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:Justice Yeldham, The Stumps and Toecutter - February 5, Happy
There had been a lot of hubbub leading up to Australian sound (and glass!) artist
Justice Yeldham's show at Happy last Thursday.
People who saw him play here in 2007 were dying to see him again, and
those that had missed him that first time around wanted to see what all
the fuss was about.
When I got to Happy at around 10pm, the place was already
reasonably chocka with punters. Wellington's psychedelic, improvised
doom rock supergroup The Stumps were on first and played a sprawling
set of slow squalling. But towards the end, they rocked out in full
noisy fight, which was lovely.
When Justice Yeldham set up on
stage. I was tempted to stand right at the front like I usually would,
but I remembered that the last time I saw him play, the odd shard of
glass went flying, so I stood around the side of the stage where still
had full view. Hey, sometimes you need to consider safety, even with
pop music.
Yeldham was excellent. He had a large, thick pane of
glass that was connected to oscillators and distortion pedals connected
to a toolbelt he was wearing. He spat beer onto and sucked and blew on
the glass with his mouth which created brilliant streams of noise. I
once saw some video footage where he played a piercing wee number and
at the end deadpans, "That's my cover of 'Funky Town'. I called out,
"Play 'Funky Town!'" But he called back, "Aw, I can't do 'Funky Town'
people always make fun of me when I do that!"
He clearly relishes
the whole performance aspect of his routine because not only does he
throw his whole physicality into it, he also does it barefoot, which
seems like quite a pointed and conscious decision to make, what with
all the resulting broken glass.
By the end of his fearless and
fierce set, his sheet of glass was reduced to a small shard which he
smashed over his head. It left me feeling exhilarated and slightly
breathless. I liked his wolf t-shirt, too.
Next up was an Australian performer named Toecutter who I knew
nothing about. I was interested because of his name. You know what a
Toecutter is eh? It's basically a criminal who screws over other
criminals. You know, like that guy Chopper.
Toecutter wasn't
quite what I expected. He had John Denver hair, stubbie shorts and
gumboots. He looked like a drunken surfer. He stumbled around the stage
shirtless while playing 'Slice of Heaven'. Yes, the song by Herbs and
Dave Dobbyn. I think I can pretty much assure you that this was the
first (and probably the last) time that Herbs and Dave Dobbyn has ever
and will ever be played at Happy. Quite clever and refreshing really.
Everybody was smiling.
Toecutter then played a mash up of all sorts of other bizarre
stuff at high volume. A Supertramp cover and Sigue Sigue Sputnik
included. I think he should have played some Mental As Anything or
Icehouse. In fact, I was rather surprised that he hadn't thought of
this himself. I called out, "Play some Icehouse!" And he looked up and
said with genuine regret, "I'm sorry! I don't have any Icehouse." (I
know this will make me sound like I'm sound kind of loud mouth, but I'm
not usually.)
Later when I was at the bar he came up to me and said that he
wished he'd had some Icehouse. I told him that he was still OK anyway.
He went away then came back (he was wearing a pink t-shirt by this
stage) and handed me a caseless CD.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's a gift," he replied before giving me an awkward little hug and walking off.
Except with his accent, it sounded like "geeft."
- Kiran
Posted Tuesday, February 10, 2009 4:36 PM
- Tagged as: review, band, music, dance, Rock, happy, noise
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