Titus, Gorilla King

Shortly following our Zoo trip on Saturday there was a doco on ABC about Titus, an amazing silverback from the Virunga Mountains. He was a pretty awesome gorilla. Watch the whole thing right here, and then read about his death and burial back in September, but only if you've got a box of tissues handy. Or just read the Wiki if you're lazy. Poor Titus. You were truly the king.

YIS in The Age, 18/03/2010

YIS News #5

All quiet on the YIS front during March, mostly just to give everyone a rest and recharge the batteries before massive April.... so massive I'm going to bold it. APRIL.

But we've been busy. Not musically of course. Bron and I are moving into a new home (which we warmed over the weekend) in a week or so.

So, yes, APRIL should be pretty mega, kicking off with the Digger launch gig at Yah Yahs on the 1st, followed by our Canberra and Sydney shows on the Saturday and Sunday. Another confirmed gig is with Baptism of Uzi for one of their The Old Bar Wednesday residency shows in April on the 21st. Also playing are fellow all-caps fans TRAJEU (previously known as Floods). We're also trying to get down to Tassie over ANZAC weekend, so, we'll see how that goes.

After that, Andre is off to Europe for a few weeks to see The Stooges and Suicide in London and play some Minpins shows. During this time I intend to write and record a 14-track concept album about the life of my pug, Buster, to be pressed only on vinyl (with a locked groove at the end, because he will live forever).

Also, on Saturday June 5th we're putting together a supergroup with Sasha (from Spitfire Parade and Constant Light) and maybe a couple of others to play a tribute night for The Fall at The Workers Club. Should be pretty cool. Also playing are Breaker Morant and a group put together by Ash from Witch Hats with dudes from Parading and Pets With Pets.

We should probably record something, right? Anyway, to recap...

THURSDAY, APRIL 1st, 2010, YAH YAH'S, Fitzroy, 8PM

Good Friday Eve with Digger & The Pussycats (Album Launch), Legends of Motorsport and Precious Jules (Kim Salmon). YIS on at 8:30pm. $10 entry.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3rd, 2010, THE FRONT, Canberra, 7PM

Easter Saturday Gig with Teddy Trouble and one other band. YIS on last. Gold coin entry.

SUNDAY, APRIL 4st, 2010, THE LANSDOWNE, Sydney, 6PM

Easter Sunday with The Nice Folk, Whipped Cream Chargers and Yes I'm Leaving. Free entry.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21st, 2010, THE OLD BAR, Fitzroy, 8PM

Supporting Baptism of Uzi (Wednesday Residency) with TRJAEU.

(then Andre is going to Europe from April 28th until May 21st to see Stooges and Suicide)

SATURDAY, JUNE 5TH, 2010, THE WORKERS CLUB, Fitzroy, ?PM

The Fall tribute night with other supergroups with dudes from Witch Hats, Parading, Pets with Pets, YIS, Strange Attractions, Spitfire Parade, Breaker Morant.

YIS on The 7:30 Report!

...kinda! Play spot the band member in this story about The Tote's last hurrah.

(also in better quality on iView, 21 minutes in)

(also downloadable in mp4 or wmv format)

Goodbye, Tote pt. 2 (Memories)

I haven't been able to sleep much tonight. I don't know if it's because of the significance of tomorrow or not, but thinking back over the times I've had at The Tote, as both a punter and a musician, it's been such a significant part of my life that I might actually end up getting emotional tomorrow.

I can't even remember the first time I went there, but a time that sticks out the most is when a slightly-underage member of a band that I may or may not be in tried to get into The Tote a few weeks before his 18th. It was the Guitar Wolf tribute night (after the passing of Bass Wolf), featuring Mach Pelican and Rocket Science, who were his favourite band at the time and hadn't played in a long time (and wouldn't for a while after that, due to Roman's brain injuries), and hence, this was an unmissable gig. We got there unusually early (as we were paranoid about not getting in), and the doors weren't even open yet. We ended up starting a pool game and getting hustled by a large African man who claimed he "owned the table". We didn't argue. We were pretty nervous about the whole thing. We both paid and got stamped and were just past the door when the lady said "wait a second, have you guys got ID". I did, but my companion accidentally "left his ID in Bendigo". We got a refund and slunk out. I backed into the roo-bar a ute whilst trying to get out of my parking space. We then went and watched DIG! at the cinema and cried into our popcorn. So, er, kids, don't try this because it doesn't work and it ends in tears. LITERALLY.

The Screaming Pigeons, 2005

A few months later we came back in an official capacity; The Screaming Pigeons (which consisted of myself, Andre and our younger brother Matthew) organised a show on a Tuesday night. Thankfully at that time The Tote did allow underaged band members when accompanied by a parent or guardian, so, we got to play. It was a pretty massive deal for us; I'd played in a few bands before and the only gigs I'd played previously were at a Frankston school fete and South Yarra backyard and this was THE TOTE, ffs. We were on first in front of about 20 people and we spent the rest of the evening with stunned looks on our faces. We all hung around way too late and were pretty bleary-eyed when we had to go to school the next morning. I'm sure Matt would have been the coolest kid in Year 9 if any of his classmates actually knew what The Tote was.


I've been lucky enough to play there again a few times, even headlining once or twice when I played with Push Button Auto. YIS were lucky enough to be able to do our first Live Mixtape show in the Front Bar a couple of months back (pictured below, with more pictures here), and got to play our second proper gig up in Cobra bar (pictured below, with more pictures here). We got the confirmation that we'd be headlining there in February only a week or so before we'd hear the news that they were shutting up shop for good.

As a spectator, I've seen some great gigs there. The one that sticks out in my mind most recently is probably Eddy Current in a packed Cobra Bar (after Teengenerate supported by Spencer P Jones, Kim Salmon and The Onyas), where Brendan practically did the whole gig whilst crowdsurfing. An insane mess of sweaty people. Bron's favourites were the New Year's shows with Guitar Wolf and Dead Moon, and an early Datsuns gig where Dolf spent a large amount of time swinging from the rafters. Evidently most great gigs at The Tote involved people swinging from things. This seemed to happen often when The Meanies played.

In a way, I'm sad that The Tote is gone, but I'm thankful that it's managed to stay open for as long as it has since it was set to close in 2008. I know that Melbourne will not be the same without it, but hopefully it's loss will serve as an example. It's sad that one of the very few times I've seen lines out the door was when it was announced it was closing for good, considering how amazing some of the shows I've seen there have been. Live music doesn't end with The Tote; there's fantastic things happening almost every night in this city. If you want to honour it's memory, go see something.

I hope to see many of you this afternoon and this evening. If you weren't lucky enough to get tickets, it'll be streaming live on RRR and PBS from 8pm.

YIS News #4

Phew! So, I did something I rarely ever do: initiate a cleaning up of something. I've wanted to record for the last month or so, but keep putting it off, but never knew why... So, maybe as a last act of procrastination, or to erase one of the reasons why recording at home is so painful, we decided to clean the bandroom up. Anyway, it feels a lot nicer to be in now, and there's no risk of tripping over cords that don't work or standing on drawing pins.

So, hopefully that means some recording tomorrow... Probably the Call The Jury/Trevor Block double A-side that we've been threatening to do for a while. Anyway, if that somehow gets done, we'll have some freebies at the Birmy show.

Other things on the horizon: our next gig is this Thursday at The Birmingham with The Strange Attractions, Nightmaster and Spitfire Parade. All these bands are really good. After that, we've got Australia Day Eve (25th of Jan) at Pony with Bad Orchestra, Baptism of Uzi and one other band. We're looking for a venue for Saturday Feb 14th as Where's Jerome are coming to town. Hopefully The Tote will have us. Then after that it's Spitfire Parade's CD launch at Pony on Saturday Feb 19th (or maybe the week after?).

The exciting news is that we've just started to put together an NSW/ACT tour for Easter Weekend. We just started thinking about it today, but it'll be from April 1st to 4th or 5th (smack bang in the middle of my school holidays), with Canberra on the Thursday night (before Good Friday), and Friday and Saturday in Sydney and The Gong, depending on where's open. Let us know if you want to help out or play with us while we're up there, especially for the Sunday or Monday in Regional Victoria between Melbourne and Canberra on the way back home.

We're also thinking about (in a very pie in the sky way) trying to get Drummer out here, maybe in June/July, but we have no idea about how we'd go about putting on a tour or anything...

Oh, and I guess we'll probably make a proper album sometime soon.

Week of Mayhem, Night 1: Andrew Bird, The Hi-Fi, 01/01/10

There's no shame in stating the following: I will never be as talented as Andrew Bird... and I'm okay with that. This is the second time I've seen him; the last time was on the back of "Armchair Apocrypha" (not my favourite A.B. album) and it was stil pretty damn magical. This was just as good, possibly better because of the material from his new album "Noble Beast", which is an amazing album (and a grower, so, stick with it if it didn't click first time).

Oh, yeah, and this was all the more amazing because he did the whole set from a chair with a busted foot. The magnitude of his achievement tonight can only be fully appreciated after you've seen how much tap-dancing on loop pedals he has to do on stage. Apart from being a master on several instruments, he also is one of the only artists I've seen who is able to use a loop pedal in a musical fashion without sounding like... well, a song sounding like it's built around a loop drifting in and out of sync. Even guys like Mick Turner can't get this quite right sometimes, and Mick Turner is one of my favourite guitarists ever. It's hard enough to get a guitarist and a drummer playing to a loop, but to have four guys doing just blows your mind. The rest of the band are quite a nifty set of players; a new guitarist, the same bassist from last time (I think) and Martin Dosh (a.k.a. Dosh who supported him last tour) on drums, drum machines and electric piano.



The setlist had some great rarities and nuggets in the set tonight. I'm the kind of person who loves hearing the embryonic song material just as much as the finished product (stuff like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot demos, engineer's demos and studio sessions is my favourite shit ever), and tonight's setlist contained a bunch of this kind of stuff. After doing an amazing version of the regular opener "Why?", he prefaced the main set by saying that he was currently interested in doing new songs and old songs the way he originally concieved them, well before they were done the way they are on the album. So, next up was what he called a "kinda mashup" of "Sweet Breads" and "Dark Matter" which was great, and later in the set we got the original version of "Imitosis" (containing lyrics scratched because Walt Disney wouldn't let him borrow a chorus from a Sesame Street song about the letter I).

The setlist below was chopped and changed a little bit; for instance, we got "Headsoak" off the Bowl of Fire album instead of the Dylan cover "Oh Sister" and maybe a few songs swapped around...

The undisputed highlight for me was my favourite track from the new album, "Anonanimal"; just a brilliant rendition that extended beyond the recorded version and shot off into the stratosphere. I can't really describe it. Just gave me chills.

(and, on the "embryonic" tangent, here's a pro-shot live version of a "not quite finished" (but still brilliant) version of "Anonanimal".)

It's going to be very hard to top this this week, or even this year, but there's some good competition... next gig to be reported on will be Yeah Yeah Yeahs at The Forum on Sunday. Should be good. Also coming up this week: King Khan on Monday, Grizzly Bear on Tuesday, (maybe) Aktion Unit on Wednesday at The Old Bar (but we might have band practice), and Future of the Left on Friday... and maybe the DFA crew spinning records after that if we've got the energy. Oh, and wait, our gig at The Birmingham on Thursday! How can we possibly compete??

YIS News #3

Having a proper practice tomorrow... might even be recording a bit. We're planning to try to record a couple of songs to give out at the Cobra show. See how we go. There'll be something up for grabs.

Check out the other acts we're playing with on the night: Pageants, NightMaster and Fourteen Nights at Sea. If you can't make it, don't stress, we've got another gig on Thursday, December 3rd at Yah Yahs.

Oh, and my laptop hard-drive corrupted, so, I've lost all the masters for the Live Mixtape... So, yes, the 40 that were made will be the only 40 that exist.

Also, we've gone up to second if you search for us on Google now. In first place is "Yes I Am Single": a website for singles who sign up and wear a badge in public to attract potential mates. Instructions are as follows:

The Yes I am Single (yis.com.au) badge is a subtle and unobtrusive tool to be worn by single people to let other singles know that they are unattached and looking to meet other likeminded singles.

Once you have your badge and yis.com.au membership, you can access our forums where you can chat to singles with similar interests, form new social networks and organise your own events.

You may like to form your own or join an existing golf, walking or wine tasting group or simply organise an impromptu evening out to the theatre or a pub in a central location.

Below are a few situations where you may wish to put on your badge with a view to meeting other single people:

• On the bus, train or ferry
• At the gym
• At the pub or at a restaurant
• At the shopping mall
• At the theatre or cinema
• While walking the dog
• On vacation
• At a sporting event
• On a bucks/ hens night when out with friends
• At the beach
• At church

Wear your badge and start meeting people the old fashioned way!

We were planning to start YISHEARTS: a singles club for YIS fans who were searching for that special someone, but we'll probably end up provoking some Apple Computers/Apple Corps scale naming rights legal battle...

YIS The Stamp

YIS, The Stamp!!!

Okay, so, it's been a bit of a slow news day...

Free CDs

We're giving away a limited number of Live Mixtape CDs at The Tote on Saturday... but if you can't make it and want one, just shoot me a message here, or email yis@aanet.com.au before tomorrow night... There'll be a total of 40 in existence. CD and postage are totally free, but I'll only have a handful to send out (plus any leftover from the gig), so get in quick.

There'll also be a couple of leftover posters at the gig too.

Favourites: Husker Du - Eight Miles High (Byrds Cover)

One of my favourite covers.

Studio Report: Mixtape #1

With time and technology against us, this afternoon we decided to blaze through the set "live to air" (if you will), and have recorded the whole thing for your listening pleasure. Five mics up in the room: one on the drums, one of the bass, one for each guitar, and a vocal in the middle... The end result is shambolic, messy, frequently annoying and a lot of fun... and now I have a headache. I'll be burning off a limited number to give out after the gig on Saturday.

Studio Banter - Husker Dus and Don'ts

More Band History: The Screaming Pigeons

The Screaming Pigeons, circa 2004.

Press Release

"Full denim outfits. Big rock poses. Stadium-sized riffs and similar sized egos. Admittedly, this band may have at least one of these things (the poses... and maybe the riffs), but no, this isn’t the newest, trendiest ‘the’ band on the block; this is the story of three brothers from the isolated suburbs of the north-east of Melbourne, Australia, coming together in the name of rock (and more importantly, fun); Simon, Andre and Matthew Fazio, otherwise known as The Screaming Pigeons.

Combining their favourite elements of the raw rock stylings of their favorite groups (whilst leaving behind the pretentiousness and the self-consciousness), The Screaming Pigeons are the perfect antithesis to the run-of-the-mill contrived retro-rock bands; a band you can dance and groove to sometimes, and rock out to others, and not have to worry about losing your indie cred.
The Pigeons draw much influence from heavily groove-orientated rock acts such as Fu Manchu and Kyuss, but also prefer the guitar stylings of groups ranging from the Stooges to KISS and Led Zeppelin, with Andre’s thunderous drumbeats drawing much from his favorite skinsmiths John Bonham and Danny Carey, whilst fourteen-year old Matthew’s unbelievably searing lead-guitar work was fashioned whilst rocking out to AC/DC and The Hellacopters in his room on a borrowed SG. With the group rounded off by older-brother Simon on bass (and the occasional vocal), the Pigeons are defiantly a force to be reckoned with.

The band are currently working on their debut release, entitled 'Molasses of Death', which will be available to the general public hopefully around the end of July."

(Of course, that never happened.)

Our first gig was June, 2004 at the Good Morning Captain (which is now some sort of Jamaican coffee house now?). I always get a bit nostagic walking past. Our set consisted of mostly instrumentals with a Kyuss medley at the end. We went on to play The Tote a few months later. We were pretty petrified about it, considering we had two underaged members (one of whom tried to get in the week before and was knocked back). Matt, who was 15 at the time, was pretty excited about it all. Eventually, due to growing tensions within the band (probably about who had the best hair), we stopped playing together a couple of years later... only to be reunited next Saturday at the Tote!

There wasn't much recorded of the band, but here's an early unfinished demo of a song. I don't even think I'm on it; Andre probably doubled up on bass and drums.

The Screaming Pigeons - Supercollider

Andre Fazio : A True Testimonial

Many of you would be aware of the momentous occasion happening tomorrow; the 21st anniversary of one of Melbourne's... no... the world's greatest drum and bass combinations: Andre Fazio. Sure, he's not techinally a drum and bass combo in the way that Sly and Robbie are, or Levon Helm and Rick Danko... or Entwistle and Moon... or Lightning Bolt... but if you could clone him, you'd probably have a set of them in every recording studio and another one doing the artwork as well...

So, Happy Birthday to him. Even though his birthday is tomorrow, come and have a drink with him next Saturday at The Tote for his official birthday drinks. Truly the engine of all my musical projects, and I couldn't concieve of being in a band without him doing something... even if he is an argumentative prick who hates my singing and antics. And that time where he grew chops to take the piss out of me wasn't nice either. Or the time he slapped the peanut butter toast in my room out of my hand and it looked like I shit the bed. I could go on. But I won't. Cheers!

YISCREAM: The Full List (so far)

Here's all the entries so far for the big competition...

Yours In Sympathy
Yep, I'm Simon
Youth Ignited Sounds
Your Idiotic Stupidity
Yesterday is Starting
Youth Inspired by Stooges
Youse is Sweet
Young In Spirit
Yodel in Sync
Yammering Identical Smurfs
Your image sucks
Yellow incremental scrolling
You're It Son!
Young Icecream Slut
young instant stereo
you i she
yelling inside stalactites
yard into story
yelling incompetent stooges
Yummy Icream bitcheS
YORICK'S INDIGO SKULLCAP.
YASSER IN SPORTSGIRL.
YOGA IS SHIT.
YOUTHS IN SOLITARY.
YOGHURT INCEST SUIT.
YIZZLE IZZLE SIZZLE.
YIS I IS
Young Infant Semen.
Yelling In Silence
Yanks In Suburbia
Yellow Inky Substance
Yobbos Infiltrating Sydney
Yawn Inducing Shit
Young Idiots Singing
Youth Informs Society
You'e In-fact Silly.
Yoda Implies Secrets
Yeltzen Is Smashed
YIS Isn't Subversive
Yes Its Shit
Yum Irish Sperm
Yodelling In Sync.
You Is Silly
Y'ALL IS SATISFIED.
yabbie is swimming!
yellow igloos stink!
yeast infection symptoms.
Yummy I Scream
you're in space!
yogurt is shit.
Yes, I'll sign.
Young Inocent Sluts
Yearing in Sactown
Yeild inside safty
Yasmines insatiable slit.
yearning in sactown.
Yauch Is Sick
Yeast Infecetion? Serious!
Yawn inthemidstof Sex
Yoshimi Is Slain.
Yusuf Islam/Stephens
Yarraville Ice-cream Shop
Yoni-In-Sadhu
Your Internetmarketingstrategyis Suspect.
Your insults sting. :(
You instantly sooked
Yeah, I suck.
Your Infuriating Sounds
Yemenis Impersonating Saudis
Young Innocent Sucks
Yearly Infested Scabs
YODA'S INEPTITUDE SYNTACTICAL.
Yourmom is sexy
YOU IS SILENCED!
young insects serious
your intelligence subverted
your interest sucks
Yahoo Image Search
Young Incompitant Staffe
Yak Incubator Surgeons

Still plenty of time left...

YISCREAM: Day 1

The Ice Cream comp has gotten away to a flyer over here at Mess & Noise.

Some of the early entries include YORICK'S INDIGO SKULLCAP, Yoni-In-Sadhu, Yemenis Impersonating Saudis and Yusuf Islam/Stephens (which doesn't really count cos it was mine)... but there's plenty more ace ones on the thread as well.

Plenty of time to get your entries in!

Re: judging... Bron, Andre and I will each pick our own favourites and then confer on which should be the winner. If we all independently choose the same one, that'll automatically win. No playing favourites!

Competition: Win an Ice Cream Social with YIS

So, you're all aware of the YIS LIVE MIXTAPE coming up at the Tote in a couple of weeks, right? Inspired by Henry Rollins' and Ian Mackaye's stint as Häagen-Dazs managers, we're giving away a free all-you-can-eat* ice-cream session at Trampoline on Brunswick St... or, another ice-cream place, if you prefer. I like the ice-cream there. It can be after the gig, or if you wanna organise another time, we'll work it out.

Okay, so, what do you have to do to win? Simply come up with the most creative meaning behind YIS as an acronym; i.e. Yours in Satan, Young Interstellar Spacemen, etc. The winner will be judged by YIS and annouced on the night at The Tote (31st of October at 5pm). You have to be there to win it. You can post it here on the blog, or email to yis@aanet.com.au

Good luck!

*up to the value, of like, $30 bucks. How much ice-cream can you actually handle?! We might buy you a tub to take home as well.

YIS Unearthed

We're up on the Triple J Unearthed site now. "Happy Bears Forever" got some positive feedback from the Unearthed team:

"Hypnotic, crunched up, industrial buildy- uppyness. Thank you. Love where this is coming from."

rating: 4/5

Steph Hughes, triple j

And, despite somehow missing out on that fifth star, we're featured on the Unearthed Jukebox for the week.

yisBay update

How much does a once in a lifetime experience cost? Well, according to tysondana69.... $10.50. Congratulations, and let us know what kind of chocolate you like. If it is a warm evening, we might even make a trip to the ice-cream bin.

Next gimmick: win all-you-can-eat Ice-Cream from Trampoline on Brunswick Street with YIS.

A ONCE IN A LIFETIME EXPERIENCE

eBay Auction

For sale is not just a gig ticket, but an experience never to be repeated.

The show is this Saturday, October 31st at Pony (68 Little Collins St, City).

YIS are onstage at 10pm. The successful bidder on this auction will recieve:

1) Admission to the gig & soundcheck (8pm) (valued at $6)

2) One drink from our rider (valued at $4, or whatever they charge for a pot.)

3) A chocolate bar/confectionary of your choice from 7-Eleven, Little Collins St. (Up to the value of $3)

4) A setlist signed by all three original members of YIS, (Priceless, surely)

5) Some sort of congratulatory gesture (i.e. handshake, friendly pat on the back, knucklebump)

6) One drum tip from Andre Fazio

7) One cooking tip from Bronwyn Liroudia

8) One fashion tip from Simon Fazio

9) Free entry to the first YIS Live Mixtape at The Tote, Saturday, October 31st at 5-7pm

You must be 18 to attend this gig and claim the prize. You must also be able to attend the gig. Happy bidding!