“BAR ITALIA AND THE 3 STAGES OF HYPOTHERMIA”

STAGE ONE (PROLOGUE).

According to the Government of Canada, there are 3 stages of hypothermia:

1. 37 C - First stage - shivering, reduced circulation.
2. 31 C - Second stage - weak pulse, lack of coordination, confusion.
3. 27 C - Advanced stage - absent respiration and pulse, loss of consciousness.

~

NOT TO BRAG, but my day begins with two romantic and heated dates. The first one stands me up, and the second one isn’t actually real. However - I am a believer in the intersectional advantages of being routinely humbled, so this is good for me, it’s good for everyone. Instead of wallowing, I find myself reflecting in the crypt of Christchurch Cathedral. I’m texting the director of an upcoming video shoot that I “can’t talk I’m in the crypt rn”- at one with the American tourists - I assimilate. My avatar gets upgraded with a north face jacket and Yankees cap. Perfect, coz down here there’s no time for distractions, plus no one knows about my awkward forenoon except the observing window cleaner, and god. I am squinting at the showcase of illuminated manuscripts and wondering which blogging platform the (s)laymen would have used. It’s giving Wordpress. 

I say goodbye to new friends Randy and Kayleigh, shake off the Idaho expansion pack, and scurry out to the car. The guitarist of the band I am helping out picks me up coz it’s time 2 film. I am cast as the uninterested love interest. This role is somewhat challenging. I piss off my directors with conspicuous stupid giggles and wide eyes. 

“Look at the focking camera! don’t look at him!”

This is where the first stage of hypothermia sets in, because its also storming horrendously while this on-screen chemistry is withering. It’s Ireland, so there’s rain gunning down my ears sideways like wet bullets. It’s just so lucky I left any lingering traces of dignity in Australia, because a hot stream of snot trickles out my nose and alerts my forged date - I wipe it off with my jacket sleeve. The seagulls cringe.

STAGE TWO. 

I wade out of the ocean of shame and onto the shore of honour, because before me on the red-lit Workmans stage, is a gentle creature resembling that of Neptune - ethereal, easy and etched within the West Coast of Connemara. Slowly dispensing the greyish blue aura over the crowd, is OLAN MONK, appearing silent and austere behind the microphone - I shiver as the temperature in here begins to plummet. “Fameless” is a castle built with the stones of a drum machine, some diluted strings, and a sampled cheering crowd. The vocals for this track have some kind of satanised effect, added on that arouse me and all the Catholic school observers in a way no one really understands - collectively, I feel a push toward Monk’s mythology and the unknown. 

The otherworld keeps opening with “Drone Island”. A tin whistle is taken far from its usual traditional Irish setting, and instead, is stretched over a belt of gravelly distortion that “feels like I’m suspended over a huge industrial volcano slowly opening in pulses……”(1). Volcanic ash starts swirling around and forming ancient runes in the red light. I’m so bewildered and entranced that I forget how cold it is in here. Or is it just me? “Addict” draws me back earthside with its heavy-pop-electro-punk *inhale* extravagance. It’s confusing and its cool - so cool I think I’ve reached the second stage of hypothermia. OLAN MONK is a showcase of talent I'm happy to have stumbled across. 

So, serious life altering condition aside - it's time to explore the dreaded Workmans. There’s lots of things happening here, like lots of alt kids spawning in the smoking area. Irish alt kids can be surmised into one defining adjective: bubblegrunge. They’re like lighter fluid flavour marshmallows. It works! I like them and wish to acculturate, so I confidently annunciate my interest in neolithic portal tombs and inflation’s impact on Amber Leaf tobacco. Before I have time to see if my bait works, I hear the start of some sweet melodies downstairs. Aw, GTG!

STAGE THREE.

Myself and my friends bowl over the bubblegrunge people with no remorse 2 get 2 the front, because the time has come - the holy trinity (BAR ITALIA) are here to explain how to confess your love to someone in the absolute most D.I.L.I.G.A.F way possible. “Rage Quit” rains down on us with some nutritious distortion and breezy bass. We start bopping in a very wholesome and jovial way. The only problem I have with this song, is that its not long enough - this makes me almost as vexed as the little bug on the cover of “Bedhead”…. (2) This venue is very intimate, so much so I sense the aroma of the guitarist to the left of Nina because he’s so greasy that he “smells like a gear” (3) - that’s (alt) rock and roll personified though, n’ it suits him fine! Gears keep grinding for “Clark” - my favourite BAR ITALIA beat (aside from 2020’s “Mangelica” - which I urge everyone with ears to give a spin). The baseline is distinct and definitive, and the chorus is crazy catchy:

“Coz you caught me on a bad day,

But its ok if you’ve got time.

You fucked me up so gladly,

Kinda telling me that I don’t mind”

True! We’re looking up at Jezmi, Nina and Sam like adorning little lambs. Nina dances so nonchalantly while she sings - and when a string breaks, there’s no ruffled feathers. It’s cool. They’re cool. I’m fuckin’ shivering. The drums start bubbling away like a brook for “Polly armour” and the lambs go mad for their trilateral shepherds. Jezmi’s angry and assured vocals stand out the most for this song, because theres a sincerity in the delivery of the lyrics dats’ real. He’s howlin’ down the mic n’ fogging up his glasses as he fervidly declares - “I’ll always have to worry coz you’re just like me”. Double true! 

I meet the band at the end of gig and give them my Farmdog business card. In the process, I reach the advanced stage, and actually die. This is sort of annoying coz I was gonna see Sweeping Promises next month. BAR ITALIA, if you’re reading this, you gave me frostbite. It’s still love <3 though - just next time I see this band (as a ghost?), I’ll take more preventative measures and wrap myself in a foil blanket before the show. Right - time to seek out some Leprechauns. I hear they hang out at Bambinos, 

and Uno Mass. 

                                                                     ~

(1) "RaymondStephens", comment from Olan Monk's Bandcamp page

(2)  See Figure 1.

(3)  McKeon, Finn. Gig attendee and Smartass.

https://olanmonk.bandcamp.com/

https://baritalia.bandcamp.com/

fig. 1

"NAVAL VICTORY OF THE GEETEE-TIANS AT KOMET"

BERLIN BESTOWED UPON US thirty-five degree heat and a disturbing hangover, but it wasn’t enough of a deterrent to keep me and my crew from sweating out every last electrolyte in the name of die musik. In my friend’s eyes, is genuine pain. It’s nearly 9pm and last nights shakes are still assaulting my nervous system. But the show must go on, because GEE TEE and SATANIC TOGAS are in town, joined by Berlin new-wave band SPLIZZ who are here to transition the scary Germans into scary Sydney mutant punk/rock. We peel ourselves off the pavement and into the line thats flung all the way down the street, surveying the freaky attendees of this rodeo and gingerly sipping from a bottle of Radler.

We slowly infiltrate the bar. I desperately avoid murderous stares from the bar staff as I fan myself with a gig flyer like a fat American Disney-adult aboard the deck of a cruise ship. The heat intensifies the further we go, and so does the fear of dying as I have premonitions of bloodshed and the Spanish armada. Destruction. The callous mouth of a flame. 

Anyway <3

I shake myself off like a dog and prick up my ears coz SPLIZZ climb aboard the stage and we all set sail into the Deutsch post-punk ocean. They start rowing with “La Vie”, where I am immediately very impressed with the dynamic between the lead singer and the bass player. His shit is so quick, and the chords used are kind of unusual and a little bit groovy, layered with the male/female vocals that blend seamlessly together like eine ziggarette und bier. This band is refreshing because they’re so cohesive and concise - it’s appregio but with German efficiency, so polished that I can see myself in the kick drum (efficiently confirming I still look like shit). “Die Angst” makes my death premonitions float away, and I thank the flanger pedal and the surfy sound it makes. I thank the guitarist. I thank god. Language barriers don’t stop me from shaking my head (in a good way) at the clever repetitive lyrics in this track - its got a hollow body and a solid brain - like a graveyard ghoul that PHD'd in molecular science. For real though, I am super interested to see what is next for spooky SPLIZZ. 

After that, I paddle the out of the basement and my strategic-band-shirt of the night is noticed by an appendage of GEETEE. 

“is that an Optic Nerve tee???”

Is the pope catholic? 

Feeling assured and special, my friends and I rehydrate and mentally prepare ourselves for the next trash rock outfit of the evening, SATANIC TOGAS. The devil emerges and so does the tsunami coz everyone is suddenly coerced into the scratchy undulations of “Digital World” - even Lucifer is lookin’ for a digital girl to give his love tonight, all right! Aw man - this drummer is stupidly good. He’s also wearing a freaky mask, and keeping that beat inhumanly fast... Ishka introduces his melodies with ad-libs designed to frighten babies, popes and my dad - “BLEGH! HAIL SATAN! ACAB!” It’s all highly nuanced. “Teenage Garbage” trashes the basement, and the devoted hi-hat possesses my feet and starts making me twist around like a happy idiot. Aw yeh. “I’m such a slob!” I’m also such a sweaty slob, because my once-dry-strategic-band-shirt is now soaked through and I am terribly self-conscious. There’s actually no time for insecurity though, because my priorities must lie in (lovingly) shoving the 8 foot tall man in front of me so I can see the dude on the upper mezzanine showcasing some genuinely seraphic hardcore dancing… As it so appears: Satanic Togas repel cops, and attract angels. 

Following another brief interval, me n’ my fellow Aussie ex-pat part with our paddy pals in a way that makes it seem like we were being sent away to war, coz here’s GEETEE, geared and ready to pick up where the others left off. Before me is Kel Mason, in another perplexing but less jilting mask. What’s behind it, I’ll never know - unless I one day become a famous, rich and hot music journalist with special mask-less identification privileges. For now, I turn to my imagination and decide he probably looks like a mashup of Hulk Hogan and Vincent Price. Some scuzzy guitar locks in with the drums for “Bad Egg” and the Germans get a little bit verrückt…

New heights are reached here coz there’s a guy who vertically crowd-surfs to the upstairs level of the venue, making me and the Germans take a break from (lovingly) shoving each other and stand in awe at the last of his limbs being pulled upwards, as if being rescued from a sinking ship. Maybe it was the climax of my hangover, but it feels like I’m in the middle of an Italian Renaissance painting - something like Sante Pernada’s Naval Victory of the Venetians at Jaffa (c. 1590s). GEETEE are the Venetians and we are the Egyptians though, coz “(I Hate) Drivin In The City” fires away like a canon and I’m swept to the very back of the basement and onto the conveniently placed couch. Hey, I don’t mind it! When I get back up, the laid back “Rock Phone”, relieves my aching feet. Its uncomplicated and sorta stripped back, but recruits a sweet bitta synth towards the end that reaffirms who tf is on stage right now - a business casual bassist VS a vocalist who threatens to rob me and light my car on fire. That, is the duality of man. The duality of GEETEE. 

We spill back out onto the street. I wring out my shirt like a prairie wife doing her washing on the ranch. It smells like the ranch. Triumphantly, we march to a Späti and chow down on a well deserved ice-cream. I give my christian father a trigger warning before sending Whatsapp videos on the homebound U8, because I am a pious and vigilant daughter. Goodnight Dad, and “Goodnight Neanderthal” x

https://splizz.bandcamp.com/

https://satanictogas.bandcamp.com/

https://geeteeband.bandcamp.com/album/goodnight-neanderthal-2