As a part of my assignment I decided to go and attend the Mess and Noise Lunchbox gig featuring The Vasco Era. The gig started 15 minutes late, but that was to be expected, it started relatively smoothly with the band starting the set with a Nirvana cover. Sid talked to the audience explaining his choices in covers and stories behind some of the songs on the album. When Vasco played there third song something went wrong- every bands nightmare…. massive feedback and distortion- of the bad kind filed the room. It took a while for the sound guys to figure out what the problem was leaving the band to entertain the audience. Sid seemed to carry this burden pretty well played a capella version of a old blues song, the crowd clapped along and seemed to enjoy the display. However, once Sid finished the sound guys still hadn’t fixed the problem. The problem took a good 15 minutes to fix with the band trying to play the same song 3 times. The crowd was starting to get a bit tired of it but luckily it finally worked. The rest of the gig went seamlessly and the crowd appeared to forget what happened earlier. I learned a lot from this gig from a performance and business point of view, I learnt that as a band you really do have to be prepared for these kind of situations where the power fails or the sound goes wrong. As a band you have to be prepared to change your songs depending on the situation to keep the crowd entertained and happy- so if that means preforming a few songs acoustically and a rocking as much as possible, it had to be done. Overall the performance was an eye opener and showed how real bands handle difficult situations.
New Single- Child Bearing Hips
This is Vasco’s new single from their new album…
Honey Bee
This has got to be one of my favourite Vasco songs as I just enjoy the sheer extremeness and loudness it possesses. It was off there forst album which got mixed reviews but when I first listening to it as a 15 year old I thought it was amazing.
Vasco Bio
Below is a link to a website that writes a very simple but informative bio on The Vasco Era. Click here
Interview
Here is a interesting interview that Mess and Noise did with Sid from the Vasco Era. It explains a lot about the bands current feelings towards and their new album. Click here to view it.
Free Vasco Lunchbox gig @the Workers Club on October 7th!
The Vasco Era are playing a free gig at the Workers Club as a part of the Mess and Noise Lunchbox series.
When: Friday, October 7, 1pm
Where: Workers Club, 51 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
How much: FREE!!!
Check them out!
The Vasco Era
The band I have decided to study as a part of my Global Musician subject is The Vasco Era. The band originated in Apollo Bay however, they currently reside in Melbourne. They are about to embark on a national joint tour with Papa Vs Pretty as they have a new album ‘Child Bearing Hips’ about to be released. They previously released two other albums- Oh We Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside and Lucille. The Vasco Era used to be with the record label Universal but recently decided to remove themselves from the label and take a more independent path. You can find out more about the band on their website.
Global Musician
As apart of The Global Musician subject I am undertaking, I have to research a Melbourne based band. I am currently tossing up between the Vasco Era and The Temper Trap, Gotye or the Drones. There aren’t a lot of Melbourne bands that I am particularly fond of or know lots about, which is shame. So hopefully through this project I will learn more about local music as well as how these successful musicians got be where they are now.
Social Media Thoughts
The social networking site I use most would be Facebook. I use this particular mode of communication mainly because a lot of my friends do, which effectively makes it easy to organise social events, birthdays etc. I use it to communicate frequently with my friends as I am able to use threads which, allow me to have a conversation with lots of people at the same time. Facebook is easy and straightforward and it makes it easy for me to communicate and share information, photos, video’s and music with my friends. It is also a great promotional tool for my band ‘The Reigate Squires’. Facebook impacts on my identity because my friends on Facebook have access to my profile, along with all my photos and the status updates I choose to write. It allows me to project my thoughts and share stuff that I like with others which, effectively generates a perception of who I am and what I like. As a musician in a band, we use Facebook to create fan pages and to promote our band’s gigs. We have our own website which is powered by WordPress and a band camp page as well. Socially networking this way is very effective as it allows us as a band to reach greater audiences and to connected with fans more frequently and easily. The band I am in doesn’t have any particularly unique ways of using online media, but I imagine one way to distinguish yourself would be to allow fans to be more active and participate with you and what your band is currently doing or going to do.
Podcast: Unearthed
I don’t listen to Podcasts very often, however, there is one in particular I like to listen to every now and then which is the Triple J’s Unearthed Podcast. The Podcast is basically a summary of the bands listed on Triple J’s unearthed site. Five songs are picked by the presenters from the unearthed new music (meaning new and up coming bands) category to be played each week. I enjoy listening to it because I get to hear and discover news bands from all over Australia and well as I get news about what is going on in the unearthed scene. I believe this Podcast is popular because it is associated with promoting new music and supports unearthed bands. You can find the podcast here.
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