Is this everything you wanted?

Drowning Pool - Sinner https://open.spotify.com/album/089oyV5caclve3ap934iRw?si=uReAn8z9SiKIXOCNwXfd-A

I guess it’s time to talk about my first concert experience. I had seen high school/local bands around Mt. Gambier before but this is about my first real concert.

The year was... ummm...

*quickly googles what year it was*

2002! (I really should stop starting posts like this...) and nu-metal was pretty much all I listened too. My mate Steve had the ‘Ozzfest 2001’ CD, which featured a few of our favourite acts and a band that quickly became a favourite, Drowning Pool.

Drowning Pool were the new kids on the block having just released their huge nu-metal anthem ‘Bodies’ the year before. It’s an earworm of a song, punchy and angst ridden just the way we liked it. The refrain “Let the bodies hit the floor!” being the main lyric can get stuck in your head for days. For obvious reasons it was one of the first songs pulled off the radio after the September 11 terrorists acts, which just helped its popularity. I later found out that the lyrics are actually about moshpits... the more you know! 💁‍♀️

Now my memory here is a little fuzzy (thanks time) as I cannot remember the exact details of how I found out about the show. I recall another friend of mine giving me a VHS of film clips from the metal/rock show Channel [V] used to run. I’ve got a feeling that was were I saw an ad for 'Channel V’s Music Bus'. For those who don’t know or can’t remember (god damn it time!), Channel V’s Music Bus was a series where they took big artists to small towns for a free concert. Imagine my surprise when the ad announced that the music bus was coming to Mt. Gambier. ‘That’s kind of cool’ I thought. Then the ad said who was coming...

Drowning Pool.

Obviously I had to go and Steve was coming with me. Looking back it’s pretty amazing, what’s the chances of that happening! Our first concert experience was seeing the newly crowned princes of nu-metal in our own hometown. Un-fuckin-believable.

I remember getting dropped off at Vansittart park. It was a sunny day, one of those days where the sun seems to shine brighter than usual. There was a fairly large crowd and a decent sized stage to boot. The stage had what I like to call a “Bon Jovi walkway”, a catwalk that comes off the stage and stretches into the crowd. There was a big screen showing the live feed of Channel V. I was excited as all hell. This was the real deal, a real show. I don’t remember seeing anyone we knew there (though I’m certain we must of), I just remember pushing our way through the crowd to get as close as we could. We ended up on the barricade, stage right (that’s to the left of the stage from the crowds perspective). The screen was behind us and provided some shade while we anxiously waited. It’s weird seeing a live TV show happening. The hosts kind of just stand on stage, looking all... normal. Jabba and Mary were the hosts plus some other dude I can't remember. You’d see the camera man quickly get into position count Jabba, Mary and the other dude in and then ACTION! They done two or three amp up crosses (I don’t know what they’re called). Pretty much they’d tell the viewers at home that Drowning Pool will be coming out very soon and then get the crowd to yell and then cut to some film clips. I remember them playing Chemical Heart by Grinspoon, but the one that stood out was Chop Suey by System Of A Down. That was a huuuuuuuge song then, everyone loved it. When they played it a mini moshpit started. ‘Holy Shit! A moshpit in Mt. Gambier?’ Oh how I was naive...

The cameraman ran back out into position, followed quickly by the hosts then finally, Drowning Pool took the stage.

3...2...1...

“Mt. Gambier please welcome into your very warm hearts, all the way from Texas, USA... This is DROWNING POOL!”

I stood there unable to take my eyes off of them. They were all dressed in black (of course) and just looked like fucking rockstars. I recall thinking halfway through the first song that I didn’t want it to end. I had been bitten by the live music bug and I was only a minute and a half into my first ever concert. I didn’t know who to watch as all the band members were having a ball. It genuinely looked like they were pumped to be there, playing for a bunch of kids who never get this kind of show. I ended up being mesmerised by the drummer. He was sweating his arse off, hitting the drums with gusto all while singing backing vocals. This could of actually been the point that I decided I should try playing drums. I had only played drums for the first time 6 months prior at school in my music class and that was only for like a week. It certainly wasn't the point that made we want to be in a band, that'll come in another blog. I remember the bassist was slamming his strings, I mean slamming his strings. CJ the guitarist looked possessed. He would kind of spasm his body randomly whilst looking upwards to the heavens. He also had a shaven head with a long ponytail which had coloured beads in it, that would accentuate every time he'd whip his hair back and forth (Ha!). Dave Williams the vocalist would just scream and sing his heart out, only stopping to mosh or to signal the crowd to join in on the party. They were all smiling to each other, swapping positions on stage, just having fun. They played two or so songs then stopped. It was time for ads. It was fucking annoying but I’m not gonna complain, it was a free concert. Then they’d play another two or three songs and that was it.

Like every concert it was over quicker than what the build up was. I’m not sure if they announced it onstage or not but they were gonna do signings in a back area behind the stage. Steve and I ran like the fucking wind to the best record store in town, Disco Records and Tapes. We both bought their album ‘Sinner’ and legged it back. When we got back they were just hanging out the back of the stage taking photos with fans and signing peoples gear. I got a Channel V postcard signed by the whole band, my freshly bought CD signed and for some reason my mobile phone. They were the nicest guys, and they hung around for ages making sure they signed every last persons stuff. Steve’s mum picked us up and that was that, our first concert experience.

7 months later their vocalist Dave Williams

would pass away.

A few months after his death Drowning Pool would release their DVD ‘Sinema’. I managed to buy it (from Disco Records and Tapes of course) even though it was R rated and I was only 14. On it they had the Mt. Gambier concert in all its glory. That DVD became the most played disc in both our households.

Many years later I’d find out one of my best mates (who I met a few years after this concert) scored weed for the band and spent the night with them smoking and drinking.

As far as first concert experiences go, you can’t get much better than that. It was in my hometown, it was a band I loved (at the time) who were at their peak, it was free and it’s on DVD.

Oh and I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes. You bet your arses Steve and I combed through the footage to find if we were on the dvd and we are on it. Albeit you need to pause it at the perfect split second to see a blurry red blob (Steve) and a tiny small brown blob (yours truly), but god damn it, we are on it.

Here's a YouTube link I found that has been edited to just have their Mt. Gambier performance. Good luck finding us! ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTnHflRaWHw&t=393s

Ring around the roses, Pocket full of posies...

For those who want to listen along...

Korn - Self Titled: https://open.spotify.com/album/7D3XFJlfZIkmGWqZXm2X8z?si=iu2XRzDoQJavIz8xVShhpQ

It’s hard to pin point exactly when got into Rock and Metal. They both were still a force to be reckoned with in the mid-late nineties. Commercial radio still played rock songs by bands, Triple J played alternative music and Big Day Out was in full flight.

6 months after moving down to Mt. Gambier the house my mum was building was complete. It was situated at the top of a court. The builder of our house lived across the road, a family lived next door and then it was paddocks all the way back down the court. The family next door consisted of a mum, dad and their three boys. Two of them were older than what I was and the youngest was a year younger than me. His name was Daniel.

I used to ride my bike out the front and play cricket on the road with my younger brother. He’d come out and join in and we quickly became friends. We bonded over video games and were soon always going to each other’s houses to play Mortal Kombat. I remember at his house the computer was across the room from one of his brothers bedroom door. Both his brothers were teenagers and as most teenagers they spent their time at home locked in their rooms. I remember sneaking a peek inside his room once when he’d come out of his room to grab food. He had a massive poster on his wall. It was 5 guys posing with two low rider bicycles with a couple of pitbulls. When he was in his room he’d play music, but not music like I knew.

It was loud.

It was noisey.

...and there was a lot of screaming.

I remember being intrigued. "What is this? And who the are those guys on his wall?"

Daniel had the answers.

“That’s a band called Korn!”

He went on to explain that his brothers loved metal and he decided that I must hear this band. I was excited to hear what the fuss was about and he was excited to show me except there was a problem...

We weren’t allowed to listen to his brothers CDs.

You know how siblings don’t like the other siblings copying them? Well Daniel’s brother decided that he wasn’t cool enough to like metal.

A little while later after a few failed attempts at trying figure out some Fatalaties, Daniel’s brother decided he was gonna stay at a mates place. This was our chance. We waited for his brother to leave the house and then waited an extra 10 or so minutes just to make sure he wasn’t coming back. I sat in Daniel's room while he snuck into his brothers room. Soon after he came racing back, smiled widely and produced a couple of CDs from under his tee. As was the procedure back then, we put the CD in his CD player and a blank cassette in the tape player and hit the play/record buttons.

What followed was an hour of me sitting there with my jaw on the floor. I remember Daniel casually sitting there nodding along, looking through the booklet of one of the CDs. He’s heard it all before, but for me this was a baptism of fire. From the offset there is tension. Not like the type I had hear before, this was eerie, this sounded like something big was going happen. That pattern on the ride cymbal is so simple yet effective, drawing you in. A guitar sporadically hints at the main riff. A little bass walk enters and exits, leaving you with an uneasy feeling. A second guitar is introduced, jarring against the other guitar. The riff is then revealed only for a psychotic scream to take center stage...

“ARE YOU READY?”

The answer was no.

Fuck no.

As the album continued I was left speechless. It was raw and visceral. I was too young to realise the pain this man was venting but I could feel it. The lyrics instantly stood out to me. They were crude, personal, angry and shocking, nothing like what this this 10 year old had heard before. The sound was heavy, I didn't even know what heavy was but I knew this was heavy. The guitars played chords I had never heard before, they squealed like they were being tortured. That bass was just doing its own thing, being slapped every which way and basically was a percussion instrument. The drums ebb and flowed with the energy of the songs. (Many years later I'd read an interview with Ross Robinson, who produced this album, where he said that David Silveria the drummer, would just rush every time Jonathan's vocals got intense so they just left it). All their unique sounds gave the album a rough, unprocessed, disturbing feeling. I remember instantly being drawn to a couple of songs. I’d later learn they were the opener ‘Blind’, ‘Ball Tongue’ and ‘Clown’. The latter of those songs had a skit at the beginning. It was them fucking up the count in and messing around. Up until that point (4 songs in) the album hadn’t let up and was a welcomed surprise. It was a little sunflower sitting in a scene that resembled a war zone. ‘Faget’ was a demented hit out at his high school bullies. In the breakdown Jonathan Davis sounds like he’s reading a letter to those tormentors. The thing I noticed was that it sounded like he was in an empty room. the vocals weren’t the clean, clear sound you get on most recordings. It was muddy and slightly distorted, like it was recorded through a cheap mic from Dick Smith's. It just added to the anger of his words. ‘Shoots and Ladders’ was weird as all hell. Bagpipes and some madman screaming nursery rhymes. The albums finisher ‘Daddy’, still to this day is one of the most heart wrenching things you’ll hear on a record. To be honest I haven’t listened to it in years, even when I re-visit this album. It’s a hard listen but something that should be heard.

There was a knock on the door. Daniel’s mum poked her head in and told me my mum wanted me home. Daniel handed me the cassette and told me he’d record the other CDs for me and bring them round. As I walked the short walk home, I was still trying to comprehend what I had just heard. The cassette in my hands felt like it a portal to another world. It felt illegal (technically it was), like it wasn’t made for me to hear. I’d later receive the other tapes, they were Korn’s second album ‘Life Is Peachy’ and Sepultura’s ‘Roots’. I’m not sure if this was what got me into metal, but this exchange stands out as a catalyst to what would be the beginning of a life long love for all things sounding dirty, distorted and demented.

Yep these are those actual tapes. The top one is "Life Is Peachy" and the bottom is the self titled album.

Desolation Boulevard

I thought it might be a good idea for people to listen to the music I'm writing about as they read. Im going to strive to do this for each blog.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2wZWSdR7RaN0VNEeWCW3IP?si=1ee3PKFtTlKwBS_6K5z-tQ

One of the first friends I made in Mt. Gambier was a kid named Steve. We met through the soccer team I joined. He was a tall red head who was hard as nails, even as 10 year old. I’m not sure exactly how we became friends, but we bonded over soccer and our love of joking around. He had two younger siblings, a brother and a sister and came from divorced parents like me. I think because I was the new kid in town, our parents helped us become friends, they’d let us go around each other’s house’s quite frequently. His brother became friends with mine and our sisters also became friends. We became one big crazy family.

Steve and I were 10 and 9 respectively. We’d sometimes listen to the radio while we played, usually outside kicking a ball. The house we were renting at the time was a huge limestone built house. It was beautiful. The ceilings seemed to be 20 metres high. We had a massive backyard with a big fuck off walnut tree right next to the back fence. The amount of times we climbed that and one of us kids would come crashing down, just missing certain death by impalement on the steel fence was insane, it was a weekly occurrence.

As my mum was an only parent, she’d sometimes struggle being in 4 places at once. Steve’s mum or dad (depending on where he was staying) would sometimes pick me up and take me to trainings. For those of you who know nothing about Mt. Gambier, it’s freezing and rains more often than not. On this particular night it was pissing down. Steve and his dad came and picked me up to take me to training.

Because of the heavy rain, training had to be moved to a swimming pool. Being kids this just meant an hour of fun in a pool, the word training is loosely used in this situation. After an hour of mucking around, “training” had finished. We jumped into Steve’s dads car and took off.

The cassette player (yeah, I'm old) in the car kicked into life. Steve and I were mucking around in the backseats but were interrupted by the sound of a snare drum. A repetitive snare roll with the bass drum stomping out the downbeats. Then a voice...

"Are you ready Steve? Uh-huh

Andy? Yeah

Mick? Okay

Alright fellas, let's gooooo"

Steve and I started dancing and singing along to the sounds coming out of the speakers. It was Sweet's hit 'Ballroom Blitz'. Im not sure if this was the first time I had heard Sweet, it definitely wasn't the first time Steve had, but it is the earliest memory I have of them. Steve's dad seemed to love the fact we liked his old timey music, but we didn't just like them, we loved them.

For those not in the know, Sweet were an English band from the 70's. They were glam rock, camp, fun and upbeat, the perfect soundtrack to our childhood. Some of the lyrics seemed nonsensical (Wig Wam Bam anyone?), which just added to the youthfulness of their sound. I'd say one of their main characteristics was their vocals. Some of the notes those guys would hit were insane, think Bohemian Rhapsody but on steroids. Fox On The Run is usually the song people know them for, as well as the aforementioned Ballroom Blitz, which was in the movie Wayne's World. Fox On The Run is Sweet's most complete song as it has a bit of everything, the high vocals, hard hitting drums, sci-fi sounding synths and a chorus that burrows into your brain and never leaves. Alexander Graham Bell was a personal favourite. It stood out to me as it was a little slower than the other songs. It had a focus on the groove unlike their other songs. It opens with a trumpet and had some great orchestral parts throughout the song. Listening back to it now it reminds me of The Beatles. Steve's favourite was The Lies In Your Eyes. It was more of a straight forward rock song which featured their trademark high vocal melodies. It's also catchy as fuck. Little Willy was a favourite (for obvious reasons), and Co-Co and Poppa Joe were just the funnest songs to kid around too, they just oozed having a good time.

I remember there were times when Steve was at my house, we'd go in my room, put on 'The Ballroom Blitz & More Sweet Hits' cassette, and just have a dance, it was our kind of disco. We'd turn the lights out, grab torches or whatever kind of light source we could scavenge and just go full disco inferno. We used to grab our soccer socks, roll them up into a tight ball and jump on the beds throwing it to/at each other. We thrashed that cassette.

Nearly two decades later we would actually get to see our childhood music heroes play live on stage... 3 times. Those three nights were fucking brilliant. Although it wasn't the whole band (Two members had died and the other two started their own versions of Sweet), they were fantastic and yes, they still could hit those high notes. One of those shows was the after party concert for the V8 supercars Clipsal 500 race 2011. My partner, Rachel was a hairdresser for the grid girls and had free entry. I was going to buy a ticket for the concert as Steve already had one, but Rachel was adamant she could get me in. When the gates opened for the concert I met her out the front and she handed me a lanyard that clearly stated it was a pass for the race and not the concert. I started to freak out that I was going to miss the show, but she was not worried. She produced a marker from her bag, then proceeded to copy her stamp from earlier that day onto my hand. I was nervous this wasn't going to work but she was confident. As we walked to the ticket checkpoint Rachel flashed her lanyard and her stamp, they waved her through, I followed suit and they waved me through. It actually worked. Its amazing where a quickly flashed lanyard can get you...

Sweet brings back fond memories of being a kid and I can't help but smile about that period of time. Moving to a completely new town where you have no family (outside your immediate family) and friends is pretty daunting, but all I have is great memories. Steve and the soccer club (International) made the move for my family and I as smooth as I could of hoped for. He will probably feature a bit throughout my blog as he is one of the main 3 or so friends who helped not only shape my musical tastes, but me as a person. We are still to this day best mates and we both still love Sweet.