polaroids of androids

SPOD + Ben Ely's Radio 5 + Art Rush @ Hopetoun Hotel - 22/05/2008

I often measure the quality of nights by the door bitch. At the SPOD single launch show on Thursday night the job was given to Dave 'hunky' Rennick of Dappled Cities Fly, which meant this was guaranteed to be a great show.

As a side note - there is a lot of talk around the place about Rennick's new band, A Curse Of Company, and their initial release 'package' - a hidden download that you can 'discover' HERE. It's Rennick's supergroup that isn't really a supergroup, featuring members of Mr Bungle, Gerling and theredsunband, as well as that Jack Ladder fella.

The Curse Of Company - All The Mines

They are playing their debut full band show next Tuesday at the Hopetoun.

Speaking of the Hopetoun, that's what this 'thing' was originally about. SPOD. At the Hopetoun. Last Thursday.

The evening was kicked off by Art Rush, a one-man-band who exists at the place where Muscles, Flight Of The Conchords and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone meet and discuss their previous love exploits. It's not as good as it sounds. Or as bad for that matter. Is music was interesting, comical and entertaining. Highlights involved the retelling of his first orgasm, which occured at the Macquarie shopping centre Greater Union in cinema eight, and the track, Penrith Chicks.

Art Rush - Penrith Chicks

Ben Ely's latest band was up next. Ben Ely is a tool and the music he presented was brainless jerk rock. Absolutely nothing. He also continually called for the crowd to move forward or dance or do something. It was hard to get into it when it was so fucking shit.

Yeah, not really my thing.

And THEN there was SPOD!

He started with just a minimal set-up - backing track, keyboard lady and multiple microphones - before transforming into a full band explosion. The band, nicknamed 'Pump Action' and consisting of three quarters of the Tucker B's, perfectly complimented SPOD's wild antics with their well executed thunderous insertions of noise and occasional harmonies.

The show was highly entertaining from start-to-finish with SPOD continually keeping his performance interesting, yet still chaotic and unpredictable. There was colourful streamers, Game-boy breakdowns, crowd surfing, mild stripping and numerous banter about every track being 'fucking awesome'. All of the key elements that make up a solid night of entertainment.

The only sore point of the evening was a couple of jerkwads who, from where I was standing, appeared to be picking on a poor fella who was there by himself, attempting to provoke him into a fight. They were drunk frat-boy scum and in hindsight I really should have teamed up with my homiez (Nicko, The Lawler and Andrew - who took the lovely photos above) and showed them a few Hulk Hogan (circa 1992) bone-crushing moves.

It was a shit thing to see at the show, especially given the fun nature of the night BUT ultimately wasn't destructive enough to ruin what was an incredibly entertaining performance.

The show was in celebration of SPOD's latest release, a 7" called Aminals, which is OUT NOW. Contained on the lovely little vinyl is the new single, Cats, a lovely track called Ladybird and a cover of 2 Live Crew's We Want Some Pussy, which, I might add, was especially awesome on Thursday night when it was performed in a ruckus-causing punk vs hip-hop style.

You can pick up a copy of Aminals over at SPOD dot com dot AU.