The Streets (aka Mike Skinner) was in town last Tuesday (10/02/09) to perform at Billboard the Venue. The support act was originally Muscles however due to the recent fires in Victoria he cancelled his appearance to help out family/friends affected. In his place the support act brought in was Pez, who cracked into the Australian music scene with "The Festival Song". I grabbed a great position right near the front, however I had an absolute tall pr**k push in front of all of us near the front. Lets just say that he was not a popular guy with all the punters he was blocking as he was not a short guy and he was wearing a puffy jacket. So I did not feel bad for him when he was pulled up by the bouncers when he lit up a joint. Back to The Streets. Mike really mixed it up playing songs from all four albums. Given the amount of material available to him many of the songs were mixed into each other. He also spoke to the crowd a lot, quite often refering to the Victorian bushfires and the lives lost. For me The Streets really delivered. Videos will be up soon. The Streets [flickr style="padding: 10px;"]tag:streets+20090210@tsanglabs[/flickr] Pez [flickr style="padding: 10px;"]tag:pez+20090210@tsanglabs[/flickr]

Another day another gig at Billboard (god I'm starting to dislike this venue). Camille (Offical Site, wiki), for those who do not know, is a french singer who is quite creative in how she creates her music. My first introduction to her was from her album "Le Fil", directly translated means "the thread", and that was represented throughout the album with the constant tone, a "B", starting at the very beginning to the end. Initially you would suppose that this would be quite limiting, in that all the songs need to be at the same chord, or or annoying but it works. It has been compared to Bjork’s Medulla. This was visible at the gig as the only instruments were a keyboard and a bongo drum I saw used once. Instead she has a group of 5 backup singers and two beat boxers proving the "instrumentation" for each song. Unfortunately I arrived a little late and was stuck behind a very large crowd so I could not take any good photos, I have some videos however. The first one she is performing "Au Port" and it gets quite funny when she tries to get the mainly English speaking audience to take part, check it out. Hilarious! httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QkS0VSIV_Q See my youtube.com channel to see all the other videos httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GePKOiwwOHo When she came out for the encore Camille was wearing a black dress with black elbow-length gloves. There was a surprise when she turned around though. Now I have heard of back-less dresses but I have never envisioned a back-less dress with crack showing. [flickr style="display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto"]photo:3216904226[/flickr] The best thing about the show was the energy of Camille and the back-up singers and I can't wait for her to visit us down under again. Here are some photos of the gig by from Flickr (copyright owned by the respective photographers) [flickr style="padding: 10px;"]tag:lastfm:event=826654[/flickr]

Another day another gig. This time I was off to see Santogold at Billboard the Venue. Decided to call ahead to find out when she was going on stage rather than standing for hours waiting especially since I was coming from work. Billboard is somewhat larger than the Corner Hotel which meant I was able to get nearly to the front of the stage when I got there just as the warm up band "Dead Set" were finishing up. They have a really good sound - a cross between mashup/punk band. Can't seem to find anything about them on the Interwebs though. [flickr style="padding: 10px;"]tag:santogold+20090105@tsanglabs[/flickr] Santogold's DJ started the show with a mix of old classic 80s & recent tunes. Santogold wore a very baggy Spacesuit, which was not very flattering and I'm sure she was feeling the heat in it. I'm sure the vigorous dancing did not help either. She performed most of the songs on her current Album "Santogold" and got up a bunch of volunteers from the crowd to help her dance to "Creator". I'll be attaching a video of the performances a bit later. On a more disappointing note however was the crowds reaction to Santogold not performing an encore, which they booed. Personally I thought it was refreshing as I don't believe an encore should always occur, it should be an exception and part of a memorable performance and when the crowd deserves it. How the crowd reacted showed that they did not deserve an encore. If you have not heard of Santogold before check out her MySpace page to hear some tracks. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Un8Zlpzd8