THIS WAS EMAILED TO ME LAST NIGHT:

GIG THIS SUNDAY!

Alliance Tavern
NEW SETTLEMENT ROGUE, EXISTENCE IS DEAD, BLACKLISTED, THE NEW MUTANTS

5pm, $5

The Alliance Tavern will be closed for gigs if this Sunday isn't a success. We need everyone to come, regardless of whether you like the bands. We need to fill the place and everyone needs to spend some money over the bar (even on juice and chips!). We can't afford to lose another venue. Everyone always talks about SUPPORTING THE SCENE. Well here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. See you on Sunday. Even if we can't save it, it'll be a hell of a party to go out on!
TELL EVERYONE!!!!

A successful gig this Sunday will keep the wolves from the door, so to speak.

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GIVE THE KIDS WHAT THEY WANT
Gig Promotion, Record Label and Photography

Contact : Chris at....
chunter@powerup.com.au
or 0417 710 664
or P.O. Box 3, Annerley, Brisbane QLD, Australia 4103
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i don't know. maybe i will come. maybe i will stay at home. the alliance is a great SPACE but that is a shit line up and if this is the scene we are meant to be supporting, maybe it SHOULD die. maybe we don't deserve venues until we have something to fucking do in them, something WORTH doing.

there is just no quality control anymore and there is no continuity (maybe there never was any. i think i remember that there once was. but those memories get hazier by the day). don't get me wrong, i am ALL for mixing it up. give me extra foxx and the slippery roger, give me dick nasty and dollarbar, but the new mutants and new settlement rogue alongside blacklisted and existence is dead? don't fucking INSULT me! give me a comfy chair and the new mountain goats record with a pale ale if you've got it and fuck your shit line up and fuck your saddening scene (for the record, i freakin' love blacklisted. you should all know that. and while it may come as a surprise to some, i also really like existence is dead. i saw them play downstairs at the elephant and wheelbarrow recently and they blew me away. it's great to see a band really treating the genre of powerful and heavy music with respect and love. it is always difficult to desipher what troy is screaming about, but musically [and i mean that vocally as well] EID rock. and that is not really a change of heart, either. i always liked them and my opinins voiced in the other forum here still stand. someone has to fucking say this stuff though, you know?).

maybe i sound lame and jaded. maybe i sound like the "others", who have moved out to the suburbs with their wide screen tv's and their squarking kids and depressive disorders, but i don't think i am. i'm just bored by medicrity and saddened by apathy. this is not a line up to go out on (if that's what it comes to, and it probably will). this is not a line up to inspire passion and excitment into the hearts of those who have been too lazy to support the alliance in the past. this line up appears to have been mashed together, given no thought, given no love or passion. why should i give you my love and passion in return?

and, in my oppinion, the way that the alliance shows have been run it is no wonder that the management don't want to keep it open anymore. shows shouldn't need to be in pubs. it would be much nicer if we could kill the liquor industry's role in punk rock, but while that role is still alive we need to rcognise the reality that they want our money, not our love, and if our clubs run at a loss for them you can't expect them to keep them going for us. and if the line up above is the only inscentive you can give me/us, i don't really give a shit about the life or death of this venue.

well, i didn't go to the show last night. i hope that it was a nice evening out for all. to be honest, i didn't even think about the show until 8.30pm, when i came home, exhausted, from a day of bushwalking. suffice to say, i had a very fun day!



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

why are

i have no idea what happened then, but my last message included an excerpt from an old message i posted here, seemingly as my "signature". yikes. oops. carry on.

Yeah, I think you have a point.

I like two of the bands that played at that show, but the prospect of going to the show really didn't interest me that much (especially since Existence is Dead seem to play just about every second night at the moment, so it's not like there won't be plenty of other chances to see them). It just didn't seem particularly exciting or interesting at all.

It would be sad if the Alliance were to stop having bands play there, but really, if they stop, it will be because not enough people go to shows there. If not enough people go to shows there, it's because they don't want to.

I think it's a better idea to look at WHY it is that people don't want to go to shows than it is to try to appeal to their sense of duty to the "scene". Why would some one attend a show they don't want to attend, so that there can be other shows they don't want to attend?

The idea of a "scene" around these parts seems to mean bands of the same style only playing with each other, and never with anyone else, regardless of how crap those bands of the same style may be, or how great bands of other styles might be. I want to see and hear GOOD music, whether it's punk rock, experimental techno, or some guy playing the spoons, as long as it's actually good. I don't want to sit through four or five crap hardcore (or rock'n'roll, or whatever) bands to see one decent hardcore (or rock'n'roll, or whatever) band. And I certainly don't want to see the same bands always playing with the same bands, week in and week out.

Having said all of that, though, I'm well aware that opinions are pretty useless without action, and that it's been quite a while since the Fightin' Amish have actually done anything to attempt to redress the often boring state of Brisbane music.

So, Riva, you and I should put our money where our mouths are, as they say in the classics, and organise the sort of shows we want to see, otherwise we'll just be some of those annoying people who do nothing but complain about stuff on the internet.

not enough people go to shows at the alliance also because it is never promoted almost it seems (to me at least, but i may be out of the loop). you barely hear about shows and never see stuff about them in street press.

its a nice little venue and it will be missed, but if you dont know about shows you cant even contemplate going to them.

I know everyone has a right to an opinion but for fuck's sakes what about if you aint got nothin nice to say then don't say nothin.

I know you don't like some of the bands that played at the alliance on sunday, I don't like all of them either but how is bitching about it on this piddly little website gonna change the music thats being made in brisbane. Ofcourse everyone's not gonna like everything but what gives you the right to get on your high horse and bag out some bands that have done nothing to you. I haven't seen a discussion topic on NSR's website about how fucked it is that the fightin' amish played some show somewhere. If I'm wrong then sorry I apologose right now, but alex and wayne are nice people and I can't see them doing this. and This may sound dumb and perhaps I missed the point but what is your posting achieving, or telling anyone except that you hate the new mutants (who could blame you) and NSR (maybe this is why I replied, you touched a nerve, I love this band). All I'm saying is maybe think, breathe and count to ten next time before you put a posting up here. It wasn't a lineup that you would go see, but I reckon a lot of others would have. If I knew about it before 9pm on sunday I would have been there. I'm not bitching, well yes I am

i'm tired. i have just moved house. some bum of a boy is causing my brain to feel dizzy and i need to get back to packing anyway...

look, i think that the new mutants are dull (nothing more, nothing less) and that new settlement rogue are, err, worse. that isn't the point though. my point was that it was a poorly put together line up, not that the bands as individual acts were not worthy of the show. i was saying that the line up seemed to have been given no thought.

you can't just throw any four bands together, you know. you need to give thought to how each band works with the others. do the bands compliment each other or are they just repeating each other or worse, clashing (in the bad way)?

the problem with the alliance, i have found personally, is that the shows always seem slapped together like this last one seemed to be. as a result, very few people are interested in more than one or maybe two of the bands playing and since the shows there are always on a sunday, most people can't be bothered to go out for it at the end of the weekend (for just one or two bands).

does that make sense? it's not the particular bands, but the line up as a whole.

and yes, adam, we should do something about this.

let me move my worldly possessions from one place to another and then we should deffintiely talk about this.

i am tired. i need candy.

How can you "save a scene" anyway?

I agree with what you are saying about getting people to want to go, not trying to force them to go out of some duty, or obligation.

...and yes, it is hard to go to a show if you don't know about it.

For the record, it was a pretty good night, witha few people showing up and kids having fun.

I might be the only person posting here to say this, but The New Mutants were great, and had some rad new songs.

I don't know if it was the last Alliance Sunday show or not, but if it isn't I know I'd be happy to keep putting on shows like the ones I did with The Perfect Lovers, Bjelke Petersen Youth and KT26ers, or Cherry Cherry and The Export Data, Brain Resin and Staying at Home.

support local talent/rock.
any scene is worth saving.

well thats a big fucking statement! "save the scene its worth it. " ?!?! well with that arguement count me in!!

&$*#&*()@@!???

if ya gonna say something, actually say something. unlike this message, which really says nothing.

Indeed. I'm sure there's a local Nazi skinhead music scene lurking somewhere around Brisbane. Is that worth saving?

Brisbane is too small.................. double the population, give us a few equivalent major cities in a 50km radius and things might be a bit more together. Unfortunately this is not going to happen any time soon..... I guess we just have to work with what we've got.

However I do agree that the failure of an event falls mainly on the fault of the bands...... shit aint going to happen unless your willing to do it yourself. I've always been of the opinion that if each band makes sure at least 10 of their friends make it along (which shouldn't be too hard given that most bands seem to have 4-5 people in them) the night is going to be worthwhile.

There are about a million people in Brisbane. That is a lot, regardless of what those "oh, it's just a big old country town here" type folks might like to tell you". And we have the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast nearby, as well as Lismore, Toowoomba and Byron Bay fairly close, all of which are the sort of places that decent bands occasionally emerge from.

Many towns that are much smaller than Brisbane have had a whole bunch of succesful bands come from them, like Olympia, Berkeley and Athens in the US, or Dunedin in New Zealand, to name the first few that spring to mind.

I don't really think we can blame too much on the size of Brisbane, that's all.