The Living End

Last week nearly all my sisters and I went to see The Living End at QUT. We had Atratus, L&L and were only missing A to make a full pack.

I've been into The Living End from their first album, own all of them, a sometimes guilty pleasure that feels like it needs justifying to our Goth/Geek friends. I'll come out and say that, as well as everything else, I like nu-punk/ska stuff. Hell I like the old-punk/ska stuff too. I'm a punky-goth *grin*.

The band's been going for nearly ten years and they're releasing a new album this year, hence the gig. And in all this time I have yet to see them live. This is a big deal. They play all-ages, they play festivals and hell, when they were in the UK they played the Brixton Academy: while we were in the UK. I'd begun to think that there might be a curse which prevented me from seeing them so when I spotted the poster at QUT last semester, $20 for QUT students, $25 for everyone else, and then got three days of work I thought: this time for sure. I put the call out for other people and Atratus said she'd love a ticket for her b-day and L&L said they'd love to come too.

The gig was being held in the QUT Guildbar, right above where Atratus and I (with George) had gone to see Rat Cat nearly 14 years ago. It's on the second floor at the back of the campus surrounded by the botanical gardens. The trek to get the tickets involved having all this knowledge and more. First I had to have the money, then I had to find a guild services office as it's the only place selling tickets. First stop KG campus, where I was organising my transcript as part of my transfer to UQ, and a search through the cafeteria building down to the lowest floor, dungeon like, past the sports centre, who had no idea about the concert, and to the room hiding in the back corner which of course was closed. OK says I, worried about tickets (and that curse thing) as I'd already had to leave it to two days before which is when I got paid, I'll go to Garden's Point. Happily listening to TLE on my minidisk, Geidi, and once on the GP campus I walked across the campus to the Guild services where I was told they are sold out: go upstairs to the bookstore. At the bookstore, I was told they didn't have any non-student tickets, go next door to the bar and ask there. It felt like a game of snakes and ladders and my fear of teh curse made me a little nervous as I enter the bar. Now I'm not a big pub-ish kinda person, so it felt like every eye was on me as I went to the bar and got my tickets!

On the night Atratus, L&L and I met out front of Borders and walked up to the guild bar, where I got carded and through belligerence and pouting got in despite the fact that all I have is my student ID. I'm nearly thirty, for-teh-goddess-sake. The crowd was what you'd expect: a lot of students, packs of people getting super drunk and yelling comments out at passer-by's (Atratus got asked if she could help someone slit their wrists *grins*). Atratus and I agreed there wasn't even much in the way of eye-candy (a guy in a Tripod shirt with a gf who pogo'ed, and the band). We met one other person who goes to Faith after his friend pushed him into talking to us. *kawaii desu* There were little pockets of punk-esque people through the crowd but very different to what you'd get at a gig in a pub or at the Arena or even at the Zoo. The venue itself was a little odd, mostly because it wasn't dark or loud enough. The two supports weren't really worth mentioning. A lot of energy and passion but nothing really new. But, what we came for, was fantastic.

They played a mixture of stuff off all three albums and two tracks off the new yet-to-be-released album. Have to say: the new stuff rocked and is not a disappointment. They played a lot of really good stuff and a mix of stuff from all their albums: Second Solution, Carry Me Home, Silent Victory, Pictures in the Mirror, Save The Day, Monday, West End Riot, Tabloid Magazine, Hold Up, Who's Gonna Save Us.

But for me there were a couple of highlights: All Torn Down, Roll On, and of course Prisoner of Society.

TLE come from Melbourne, which is a lot more obviously working class and unionised than Brisbane. From the first you can feel the suburban working class roots in the lyricism of the band. I think what I love about them, as well as the skankin' tunes is that they don't hide who they are and where they come from. Their roots are evident in every word and in the energy and style of music they play. They came out of the nineties bringing the energy and even the politicism of the early punk in a new way and bands like Green Day are only now catching up to their ability to make good music and take a stance.

I feel I have to explain what I mean by their politicism: a lot of their songs talk about things which people usually remain silent about in our generation, particularly in Australia. We pretend that we're a middle class, white country where everyone lives in suburbs like on Neighbours or Home and Away. Oh sure every now and again there'll be someone different but on the whole Australia is bourgeoisie. TLE talk about a life that isn't that way, that is part of our history with the strong union movements even into the eighties. Songs like Roll On, West End Riot and One Said to the Other are all expressions of a kind of life that isn't simply a middle class suburban experience. Along with The Cat Empire, TLE typify for me a part of what it means to be Australian.

So listening to Roll On, a song explicitly about a Union action, in the Garden's Point QUT Guild Bar with a bunch of students who will go on to do mostly public service and corporate jobs was kind of amusing. It kind of highlighted to me the change in union participation since the late eighties and the idea that this song, and the student unionism, is probably the most involved in unionism that most of the people in the bar would ever get. Thank you John Howard!

Brisbane during the Joh era had most of it's historical architecture decimated. The notorious Dean Brothers would come in the night before a building was to be Heritage listed and rip it down. Cloudlands, a venue which had been running at least since the fifties when couples used to go and meet to dance through to the eighties where our family tells us of going to see punk bands play, was a victim of this part of our history. As Atratus pointed out on the way home, the amount of newer buildings in Brisbane in comparison to Sydney or Melbourne, is a result of Joh and the Dean Brothers.

All Torn Down's lyrics are like a homage to Brisbane:

I see the city and it isn't what it used to be
A million houses goin up and down in front of me
No time to let the concrete set before it's broken up again
Don't care if it's historic, don't really care at all.

It's a short poppy song that's great to sing along to. When they played it, in our city, it was fantastic. Atratus said it's the song she most wanted to hear and I love it to pieces too. The best thing is that they expanded it from about two minutes to about six or eight with an amazing musical interlude thing. They managed to keep the tune and bring in a lot of the energy and styling of the early eighties ska and punk music. Just perfect.

The third highlight song, Prisoner of Society is their biggest single. They had a lot of fun playing it and we enjoyed yelling along. They did that audience participation thing getting us to yell out:

Well we don't need no one to tell us what to do.
Oh yes we're on our own and there's nothing you can do.
So we don't need no one like you!
TO TELL US WHAT TO DO!

It's an anthem of our generation (whatever that is) and loud, and pogoing until one of my skirts fell off, and lots of fun. Despite 'the generation gap' our parents would have been so proud of us pogoing and skanking to one of their favourite songs *grin*.

We got an encore with Second Solution but Atratus and I were very disappointed by the younger generation letting the Brisbane side down - only one encore!

It was a fantastic night out, and even though I had to move house the next day, I'm so glad I finally got to see them play live.

nb kawaii desu is Japanese for cute, it is and is pronounced ka-wa-ee des

Six months, huh!?!

I've been taking a sabbatical, or rather a semester-ical, from this blog in completely accidental manner. It was necessitated by a lot of things changing in my life over the last six months. I've barely been able to take a ten second breather in nearly all that time.

My Mum came back from Sydney for three months, my Brother turned 18, my Gran moved into a higher care facility in her retirement home, full-time study (although I dropped Jap because it was taking up too much of my workload), changing university to UQ and the big almighty decision to move out of 414./the coop. It doesn't sound much in a little list like that, but wow it's been hectic.

King of Brisbane

Mum's return and Pan's eighteenth meant lots of planning for his party. We know that it was probably just as much Atratus and I wanting it as Puck but we put on our planning hats and held it at the Bowls club across the road from our place: how suburban! The actual night was a lot of fun, semi-impromptu dress up party with a suburban Goth theme - my SO and I went steam punk, which entailed making a period skirt and making steampunk jewellery from scratch. Puck was prescribed the task of putting music together to pump through the sound system and we ordered pizzas, made sushi and popcorn and put on a tab for soft drinks.

The bowling club is such a different environment to our usual venues, a lot more laid back, even though we weren't allowed to go out onto the green. It's nestled into the hills facing the train lines and surrounded by bush, all good.

Pan was coronated as the King of Brisbane with the regency being handed over and a crowing ceremony. Speeches were made and Pan's harem surrounded him and hung on his every word. He even got them all to do aerobics, at least that's what it looked like they were doing. We did have an incident where some of the guests nearly burnt the place down by reheating pizza on a plastic dish in the microwave and not watching. The guys who owned the place were super friendly and didn't seem to worry too much but we were all a little annoyed after the two boys came in, saw the smoke, and then bolted into the park and away. We ended the night with a crew of us dancing to J-Rock, and Atratus and I teaching they young 'uns to Gothic two-step to my SO's impromptu DJ'ing. Everyone had a ball.

And then... the moving

We decided by March (and it took months of heart searching) that my SO and I would move out of the house that we've been living in for the past six or so years (except when we were in the UK, which doesn't count). This is the first time I've looked for a place in over eight years and it's been scary. We broached Yaln about moving in together when his lease came up in July (which is now) and all decided it'd be a lot of fun to live together. Of course this meant deciding exactly what we want in a house and where.

There are rules. It has to be within zone 2, although realisitically it has to be in within the first half of zone 2. It has to have enough space for Yaln to have a study and bedroom and for SO and I to have space not to kill each other in. There needs to be a library, a big library. There needs to be a good kitchen and entertaining rooms, Ideally there's a room that the boys can game in spearate to the room that we watch slash, uh, TV. It needs to be easy access to SO's work, my uni and Yaln's work. We'd like green and parks. I'd like accessible views of the city (one of my indicators that I'm still an urban rather than suburban girl). And we need to be able to afford it on two wages and my utterly non-existent Austudy (oh wait, that implies I'm even eligible, which I'm not).

The first round of hunting, courtesy of my SO's little brother entailed a list of houses to look at that Yaln and I had been looking over on the net for the week before we physically started. We went and peeked at the most likely and then started to ring to see if we can get keys and go look inside. Of course they don't give out keys at most of the places any more and we'd have to arrange appointments. We managed to run around, pick up lists and peek at a few places. The second trip out was Yaln and I with my littlest sister who currently caretakes George our car. We'd arranged to see two places on a Tuesday afternoon. The following Saturday, Yaln borrowed his Mum's car and we arranged four appointments and went looking.

There are some highlights.

One of the places we went to look at in Indooroopilly, which SO and his brother climbed in and peeked around, had an indoor mini-golf course and a bar/theatre downstairs. It was a massive Sicilian-style place and got resounding no's because of it's very erratic styling, the distance from transport and the massive 50 degree slope that needed to be circumnavigated/driven to get out of the street.

Our Favourite from the internet was a house we referred to as 'The Manor', mostly because that's how it was referred to in their advert. We drove up through some twists from the closest station to the top of a hill in Newmarket where there was the most amazing view, directly opposite 'The Manor'. The picture on the net made it look like it had a turret and a garage underneath (anybody scream Batcave?) and the description had a whole pile of rooms. But when we got there, after my pointed remarks about the fact that I wasn't walking up those hills everyday and I didn't know anyone without excess testosterone who would, it was a little disappointing. The camera never lies, but the photographer can sure pitch it differently. The front was so much smaller. There was another group viewing so we checked with the agents and they said if the others were ok, they were ok with us looking around. So we traipse around the house and I find them out the back and check if it'd be ok but they said no because they'd been looking so long. Honestly I was relieved. I was so disappointed that it wasn't what I was expecting, but, rude much?

'The Bungalow' in Newmarket was a three bedroom house with an outdoor entertaining area and it was shiny, as in the floors. We checked this place out a couple of times, as it was our favourite of the first round. It was just a little small for all our stuff.

The Bardon house rocked, well if you could buy it and do it up and get rid of the carpet upstairs (I became really adamant about shiny floors by halfway through the hunt), and make internal stairs and a verandah for the amazing view. It was an old house with a flat thing underneath and a shed in the garden. There was a 'cave' underneath the house that you had to go under the stairs to get to. Unfortunately it was filled with lots of old furniture but they were going to clean that out. It was big enough for us but just a little too awkward with its spaces. Really close to public transport too. I'm not even sure if I can describe it properly but it was like a labyrinthine house with lots of different spaces, indoors and out, and not internally connected. All the downstairs was concrete floors and there was this amazing,undefinable mural mural painted on the side of the house. The house was a little frayed at the edges, but if my SO had seen it he'd have probably convinced us to take it just because it was so erratic. It only had two upstairs bedrooms and one of them would have to be a study because of the air con and the cool. view. It would have been wrong to do anything else with it.

We did finally find a place, and in that beautiful Brisbane way, Yaln's mum knew the person who was living in it. This meant we could go and peek even though no one else had managed to do an inspection because the agency hadn't arranged any with the tenant still there. It's fantastic. Two large bedrooms with sleepouts, an extra room for the library and a decent sized media room, a dining room with fire, a big deck, a downstairs dungeon space for gamers or crafters and an 'erotic' kitchedn (ask the boys). It's about 3 minutes from the train station which put some of the other people off but we're like, train noise, piff.

We're moving in next weekend and are eratically packing at the moment. We don't have enough boxes and we still need to organise a truck and more importantly the internet but it's happening and it's exciting!