Crocodiles

The dark side of the Cali­for­nia sun is about to shine on us as San Diego duo Cro­codiles begin a series of shows in NZ this week– kick­ing off at SFBH this Wed­nes­day Decem­ber 2nd with sup­port from Wel­ling­ton swamp-disco legends Thought Creature.

For the unini­ti­ated, Cro­codiles songs began sling­ing across the Inter­webs after No Age named the band’s song “Neon Jesus” as one of their Top Ten shred­ders of 2008. Unpromp­ted, the for­ward-think­ing Fader Blog pos­ted two more stun­ner tracks, ’I Wanna Kill’ and ’Sum­mer of Hate’. The influ­en­tial Ste­reogum named them “Band to Watch” and described them as “The Vel­vet Under­ground swinging Jesus and Mary Chain.”

Cro­codiles’ homet­own San Diego is a sleepy mil­it­ary town, stuck between Tijuana and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but it isn’t Surf City, USA. Hells Angels, jocks, drug cas­u­al­ties, and the med­ic­ated rich pop­u­late the beaches, and while war­planes rumble in and out of the nav­al base. The kids here are bored. Charles Row­ell and Brandon Welchez played in vari­ous bands (includ­ing The Plot to Blow Up The Eif­fel Tower who played some mem­or­able shows here in 2005) before the duo struck out on their own as Cro­codiles. They quickly self-released a 7″ single and used it as an excuse to escape their tarpit homet­own. Cro­codiles album ’Sum­mer of Hate’ is born of the ali­en­a­tion and frus­tra­tion fuel­ling their ini­tial pair­ing.

Pre­s­ales for this show are a ridonku­lous $23 for an inter­na­tion­al act, avail­able from our friends at Good as Gold, Real Groovy and undertheradar.co.nz. But act now and you shall receive a double pass for the even more ridonku­lous price of free!

The Verlaines and the VBC!

Woo hoo – this is going to be a big one.

Pre­s­ales are avail­able now for The Ver­laines – live in Wel­ling­ton at SFBH on Wed­nes­day Decem­ber 9 (which just hap­pens to be my birth­day – thanks guys!)

Hav­ing just released a new album ‘Cor­por­ate Mor­on­ic’, don’t miss the chance to wit­ness one of the great Fly­ing Nun bands, who haven’t played here for ages!

It’s also the VBC Christ­mas party!  

Pre­s­ales $20, avail­able now from Real Groovy, Under the Radar + the VBC.

 

Aeon – Wellington in Flux

Brenda from NZ On Screen aler­ted us to the the fact that Richard Sidey’s short film Aeon is now avail­able to view on the site:

Wel­ling­ton is giv­en the Baraka ‘time-scape’ treat­ment in this short film by Richard Sidey, made while study­ing at Mas­sey Uni­ver­sity. There’s no char­ac­ters or con­ven­tion­al nar­rat­ive, but the life cycle of a city is cap­tured in a Koy­aan­isqat­si-like com­pil­a­tion of day and night-time scenes. Clouds scud by in hyper-time-lapse and slow-motion, and Wel­ling­ton land­marks (har­bour, buck­et foun­tain, tur­bine etc) are seen anew, cut to a soundtrack by per­cus­sion group Strike. The tone poem won best stu­dent film at the Amer­ic­an Con­ser­va­tion Film Fest­iv­al 2007.

Update: Embed­ding is now enabled via NZ On Screen’s very own extern­al play­er.  Ka pai.

Kia Ora

Hello dear read­ers of the Wel­ling­tonista!  This is just a quick note to say hello to you all, as I have recently been envel­oped into the fold (?) and will now be inform­ing you all of upcom­ing events I think are worth your time via this here blog.

A little about me – I work for The San Fran­cisco Bath House, and also pro­mote oth­er shows across this fair city (i.e. at oth­er bars). Usu­ally I have a good deal of insider info regard­ing tick­et sales, sup­port bands, rumors of upcom­ing acts and gos­sip in the form of unusu­al rider requests and stor­ies of bad beha­viour and debauch­ery that inev­it­ably go down when people + music + liquor come togeth­er. All to share with you!

There are a couple of gigs need­ing spe­cial men­tion com­ing up, but I will post on those sep­ar­ately soon…

Nice to ‘meet’ you all, and thanks to the Wel­ling­tonista team for the warm wel­come.

 

Lover’s Tiff – Oh Wellington we could never stay mad at you for long

“The quiet doors, which led to Wel­ling­ton’s morgue, were off Tarana­ki Street.”

Thus begins Row­an Saker­’s murder mys­tery nov­el Lov­er­’s Tiff, which, right from the word go, wears its set­ting on its sleeve.  Fit­tingly for such a Welly-focused read, a pre­print copy was flicked Wel­ling­tonista’s way for a review pri­or to the book launch. Lov­er­’s Tiff is Row­an Saker­’s first nov­el, writ­ten after a recent return to Wel­ling­ton after nine years liv­ing in France.

The book launch is tonight (Wed­nes­day 25 Novem­ber) at Turn­bull House from 6.00pm until 8.00pm.

This is a murder mys­tery firmly with­in the pulp tra­di­tions of the genre: com­plete with tough but square cop who will nev­er be hip, the smart middle-class girl who turns into a fer­al and some­what slutty dro­pout, and all the twists you would expect in the hunt for her killer that takes us to Palmy, the Hawke’s Bay and all across Wel­ling­ton.

Mighty Mighty Crack

Remind me nev­er to sit on the stools at Mighty Mighty again without wip­ing down the seat first.

Lightning Bolt are here! Tomorrow night!

Some­body just asked me what Light­en­ing Bolt are like.

I said: take the White Stripes and feed them, force them through the eye of a needle which is made frmo some­thing which looks like Cream’s farewell live gig Albert Hall 1969, push them all the way through to the oth­er side in a place where everything’s in the red and the sound becomes an envel­op­ing 4‑dimensional bear hug choke-hold strangle deadly embrace, where the stone inveades yr bone and

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[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hcw1C1AzQI]

Wed­nes­day 25th Novem­ber in the middle of the floor at San Fran­cisco Bath­house… tick­ets avail­able from Slow Boat Records and Under The Radar… updates and more info from Gales­burg.