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2004-11-11: In rememberance of other bands that were good

We took a minidisc to our practise the other day, with unmixed results. Boom boom.

Please note that the vocals may be indistinct on many of these tracks. That's ambient mic recording for ya.

Tania recorded a song for her friend Langers, but T was never quite happy with it. Ah well, here's the only version that wasn't skipping or truncated: Enjoy!

Next up is the only other song we played that night that we'd actually, uh, written. Now You're Gone. Still not quite happy with it - but agreeing with Brent more and more about his guitar bits.

Most of the rest of our recordings were just of us jamming. Here's the first jam in all its over-indulgent glory: LaLaLaLa! Matt's drumming rules in this song.

You don't know pain until you've known fatherhood. That's not really a saying, it's just Brent's opinion. And he expresses it with terrifying clarity in his sprawling avant-garde masterpiece: Love My Baby. Incidentally, Matt's drumming rules in this song too.

Wait for it to get going, and there's not a bad tune in there. Somewhere. Noone Controlling You

The next track, I love the start. There's some bits in the middle that are good too. It's not that great overall, but HEY, DID I MENTION WE'RE IMPROVISING, YOU NITPICKER?! Moving In The Dark.

I include this track for no other reason than Tania says something hilarious at the end: FiveFour?

If you were invisible, what would you do? That's right, you go around giving people a bit of touch. If I Were Invisible.

I'll be honest with you, the only thing I really like about this song is the way it starts. Give it time while we're working out the chords... Hogwash.

Do you, like me, have trouble determining who's "dealing" at a party? You may sympathise with the humble protagonist of Come To The Party. A rather funky 70's number.

That's everything we did on Tuesday! Enjoy!

Dan

19/05/04: The Debacles return gig at the Empress breaks all records.

(by Brent)

Last night's amazing concert extravaganza (featuring the Debacles supporting Man Bites God at the Empress) has been officially declared to be the coolest and most fun gig by any band anywhere ever in the entire history of bands called the Debacles.

We rocked out hard, just like a younger Metallica or an older Silverchair, easily into the third bar of the first song when guitarist virtuoso Brent broke a string on the electric. After that we kind of rocked out like Peter Paul and Mary on speed because the rest of the night had to be on the accoustic.

The Empress gig saw the introduction of the all singing all dancincg all piano-playing Dan as the front man. Now that we have an ACTUAL drummer, dan is no longer confined to the dungeon that is the rear of the stage and is free to strut his erotically magnetic stuff and wow us with his talent on the electronic ivory.

After the third start, lead bass guitarist Tania "foxy vixen" Strahan belted out her instant classic Summer Song without too many hitches... including the two cunning bars of 7/8 that the audience would have probably NEVER picked up on but which each took a week of practice to get right.

Matt "skins" Mulcahy continued to demonstrate his immensely overpowering sexual prowess through his drumming. He drums like an epilectic robotic monkey... chaotic, rhythmic and atavistic. He was drooling from both corners of his mouth all night, so we can safely assume the stage was level.

The highlight of the performance would have to have been the impromptu improvised song. With about 10 minutes left before our time was up, we realised we had 2 minutes of material to get through. Faced with the prospect of singing that one song 5 times, Dan panicked and asked for a volunteer from the audience. Drew the engineering student with a fear of public speaking was volunteered, and Dan used his comic genius to invent a song on the spot (but Brent invented the chords: G D Am C. Always remember that children: Four chords, play 'em till you drop. It's the easiest way out).

A great big thanks to the Empress, Man Bites God and our friends for turning out and making it such a fun Wednesday night. We couldn't have done it without you... because then we'd just be playing in a lounge room... without any other musicians... by ourselves... hmmm.

Gratuitous promotion! :
The chalkboard with our name on it... misspelled

21/03/03: Debacles declare war on recording fidelity

In the true spirit of poor noise reduction algorithms, I give you the oddly beepy, clicky, but nevertheless fun second Debacles demo. A few stats:

As many as six microphones were used to record the sound, several of which weren't made of plastic!
We used a fake woodgrain Yamaha 8-track recording desk from the 80's
We had nothing to plug into the "out" part of the recording desk, so we just piled all the tracks over the top of each other on a minidisc and hoped for the best
It wasn't the best
We released it anyway! It's not that bad for about four hours' work (an hour of which was spent grumpily replacing a broken microphone)

So, I bet you can't wait to get a'clickin' and a'listenin', so without further a'markup, here they are:

Mountain
Bucket (Sorry about the gappy-bits, the discman was bumped. er, a lot.)
It's Me
Leg

19/03/03: Pony gig mp3s now online

Wow - we're listenable! That was my first thought when I popped these into WinAmp. Then I realised that I was playing the new album by Zwan. However - we're still okay! Check it out.

14/03/03: The Debacles' fourth gig cures cancer!

Last night was another smashing gig, this time at Pony on Little Collins street, in the city. I really should be announcing these sorts of things in advance. Anyway, the gig was yet another quantum leap forward for your humble entertainers (where a quantum is the smallest possible discrete change).

The sound was the best it's ever been (thanks Lucien!), and all our mates said we were great... but then, they have to say that, or we'd stop letting them use our bar tab.

We supported two sterling local acts:

Somatid Cycle (rock/metal), a bunch of very enthusiastic lads who have spent the GDP of a small African nation on effects pedals
Interstater (rockabilly), not my cup of tea (more a cup of warm acid) but if you like intense, driving rockabilly, they're great. Very loud. They have a very funny song called "Carpark", which contains the line "Jenny you're a Johnny / Suzie you're a Sly / Martha, you're an Arthur / Girlfriend you're a guy!", or something like that.

It should also be mentioned that we've had our first taste of a rock'n'roll punch-up! While Interstater were playing, a female audience member who couldn't stand their music (and whose peanut-sized reptilian brain couldn't quite grasp the possibility of going somewhere else instead) decided to throw water on their guitarist. I have no idea why she thought that was a good idea. Maybe she thought he was the Wicked Witch of the West, and he would melt melodramatically. However, the actual effect was for him to storm off stage, pack up his guitar, and tell the girl (and her equally peanut-brained boyfriend) to kindly leave. There was almost a fight, until the bouncer (who resembled an African-American Sherman Tank with limbs) escorted the water-throwers downstairs. Exciting!

A certain Mister Lucien Boland kindly assisted on the mixing desk, and also found time to record some video of the event. Here for you now is a pic and MP3 of the song "smoke", the start of which sounds almost exactly like "Put Your Lights On" (feat. Everlast) from Santana's "Supernatural" album (Thanks to my mate Graeme for pointing that one out).

The song (~2.53 Meg)

It looks like Lucien has had a bit of a joke on me, and replaced my image (using some Photoshop-type program) with a picture of a great big dork with stupid shorts on. Ha ha ha ha - good one Lucien!

27/02/03: Glorious Beginnings

Behold, our Ghastly Creations! (lighting crashes)

Last weekend, we recorded a few demo tracks in Brent's shed (our first with the new lineup), many of which are band-spanking new! (geddit? I crack myself up sometimes)

So, here for your listening ambivalence, are the low-bandwidth versions (~500K each, ~2 min download over a 56K modem), and high-bandwidth versions (~2Meg each, ~8 min download over a 56K modem).

Just Enough low high
Postcard low high
Easy Rider low high
Turn Around low high
Sitting, Waiting low high
Postcard with Brent singing low high
Easy Rider, home recorded demo from 2000 low high
Emerald City, home recorded demo from 2000 low high

Feel free to share them with your friends (especially if your friends are record company executives), play them in your car, or burn them onto CDs; just don't perform them and say they're yours or we'll hunt you down and cover Celine Dion songs in front of you. Falsetto.

Enjoy!

25/02/03: The Debacles' third gig blows away two drunken pool players and other band

Last Saturday, the 22nd of February, the Debacles proved once again that they can rock out even if no-one is there to watch.

Supporting Siamese Sally at The Cue, we were beset by fewer technical hitches than last time, except for a non-working speaker which spared the audience from one channel of debacleness.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to ask that the City of Fitzroy give more lenient fines to bands. So far we've broken even on the fines/profits ratio, but one day we'd like to use the money we make for something other than lining the pockets of Fitzroy's Fat Cats. Like Guitars!

Here endeth the rant :-)

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