One nice thing about living in Northcote: going to see bands is a lot easier.
I just went to the Empress Hotel to see
Swirl (a Sydney-based guitar-pop
band, who were something like Australia's answer to Slowdive in the early
90s), as well as a local band named Bidston Moss, who were also pretty good.
(There's something about good, tight, groovy guitar pop that is free of the
prions of grunge that tend to turn music into so much slop; a condition that
is sadly common after the 1990s, but I digress.)
I also bumped into some people I knew from
FourPlay gigs there
(Nick and Naomi of
Dandelion Wine,
who will be launching their new album soon, so that will be worth checking
out).
Anyway, I was hoping to go home with a Swirl album, but alas, it was not to
be; their upcoming album is trapped in rights negotiations with recording
companies. Their back-catalogue is deleted, and has been so for a while
because of lack of demand; and the copyrights are still owned by the
recording company, meaning that it's buried in The Man's vaults, and not
even the artists who created it have any rights to it.
There is something very, very wrong with the recording industry...