Short Stack

I have whole-heartedly enjoyed seeing this week's comical social-network-tiff between pop culture blogger Jess McGuire and the fans — and lead singer — of Short Stack.

McGuire posts a photo of the three lads wearing nothing but socks on their penises. When I was 15 I guess I thought the idea of the Red-Hot Chili Peppers wearing nothing but socks on their penises was kind of amusing as well. But I would have thought anybody who tried it now would be derided for being several decades too late.

McGuire, sadly, hasn't put the cream of the twitter traffic on her blog, most of it is badly spelt comments pointing out that, at 28, McGuire is too old to like Short Stack. This leads to my favourite which was from @nicoletosev saying “shes at home with metapores and hot flushs @jessmcguire just needs alil dick.” Metapores! That's adorable.

Metapores. That cheers me right up.

Even better than a packet of Timtams

Pleasingly, the new management at the Brunswick Hotel (140 Sydney Rd Brunswick) have asked us to play and we've found a slot in our busy schedule on Sunday the 19th of July. Come along and join the rock. Ships and Thieves are playing as well and that means two red-hot bands on the one stage on the one evening. For free. OMG.

Lean and Mean

We, here at the Squidquarters, are always up for a fight (if the comments in the last post are anything to go by we like a fight with each other most of all). And it may be worth thinking twice before taking us on. We are shedding appendages and delinquent organs like forward-thinking telecommunications organisations are dropping H.323 endpoints for SIP. To recap:

• Silky without appendix
• Crafty without teeth
• Paddy without braces
• UT still largely intact… perhaps reconstructed.

So look out on the Sydney tour for fancy smiles, easy chewing technique and tummies that don't hurt.

Classic Australian independent rock

I heard The Saints' (I'm) Stranded being played at a café near the office where I rock my day job and I was struck by the comparison between it and another classic Australian independent release, GOD's My Pal.

Both feature raw production, both feature unsophistocated musicianship and both mention homes (one describes a protagonist being far away from home and the other is inviting you over to the protagonists house. Charming)

The big difference is a 16-year-old Joel Silbersher trying to sound like Lemmy versus a 17-year-old Chris Bailey trying to sound like Bob Dylan. My Pal is charged with a potent hook and (I'm) Stranded is utterly unlistenable.

From Hugh to Eternity

Okay, let's be frank. People dig their own kids. And not for the first time I find myself standing right in the middle of the road as the everyman.

Despite my awesome song writing skill and flaming hot guitar work and lilting yet soaring vocal prowess, I am not a particularly gifted musician. What I have comes through graft and pretence. My son, the reincarnation of the Buddha known to you as Prince Hughie Siddharta, is 16 months old and completely wondered me by singing the first phrase of Bah Bah Blacksheep the other day and has barely stopped singing it since. The return phrase is now often appended. The lyrics are all "bah bah bah bah bah" but I am openly amazed. The first two intervals are spot on. Tonight we had a rousing Hot Cross Buns added to the already formidable set list. My son, the God King known to you as Prince Norodom Hughie, appears to be a musical genius on par with Mozart and Whitney Houston. 16 months! Well outside the first year of perfect pitch already covered on this blog.

Quiz

It's pleasing to note, from time to time, how thoroughly the Squid Ink way of life infiltrates modern society.

This week's example comes from page seven of the Good Weekend magazine which came free with today's copy of The Age.

Question four of the quiz asks “What marine creatures have three hearts and blue blood?” which is a lock-it-in, put-your-house-on-it gimme for any fan of the band.

And then, only inches away is question 15 of the quiz which asks “What type of animal is a hinny?”

What type of animal is a hinny? Is this the final proof that Squid Ink's radio-friendly smash hit is taking over the press or possibly that Ms MacDonald and Mr Schluter, who compiled this particular quiz, were at the gig at the Brunswick Hotel — hoping in vain to see a fellow Fairfax employee playing onstage — and thereafter had Squids and crossbreeds on their minds?

Food for thought.

Squid Ink Go Global

Global is a fairly loose term as we have been struggling to crack Africa and most of the Americas but non-continental Europe has been smashed (particularly a small corner of the home counties). I sent this link to the dudes via a Generation Y social networking device and it was blocked I think for the use of the word cock inside Buzzcocks...and I thought Generation X were a bunch of prudes? Which leads me neatly to an observation...in my conversations with people who have attended gigs and listened to the debut Magnum Opus we have been likened to, in order: Stiff Little Fingers, the Buzzcocks, the Descendants and in the review below (taken, perhaps not, from the Whitstable and District Echo, an organ no doubt well respected by Silky for its gritty, hard-nosed, good-old-fashioned-get-out-there-and-find-a-story kind of journalism mixed with cutting edge cultural reportage...and apparently all done for the visually impaired) Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks again. This is heady company we keep. I find it genuinely uplifting that the reviewer has actually listened to the album.

Squid Ink : 8 Legs To Hold You. **** Album of the week.

"These Aussie wierdos certainly have more in common with English punk outfits like Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers than their compatriots and ex-prisoners Midnight Oil, INXS and Ice House. But that's a really good thing believe me. The excellent opener "Deadpan" sets their stall out early doors. A "Tour De Force" might be pushing it but these guys show us that going crazy isn't the sole right of Aussie cricketers (esp when they lose the Ashes this summer)! The tight musicianship all round kicks ass and I couldn't fault the recording/engineering - they clearly have well equipped studios and producers down under! Interesting mixing with some clever bits show these guys have some imagination alright - eg start of "Mrs Bun". Some corking little songs in there, too - lots of laugh out loud lyrics - check out "Inter-species Carnality Blues" for belly laughs - "Are you a man or is that some kind of falsie? Are you left handed or is that some kind of palsy?" I found myself sniggering on the tube whilst listening on my iPod! Added this album at the same time as Elbow's Seldom seen kid and I found myself skipping back to 8L2HY! And Elbow got some crappy Mercury prize for that tosh. Overall a groovy little album I'll be happy to listen to whilst walking the dog or pogoing around Whitstable.

Peter "Katie Price" Andre, Chief Music Writer, May 2009"

Squids on film

I really like this and decided, spontaneously, to blog about it. What do you reckon?

ELO made some pretty awesome videos, back in the day. Should Squid Ink make a video? For which song? And what kind of video should we make? How come I can't figure out how to embed a youtube clip in this post?

I already feel like Modern Doug missed a good opportunity to shoot some stock footage with his visit to the Donkey Refuge last year. Would hate to miss another. Alternatively, we could just drop 'Song for Uri' on top of the vision from the clip to Soundgarden's Spoonman, submit it to Rage and hope that nobody notices.

Oh Rock of Ages

Squid Ink played the Brunswick Hotel last weekend.

We launched the album in a blazing fury of hot rock and the crowd loved it.

However, you may not have heard the bad news: Silky-D — our own hard-rocking, praying-mantis-shaped guitarist — due to health reasons could not be on stage. The band felt dreadfully unhappy about this and so, I fear, did the audience. We tried to placate the murmuring fans by giving them a taste of Stand-In-Dave but it simply wasn't the same.

Anyway, Stand-In-Dave handled the material comfortably, we nailed the old hits, the new songs went down well. We chose to keep Motorcade in our pocket for you until Silky can join us because only then can we do it justice. Look forward to that.

We have to play again when Silky is back on two legs. Watch this space.

Squid Ink On Ice

No no! Not the drug of choice for the post-pepsi generation instead a reference to the travelling Disney spectaculars and to their originator's suspended animation. Why?

When I popped the live CD of last saturday's gig, unimaginitively titled "John Barleycorn Must Live III", into my computer iTunes helpfully suggested that I was about to rip "Bambi - Disney - Children's Music". I corrected it but was quietly pleased to know that we were helping to ensure that the kids are alright.

On Turning 33

1) RPMs...should probably leave it here. At Squid Ink Headquarters we are all about the works of Gamsci but cannot stomach his lack of revolutionary intent. If there are not 33 and 1/3 revolutions of the mind per minute in the office Silky starts playing Motorcade and Paddy smashes the capitalist machine.

2) How good is it to have an enormous monster of a gig at the Barlecorn Hotel this saturday evening at 8pm, the true home of Rock and Roll and nominal refernces to alcoholism?

War is over (if you want it)

Squid Ink's war against apathy, child-rearing and the deleterious impact of modern-day work commitments has finally been won. On May 8 — VE Day according to Wikipedia — there will be no peace in our time, only red-hot rock.

Banners will wave, strangers will kiss in the street, panty-hose will become suddenly affordable once more and — most importantly — the boys from Squid Ink will play live for the first time in more than a year.

Eight Legs to Hold You, an opus three-days in the making, will be launched upon the world with a corruscating live performance at the Brunswick Hotel. New merchandise will be available, as will copies of the album and — possibly if the publishing department can meet its deadlines — the first ever, colllector's item, issue of the Squid Ink zine.

There will be new material to unveil and old favourites to revisit as the Squid Army gets a new set of orders from its four Churchillian overlords. No war can be won by one band and support will come from Ships and Thieves as well as The Chemistry Set. The Age calls them: “Among the best bands ever to have a shared a stage with the eight-legged bushmen of the calamari.”*

More details to follow as they come to hand.

*technically not The Age per se but Silky-D, though he does work there.