Feels like every week there’s an article about another live music venue under threat or closing. And this is a big one. I remember going to community meetings to save the Espy over a decade ago when Becton bought it. The plan was to keep the ‘historical facade’ & whack up a massive apartment complex, obliterating the music venue. It didn’t happen due to a ground-swell of community intervention. But that was then. The Espy’s future will shortly be in the hands of it’s new owners, presiding over their prime St Kilda beach-front real estate. Nervous times. Here’s an excerpt from an article written by Al Newstead at tonedeaf.com.au  – published yesterday.

“As the venue’s own website points out, The Espy is a cultural icon with a long standing tradition of live music, “on an average week the pub plays host to over 50 bands and DJs across 3 stages 7 days a week. The future status of the iconic Melbourne hotel as a live music venue is purely up to whomever the new owners are.

This makes me VERY nervous” said fellow live music venue operator James Young, of Melbourne’s Cherry Bar, in a Facebook post pointing towards an article from The Australian on the sale of the Espy. “In my opinion, no venue in Australia puts on more local live music than The Espy in St Kilda,” writes Young.”

Read more here.

Fires out.

Amsterdam September 2007, the day before our first ever overseas tour date. That city was the first show on a European tour through 9 cities in 7 countries in 3 weeks. We’d finish up in Turkey after Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine & Romania. An eye-opening, mind-blowing experience.

TOF in Amsterdam, September 2007.

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Another article about Triple J published last month in the Sydney Morning Herald (little slow off the mark here). To some degree I can understand it, but it still strikes me as ominous that no-one want’s to go ‘on the record’ to criticize the station. Even successful artists opt to speak anonymously. The power Triple J supposedly welds over the careers of Australian musicians has the industry walking on eggshells. But it’s a tax-payer funded organisation – so it doesn’t have the right to ostricise anyone for criticizing it. The problems with Triple J begin at a fundamental level: Either a committee should be choosing the station’s play-list, or they should do away with play-list’s altogether. Right now, program manager Richard Kingsmill, with God-like status, ultimately decides who gets on & who doesn’t (indeed, they call him ‘The King’). And that’s not right. No wonder Triple J has become homogenised and unrepresentative. Click here to read the article.

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After a long Saturday working on the venue, wandered over to Stalk & Kim’s to chill out over a few beers. Played a few songs on their house guitar & got into some long conversations about stuff I can’t quite remember this morning. Left feeling almost human again. Love hanging with the guys who reminded me this was the third Saturday in a row I’d dropped in & played for em. Kinda like a weekly gig. Always a bunch of friends gathered there – the unofficial Yak Bar (the bar Stalk used to own in Abbotsford where we first met). Thanks for another great night guys.

Pic from Stalk’s Facebook last night.

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Another weekend about to start. Building crew arriving at 7am tomorrow morning. We’re all in working on the new venue. Max has already started – running the sander across door frames. We’re getting there. Some point over the next few days, we’ll put a time-frame & plan together for official opening. Venue name still alluding us…

Max & sander in the new venue.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

Some ‘never-before-seen’ video of a show we played in Kiev, Ukraine 2009. Our friend Dave, the guy announcing at the start, sent us this footage shortly after the tour. I filed it away & only re-discovered it yesterday. It’s rough & raw but the energy’s there. The show was at Club Bochka in the heart of Kiev, one of our favourite places to play in Ukraine. Sadly, I’m told the club is no longer there. The first time we played Bochka in 07 the crowd-reaction changed the band forever, a packed mass of crowd-surfing, wild-body-slamming humanity. We miss Ukraine. It’d be great to tour there again someday…

Fires out.

Here’s an excerpt from an article published by ToneDeaf.com.au on Monday reporting the Barley Corn’s demise. It’s been quiet over there, the doors barely open this year (just across the road from us on Johnston St, Collingwood). Not sure what happened but apparently we’ve lost another live venue –

So it goes, it is now Melbourne’s turn to face the music, or lack thereof, as the historic Collingwood Venue ‘The Barley Corn Hotel’ of Johnston St hangs its head as its doors close for a final time. Having operated for some 140 years, the Hotel is remembered by many as a “we played our first gig there” type venue, and its closure stings as a sentimental loss to Melbourne’s live music scene.

Despite earlier laid-out plans to cosmetically make-over the Collingwood venue, The Music reports The Barley Corn Hotel will be transformed into accommodation as the owners decided it was a more ‘sustainable financial option’.

In addition to this, co-owner Jesse Pascoe told Fairfax “due to a combination of problems with council … it was too hard to fight an uphill battle. I can’t put into words the love and plans we had for the place and it was all crushed.”  Read more here.

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Max in full flight at Zebra Festival China 2011.

See a short documentary about that 2011 China tour here. Visit our YouTube Channel for live festival footage from around the world.

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We toured Ukraine 3 years running from 07 to 09 with local punk legend Sasha Pipa. Had no idea how famous he was until we stepped on stage at a club in Kiev to open for his band Borshch.  Sasha rose to prominence in the 90’s for his part in seminal Ukraine punk band Vopli Vidopliassova who were dangerously anti-establishment & anti-soviet union. Band members regularly received death-threats and harassment for their courageous irreverence against authoritarian censorship and government. We were honoured to be touring with such brave people. Here’s a video from Vopli Vidopliassova – one of many that got them into trouble.

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Channel 10’s Bondi Rescue will use our track ‘Skeleton’ this coming season. Skeleton was released on the Betrayer album (2010) – listen here (track 13).

Bondi Rescue, Channel 10 Melbourne.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.