a friend of mine – Their mix of catatonic introspection and impassioned instrument thrashing makes their live performances a unique spectacle that “you couldn’t turn a deaf ear to… double unison vocals which droned into a sea of power chords, and a drummer that rocked hard enough to put holes in your ear drums.” (fasterlouder.com.au) ” A Friend Of Mine played the sort of music you might bulldoze a neighbourhood to: rolling waves of brooding guitar grounded by frenetic, precise drumwork… their variation in intensity and unpretentious character made them a band worth catching.” (Inpress) They have since gone on to support a number of bands as diverse as Magic Dirt and Baseball, as well as improvising alongside Damo Suzuki.
tim dywer – I asked him for a bio but he never got back to me , so I am writing one for him. Tim reckons he sounds like suicide and he sort of does, I saw him playing with a jumper on his head and hammering a saxophone with a lot of smoke from a smoke machine. Was pretty good show. I think he is also doing some kind of master degree in art or some shit like that down in canberra. Anyway I guarantee it will be worth seeing
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sat 31
mgtvle, 40 fitzroy st, marrickville 8pm $10 all ages
ampere, majorca, former republics, scum system kill
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sun 1
dirty shirlows, 32 shirlow st, marrickville 4pm $10 all ages
ampere, majorca, ohana, crux
just got back from a weekend in melbourne to check out the ampere shows – awesome and intense. ohana were there too to record their new cd and play quebec’s final show. great line ups in great spaces.
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that’s all i have for now. i’m leaving on friday so if you’ve got anything coming up in the next six weeks let me know by wednesday and i’ll add it to the list. i’ll be checking email from time to time too.
shaun/tenzenmen ++ i’ll either be at these events or wishing i was there ++
the lilies – it’s a sound that occurs when grunge and psychedelia meet in a dark alley. There is also a strong assosciation to the fringes of the punk and new wave movements with experimental ‘post’ sounds present – an unhinged sorta vibe.
Every wednesday night club ‘consolador de dos caras’ will be changing the lyrics of that easybeats classic as midweek becomes the minds principal night of longing.
The front room is still operating as a free market with all your favourite music you never knew you liked from our irregular yet robust dj’s so bring along your music / art / publications / etc for sale while you still can . If the front room has a weird dinner party or so function that could possibly not be part of dual plover then the entrance is around the side on edgar lane.
While in the back room we’ll have 4 live acts every week for a nominal charge (usually $5 but may vary depending on touring acts). We open at 8pm and live acts in the back are between 9pm and 11:30 however the club is licensed til 6am so please feel free to stay on drink or dance to whichever dj is still playing.
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wed 21
Wednesday, 21 May, 2008 Art After Hours – Art Gallery of NSW 6.30PM central court Amanda Stewart – writer, performance poet, vocalist + Jim Denley – wind instruments and electronics Amanda Stewart and Jim Denley first started working together in the late 1980’s. Jim was interested in what his music instinct could learn from language and Amanda what her language instinct could learn from music. Their excitement came from the creation of, for them, new types of song – symbiotic words and music. They would go on to expand the scale in the group Machine for Making Sense which started in 1989. They have continued to do duos for the last 20 years. 7.30PM Centenary Auditorium Machine for Making Sense a music video by Stephen Jones. The group Machine for Making Sense have been producing exploratory music and interdisciplinary work in Sydney and around the world since 1989. The group includes: Jim Denley (flutes, saxaphone and voice), Chris Mann (voice and text), Rik Rue (samples and tape), Amanda Stewart (voice and text), Stevie Wishart (violin, live electronics, hurdy-gurdy and voice). This film has them performing at the Sydney Opera House in 1994. Free.
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thu 22
sandringham hotel, newtown $? 8pm
my precious (singapore), meaningless existence (brisbane), crux, death trap
the new my precious material is excellently executed punk/hardcore with two screamo styled vocalists. these are some cool kids from the DIY scene in singapore so go say hello and ask them about it – maybe your band will play there one day.
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fri 23
Friday 23rd May: Opening forum 6:30 pm at Australia Hall, 150 Elizabeth Street, Sydney
Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th May: Panels, Discussion & Workshops Redfern Community Centre, Hugo Street, Redfern
Speakers include: Larissa Behrendt Vince Forrester Tom Calma (tbc) Heather Goodall Sam Watson Mick Dodson (tbc) Barbara Shaw
Conference sessions include: *History of the struggle *Unions and Aboriginal rights *Resisting the new paternalism
Almost one year since the NT intervention began, there is a pressing need for the Aboriginal Rights movement to come together, consolidate recent gains and plan for the fight ahead.
The new Rudd Government has made some important symbolic gestures – from the apology through to commitments to ‘Close the Gap’ in Indigenous health. But for communities in the NT, Rudd is now the face of an intervention which is causing a new wave of dispossession and, as argued by Mutitjulu elder Vince Forrester, “a return to Apartheid”.
Welfare quarantines, the destruction of Community Employment Development Projects (CDEP) and the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal lands, businesses and services has forced thousands of people from their communities into urban centres. There they are met with racism and police repression – 190 people were taken into custody in Alice Springs on 4-5 April in an operation targeting “anti-social behaviour”.
The ideas of paternalism, assimilation and the free-market driving the intervention, and pushed so hard by the Howard government, are impacting on Aboriginal policy across the country. From the Queensland government’s decision to continue holding stolen wages “in trust”, the “mainstreaming” of Indigenous services which continues, through to the burgeoning national roll out of punitive welfare policies, a policy consensus has emerged in government and media against self-determination.
The new government is actively campaigning for retention and expansion of the explicitly racist intervention laws. They refuse to acknowledge the social break down taking place. They continue to deny Aboriginal people the basic human rights of protections against discrimination or rights to appeal.
2,000 people marched in Canberra on February 12, demanding an end to the intervention and campaign groups have been established iwn the major cities. Many trade unionists and activists in the broader community have recognised the need to actively challenge the racism of the intervention and renew the fight for Aboriginal rights around the country.
The upcoming conference aims to strengthen the networks that have been formed through this campaign. This conference will look to successful struggles from the past and hear from the strong communities leaders of today – to advance the politics of self-determination and forge demands and strategy for the ongoing campaign against the intervention.
Any groups wishing to become more involved in the campaign through organising and running a workshop at the conference are invited to register their interest with the organisers. For further information, please contact aboriginalrightscoalition @ gmail . com (with spaces removed).
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fri 23
Date: Friday, May 23, 2008 Time: 7:00pm – 11:55pm Location: Little Fish Gallery Street: 22 Enmore Rd City/Town: Newtown, Australia
S.C.A.R. Print Project is a series of print making workshops and exhibitions happening across australia in march, april and may. These workshops and events bring together folks who are survivors, folks who support survivors and folks who work to end sexual violence/abuse in our immediate communities and in the wider world. They will give space for people to creatively express their feelings around this shit and be supported and recognised as having valid and important voices (individually and collectively) S.C.A.R. prints is a World Without project (Melbourne’s community response to sexual assault group) www.worldwithout.org
There will be music and an exhibit of heaps of prints from the workshops, plus an auction of the prints with all money raised going to World Without
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fri 23
thunderdome 22 fotherigham st, stanmore 7pm
walrora, fail
bands start after scar auction at little fish
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sat 24
Paradise Lost Dirty Shirlows, 32 Shirlow St, Marrickville $10 10pm
Hey hey you Cool Cats & Jivin’ Jo’s get your groove on and come on down to Dirty Shirlows this Saturday night for some disco diving delights… Get your leg warmers, head bands, tights, short shorts, skates, shoulder moves , blush , butt bounce , and loved up eyes ready for a surprise ! HHmmmmm feelin feisty check out www.paradiselost.net.au if you wanna taste the tunes. God Dam come get your swinging sweet groove on baby….
PS – there will be a lock out once we’re full at Shirlows this w/e so make sure ya get in early for a full physical body visual and aural experience
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sun 25
Make sure to to come to the MCA on Sunday May 25 – because we are having a Zine Fair! There will be loads of stuff to buy, sell, trade as well as live music and great panel discussions.
FREE ENTRY Watch this space as the program is announced… A hard copy program guide designed by Keg de Souza will be available at the MCA from May 9
Interested in booking a stall? Call 02 9245 2484 or www.mca.com.au/events $10 per table or half a table for $5
New to zines and want to find out more? ZINE MASTERCLASS DATE: Sunday 11 May, 1.00pm-5.00pm COST: $30/$25 Members & concessions For further info and to book go to www.mca.com.au/events
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sun 25
to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the French uprising in May 1968, there is going to be a screening of ‘The Grin Without a Cat (Le Fond de l’air est rouge)’ – an epic elegy to the new left and the contradictions that swept the world in 1967 and 1968. It includes an amazing collection of footage from the streets of France as well as from around the world.
PLUS there will also be a launch of a zine all about May 1968.
Where: Black Rose Anarchist Library, 22 Enmore Rd, Newtown (100m from Newton station). When: 5pm, Sunday May 25th. entry by donation ($5 or what you can)
******************** Black Rose Anarchist Library & Bookshop 22 Enmore Rd (100m from Newtown Station) e: blackrosebooks@yahoo.com.au P: 0424 490 792
kate wilson (drums) steph (guitar, vocals) kallie (vocals) kate mara (accordion)
Serial Space 33 Wellington Street Chippendale 8pm $10 + $8
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i’ll actually be in melbourne this weekend – friday is my precious/ampere double bill! and saturday is quebec’s second last ever show (with my disco, ampere, daimond sea and majorca! – how’s that for a line up!)
shaun/tenzenmen ++ i’ll either be at these events or wishing i was there ++
consolador de dos caras la campana, 53-55 liverpool st, sydney
acid wagon of death Dingo – Keys, broken interfaces and Not paying for anything King of the world – Drums, broken drum machines, fuck off and die, Riffman- Guitars, broken amps and Bad Credit
mickey gloss Created through the union of two, Daniel Noort on guitar and Kurt Bugden on drums, Mickey Gloss are a 2 piece musical outfit that are simple in their mission ‘To give back to the music’. Mickey Gloss take what they have learnt from bands past and present to create a sound that rejoices in the process of life. Think cicada chirps and whale noises that wake the dead and you come close.
aemon currently in an improv band (this is the only way to describe it) titled The Nihil Spiritual Orchestra. The band is currently on hiatus, but this is as a result of nothing having been organised since i began my last intensive year of study at uws. Ive been lucky enough to begin B.Music Hons studying with Caleb Kelly, so ill plug the goods that that entails. My musical focus these days are in drone and glitch, and i have continued to move away from the harsh noise that i began fostering early 2007, to try and achieve more relaxing soundscapes despite high decibel levels. My interest is in combining the now-time effect of unchanging frequency spectrums, whether they be pitched or not, and combining this with untempoed, unpulsed rhythmic attacks, inspired by ambient, noise & doom, and glitchcore and skipping cds respectively.
plus markets and djs
if you want a stall or to dj or you want to play – get in touch!
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sun 18
scene around sound sunday sessions #1 31 winbourne rd, brookvale $6 midday ALL AGES
frank rizzo, anal discharge, meatswine, maus, snagglepuss
there was a good turnout at last weekend’s show in brookvale and these ones at scene around sound should be happening on a regular basis.
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and that is all i have this week! i’m kinda glad in some ways – the last few weeks have been hectic and the following weeks will be too! but if you know of anything else going on that is not generally advertised then please get in touch. i’ll be away in june so let me know if there’s anything going on soon so i can schedule it to go out on the list whilst i’m away.
hope everyone is well
shaun/tenzenmen ++ i’ll either be at these events or wishing i was there ++
bad news is that daighila got pulled by immigration in melbourne and sent straight back home to malaysia. we’ve had no contact with them so don’t know the details for sure but basically their tour isn’t happening, except to say that we’ll try and still have the shows with local bands and all proceeds being sent to the band to help with their expenses. we’ve tried to pull down everything online about the tour as we’re certain immigration will be persuing the issue.
ok – for sydney this means sunday afternoon at dirty shirlows is cancelled. we’re still planning to go ahead with thursday may 8th at 34 murray street with an amalgamation of the line ups. please come and check it out and donate as much as you can. the band have probably lost in the region of $6,000 and having to quit their jobs to come here they will be desperately short of money (plus not being allowed back here for 5 years).
23rd May 2021 – I always warned bands about the best way to get through immigration in Australia due to it’s draconian rules about earning money and tax avoidance – doing things legally involves copious amounts of paperwork and a fee that would never be recovered for the types of artists I worked with. So, never fly into Perth or Adelaide and never arrive in the evening – always try to arrive as early as possible – that’s when it’s the busiest as most airports don’t allow flights to land until 6am usually. If you can, arrange a sound engineer with a story that the band is here to record at their studio (essentially indicating that they are employing the services of Australians). Never tell them the correct name of your band as smart officials will net search for show listings. Have a person ready at the airport with exactly the same story as the band. In the case of Daighila, they flew into Melbourne arriving in the evening and it seems that they were actually pulled up with a couple of other people on their flight and those people were entering illegally to work and it was just bad luck that the four guys in Daighila were assumed to be with them. I was in Sydney at the time – I hadn’t organised the tour but just the Sydney shows. We couldn’t talk with the band and on that evening we had no idea what was happening with them. They were flown back to Kuala Lumpur the next morning, now jobless and thousands of dollars out of pocket. The story made national radio, for which I was interviewed outside the benefit show at Louies. We managed to raise $370 for them that night. I am still close friends with 3 of the guys in the band and try to see them whenever I visit Kuala Lumpur.
13th June 2021 – While looking around for other things I came across this article (written by Nick from the band McClane, who I actually listened to today, just by chance, though wondering why I had sold all the copies I had of their demo and never keeping one for myself) which includes a message from Daighila originally posted on MySpace and some lively discussion in the comments section. It is amazing to see how upbeat and positive the band where despite the shitty situation. Taken from the Canberra based Riot Act page:
However, thanks to our friends in the Immigration department, the band was detained in Melbourne and interrogated for 6 hours about their work intentions in Australia. The following is a message from the band that was posted on their myspace.
“Dear friends…yes, we were sent back home from Melbourne by the Australian Immigration after being separated and interrogated for 6 hours and after being detained in their detention centre for another 24 hours. They ‘assumed’ that we came to find jobs and become illegal workers. Despite the lack of proof to convict us and the fact that we’ve already booked a ticket back from Brisbane, they insisted that we allegedly came to find jobs like the other groups of Malaysians who were detained prior before we arrived. They also say they believe we came here to work because we carry small amounts of cash in our wallets. But we explained it was a safety precaution and we had a bank account with sufficient money in it. We even presented our bank card. We also presented proofs that we have stable lives in Malaysia. But it was all ignored. Alas, they cancelled our visas with the reason that we couldn’t convince who they called the ‘decision maker’ (whoever that was…) that we were actual tourists and we could support ourselves during our stay in Australia. As a last resort we gave them our friend Juzzy’s number who organized our tour. They called and told him that we explained he was going to find us jobs and they then told us that Juzzy explained he’s going to find us jobs! Clearly they tried to provoke us to admit that we came to Australia to find work. We demanded a phone call but they said, “You can only call Malaysian Embassy, but nobody would probably answer because it’s already late.” We still demanded that call and they say we can call after the interrogation but unfortunately, we were never given the chance to call. It was absurd and even the staff of the detention centre couldn’t believe what just happened to us. But they say things like this always occur….even Kris Dayanti was sent back without a reason once…hahaha. We took our chances, rolled the dice and got a little unfortunate, I guess.
Although we didn’t make the tour, but we did make new friends at the detention centre. If any of our new Malaysian friends in the detention centre is reading this, never give up!! To my Israelian roommate, thank you for watching over us. You never did give us your name. =(
We would like to show our deepest appreciation and gratitude to Juzzy, Shaun, Alex, Lena, Yeap, Lawrence and all our Australian friends who’s helped, waited, tried calling us, tried to let us out and everything…..we all did our best. And not forgetting our Malaysian friends who supported us, sent us, and picked us up at the airport. We really appreciate everything.
After all that had happened, whether it’s a case of discrimination, racism, or tyranny, we still believe in global DIY connection and friendship because no ones to blame but the discriminating system we are forced to submit to. Yet, we will never give up. ”
Thankfully no one was imprisoned, however a lot of people organising the shows around the country and Diaghila themselves were left out of pocket due to the shows not continuing. A benefit show will be conducted next weekend, more details soon.
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some good news if you want to party tho:
Name: Iceland Warehouse Party Time and PlaceStart Time: Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 10:00pm End Time: Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 6:00am
Location: Iceland Squat Street: 2-8 Weston Street City/Town: Balmain, Australia
The Iceland warehouse squat in Balmain is notorious for it’s great parties! Sadly it’s all gonna end as the site will soon be re-developed. So the squatters are going out with a bang with an all-weekend festival of fun this weekend. There’ll be DJs, bands and lots of live performances.
Come down earlier and have a drink and a dance if you wanna, or rock up late after you’ve finished your fun elsewhere.
shaun/tenzenmen ++ i’ll either be at these events or wishing i was there ++
1994ever 