Ok its bitch session time and I love having a rant,(must be that time of month) yep guys get it emotionally I believe, How many of you out there in la la land have been to Timaru? or even know of the towns existance? I have been here for ten years(shudder) Originally I spent ten years in CH-ch and had the priveledge of seeing many great bands perform live, I used to revel in the metal scene there in the early 90"s, I saw PUNGENT STENCH play at warners way back in 93,kicked around with the boys from human etc. It didnt really matter what genre I was going to see it was the pleasure of seeing bands perform live and it still has a happening scene to this day,at first when I came to Timaru and we formed HARM, the live music scene was cranking, there where 3 or 4 good live music venues with regular gigs happening from local bands,-Polar,empathy,the muff divers ,in recent times Bald mother, shimata,code,The LOADED HOG in Timaru was( the) live music venue and they brought a lot of good bands to the town ,sterio gram,foamy ed,pluto,the feelers,elemenop,8 foot sativa,king kapisi,shihad,grinspoon but to name a few,the HOG closed down a number of years ago now and that was a sad day, a lot of the venues stopped having live bands and the whole scene kind of crashed,BAR EXCEL took over getting a lot of big names through Elemnop,the bleeders, pluto but to name a few ,attendance to these gigs was appaling with such few numbers turning up to support these performers,Last year I was approached by an electronica group called REALITY COMPOUND and DJ ROMANTECH via the HARM myspace page,we exchanged words ,I had a listen to there tracks and told a lot of local people that this was going to be a great show,and it was a great show for the group of about 5 of us that attended,REALITY COMPOUND and DJ ROMANTECH and the other djs had such a diverse show it F**ken went off big time what a mix of brilliant performances electronica,drum nbass spoken poetry over ambient electronica(SHANE HOLLAND) but where was the support it was free to watch as well,such a dissapiontment but for us 5 that did go it was fantabuloso,Its so Ironic in Timaru as people will go to work here and listen to the edge or port FM(local radio) that plays repetitive run of the mill tiolet paper music all week,THEN COMES the weekend ,people get pissed and rock into town and go to the bars and clubs and the D.JS play the same shite that has been heard on the radio all week,and folks love it,I will give credit to long standing resident DJ ROSCO from BAR EXCEL for his abillity to be able to read a crowd and mix it up playing genres to suit all the punters right accross the board, hip hop to roots reggae,rock to nu-metal,dance and electronica, to hard house and trance etc. I was out last week at a local club and the dj repeated the same crap hip hop song like 7 fricken times through out the duration of the night,what is up with that shit!!!!, as the live music scene has dwindled here in Timaru a few remaining bands that are still alive here are generally put off by playing in town, hence GADGET and CAUTION to local bands played just recently,I missed them play(bummer) but the venue where they did play pulled the plug on them, all because next door at the douf douf bar, punters where piling in to hear there favorite radio song,Hence the 40 odd people listening to the live BANDS were soon listening to F**ken britney spears and the bands had been kicked off stage by the bar owner and people left!!!!!!! AAAARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!! what a fricken joke like, I would like to give credit to the team at SOPHEEZE catering services as they have a live music venue set in the caroline bay park its a great venue they have bought such bands as BLIND SPOT and DEJA VOODO to the region with reallly good turn outs,last xmas we organised a live music night with local bands SHIMATA,BALD MOTHER(now Queenstown residents) us HARM and our good friends from CH-CH SEUDE ARCADE it was a huge success with a great attendance it went off with a bang approx. 300 people (and thats big numbers for Timaru),I cant help but get annoyed when talented local musicians and artists are shunned away from playing live here in town and big names from the rest of the country go, OK think we will by pass Timaru and go straight to Dunedin,there is not much insentive to play in Timas when the support is not there ,I fear that the small minority that do appreciate the live music factor are a dying breed and that is truelly sad ok thats my rant over and done with ,feel free to comment or drop me a message regarding this here blog,cheers thanks an all
Russ the singer from HARM rocksteady and be-bop yall!!! :-)