so this is a little piece getting published in the g20 reader in this ole town of melbourne
DIY HOUSEGIGS MELBOURNE
Diy Housegigs Melbourne began as an idea in late 2004, inspired by the DIY ethic of 70's and 80's punk. The idea was to bring together anyone interested in to holding gigs free from the constraints of the commercial society in which we unfortunately live. These gigs would be held in backyards, abandoned warehouses and shopfronts, dingy squats, rooftops, in short wherever the fuck one wanted.
The first of these gigs took place in early January 2005 at a house in Brunswick. On a warm summers night fifty or so people watched and sweated to the sounds of Tank, Young Love and Group Seizure. Those who weren't watching the bands lounged in the open rooftop reading and looking through the zine distro that had been set up. The next gig took place a month later at the House of Finbar in Footscray with twenty people chilling out to the sights of Go Genre Everything and Trickledown. The highlight of which was the four year old next door neighbour, who'd spent most of the gig hanging over the fence, singing along to a couple of improvised Trickledown numbers.
The next gig was Compost held at Montrose, a small inner city terrace house in North Carlton. Here 80 people relaxed in the backyard to the chilled sounds of Snawklor, Raceless and Ai Yamamoto, Casionova and Rose Turtle Ertler. There was a zine stall ran by Breakdownpress (www.breakdownpress.org) and food and cake for everyone. As dusk set in the Town Bikes gave a five-minute performance to end the night.
The forth gig took place at the House of Finbar and was the most ambitious gig to date. A mini-festival entitled “Let's lynch the landlord” it featured some ten bands/performances including: Pisschrist (one of their performances in which Yeap ended up with a bloodied face), Young love (the singer of which also followed Yeap's traditon of ending the gig bleeding from the mouth), the Ureviles, Procedure 286, Panel of Judges, Arch Rivals and Potential Citizens. There were also speeches from Michael Hyde- a uni lecturer who was banned from uni for life in the sixties owing to his student/ Maoist activism- who spoke about the Maoist anti-war protestors of ‘68 (and was questioned intelligently by a room full of anarchists about his opinion on Mao) and Briony from Resistance who spoke about her upcoming trip to Bolivia. Along with the speakers and bands Barricade books had their own store and there was information about the upcoming Stolenwealth Games Protests and Food not Bombs provided food for the event. There was also an acoustic room where a husband and wife duo spent the afternoon making experimental noise and spontaneous poetry performances took place.
The next gig was DIY Housegigs Melbourne greatest achievement to date: a mini-festival taking place over the course of a weekend (the 5th and 6th November 2005). Entitled The Cardboard Chateau the gig began in the early afternoon on the Saturday and finishing early Sunday evening when the cops enforced a $500 fine for noise violations and complaints. (A fine that in true DIY spirit has and will not be paid seeing as the gig only ran ten minutes over time and it wasn’t until everything was packed and everyone was heading home that the police decided to come and slap on the fine.) The festival featured some twenty performers all up. Saturday saw an eclectic mix of music styles from the noise and punk rock antics of True Radical Miracle, to the sublime sounds of Mousetrapreplica (complete with sound specific painter), to the riot grrl of Love the bomb, the eclectic country/gypsy music of The Adorable Catastrophe. Sunday was a much more relaxed affair with the sixty or so in attendance basking in the late spring heat to the sounds of Seth Rees, Basement Cinema and Go Genre Everything. There was also a puppetry performance by Deborah Hall complete with dancing skeletons and oversized toy squids and fish. The highlights of the show are varied but the collective spontaneity of the Exquisite Corpse art (one person writes a sentence, the other person draws a picture folds it over and passes it on to the next until the page is full and you get a strange and weird story) and acid inspired and induced graffiti that spilled across the wall on the Saturday night are a couple. Once again there were stalls from Barricade Books and Sticky (the zine store in the underground ) and there was cake and food provided by the vegan cooking branch of the Barricade collective. There was also a zine Here, there, everywhere given away free for the first sixty or so house goers. In this a lengthy account of the G8 protest in Scotland could be read as well as travel logs of protests in Darmsdat and squats in Berlin.
Over the rest of the summer of 2005-2006 a couple more gigs were held of which the Ovens Street warehouse was the most noteworthy. Organised in nine days this gig took place at the civil time of 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, with a wading pool out the front and haircuts in the alley around the side, a hundred odd people came to witness the sounds of Dead Record Girls, Go Genre Everything, Batrider, Love the Bomb and The Auralees, and the spoken word of Alice O'brien. The evening ended with the sounds of DJ's Cleopatra vs Prblmatic and the joys of a drunken walk home. All up DIY Housegigs Melbourne has held some dozen or so gigs and is looking to hold plenty more.
At the moment DIY Housegigs Melbourne is constructing a new interactive website to replace the old one. This website will have stories and photographs and sound bites and maybe one day in the future video footage (volunteers anyone?) With summer coming DIY Housegigs Melbourne is looking for people to start some fun and action to enliven the city. If you're in a band, or know anyone who is, or an artist, poet, writer, feral activists, media subverter, or if you just want to organise an enjoyable afternoon/evening at you place then you can send an email to diyhousegigsmelbourne@gmail.com and we can help you out. It’s fun and relatively easy a couple of emails and phone calls and a great afternoon can be had in your backyard. So come on let's create some little fun spaces of resistance and enjoy this summer and the years to come.
DIY HOUSEGIGS MELBOURNE
Diy Housegigs Melbourne began as an idea in late 2004, inspired by the DIY ethic of 70's and 80's punk. The idea was to bring together anyone interested in to holding gigs free from the constraints of the commercial society in which we unfortunately live. These gigs would be held in backyards, abandoned warehouses and shopfronts, dingy squats, rooftops, in short wherever the fuck one wanted.
The first of these gigs took place in early January 2005 at a house in Brunswick. On a warm summers night fifty or so people watched and sweated to the sounds of Tank, Young Love and Group Seizure. Those who weren't watching the bands lounged in the open rooftop reading and looking through the zine distro that had been set up. The next gig took place a month later at the House of Finbar in Footscray with twenty people chilling out to the sights of Go Genre Everything and Trickledown. The highlight of which was the four year old next door neighbour, who'd spent most of the gig hanging over the fence, singing along to a couple of improvised Trickledown numbers.
The next gig was Compost held at Montrose, a small inner city terrace house in North Carlton. Here 80 people relaxed in the backyard to the chilled sounds of Snawklor, Raceless and Ai Yamamoto, Casionova and Rose Turtle Ertler. There was a zine stall ran by Breakdownpress (www.breakdownpress.org) and food and cake for everyone. As dusk set in the Town Bikes gave a five-minute performance to end the night.
The forth gig took place at the House of Finbar and was the most ambitious gig to date. A mini-festival entitled “Let's lynch the landlord” it featured some ten bands/performances including: Pisschrist (one of their performances in which Yeap ended up with a bloodied face), Young love (the singer of which also followed Yeap's traditon of ending the gig bleeding from the mouth), the Ureviles, Procedure 286, Panel of Judges, Arch Rivals and Potential Citizens. There were also speeches from Michael Hyde- a uni lecturer who was banned from uni for life in the sixties owing to his student/ Maoist activism- who spoke about the Maoist anti-war protestors of ‘68 (and was questioned intelligently by a room full of anarchists about his opinion on Mao) and Briony from Resistance who spoke about her upcoming trip to Bolivia. Along with the speakers and bands Barricade books had their own store and there was information about the upcoming Stolenwealth Games Protests and Food not Bombs provided food for the event. There was also an acoustic room where a husband and wife duo spent the afternoon making experimental noise and spontaneous poetry performances took place.
The next gig was DIY Housegigs Melbourne greatest achievement to date: a mini-festival taking place over the course of a weekend (the 5th and 6th November 2005). Entitled The Cardboard Chateau the gig began in the early afternoon on the Saturday and finishing early Sunday evening when the cops enforced a $500 fine for noise violations and complaints. (A fine that in true DIY spirit has and will not be paid seeing as the gig only ran ten minutes over time and it wasn’t until everything was packed and everyone was heading home that the police decided to come and slap on the fine.) The festival featured some twenty performers all up. Saturday saw an eclectic mix of music styles from the noise and punk rock antics of True Radical Miracle, to the sublime sounds of Mousetrapreplica (complete with sound specific painter), to the riot grrl of Love the bomb, the eclectic country/gypsy music of The Adorable Catastrophe. Sunday was a much more relaxed affair with the sixty or so in attendance basking in the late spring heat to the sounds of Seth Rees, Basement Cinema and Go Genre Everything. There was also a puppetry performance by Deborah Hall complete with dancing skeletons and oversized toy squids and fish. The highlights of the show are varied but the collective spontaneity of the Exquisite Corpse art (one person writes a sentence, the other person draws a picture folds it over and passes it on to the next until the page is full and you get a strange and weird story) and acid inspired and induced graffiti that spilled across the wall on the Saturday night are a couple. Once again there were stalls from Barricade Books and Sticky (the zine store in the underground ) and there was cake and food provided by the vegan cooking branch of the Barricade collective. There was also a zine Here, there, everywhere given away free for the first sixty or so house goers. In this a lengthy account of the G8 protest in Scotland could be read as well as travel logs of protests in Darmsdat and squats in Berlin.
Over the rest of the summer of 2005-2006 a couple more gigs were held of which the Ovens Street warehouse was the most noteworthy. Organised in nine days this gig took place at the civil time of 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, with a wading pool out the front and haircuts in the alley around the side, a hundred odd people came to witness the sounds of Dead Record Girls, Go Genre Everything, Batrider, Love the Bomb and The Auralees, and the spoken word of Alice O'brien. The evening ended with the sounds of DJ's Cleopatra vs Prblmatic and the joys of a drunken walk home. All up DIY Housegigs Melbourne has held some dozen or so gigs and is looking to hold plenty more.
At the moment DIY Housegigs Melbourne is constructing a new interactive website to replace the old one. This website will have stories and photographs and sound bites and maybe one day in the future video footage (volunteers anyone?) With summer coming DIY Housegigs Melbourne is looking for people to start some fun and action to enliven the city. If you're in a band, or know anyone who is, or an artist, poet, writer, feral activists, media subverter, or if you just want to organise an enjoyable afternoon/evening at you place then you can send an email to diyhousegigsmelbourne@gmail.com and we can help you out. It’s fun and relatively easy a couple of emails and phone calls and a great afternoon can be had in your backyard. So come on let's create some little fun spaces of resistance and enjoy this summer and the years to come.
posted by paradigm at 9:24 PM
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