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.

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 girl/boy 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 a 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... or has my naff detector broken now that I'm old... 

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? Taste: It's a mystery. 

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

Every Detail's got all the intense jangles and strums and the noisy repetition swirling into a maelstrom echoing The Velvets, The Feelies, The Clean et al. Nobody really expected a popular revival of this kind of music, we thought it had been done to death by the end of the 80s although it had continued in its own little alcove during the 90s & 00s where the diehards were keeping the faith. These Melbourne 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 a trendy fresh and retro to them.

The downbeat sounds of both St Helens and Scott & Charlene's Wedding were retroactively chucked into the fake genre dubbed dolewave. This was a joke invented as a pejorative term for pissweak jangly indie bands in Melbourne in 2012 like Dick Diver and Twerps. A scene is not a genre but somehow a few years later midwit writers took it seriously and now its got a wikipedia page all of its own. 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...

Beaches - Hoedown [2008]

I guess this was the first Beaches tune we all heard. So Gillian Tucker plays bass here and made the video. Beaches were a strange sorta Melbourne underground supergroup with the most guitarists. Hoedown is an upbeat driving surf guitar jam. Pretty cool.

Beaches - Halve [2010]

More guitars is better! A swarm of sparkling, driving and spaced out guitars go into swirling overdrive for your dreamy listening pleasure. The cosmic-psych-gaze is real.