Spider Vomit

[2007]

Here's a rough and ready video of Spider Vomit I've never seen until today. Scuzzy tripped out raunch'n'roll baby!

You know what's funny I saw Spider Vomit live once and had their cd. Back in the late 00s I had the first cds by St Helens, Beaches and Scott & Charlene's Wedding but I did not realise the dude from Spider Vomit was the same dude in S&CW and the chick in St Helens was the singer in Spider Vomit and the main dude in St Helens played bass on the first Scott & Charlene's Wedding album. That's all news to me today. All I knew was that the bird who played guitar in Spider Vomit was also in Beaches and that she was awesome. Her name was and is Gill Tucker.

I was once accused of being a hipster for owning the Widows Walk cd.

[2006]

Here's an even rougher videeo. Spider Vomit doing Widows Walk live in someone's lounge room a year earlier. Tribal psychedelic grunge Royal Trux stylee. So the singers here are Hannah Brooks who went on to sing in St Helens and Craig Darmody who went on to form Scott & Charlene's Wedding. 

St Helens - Pharaohs Tomb [2009]

At the time I thought St Helens leaned way too much into their Royal Trux and Television influences but I gotta say there are some pretty cool tunes on their one and only cd Heavy Profession. It's all dual guitar interplay and intertwining dual vocals. 

St Helens - One In Seventeen [2009]

Now that we're in this constant state of decline culturally and otherwise, I really appreciate these guys giving it good crack. The Rolling Stones heavily influenced Television and The Rolling Sones heavily influenced Royal Trux and The Rolling Stones, Television and Royal Trux heavily influenced St Helens and now I can dig it man. That's a triple layer of Stones which is just the right amount. There's a bit Neil and bit of J to add into the pastiche mix on this tune too. I'm starting to think that this tune is so good it might just be undeniable...  

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Footscray Station [2010]

So the singer here is Craig Darmody who had been in Spider Vomit. Here though he's in more of an 80s indie jangle mode à la The Clean, The Bats and The-Go Betweens so I never put 2 and 2 together. Who cares anyway. Para Vista Social Club was an instant classic in my mind which now I see is kinda funny because it is just as much indebted to its influences as the St Helens album. Why do we allow certain things and not others? It's a mystery. 

Scott & Charlene's Wedding - Every Detail [2010]

Every Detail's got all the intense jangles and strums and repetition swirling into a maelstrom echoing The Velvets, The Feelies, The Clean et al. Nobody really expected a revival of this kind of music we thought it had been done to death by the end of the 80s but these kids weren't even around when REM, The Clean, The Verlaines, The Bats and The Chills were getting played on all night music video show Rage so I guess it was fresh to them.

The downbeat sounds of both St Helens and Scott & Charlene's Wedding were retroactively put into the fake Melbourne jangle genre of the last 13 years dubbed dolewave. This was a joke invented as a pejorative term for pissweak bands like Dick Diver and Twerps. I really don't get that St Helens get included as they don't have a wannabe Dunedin 2.0 bone in their body, Scott & Charlene's Wedding however...