February 24th Thursday - Manhattans Bar, Perth
I get up early and pack my gear, touring solidly now throughout the World for more than three years I can pack my suitcase and grab the gear I need to play live in less than 1/2. It's reassuring that you have it down to precision amounts of underwear, metals shirts, hoodie and jeans, you know you won't run out and and you know how long you have before having to spend a moment in the coin laundry. It's a weird feeling, I'm int he country side of the east-coast playing with my dogs at lunch time and that night I'm going to play to a room full off people on the other side of the country, I still marvel at time difference and plane travel.
I head to the airport and catch my ride to perth, a nice little kanga jet to melbourne and then a connecting onto Perth. I have some dude who's jumped into the seat before me and laid claim to half off my seat, he doesn't seem to happy that I'm going to jump in there with him, he's covered in tattoos and a bit over weight. He makes a comment at me trying to get my (heavily over weight) carry-on bag into the very small compartment "that's why I travel with NO ahng luggage" he say to smiling at me. I think to myself "fuck-off" but then smile and say "I don't have an option!". It's true, I travel with exactly 23.5kg of luggage, it's a fine art and allows enough clothes, synth, merch and pedals, I then need to carry the res tin my backpack which is always at least 10kg+. So I finally get to Melbourne off this small ass plane and onto a nice big 737 to Perth, I have exit row and a nice tv screen with a surprising amount of recent films, a nice treat, usually I sit and fiddle and work up new AXXONN tracks. It's true, half of Let's Get It Straight was written on a plane flight to Japan.
I arrive in Perth and meet up with Stuart Buchanan, director of NEW WEIRD AUSTRALIA, the guy that's making this whole AXXONN roadshow possible. It's actually really nice to have him around cause touring on your own can be a pretty lonesome affair, not quite to the stage where you're paying for $2 peep shows for company, but close. I have an interview on local radio almost immediately upon arriving, so Stu and I grab a taxi and get headed towards our hotel, I take the interview over the phone, it's pretty funny and the usual chit-chat, they spin a bunch of AXXONN and I get off the phone. Ok it's important to mention that it's VERY VERY HOT but I still haven't quite realised how hot. We arrive at out hotel, the Royal Hotel 'quality budget', it says on the side. We have a room right at the top, we open the door and it's hotter than a sauna with one very small window based air conditioner. With ,little regard to carbon emissions I set the thing on 16c, it tells me the room is 32c and i would say that's about right. Stu and I head out for an hour or so and come back to hear the AC working overtime, it's flickering somewhere between 29 and 30.
We head off to the first of two gigs in Perth, this one at Manhattans Bar, just out of the city, a place I'd played at before and a place I'll unlikely ever play again for reasons to follow. We became aware very last mintue of a 10am curfew, ridiculously early for a Thursday but also ok for me cause it kinda felt more like 1am anyway as my body was still on EST. We arrive at the venue and despite Stu sending through a bunch of posters there's none on display, kinda weird. I do notice though that there are posters as old as two weeks still around, I mention this to Stu later and he mentions that the only poster he sees is in the bin in the toilet, super weird. The other supports arrive in time.
Gilbert Fawn is brilliant, Craig McElhinney's ambience is epic but he looses be with time and Erasers are short and sweet. Somewhere we get side tracked by the time and I'm left with a little more than 20 minutes to do a half hour set, 'shit!'. The sound guy then informs me he can't turn me too loud because the venue manager is there and that he might need to cut me at 10, I'm kinda delirious and just nod, pretty sure normally i wouldn't have excepted it so easily. I start off and the sound isn't too bad but soon enough I see the manager walking across the room and my volume dissipates. When your one man and making the kind thick nutritious sonic slabs that AXXONN does it's like having your throat cut, there's nothing you can do but hold your throat to coax every last second out of life. I always have a bit up my sleeve and usually save that for the end so consequently the mid section of the set sucks balls, volume wise. I finish it off and start packing up. The venue manager brings the sound guys his cash and me a point of Bulmers, a very very small consolation. We pack up and get out of there, a grand total of 9 payers and $30 once we pay the door girl, a real solid kick in the ass. 4/10
We head back to the Quality Budget hotel where our AC has successfully got the room down to 26c (in the next 12hours it doesn't go down anymore) it's 1am and 31c outside, brutal.
February 25th Friday - The Bakery, Perth
We wake stupidly early and head to a little cafe, it's the basics, two poached eggs and one avocado on toast for $16, wow I had forgotten how expensive Perth was till I had this. We check out of our Quality Budget accommodation and head to our next residence, the Mantra, a nice little 4* number with awesome air conditioning. It was however a total hike to get there, we couldn't get a single taxi despite calling twice and attempting to hail as many more. Finally we take the bus, it must be easily 30c+ outside and it's only about 10am. We leave our bags at the Mantra and head off in search of legendary local record shop Dadas. We find it and it's awesome but we're so tired and delirious we don't know what to look at first, I talk to an employee there for a while that I know and then huddle into the corner to read an article in the latest Mojo magazine about Nirvana and the year Nevermind came out. Stu leaves in search of AC and I stay a little longer, I catch up with him to find him in a comic shop, they're kind of cool as i think about many of the terrorising images a potential album art. We decide to head back to the hotel via a nice little vego cafe, i eat one of the nicest meals of the whole tour, a nice little veggie stack with side salads. We get back to the hotel and can finally checkin, Stu goes straight to sleep and i have a very small snooze before some friends contact me about going for a swim, I'm so close to cancelling it's not funny, but I go anyway. It turns into one of the best swims i've had in years, a beautiful beach, beautiful company and refreshing, for a small moment in my whole time in Perth I feel physically comfortable.
We keep it brief and my friends drop me back at the hotel. I go to sleep for a few hours, meanwhile Stu didn't even know i had left to the beach. I get up just in time to head to the venue. I'd been there only once before for a Laneway after party with PVT some years before hand, I knew that it had a ripping PA, that's usually the only thing I worry about. I'm supporting Perth band INJURED NINJA some of the nicest guys I've met in music, incredibly driven and an attitude of 'join the ride or move over', I think they're fucking awesome. They into AXOXNN and seem pretty excited to have me joining them tonight, they also inform me they've got in EXTRA SUBS for tonight, it's always candy to my ears. But I start getting concerned about temperature, it's easily 30+ outside and even more inside and more and more people start piling into the space, i already feel pretty exhausted and it's so hot that I can't even bring myself to eat, meaning not much energy coming in.
It comes time for AXXONN to play, I;m setting up my gear and already there is streams of sweat running off my heads, shit this is going to be crazy. Half way through the intro of my set the poor old synth is already covered in sweat but it's kinda crazy and fun, things get super loose and the crowd really responds, there's about 140 something people and slowly but surely they seem to come across to my side. The extra subs are doing double time and the lighting guys is too with plenty of strobe syncing and other cool shit, it's super hot and by the end i feel like my face might melt off. I wrap it up and feel pretty good about the set, the Ninjas say they dug it and a steady stream off randoms want to chat, always a good sign, all in all I have a good time but it takes me nearly an hour to recover, I stick around for Injured Ninja and head off just after their set, something like 3:30EST that I head back to the hotel, with an earlyish flight out of perth to Melbourne. 8.5/10 (a few off for the heat, not Perth's fault really)
February 26th Saturday [No gig - just heading to Melbourne]
Saturday was just weird, we wake up exhausted from two days of assaulting heat in Perth, have breakfast and head to the airport for our 10am flight, jump on the plane put our watches forward 3 hours, take our 6hr flight and arrive in Melbourne at 5:30pm. i get picked up by an old friend and Stu heads off to another Quality Budget hotel. I grab a bite, some cheap indian with friends and then crash early, I almost sleep for 12 hours, it's awesome, it's raining and it's a total contrast to the weather in Perth.
February 27th Sunday - Yah Yahs, Melbourne
I wake on Sunday and just kick it for most of the day as my body readjusts to being in what I consider to be a 'normal' temperature. I then shoot off to an awesome cafe on Sydney Road in Brunswick called GREENS where I'm meeting my sound tech for the night Todd Dixon and Tom Lyngcoln from THE NATION BLUE for coffee, chit chats and to discuss/work on a future project. Tom gives me a ride to YAH YAHS. I've actually never laid eyes on the place but am pretty casual as the staff, booking agent etc. are all very nice which always leads me to think the venue will be too. It's a nice place, not huge, not small but it's going to do the job, especially as its a FREE Sunday gig. Todd sets up and talks to the other supports PEON, NO ZU and MYSTIC EYES all very capable and awesome avant performers in their own right, it's going to make for a pretty good evening. As it happens a lot of people are turning up out of the blue from Brisbane, Tasmania, Melbourne including old high school buddies I haven't seen for some 15 years, it's exciting, kinda like playing in all those places at once.
I kick off my set and Todd's doing a sweet job of tuning every last morsel of sound out of the PA. But I start to have some tech problems, my foot controller which pretty much keeps everything going forward when i want it to starts working intermittently, it's the batteries and it make for some weird sonic interludes as I go to change with melodics changing and nothing else, I weigh up my options and remember that MYSTIC EYES who played before me had a Boss Loop Pedal, what I needed was a power supply, something I could plug in quick and get the foot controller back in action. I leave a monotonous loop running and jump into the crowd to find Lisa, she finds her adaptor and I plug it in and we're back in action, I'm kind of pissed that I let it happen in the first place so then things get really interesting, I think I play better when I get a bit aggressive, more focused. Anyway the last few tracks Let's Get It Straight and Urine Mote sound epic as Todd tunes the bass into the PA perfectly. But I'm still fuming about the foot controller problem taking out on the keys - it's by far the biggest tech issue I've had with AXXONN and in perspective quite minor. I finish the set and have that overwhelming 'end of tour feeling' when you realise there no gig to go to next, I'm quite a fiend for touring, I love it and would play every night if I could, I like making albums but for me they mean nothing if you don't play them live, I've never understood 'studio only' artists. For me it's engaging with an audience, seeing how your material sits in public and making the necessary alterations to have sit exactly where you envisaged. Yah Yahs 7/10
Thanks to NEW WEIRD AUSTRALIA www.newweirdaustralia.com
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