THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION – AUG ’15

THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
JSBX 2015 vert 2_495

JSBX:  FREEDOM TOWER – NO WAVE DANCE PARTY 2015!

Hail, hail rock ‘n’ roll! And all hail the The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion! Back with a brand new album and an Australian tour in August 2015.

Freedom Tower – No Wave Dance Party 2015 be thy album name and it’s every bit as triumphant and exciting as the title would suggest. Rehearsed and polished in a string of secret gigs and unannounced opening slots in New York City theatres, hotel bars, and dives (often under assumed names), and recorded at the legendary Daptone House Of Soul in Bushwick, Freedom Tower – like the best sides that percolated up from the Bronx, the Lower East Side, and Greenwich Village across the 1970s and ‘80s – is more than a high-octane dance party record, it is a document of New York City, a chronicle of grit and terror and love!

“A record as chaotic and full of life as the city that inspired it, Freedom Tower sweats with feverish energy.“ Consequence Of Sound

“Freedom Tower pares the group back to the elements, the razor-wire riffs some of their best; while Spencer’s holler sounds as grease-slicked and super-cool as ever” **** MOJO

“Freedom Tower showcases three men who grasp that great rock’n’roll can be at once rudimentary, virtuoso and preposterous” **** UNCUT

For nearly a quarter-century the Blues Explosion have been sweating, freezing, eating, drinking, fucking, fighting, winning, and losing in New York City, perpetrating some of the most timeless moments of musical mayhem in the history of Manhattan and beyond. As ever, Jon Spencer tells the tales, Judah Bauer plays the blues, and Russell Simins smashes things to bits… And as always Blues Explosion stomp on the faux underground oasis peddled by bourgeois hipsters and marketing jocks to deliver the real deal —  rock’n’roll that is unapologetically nasty and strong.

“… greasy riffs, twanging licks, tight drumbeats, banging, clattering, handclapping, and leather-trousered ass wiggling….expertly rendered, precisely messy, irresistibly life-affirming punky, funky rock ‘n’ roll.” Under The Radar

In recent times JSBX have toured Australia appearing at the Golden Plains Festival, Sydney Festival, Hobart’s MOFO and on select double-bills with fellow noise addicts Dinosaur Jr. They return this time for a headline appearance at Supersense – Melbourne’s newest cultural event – also featuring John Cale, Lydia Lunch, Mark Ribot, Chris Abrahams (The Necks), HTRK and more. It’s a (super) sensory overload with the Blues Explosion being the proud bearers of the ‘overload’. Elsewhere The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion will lift the roof off venues in New Zealand, Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart and Perth.

“… JSBX brings everything they have to the performance. Its a S-H-O-W in all caps, with Jon Spencer presiding as carnival barker, MC, chief entertainer and all around head get-down honcho for the evening”. – Dagger Zine live review May 2015

There are eight million stories in the Naked City — but there is only one Blues Explosion!

Ladies & gentlemen, please welcome the fabulous, most groovy, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion back to Australian shores this August. Tickets for all shows on-sale June 5th *

ED KUEPPER – JUL ’15

ED KUEPPEREK 5_495

For the better part of 2013 / 2014 Ed Kuepper toured the nation performing his crowd-pleasing ‘By Request’ show in city centres and regional towns culminating in a sold-out performance at the City Recital Hall for Sydney Festival, whereupon our Ed assembled various members of the Sydney Chamber Orchestra for a once-in-a-lifetime radical re-working of Kuepper Klassics.

Ed Kuepper’s wisdom is evident and naturally his relationship with the songs he wrote decades ago has matured and shifted. He isn’t satisfied with rattling off old times to a parochial audience in a suburban pub. His music continues to expand, injected with new facts, new sub-ploys, and sometimes shifting the narrative entirely. – FBI radio review

For his first tour of 2015 Ed Kuepper will again tackle any industry pre-conceptions, this time though, performing a set of largely new and as-yet-unrecorded material for a tour being dubbed Nostalgia For The New. And, in a further twist to the norm, Herr Kuepper will undertake the tour via a 3-week-mid-week residency in Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne with spin-off weekend shows in regional areas.

I was thinking of the times you’d go out and see an artist to hear the new stuff, I kind of missed it…felt a nostalgia for the new if you catch my drift – Ed Kuepper

The new material is being workshopped with the intention of recording a new album of all new studio material – his first since the wonderous Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog – before the end of the year. However, with each show being upwards of 2 hours long and without a support, our Ed has graciously allowed some of those back catalogue gems to be included in the set(s) too.

But wait, that’s not all, in between times, the nation’s first true Saint has also been busy putting down his first full-length soundtrack for the feature film Last Cab To Darwin. Directed by Jeremy Sims and starring Michael Caton, Last Cab… will premiere at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

… for me the chance of a lifetime really, been wanting to get into film scoring for years … it’s a very moving film which hopefully I’ve done justice to – Ed Kuepper

In the meantime get ready to lock in your mid-week winter kicks with Ed Kuepper as he sweeps down the east coast on his Nostalgia For The New tour this July.

Tickets for all shows on-sale Friday 22nd May.

THE KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW – JULY ’15

THE KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW
KK&BBG 495 New

“This dynamic duo has relentlessly pursued an uncompromising vision of the subversive power of music that pays no heed to commercial imperatives. Standing outside the industry, two fingers raised in salute, they have nevertheless managed to forge an international career completely on their own, idiosyncratic terms.”

The pioneering rock’n’roll legend that is The King Khan & BBQ Show announce the side shows to their Splendour In The Grass appearance.

The fabled duo (comprising singer / guitarist King Khan and drummer / singer / guitarist Mark Sultan) made their Australian debut at the request of Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson for the 2010 Vivid Festival will play additional shows in Sydney & Melbourne in celebration of their recently released album Bad News Boys, their first in 5 years.

This fourth album’s a gas. – MOJO ****

Entirely unoriginal, but the sort of thing that, 55 years after it was invented, it’s still hard to get enough of. – UNCUT ****

At its core, Bad News Boys is a joyous celebration of all things rock’n’roll by two guys who seem to have it running in their blood. – DROWNED IN SOUND

The band infamously broke up at that Sydney Opera House show. The venue and event organisers branding their show, and Khan in particular, a security threat! Arguments ensued and well, that was that. They managed to reconvene some three years later though, and returned to Australia in 2013 for a series of sold-out shows. Bad News Boys brings the manic-duo into the present.

The King Khan & BBQ Show’s formula of mixing timeless classic rock’n’roll melodies and harmonies with pure butt shaking savagery has hit the nail right on its head once again. Get lost in the romantic ballads about love and loss. Get pummelled in the gut with their return to classic floor punching hardcore. Get all loosely goosey with their true R&B Gospel salvation/salavation and feel the Holy Spirit deflower your holiness. Get crushed by the crunchiness in their celebration of crunch. Just get! Got it? Good! – Unknown.

Geelong’s newly crowned garage-kings The Living Eyes will guest on both shows with further support from Los Tones (Sydney) and The Pink Tiles (Melbourne).

Grab your own salad plate and head on down to the box office on Friday May 1st for tickets to The King Khan & BBQ Show, proudly presented by Feel.

BILL CALLAHAN – MAY ’15

BILL CALLAHAN

Bill C 2 495x330

On his last visit to Australia Bill Callahan performed at a ski-resort atop a mountain in Victoria for All Tomorrows Parties. He also appeared in a tent in a park for Sydney Festival – both events now holding a special place in Australian festival folklore. This time however, Bill C. has swapped the great Australian outdoors for the great Australian indoors and will perform three exclusive east coast shows: Tuesday 26th May at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall and Thursday 28th and Friday 29th May for Vivid Live at the Sydney Opera House. And in another Australian exclusive, and unlike previous visits either as Bill Callahan or Smog (his previous moniker) Bill will be bringing his regular touring band with him.

Four dudes, one harmonica, two electric guitars, one glitter-painted bass, barely half a drum kit and six lights is all it took to conquer the behemoth of a room transforming it into a gig with the cosiness of a chamber music recital. Review – Royal Festival Hall, London 2014.

In the years between Australian visits Callahan has released two albums proper, including the acclaimed Dream River featuring the Australian alternative radio hits Javelin Unlanding and Small Plane. Elsewhere Dream River kicked goals too landing at no.44 on the UK mainstream charts and picking up a five star review and the album of the year gong by influential English mag Mojo.

***** Dream River may be Callahan’s most beguiling album yet – MOJO

**** An Artist at the peak of his songwriting powers / the finest English language songwriting of the last 20 years‘ – The Guardian

**** ‘Bill Callahan sings the truth. Bathe in his voice, sink in it’ – Sydney Morning Herald

Setting into a cleaner musical palette since his tape-recorded beginnings as Smog, Callahan’s cult-audience has slowly grown from barfly clubs to hushed theatre reverence giving his baritone subtle delivery, and lyrical thumps such as album opener The Sing a refined precision: The only words I’ve said today are “beer” and “thank you”. Beer. Thank you.

Whether deceptively open or characteristically cloaked, Callahan’s status as a classic outsider songwriter will be brought up close in this six years in-the-waiting return for Vivid Live and Hamer Hall.

SUNNYBOYS – MAR ’15

SUNNYBOYS

Sunnyboys Live 495

The feel good story of 2014, Sunnyboys, announce a summer tour and the deluxe reissue of albums 2 & 3: INDIVIDUALS and GET SOME FUN.

The 2015 tour follows a series of sold-out east coast shows in 2013-2014, national theatre release of the feature-length documentary The Sunnyboy, a live appearance on ABC-TV show The Crack-Up for Mental Health Week and the deluxe re-issue of their rightly celebrated eponymous debut album. That a band could achieve all that interest some 30 years after they originally disbanded shows the respect in which they are held and the quality of the material they created in their brief but highly-charged original career.

The 2015 tour will include shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide plus a slot at the Perth International Arts Festival, just the second Sunnyboys appearance in the W.A. capital since 1984. Brisbane and Sydney fans will also be ecstatic to learn that in their respective towns Sunnyboys will be joined by former sparring partners, the legendary Riptides.

In the post-punk gloom of 1980-1982, the all-too-rare double-bill of Sunnyboys and Riptides became the stuff of legend, the best party in town. The Riptides anthemic show closer Shake It even provoking stage invasions long before it became de rigour. Although the initial life-span of the Riptides had them lasting just five years (1978 – 1983) their live legacy and tracks like ’77 Sunset Strip, Tomorrows Tears and Only Time have remained and the band have reformed sporadically over the years to great success, the last time being Brisbane’s 2006 Pig City festival which also featured the original Saints. More recently frontman Mark Callaghan has overseen the mixing of the Riptides debut album TOMBS OF GOLD. Recorded in 1982 but mixed just this year, TOMBS… is available right now on vinyl and CD – what took them so long!

Other guests on the February tour include The New Christs (Melbourne and Sydney) young punks Bad // Dreems (Adelaide) and Dom Mariani’s post-Stems vehicle DM3, in Perth.

Both Sunnyboys albums, meanwhile, are to be re-packaged and remastered with a bevy of bonus tracks, INDIVIDUALS in particular having a major overhaul with 8 of the original tracks stripped from the album completely and replaced by 8 alternative mixes found just last year in the archives of album producer Lobby Loyde. The original version of INDIVIDUALS has long been a thorn in the side of Sunnyboys, unhappy with the released versions and the decision by their record company to release it rather than remix it. The recently unearthed mixes have addressed that issue completely with the band declaring “The difference is amazing. It’s like a different album, fresh and dynamic – we look forward to playing it again”. INDIVIDUALS is rounded out by the 7″ version of Show Me Some Discipline plus b-side Pain and a 5-song live session recorded in Sydney by Triple J in early 1982.

GET SOME FUN will comprise the complete album recording sessions including singles Love In A Box and Comes As No Surprise, four non-album tracks and a 5-track live performance taken from the infamous Narara Music Festival held on a farm in rural NSW in 1984. Even the mud and damp of the day can’t impact on the energy of the Sunnyboys in this fantastic live performance.

Both INDIVIDUALS and GET SOME FUN will come complete with detailed full colour booklets and are to be released in early 2015.

Tickets for SUNNYBOYS – IT’S A SUNNY DAY TOUR are to go on sale Friday 5th December (except where noted).

J MASCIS – FEB ’15

J MASCIS

J Mascis 2014 495

Mascis had thrilled us for little over an hour, making everyone’s eyes twinkle as they sat back, marvelled and at times even levitated due to his astonishing guitar playing – AU Review 2012

Last here in early 2012 for The Falls Festival and multiple sold-out Sydney Festival performances, Dinosaur Jr frontman / guitar-guru J Mascis returns to Australia and New Zealand in February 2015 for Adelaide’s Garden Of Unearthly Delights Aurora Spiegeltent programme, as special guest to premier ambient / noise outfit Mogwai for two shows at Perth International Arts Festival, for headline performances along the Australian east coast (including first time solo appearances in Hobart and Canberra) and for three shows on the north island of New Zealand.

The 2015 tour follows the release of Tied To A Star, the second solo album from Mascis that picks up exactly where 2011’s debut Several Shades Of Why left off.

And though he plugs in for strategic, ripping solos throughout Tied to a Star, highlights like “Wide Awake” – his perfectly paired duet with Cat Power, which barely breaks a whisper – show that Mascis is now as skilled at quiet as he is with loud. Rolling Stone August 2014

As an added treat, former Magic Dirt front woman Adalita will join J for shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney. The two indie-rock luminaries paired up in 2012 for an appearance on SBS TV show Rockwiz performing the Tom Petty / Stevie Nicks classic Stop Dragging My Heart Around though the relationship goes back further with Magic Dirt having supported Dinosaur Jr on their 1995 Australian tour.

Stop Dragging My Heart Around
Every Morning (featuring Fred Armisen)
Is it Done

Don’t miss J Mascis with occasional special guest Adalita on tour this February.

Presented by Feel & FBi.