Weird Out West III
4 April in Melbourne (Footscray), with The Vasco Era, The Night Terrors, Tongue Dissolver, Solsa, Ov Pain, Kinetic Vision, Hospital Pass and Local High School Students Play The Velvet Underground.
Footscray deserved this. A whole afternoon and evening of music, perfect weather and excellent vibes in Maddern Square.
Maddern Square has always struggled to make sense as a public space. It sits between the Nicholson Street Mall (Australia's first pedestrian mall, in fact) and the Footscray Market. The whole time I've lived in this suburb it's wavered between being a quiet place to walk through and sit in, and vaguely antisocial.
It was obvious that this iteration of Weird Out West, a semi-regular event that was previously held in the courtyard of the Footscray Library, hit the right notes of accessibility and welcoming, including street denizens and people with high mobility and care needs.
Footscray excels at this type of thing. I have always felt that Footscray is much less uptight than many other parts of Melbourne. As a place it has a knack of subverting coolness (hence we ended up with a wall near the portaloos covered in chalked messages of encouragement like WIPE YA BUM and Go 2 Wee Town) and setting its own chaotic social norms (this is why I always walk out in front of cars expecting them to stop for me). It's also helpful when events don't have a ticket price.
The lack of alcohol licensing arrangements were heartily ignored as everyone pretty much did what they wanted, giving the whole thing a vibe of a large backyard house party.
To the music!
First up was Local High School Students Play The Velvet Underground who clarified that this is their actual band name that they will be sticking with. They did seem young and they did play The Velvet Underground, so aptly named in this instance. They started with Heroin which was an amusing choice. They were really very good.
Next were Ov Pain, an experimental duo from Aotearoa but now based here. They were among my favourites of the day. Their music is the people-standing-at-a-desk-twiddling-dials-and-pressing-buttons type, plus some saxophone. Every band should have a saxophone, especially with dreamy effects that suggest the owls are not what they seem.
Hospital Pass is Bonnie Mercer and Lisa MacKinnon, and was an act we were especially looking forward to being pre-existing Bonnie Mercer fans. They both played guitar, using effects to great, uh, effect. I will basically always say yes to seeing this kind of stuff live.
From this point, beats arrived. Kinetic Vision do not get the award for having the best band name, but they are really excellent and very enjoyable to watch. They comprise two dudes doing the desk-twiddly thing and a drummer who was frankly amazing. I just loved watching them play as a unit as the desk men and the drummer took turns doing sick drum breaks.
Around this time the crowd hijinx were getting silly. Bailey, one of the local denizens, broke the TOILETS sign which to be fair was very shoddily made to start with, so then a security guard spent ages trying to fix it. One of the older Vietnamese men who sit outside Scarlet Corner every day playing Go turned up dressed like a Native American, including full headdress. This is not the first time I've seen him dressed in that outfit.
By the time next band Solsa came on I was flagging somewhat. I don't think I was in the mood for them, and if I was I would go see NPCede instead. We eventually conceded it was time for a break and headed home to regroup and then to one of our old faithful local restaurants for some restorative noodles.
By the time we got back to Maddern Square, Tongue Dissolver were playing, the sun had set and the crowd was bigger. (We didn't really miss much because the event had a dinner break too.) They are kind of a punk/techno mix with lots of drums. I want to see them again when I'm not going "whoah, there's heaps of people here now."
The Night Terrors do instrumental dark synth which, as I have more than once mentioned in this blog, is not necessarily my bag. They were very good musicians but I found it a bit cheesy in the way that European symphonic metal is. I also learned that a theremin is not a cowbell and you can have have too much of it. The guy was really very good at playing the theremin, mind you.
Finally there was The Vasco Era which to me is one of those bands where the name is familiar but you have no idea about them. They are from that era where dudes seemed to be competing to see who is the most rock 'n' roll. I did not pay attention to that whole thing at the time, I was listening to other things.
The Vasco Era would be, based on me now having seen them once, the most interesting of those types of bands, at least in their live shows. I really liked their plodding pace combined with moments of chaos. And what they could conjure just from vocals and some very minimal blues guitar was impressive.
As the event ended there was a spontaneous outburst of yay-energy from the crowd as everyone seemingly simultaneously realised and rejoiced at how good Weird Out West III was. Truly a glorious one.
