D4
The Stalkers
City Lights
Friday, August 16, 2002
@ the Annandale Hotel, SydneyI didn't get to the Annandale in time to catch City Lights, but it wasn't for want of trying. I saw them here at the Annandale about a year ago and thought them just an okay band at the time (it was apparently only their first or second gig), but a couple of weeks ago I saw them again and my first thought was, "Shit, these guys have really been practicing!". Judging by the looks on the faces of the punters around me, I wasn't the only one coming to that kind of conclusion. Word is that they hadn't actually played that many gigs in between, due to a few personnel upheavals, so a lot of hard work in the rehearsal room may indeed have been behind their astronomical leap in performance.
Anyway, that was another good opportunity gone begging (but I make no apologies to anyone, especially not to musicians who either write their own reviews or get ex-band buddies to write them for them), so there was nothing else to do except hang around at the front of the stage waiting for the Stalkers. This is a new band consisting of Ben Ely (Regurgitator), Peter Kostic (another guy from the 'gurge), Ray Ahn (Hard Ons, Nunchukka Superfly) and Ray Lalotoa, who used to front his own, eponymous band ("eponymous", now there's a word I don't get to use too often!).
They're calling this the "Kick This Shit to the Next Stop Tour" and their press release describes their brand of noise as "good clean fun spliced with garage rock ala '70s punk meets Detroit Radio Birdman". I'm not too sure about any actual Radio Birdman overtones, though I did pick up some general hard driving, open throated Detroit rhythms towards the end of their set, when they started to get really out of control like a stolen truck full of nuclear waste hurtling down the highway and treating the police roadblocks like speed bumps.
Most of all though, what I definitely did hear was a lot of raw musical energy, along with some good toons and strong riffs, played loud, fast and tight. This is what punk was meant to sound like, before it lapsed into a snotty, supercilious attitude and a restrictive dress code (not that these boys don't have their own uniform look down pat - matching tee shirts, red for the singer, black for the band, featuring the leering face of a skull with its hair style supplied by a clenched fist).
Forget your buzz-saw guitar, this was more like frog-in-a-blender guitar and it leaves you feeling like you've been given a colonoscopy with a rota-ruta. This is rock that practically reaches up your dung funnel and tries to rip your entrails out. When it comes time to write the big book of Oz Rock, you can expect to find this band in the index under: "arseholes, new, the tearing of". Apparently there's an EP in the works. Approach it with caution.
The D4 are from New Zealand and apparently are the NME's latest best ever, all-time favourite band, supplanting last week's best ever, all-time favourite band the Vines who in turn supplanted the Hives, who in turn supplanted the Strokes, who in turn supplanted the White Stripes. Or maybe it was D4 first, then the Vines. The NME may even have had a few other best ever, all-time favourite bands in between (weren't Black Rebel Motorcycle Club given a guernsey and invited to do a lap of honour at one stage?), but who can keep count when the fashion changes so quickly? What the fuck, wait another week and it won't matter, because they'll be drooling over someone else. In fact, it doesn't matter now. What does matter is the music and these sheep shaggers rock, big time (sorry chaps, but I had to get at least one snide New Zealand dig in there).
Much is being made of the fact that they do a cover of the Fun Things' "Savage", but for me the real interest is in how easily it slips into their set, which is a continuous cacophony of the sort of raucous noise we love to hear around here; not so much punk or even garage, but more like power pop gone completely feral, all snapping teeth and scrabbling claws.
This is the third time I've seen them (the other times being at the Iron Duke a couple of years ago and more recently supporting Birdman down in Melbourne - apparently they came all the way from New Zealand just for that one gig) and as on previous occasions they put on a full on show from the moment they hit the stage. The band was drenched in sweat long before the set was over and sections of the audience (mainly, I suspect, those closer to our simian ancestors than the rest of us) went into an absolute frenzy from the first chord.
My mate Frank had been complaining about munchkins nibbling at his ankles while we waiting for the band to come on (munchkins with New Zealand accents, he was at pains to point out, feeling that the crowd was unnaturally bolstered by homesick ex-pats hankering for a whiff of the old country). Frank's pretty tall and normally likes to stand about three quarters of the way back from the stage, since that avoids getting caught up in any audience shenanigans and he can still everything from there over the heads of those in front of him (which generally isn't the case for anyone standing behind him, unless they're the esteemed Steve Gardner or the late, lamented Andrew Brown).
Of course, at that distance it's hopeless trying to take photographs, which is why I'd led the way up to the front, but once the band got going the over eager smurfs behind Frank soon got the better of him and he retreated to a more sedate spot. I was fortunate to have right behind me another photographer who spent much of the set defending us both. It probably goes without saying that this photographer was a woman (actually there were several chicks with cameras, including one short blonde with such a huge lens that it made me feel totally inadequate).
I learned long ago that girls can get away with all sorts of things that boys can't and that foremost amongst those things is defending yourself against a mosh. Half these pricks are just looking for a stoush and the moment you give 'em the least excuse, you find yourself right in the middle of one. Chicks just don't have the same problem.
This was crystallized for me one night many years ago when Ed Kuepper played a free show at the Feathers in Crows Nest. I'm not completely sure of the year, but I think his backing band was still calling itself The Yard Goes On Forever, if that's any help. Anyway this was just down the road from where I was working at the time and a bunch of us decided to grab a counter meal at what then passed for the pub's bistro (fisherman's baskets all round, if I remember correctly) and then catch the show.
Long story short, we ended up down the front surrounded by drunken tools and this junior programmer, who was only about nineteen and stood five foot nothing without her shoes, seemed to be getting the worst of it, from one clown in particular. He'd bump into her, she'd push him away; he'd bump harder, she'd push harder. This happened half a dozen times over a five minute period. As he'd bump into her he'd have what Stephen King likes to call a big, shit-eating grin on his face and he'd wait patiently for the corresponding push back, but finally instead of pushing him, she punched him in face as hard as she could. She was pretty small, so even giving it her all, as she obviously did, I wouldn't have expected the blow to be as successful as it was...
None of this has anything to do with the D4, but as I sit here now typing this, well over a decade later, if I close my eyes I can still see the absolutely stunned look on his face as he went over backwards onto the floor and it still gives me a warm feeling of satisfaction, just as it did then.
Tonight the seething sea of human flesh at the Annandale didn't stop members of the D4 descending down into the crowd, multiple times in fact, with one guitarist even making it as far as the bar, standing up on it and playing from there. Unbeknownst to him, he had some help in this from Gary (shit, still don't know his last name) from the Meek, who was also standing close enough to the stage to see that the guitar lead had caught on the fold back monitor. Since no one else seemed to be doing anything about it, he reached forward and untangled it, freeing it just in time to get abused for touching the band's equipment by a roadie who finally turned up once the job was done.
Towards the end of the night, some idiot from further back in the crowd even flung a bottle which clipped me hard on the shoulder and judging by amount of beer that poured down my back, it had been far from empty (and how fucking unAustralian was that?). I tried not to let it get me down. I guess you just gotta take the rough with the smooth. After all, this weren't no teaparty at the vicarage, this was rock'n'roll. - John McPharlin
