hey, um, i highly doubt that anybody is going to read this message any time soon, as no one has posted here recently, except john, and i have reposessed the computer which he posted from.

anyway.

the fightin' amish are back. i am back. from china (and mongolia and the like). it's weird to be back in brisbane. i was really miffed at first, i got panicy and wanted to go back to china, because now i guess it's (almost) as much my home as here. that's a nice feeling. home, though, has lost a lot of its value to me. travelling kind of made me feel homeless. homelessness seemed sad to me before i left, but now it's exciting and makes me feel free.

seeing shows has become much different for me. it kind of feels like an endurance test now. sometimes. i got home, and a few days later the Buzzcocks played "oh my god, you can't miss the Buzzcocks! you'll just regret it so much if you don't go". why? because i won't be able to tick them off my list? it's sad the way that everyone just goes out to shows, maybe because they're more scared of what they might miss if they don't go, than what fun they might have if they do go, and then they just stand around in the dark, get drunk, talk to no one they didn't come with and then leave. go home. go to bed. BAH. YUCK. ICK.

the fightin' amish played an allages show the other weekend. it was with The New Mutants, Brain Resin, Existence Is Dead and Pure Evil. it was okay. no one came, no one ever comes to allages shows. why would you, when it's on at the Gabba Hotel? i notice that they don't even put the bucket of water with plastic cups beside in the corner of the room anymore. (for those who don't know, the bar is shut up, it's just the back room, with the sun pouring in through the corrogated plastic roof and that's it. you can't even buy a soft-drink). maybe when that place gets knocked down the kids will bother to set up a better venue, where it's nice to go out to and, urrr, bands are actually paid a fair share of the takings and smaller bands (bands that don't guarantee a huge crowd) can get a show (though i know that the gabba just rakes in the punters right now!).

so anyway, the show was alright. can't say i'm a big New Mutants fan, and although very impressive, Brain Resin wasn't really what felt right with my hangover at four in the afternoon.

we rocked, oh of course. actually, we went better than i expected, but yes, rusty as all hell.

Existence Is Dead. well. they have really great songs. instrumentally they rock, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, i just ain't into it. troy screams like he's dying from the pain of every song, every time. really? ehh, maybe, but i doubt it, and it kind of comes across as false and shallow, as a result. who am i to say though, really? i am just riva, maybe he IS dying from the pain every night (afternoon). the way that they (troy) run around and harrass friends in the crowd still seems intimidating to me, aswell. just my opinion, yes, but it seems like the whole crowd participation thing, the unity, the breaking down of barriers is an obligation to the crowd, like it's aggressively forced. maybe making your crowd feel on edge is the point, it sounds like something you'd read in a "punk" article in The Australian, but it's not my idea of fun. now though, i must sound like a grandma: for a band that make such a fuss and a hoo-har about their lyrics, and about how important and topical and so on they are, i couldn't understand one goddamn word that man was singing. i know they print a zine, with lyrics, but it still seems ridiculous. why not just publish a zine? if you're going to sing about important things, why not make it comprehendable?? really, it makes absolutely NO sense to me. none at all.

Pure Evil. bah. boring. like i said, sometimes it just feels like an edurance test. they were fine, but nothing special. another band i couldn't understand (the lyrics of) for the life of me, yet seem to be very serious about what they're singing about. i know, most people probably have no clue as to what i sing about, when i'm let near the microphone, but really, you'll do okay to miss my ranting of elephants and rainbow brite and the goonies and such like. and the ones (songs/lyrics) that are important to me (and hopefully interesting to you), i try to make more understandable. by all means, if you can't hear the words to "koko's kitten" or "that's just not how you play grindcore", let me know. i think adam's songs are all pretty well comprehendable.

that's all. who is even reading this? if anyone is, i have a bunch of other grievances: "let's firebomb the valley tonight" seems frighteningly more appropriate now that i'm back, i think that having a policy against playing on stage (ala Existence Is Dead) is a flawed idea, i think that australians are a bunch of sluts and whores and that advertising (especially govermnent advertising) here is WAY more terryfying than it is in communist china. maybe some other time.

in positive feebdback though, now that i'm back i'm really excited to see Team Plastique and Equaliser 24K - i know that they've both been around for quite a while, but sometimes i'm not so quick off the mark, also, Straight Out Of Brisbane sounded fantastic and i'm really looking forward to the next one in november (november, i think?). there's this absolutely amazing warehouse being used in Newstead for a few rad events. i don't know how much of a secret it's meant to be. not any kind i don't think, but unfortunately it's getting knocked down in a couple of weeks anyway. it's such a shame but i'd be really interested to try and work on any similar, more permanant (perhaps) venues. does anyone know of any abandoned warehouse space (prefferably in a thick industrial area, you know, for noise reasons)? i'm also looking forward to setting Electrocution Distribution (my zine distro) up again really soon.

i missed my friends. i missed my guitar. i missed my family. it's nice to be back. i'm not always so cynical. i actually have a lot of love i think. it's just that the good things, when speaking so generally, to strangers, mostly seem to go without saying. the bad things need to be changed though, so clearly they don't go without saying.

riva

This is the third time I've posted here, and its allways a reply, never have the balls to get ball rolling but real quick to cut someone down. WEll here goes again.

Riva, I'm glad you posted up here but did you have to call a whole country "sluts and whores". Just because we're white and western, why should that make it ok to cast general dispersions (I don't reckon thats spelt properly) on a whole country. If I picked a more sensitive counry, say perhaps Thailand, I couldn't get away with calling them "whores" especially in this oh so touchy "scene". Even though calling Thailands population, whores is much more appropriate with the ever-expanding sex trade over there. I am probably completely wrong but No-one else is home and I needed to argue.

Oh and by the way you really should go see team plastique, They are the coolest band in brisbane, I'm not sold on that equalizer 24k girl yet though, Lucas had a crush on her for about a day, when she recorded Dick Nasty, I think he mentioned her "rack" through the microphone without realising that they could hear us in the control room, Hilarious in hindsight. Though thats not why I'm not sold on it, I have heard the cd and it just is to challenging for my for my ears, you know what you said about an endurance race....

hey john, thanks for giving me a platform to hollar some more on. you're a kind man!

why am i calling australians a pack of raving sluts and whores? well, when i first arrived in china, and for the first three months that i was overseas, i thought that the chinese people were incredibly sexually conservative and shy. there seemed to be a lot less public affection, promiscuity and nudity. then i went to laos, where the local buddhists are offended by the sight of even my shoulders! the people in laos are VERY sexually conservative and there is no romantic affection shown in public at all really. so, when i returned to china, i felt differently. the chinese people actually just strike me as having a little more modesty, a little more subtlty and a little more class than australians and perhaps westerners in general now!

when i got back home i was blown away by the western advertising, western television and the way everyone here dresses. the ads display a wall-to-wall campaign of tits, arses and muscle. no matter what you're selling - car parts, kitchen ware or superanuation, it's all buffered with sex. i knew as much already, but after being away from it for so long, i guess i became de-desensitised. it's the same with television. what really strikes me on tv though are the news reporters. again, i knew already that it's ONLY EVER young "attractive" women and old men, but now it horrifies me moreso. lastly, the way that people dress, women in particular, is just mind boggling to me now. let me prefix this, by saying that fat is not the problem, because a woman bearing rolls of chubbiness in a free flowing fashion is of no bother or disgust to me, whatsoever, in fact i think it's sexy, but every day, every where, i see these women with contorted rolls pushed and manipulated fat hanging out of all kinds of ugly attire. hipster skirts seem to be the big offender at the moment - women in droves can be seen walking down the queen street mall with two-sizes-too-small hipster skirts on and a roll on each side just above their waist bands billowing out in a most unbecoming fashion.

i know that some things have changed, even in the short time i've been away for, but i don't think that visible contorted flab will ever be a mainstream rage. it's just hideous.

the main difference though, is just that i notice it now. walking down the street sometimes feel like a really cheesy live porn, where the budget didn't allow for costumes that necessarily fit and the story line (the advertising and television excerpts) just come accross as tackyily over the top.

as for thailand - john, get with the times, thailand is cleaning up it's child sex scene and word has it from an asociate of mine, that you can't even go there and see GROWN women shooting ping pong balls out of their muffs anymore! if kiddie porn, perculiar sexual practices and apparently, even body parts (need a new lung fast? no one will notice if there's one less street kid in bangkok. that sort of thing) is what you're after, i hear cambodia is the place to go this decade.

have fun!
love riva

i was talking to james amish the other night and he felt that i came accross as hating Existence Is Dead. oops. no. i like Existence Is Dead. i stand by what i initially said here, but i think they are a really good band, particularly musically, but also vocally. i did however feel that some level of criticism could be constructive, both to them and to the world at large.

Hey kids, all is well.

I like to scream. I don't feel comfortable singing.

The grabbing people thing is getting stale though, and they weren't my friends, but I digress.

Sing, sing, sing.

How's you all?