.
No more dancing in a flithy arm pit, being getting splashed with the earnest sweat of the youthful damned.
No more clanging away at some cheap instrument in the misguided opinion you were having some sort of fun and being amazed when some ciggerette eating publican thrust $20 and a pot in your hand at the end of the night.

No. None of that foolishness. I'm very happy that I (and millions of others) can happily have some music when we want it, without having to leave the lounge room and risking getting dirt on my me.
Marvelous!

I'll also be pleased when all of this "Band" nonsense finally goes the way of the Wooley Elephant.
I don't care who you are. I've been around and all of this "fun" just gets the kids hooked and detracts them from housing loans.
How are people going to live in quiet streets with this razzle dazzle racket keeping them awake?

Bring back Mr. Bjeke Peterson.
He had the right idea about people gathering to listen to this yee har music. Shooting is too good for 'em.
Surely we could open a salt mine somewhere and bulldoze these ne'er do wells into the ground. St.KIlda perhaps? I've head it's very respectable down there now.
Not like how it used to be.
Sometimes I shudder as how many nights I spent there feeling like I was doing something "cool".
Just makes me want reach for my new Ipod with built in Thermos. Ahhhhhh......lovley....nothing like breathy 20 somethings fingerpicking a song about cocoa to sooth the faint nigglings of rock from my teeth.

O.k.
Once again my thanks to the whole team at "The Show with No Name".
Hopefully we can add to the non-threatening aspects of modern life with our easy listening play list and out carefully worded commentry on various dinner party faux pas!
It's been lovley!

Cheerio!

Mick "MInd my comfortable pants!" Dog.

Who are the show with no name

We're a tired old bunch of rockstars who've spent a collective 750 years at the top of showbusiness and now we're awaiting the return of the prophet known only to Radio Dave to lead us to the promised land... Until then it's a bit like the Goodies, albeit living in a small cardboard shack in the wilds of a place known only to us and 90,000 other people as 'Sebas'... but that's another story.

Lenny's currently still coming down from the Grammys where he was arrested trying to snort Mariah Carey. It wasn't the fact he'd laid her out on the table so much as the way he was wielding that razor blade... Poor old Mick Dog was last seen wandering aimlessly down the highway outside of Wodonga clutching a half-used souvlaki and asking people if they knew how to call in an airstrike on Rockhampton...

But we continue, like the famed Hamburger Cart - night after night churning out the steaming hot goodness to the varied mumbling freaks, suits and geeks of our town. Things are pretyt grim for music fans in this place, what with Grainery Lane now closed, big Paddy O out of Karova and the ever present menace of 'Dirty' Frank Callahan on our streets... we shall fight the good fight here and forever... are you gonna eat that?

We cling tenaciously to the dream of honest rock and roll and someone shouting on the radio... via the medium of the Show With No Name - the only radio show in Ballarat to have its own Youtube action...

Not quite as monstrous a media empire as the man known only as 'Hardware' is amassing, and far from the greatness that was BTV6 in the old days.. but we will continue the struggle...