Chillum

The Hairy Lemon Backpackers AKA The Royal - Mawhera Quay, Greymouth

Friday, 20^th June 2003

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No, Nightglo, I can't answer your question. I don't know what a chillim is, but I know what Chillum is.

This band have been around for at least a couple of years. Playing the odd gig, birthday bashes and now to the Hairy Lemon crowd. It's about time too. The whanau encouraged me to come along for the evening so I dragged my weary butt out of the house with the intention of enjoying good company and hopefully, good music, and to decide for myself if Chillum were worth getting excited over. Well, two out of three aint bad.

Chillum play all originals and I'd like to make some commentary on musicians who are brave enough to trot out their un-covered medly of melodies to an audience that may not have had much exposure to their stuff. In these times where we find ourselves drowning in all manner of pop drivel, originals take us away from the same ol' everyday thing, and it means that the artist/s are trying really hard and really care about their music rather than about their bank account. The drawback is that the music producers may not be clamouring to sign up an original band because the main thrust here is to mass produce, mass market and make masses of dosh very quickly ~ in other words, the consumer may not stampede down to the local CD store and buy the product. As a listener and a consumer, your part in this is to go to these gigs and support the original bands - if you're lucky and if they're lucky that you like what they do, they just may have a single or EP available at a nominal price that you can take home in your hot little mittened hands and play at your leisure in your blessed cotton socks.

Anyway, enough said about that. I won't rave or rant on any further (although the subject may rear it's bold and beautiful head again at a later date)...

Back to the business of Chillum - how were they? These guys took a little bit of warming up which might be explained in part by Jeremy finishing work that day in Christchurch, making the 3-hour drive over the mountains, and not quite looking forward to the drive home after the show so that he could start work early in the morning. So, despite them being just a tad shambolic at first, once they warmed up they were not often off their game... exuberantly noisy, full of West Coast charisma and eccentricity, with an average sized arsenal of cracking good tunes, and it didn't matter later when they recycled almost all of their entire repertoire, because as each song ground to a halt it was clear that the audience wanted a little bit more of 'em, and a lot more they gladly gave. I've got a soft spot for bands that wholeheartedly show that they enjoy performing.

Chillum's lyrics are a liquorice allsort of everyday emotions, delivered in an unapologetic style and confirm that no one is unique and that we are all here to experience life, and learn and grow from it. With that, Dayglo has a minor realisation that this was West Coast funky punk pop, which is what I expected ~ lots of people having a great time listening to music being played by a band that is also having a great time. There's plenty of raw grit here and a great drum sound from BJ (it made my jacket vibrate!), and those chiming guitars as the band continually gathered steam.

The rest of the night passed in an alcoholic blur thanks to the superb bartending skills of Tim, but I look forward to listening to Chillum again. I believe that chance will come at the Waimangaroa gig on August 2^nd ~ see you all there...