Taken from Rave Magazine - and notable for being my first favourable review in the Brisbane street press.
The Bats/Greg Brady And The Anchors/The Deadnotes
The Troubadour - Sat Apr 24
The Legend!, AKA veteran music writer and critic Everett True, joins sometime-collaborators The Deadnotes for a combination of jagged, ramshackle pop and poetry, soundtracked by horns, bass, drums and keyboards. While the crowd seems to be somewhere between amused and bemused by his rather shambling performance, it’s actually not without highlights. Down the track True may not do himself a disservice by singing a little more, as a brooding Bad Seeds-esque ballad illustrates (he’s got a not-bad baritone) and the rant about being “fucked up on alcohol” is frenzied and darkly funny.
You can download the show here.
P.S. The Deadnotes are way funnier, talented and musically adventurous than I can ever dream of being. I have no idea why anyone would want to focus on my performance and not theirs.
P.P.S. Doing a quick Google for Justin's photographs of our set supporting Vivian Girls last year reminds me that I never reprinted his report here. I'll rectify that now.
Normally when I photograph a show I’ll try and write some quick notes the next morning to help me when I finally get around to writing the blog post. However, I have gone through a massive phase of not doing this, meaning trying to write posts more than five months after they happened.
The most interesting thing about this show is that I can’t remember much about Vivian Girls other than that the bassist is really cute and they had copious amounts of reverb. I can’t remember much about Nova Scotia other than they stuck out like a bit of a sore thumb on the bill by being way too proficient on their instruments. And I can’t remember much about Feathers, other than thinking that this might have been the first time that I’d seen them with Susan drumming.
But over 5 months later I can still remember that Jad Fair told The Legend! (better known as fading music critic and fringe dweller Everett True) that there are only two types of song – songs about love and songs about monsters – and that the Legend! was more of less drunk between the ages of 18 and 4o-something (other than one year in his late 30s from memory). This was my first experience of seeing The Legend! live, having missed him play a couple of times with The Young Liberalspreviously and I was quite impressed. He was playing with The Deadnotes, who provided a musical backing that really suited the prosed-based monologue vocals. That I can remember more of the music from their set months later than anything else that happened on this night speaks volumes and goes a long way to validating Everett True’s view that if you’re given a platform you should at least be memorable. Something like that anyway. I’m sure he’ll be along to confirm or otherwise in a bit.
Some more photos on Flickr.
P.P.P.S. I still have my beard. That photograph was pre-this beard.
"if you’re given a platform you should at least be memorable. " yep.
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