The Harvest Party

Saturday, 10^th May 2003

Overall Rating?

| Home |

A purgatory of souls could have been located in Blackball on this black slab of a night, a night that appears to have been designed to place ordinary mortals in an extraordinary and preternatural environment.  The  multitude of souls and the soul-less that showed up were in for a night of a strong texture of garage rock and roll, punk heaven and hell, and thanks to the organiser's inversion of rhetorical strategies the hall bulged at the seams with the good, the bad and the fugly. Oh yeah, the price of the ticket wouldn't burn a hole in most people's pockets either.

A delayed start to the night didn't dampen the atmosphere as much as the mythical West Coast rain did.  Enter N²0, who proceeded full throttle to motor down the audience to score maximum points, and maximum points were easily gained as they delivered an incredibly tight and energetic set led by Geoff Adams, who used to have his own ministry and is still a christian punk rocker extraordinaire. Punk is not dead, it has just gained weight, so some whit once said.  Times like this, one could believe that the religions of the world could have been mislead.  I think God would be very pleased if She was listening.

Make way for the Dellburgoes, as ab-fab as the night before and make way for dancing feet, and make way for the ensuing repertoire of the currently unrealised that followed on from reeperbhan rolicking rock 'n' roll, complete with assorted vitriolic lyrics.

At times I felt like I'd been shot in the kneck by an AK47..  Please, tell me, did this genre of music have any influence on human progress?  Yeah, well, maybe, says Nightglo, because raw punk generally spoke to the arsehole in all of us, and if you could pick up on the lyrics of the vocalist who generally sounded as if their vocal chords had been primed with a flamethrower, it was also a culture that communicated to the more angst ridden and angry teenagers (that awkward angst always looking for closure), most of whom were and still are, fashion punks.  At its best it was a passionate and cathartic force for a blank-faced crowd.

This crowd was far from blank-faced.  Well, at least they weren't at this time of the night.  Woodwork for miles around would have been bereft of their familiar interns looking for a night away from the tele and worrying about antibiotics in their Big Macs.  Either way, the crowd was going to have the snot blown out of their sinuses with the Harvest line-up.

Flesh D Vice, punk rock metalers from Wellington, provided a feverish, freakish collision of sound, improvised noises and distorted mutterings emanating out of the PA.  Maybe their hard edge transmission is getting a little soft.  Dayglo just might get shot down with the vocal chord scorching flamethrower for that comment, but hey, so what if these legends have been around for a while and can even claim some further home-spun fame with the Shihad/Pacifier connection...   Dayglo still scratches head, and thinks "hmmmm... Next!"...

Some of School of Meat's stuff was just too repititious that it was like listening to a schizophrenic sermon, and repitition does not necessarily mean that there is a message in the music.  Hey, I was old enough to appreciate punk music when it actually existed and since those times, have seen and heard an explosion of diverse music genre.  Our musical boundaries have been expanded whether we like it or not.  I like it.  You may have noticed that Dayglo is throwing the word punk around rather heavy handedly.  It's a fairly broad brush attempt at describing heavy metal / hard rock / punk thing style, Okay!  One thing though, the previous two bands still had the shadows and remnants of the pure and raw days of the late 70's and early 80's - music that is honest enough that it can be downrght brutal.  

The Carnys, all wimmen band and hometown Wellington heroines have been described as anarcho-feminist something-or-rathers... Nightflo prefers the feminised term "anarcha-feminist".  Dayglo strongly suggests that you catch this act next time you're in their vicinity, if not only for the electrified, electrifying  violinist, Sam, who easily and deservedly takes centre stage.  The rest sound like the love/hate child of Minnie Mouse and Tom Waits on Prozac.  Bit of a thumbs-up for White Rabbit though.

If you can't stand the heat, stay in the kitchen... you never know what might come out of the oven.  Pre-dawn saw Colin, fireman, pyromaniac, pyromancer, fire-artist, fire breather, human flamethrower, throw some heat around for the couple of dozen keno's that remained.  An astonishing physical performance.  Who was that drunken chick who was determined to get her hair singed?  Who cares.

So, who did show?...  N²0, The Dellburgoes, Flesh D Vice. School of Meat and The Carnys.  Darn shame the Christchurch contingent didn't arrive.  It would have added some vital ingredients to the soup pot that was quickly brought to the boil, left to roll, turned down to a simmering cacophany of sounds until some bright sparky finally found the 'off' button.

Everyone's got an anthem, and Gonk's anthem is his promise that this is definitely the last ever Harvest Party.  Bets are on that it's not.  I think Mr Gonk likes a good party - don't we all?

| Top |

Three Finger Puppet Master

Life is too much for your mind, I think life is too much, so why be in it?
Colours that argue amongst themselves are a huge problem
Love and fear have got a lot to do with why the world sucks
But what can you do?  I said, What can you do?
Like a black rain, beating down on me
Like a Bad Religion line, which won't let go of my brain
Like a finger puppet's ass, it is in my head... Blame it on the rules... Blame it on the fools
Country clubs are gonna drive us all crazy, and morticians make me feel like a dumb arse kid
Star spangled banners and hypocrisy will be the downfall of civilisation
But what can you do?
Oi, I said, What can you do?

Aaaarrrrrrgh... what a load of crap!