Thursday, October 26, 2006

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.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

the shed two storey's in the sky

here's a couple more pieces. the nimbus section is the beginning of the sam selection below. the other is just a brief little poem.

NIMBUS

Get.
Get up.
Get up now.
Now
Now
NOW!
Come on.
Move your leg.
Move your leg.
Move your...
Come on.
Move it.
It's not hard.
Move it.
Move your damn leg.
Move it!
Lift and Put down.
Lift and...
Put.
Down.
Lift and...
Move it.
Your left one.
Move it.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Move it!
Move it!
Move it!
MOVE IT FUCKEN NOW!
NOW!
NOW!
Move the fucker now.
Move it.
Come on.
Come on.
Come...
On.
Come...
Come...
Come...
Come.
Fine.
Fuck it.
Stay there.
Just go on.
Lie there.
See if I care.
See if I.
Just stay there.
No one's watching.
No one cares.
No one
No...
One.
No...


BREAK UP POME (AFTER ED SMITH)

There used to be a time
i would have shared my toothbrush
now i couldn't care

oh and this is something i started this morning:

ALONE

I wake to find myself lying who knows where.
It's light. Or at least in my eyes it's light.
I have a terrible headache and my mouth is aching.
I worked last night, I think. I don't know days have been blurring lately. Too much to. I'll get on top of it soon I hope.
I hope.
I hope.
I'll get on top of it!
I lift my head. Try and lift my head but I can't. The headaches too much. I'll have to just lie here and wait.
I roll over. Look up. I can see a lamp and some leaves. I'll lay here for awhile, sleep it off.

There's some loud knocking.
I think it's coming from beyond me.
I don't know. With this headache all sounds are reverberating. It could be coming from right in front of me for all i know.
It doesn't really matter. At least now I know that there are other people around and that maybe i can get help. I just have to get up.
I try raising my head again.
One, two, three. I raise it three centimetres and then nothing.
I lay me head back down.
It aches so much now.
I'll give it ten, twenty, thirty minutes and try again.

There's a couple behind me.
I can hear them arguing.
It seems pointless.
They're late to meet someone. A mother, a father. I don't know. Through the headache their voices are muffled.
I try and yell.
Nothing happens.
I try and yell again.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I hear a car start.
I am left alone.
I stare up at the lamp shade and the branches.
I count to ten.
I have to get up and out of here.

I have made it.
Finally I have made it.
I am sitting on a brick fence.
It is white.
There's a block of flats to my side.
My head is still hurting.
On the ground there is a pile of blood.
I wonder where it came from.
I reach up and touch my face. There's cut's and lacerations all across it.
I look down at my arm.
The stamp is still there.
On my right arm as always.
Wait! This time it's on my left arm.
Something is not right.
My head is hurting more than ever.
I fall.
Face down.
Face flat down I fall.

I am up again.
Sitting not on the fence but on the ground in front of it.
I can see a house in front of me.
Further up the street there is a man walking his dog.
I think of getting up, chasing after him but he's walking too fast.
Besides there is a telephone closer.
When I get the strength I'm going to walk across to that and call home.
9542 4322
9542 4322
9542 4322

...to be continued

Sunday, October 08, 2006

here's a couple of extracts from a work in progress. enjoy.

maybe that's all we can hope for. one, two, three, four, five seconds of pure unmediated joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, loneliness, whatever. maybe that's all we're after and that's all we need. and that if we have to lie, cheat, steal, fuck, fight, breathe, argue for that then that's enough. that art, addiction, prostitution, robbery, even murder and rape are ways in which we can reach that. that deep down we're all fucked up with nowwhere to go. that we're all searching for the same thing: a way to break through the artificialty. maybe that's all there is to being a human. who knows? whatever the answer (if there is one) it was certainly too much for Sam's seventeen year old mind to comprehend. particulary given the hour and his state. no at 6 on a saturtday morning there's only one thing on your mind and that's...sleep. well once the room stopped spinning and your stomach settled and the heart slowed down and the body started twitching there's one thing on your mind. and that's sleep. sleep and dreams. sleep and... sleep.


was sam sad? was he happy? hard to say. he felt his heart beating. he felt his chest being ripped apart. he felt like he was about to be thrown face first into a cave to which he and he alone would have to force his way out of. he felt so different. a week, an hour, ten minutes ago it had all been so...so flats not the right word but it will have to do... so just so and now... and now it was all just...just different. was sam sad? was he happy? hard to say all he knew was he was fucken terrified and he had felt like that before..

obviously the context helps but it would be great if you comment.

and another poem/prose piece

PROJECTILES

To the loud grunts of two guys fucking on screen we make out.
You ask if this is my first time, your hand reaching down my trousers.
I lie and say no.
Good, you reply massaging my hard on.
Want to go to a room? you ask.
I nod.
You lead me hand in hand.
Are you sure you want to do this? you ask shutting the door behind you.
Yes, I reply.
You sure? You ask again detecting the nervousness in my voice.
Yes, I reply making sure to sound confident.
Good, you reply reaching for my zip.
You pull out my cock and begin sucking.
I begin shaking.
Relax, you say. Relax.
I take a deep breathe.
And another.
And another.
Slowly but surely I feel my body relax.
Up and down you move your mouth. Up and down.
In my head I try and describe what it feels like.
I can’t. It’s... I don’t know. Words will never do it justice.
You pull back.
My cock pops out of your mouth.
You ask me to come all over your face.
I start masturbating.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven
Eight
Come! Come all over my face! you shout.
I try. I try. I try. But I can’t come.
You face is too beautiful to destroy with my white sticky liquid, besides I wouldn’t want you to walk around the city with the smell of me on you.
Sorry I say pulling up my trousers. It’s... it’s... I don’t know...
And I don’t for once.
That ‘s alright you say. Maybe some other time. Next time we’ll go to my place.
Yeah, I reply, maybe that’ll be better.
We both know it’s a lie. There will be no next time.
But somehow it’s the right thing to say.
It’s so perfect in it’s untruth. You turn and walk out the door, heading back to the lounge.
I turn and walk out the front door embarrased and more confused then ever.