The Brother Moves On

I recently got roped, by an old varsity acquaintance, into playing for The Brother Moves On. A multi piece orgasmic fusion of stuff. I really don't know how to describe the sound. Its got some township grooves, with a lot of funk. A little bit of spice and a shit load of attitude. It's soul music. And I'm diggin' it. I played my first show with them last night. At the WITS freshers party. It was rock n roll to say the least. But in the shit fucked out kinda way.

http://www.myspace.com/thebrothermoveson

The brother moves on intervention at Workers Museum Newtown -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePYMXlRhAiE&NR=1
The brother moves on intervention at the Botannical Gardens
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_C0QLalmBU

We got there at four, well I got there at four. Checked up with the sound engineer to see if I needed a bass amp. I didn't. The rest of the band handed rocked up yet. The whole parking lot where the event was being held was pretty dead. So I went for a mission around campus, and ended up at the PIG (the post grad club, in essence: the bar where post graduate students go to drink and debate non-essential worldly issues - such as is this beer bottle green or am I drunk, and is this a matter of subjectivity?) where I found my band mates. Boozing. Definitely my kind of band. Zwash has a black eye from the night before. He got beat up by bouncer at Rats, apparently it was BJ's fault, but who knows. So we hit the bottle a bit, Zwash and I head off to hunt some weasels. Get back to the others, head to BJ's car, drink some rum and dutifully head to the stage for sound check. We're supposed to be on at 6. It's 5pm and the stage tech isn't ready for us. Typical, neh?

So, after about an hour of line-checking the sound is sounding pretty decent. Though of the many monitors I didn't get a very well working one, so no audible bass for me. It makes my forearms cramp. And it's not a pleasant feeling.

The next mission is getting wristbands for the band members, the event organiser assured us she gave them all to Lily. The one's Lily did have she'd given to the band, but we were still a few short. With much wrangling we eventually got a few more out of her. And I missioned off out the designated area to fetch my jacket. Coming back in was another mission all together. My wrist band had been attached rather loosely, just incase we had to sneak someone in. And playing with tags is a bi-atch sometimes. They just get irritating. I'm not one (lately) for wearing things on my wrists. So the irate bouncer gave me shit about the looseness of my wristband, said I'd got it from someone else, wouldn't let me through and then tried to confiscate my bottle of rum. There was only a few shpots left in it, so I downed the rest of the bottle. This was about the same point as our visual fx guru rocked up, wrapped in wreaths of red and white bunting tape. He speaks the language, and manages to get me out of shit and back into the venue.

We head to the stage, the time has come to jam. The venue's filled up a bit by this point. Lots of drunk, and soon to be drunk first years. We start the set. The sound on stage has gone from decent to crap. But we play through it anyway, and get into the vibe. All's going well till half way through our second number, something goes wrong with the drum kit, I think it was the bass peddle, but I'm not quite sure. We get over that hiccup and get to our fifth song, and are cut out half way through, the dj just kicking in some house beats. We get off the stage, and the organiser gives us a stern talking to, which went something like "Pack up your stuff and leave." We were all mighty confused at this point. And Siya (our lead vocalist and manager) starts arguing the odds. Apparently BJ, our dj had been told to cut the set, but instead of obliging had stuck his tongue in his check and made vulgar blow job gestures. So they cut us mid set. What a bunch of prudes. They start the event late, and expect us to cut our set short because they can't manage themselves. On top of this all they weren't even paying us, even though they were charging 70 bucks entrance at the door. What a load of bull.

I ended up at the bass line a little later, watching Tumi and the Volume, Tidal Waves and aKing. This show I think was rather badly advertised, it was pretty dead. And it made me realise that even the best of performers and bands have shite shows too, where the crowds dead and the sound just doesn't cut it. It's the way of the music industry..