Modern Error win the Guinness Live Thursdays Grand Final and head to Ireland!

Last week, Modern Error from Blacktown overcame three other bands - Iron Bar Hotel, from Sydney, Buddha in a Chocolate Box, from Hamilton and Palatial Digs from Perth - to win the Guinness Live Thursdays Grand Final.

Over 200 music fans supped the black stuff at the event at the Gaelic Theatre in Sydney as judges elected the five-piece to be the band that should head to Dublin for the upcoming Arthur’s Day celebrations, where they will play alongside the Scissor Sisters, Stereophonics, Paloma Faith and Calvin Harris.

In our opinion, the panel made the correct decision. While the Blacktown band's performance was a little high on the histrionics (we could have done without the guitarist striding to the middle of the stage and delivering his solo with one foot on the monitor while the lead singer was on his knees and the bassist was head-banging open-mouthed, if we're being honest), in terms of tunes, these guys were the best. Now, having frantically ordered their passports they'll be taking their melodic heavy pop-rock with nu-metal and emo edges across the world.
 
In case you haven't been paying attention, Arthur’s Day is a globally celebrated event honouring the life and legacy of Arthur Guinness – The man who introduced Guinness to the world when he signed the lease on the St. James’ Gate Brewery in 1759. 47 other countries will also be holding high-profile music events and celebrations to honour the remarkable life and legacy of Arthur Guinness.

As you can see by the below reaction to the judges' decision (which, from what our sources tell is, was not taken lightly at all and was a very close-run thing), the Modern Error boys are pretty happy to be heading to Ireland. We don't mind admitting we're kinda jealous.

Guinness launch Live Thursdays

With Arthur’s Day around the corner, Guinness last night launched an eight-week nationwide campaign, entitled Guinness Live Thursdays, to celebrate craftsmanship in music and with the aim of finding Australia’s next up-and-coming band.

It's a competition totally worth entering too, as the winning band will score an all-expenses-paid trip to Dublin to perform alongside some top live acts - and Stereophonics - at the Arthur’s Day celebrations on Thursday 22nd September. Arthur’s Day, incidentally, honours the date in 1759 that good old Arthur Guinness signed the lease on the St. James’ Gate Brewery and introduced the black stuff to the world

Anyway, after playing an intimate live acoustic performance at yesterday's launch, ambassador for Guinness Live Thursdays and APRA award winning blues and roots artist, Ash Grunwald, told us, "I am so excited to be part of something that helps untapped quality talent get noticed by the Australian music industry. We have a lot to offer here."

WANNA GET YOUR BAND INVOLVED?
From today, aspiring bands from Australia can upload their MP3 tracks on the Guinness Australia Facebook page to enter the competition. The entries will be shortlisted to 30 bands who will play in 15 regional judged heats across Australia. The four finalists will then progress to the Guinness Live Thursdays National Final, due to be held in Sydney on 15th September. The lucky winners will then whizz around the globe to take part in the third annual Arthur’s Day global celebration - alongside the Scissor Sisters, Stereophonics, Paloma Faith and Calvin Harris and more - on Thursday 22nd September, in Dublin.

So get uploading today - and you could find yourself on stage on the other side of the planet in a few weeks!

Stereophonics - Keep Calm and Carry On

When Stereophonics first burst onto the scene over a decade ago, they were considered a really exciting new prospect due to their excellent suburban stories, which were delivered with verve, feeling and that amazing growl of vocalist Kelly Jones. Such vigour quickly dissipated though and, since then, occasional glimpses of that early promise have been drowned in a sea of pub-rock mediocrity; solid, unchallenging songs with clichéd lyrics and choruses that your older brother loves to sing along to. Still, their albums have continued to sell by the truckload, so it’s no surprise that the tried-and-tested Stereophonics formula is largely apparent on their seventh studio album.

Because the Welsh quartet aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here, it’s no surprise that Keep Calm… isn’t going to change anyone’s life. On the occasions they reveal that the fire is still in their bellies, like in the adrenaline-fuelled Trouble, and that there is a narrative to their songs, like on the poppy Innocent, they can still be rather engaging, but all too often they veer towards the safety of the middle of the road. Songs like Could You Be The One? are sentimental claptrap, with Jones really overdoing the gravelled gargle that his once amazing voice has evolved into. The age-old Stereophonics problem is that, for every Dakota, there will always be a handful of dirge of the Mr Writer variety, and, frustratingly, Keep Calm… is no different.

Without wishing to make the previous two paragraphs seem superfluous, this album can be reviewed succinctly enough by simply saying that it is just another Stereophonics record, nothing more, nothing less.

Stereophonics at The Metro

Following my interview with Stereophonics, I took in one of their gigs in Sydney:













STEREOPHONICS
BRITISH INDIA
The Metro, Sydney
05/05/08

It was a case of trying to spot the Australian in the crowd for the first of two sold-out shows at The Metro, as it seemed the overwhelming majority of people that descended on George Street were British [including this reviewer]. Due to early doors, many punters were either still on their way to the venue or clambering for booze at the bar while Melbourne lads British India played, which was a shame because their short set was powerful and impressive.

While travelling half way round the globe to play to a room filled with people from your homeland seems like defeating the point, Stereophonics revelled in the rapturous reception they received as they sauntered onto stage. With singer Kelly Jones looking quite the clichéd rock frontman in a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, the Welshmen punctuated what was essentially a greatest hits set with a handful of tracks from their new long-player, Pull The Pin.

With six big selling albums to select tunes from, their performance was always going to provoke something of a singalong, with second track A Thousand Trees sparking the first major audience participation of the night. The first low point though came with the arrival of the rather sour Mr Writer, with Jones grumbling: “Why don’t you tell it like it really is?” Well, okay - while upbeat numbers like The Bartender and the Thief perfectly suit his distinctive sandpaper vocal, slower songs such as this turn it into a horrible, lifeless drone. Other weak moments included the limp You Could Have It All, and even the most enthusiastic fan must have struggled to remain engaged during Hurry Up and Wait which, fittingly, seemed to last forever.












Conversely, More Life in a Tramp’s Vest and Local Boy in the Photograph were riotous romps that proved Stereophonics’ real strength lies in their punchy, aggressive rock tunes. While one might expect such energy from tracks written when the band were young whippersnappers, pleasingly, offerings from their new album displayed similar urgency and vibrancy.

Ending the night with the delicious Dakota [which meant we were thankfully spared their painfully lacklustre cover version of Handbags and Gladrags] the Brits left the stage to a massive ovation, suggesting that the many backpackers in the crowd were happy with their decision to spend about three weeks’worth of food budget on a ticket.

Stereophonics interview

I interviewed Stereophonics before they arrived in Australia. Here is the version that appeared in Melbourne's Inpress:






















STEREOPHONICS bassist Richard Jones talks to ROB TOWNSEND about the past, the present and the future

Because they slipped off the radar for a couple of years, it’s easy to forget just how popular Stereophonics are. Their last five albums have entered the British charts at number one, they’ve headlined Glastonbury and played huge shows all around the world. So it is little wonder that tickets for their upcoming shows at The Forum have been selling like particularly hot cakes. “It’s really good yeah,” bassist Richard Jones beams about the band’s popularity over here. “It’s always really good whenever we’ve been to Australia, and we’ve always wanted to tour as extensively as possible, but for one reason or another we haven’t been able to. So it is nice to know that, six albums in, we can still sell tickets.”

As seems to be the case with so many British bands, the Welshmen love heading over this way, and have fond memories of previous trips to this side of the planet. “I think we were there for about four weeks the first time we were out there and it was really cool,” Jones reminisces. “You know, women are crazy, men are crazy, booze is really good and everybody likes to get entertained. They’re all good ingredients for a band touring.”

The tour comes on the back of recent release Pull The Pin, meaning there will be plenty of new tunes on display. Yet, with such an extensive back-catalogue, there are bound to be a few oldies as well. When Jones talks about how much fun it is to throw in some older tracks, I ask him whether there are any songs the band is bored of having to wheel out at every single gig. “I suppose you get tired of playing the ones you get more known for, like Handbags and Gladrags, Have a Nice Day and to some extent Dakota. It’s such a popular song that everybody wants to hear it every time we do a gig. Sometimes you do want to be selfish and say: ‘Fuck it, we’re not gonna play that tonight.’” But a band doesn’t reach such a level of success without knowing how to please a crowd, so chances are that these live favourites will end up on the set-list. “At the end of the day it could be an audience that has never seen us before, so you’ve got to give them what they want.”














As Jones casually chats down a phone-line from his home in Wales about everything from the weather [“It was dry today, for a change,”] to the McCartney divorce case [“Who gives a flying fuck?”] it’s hard to believe this is a band that had a painfully tumultuous relationship with the press for so many years. “I just think it was our time to have that slating. You know what happens in the UK; they build someone up and put them on a pedestal and then try to take pot-shots at them to knock them off. That was just our time.” Their fractured relationship with the media wasn’t helped by their song, Mr. Writer, which many journalists saw as a personal attack from frontman Kelly Jones. “For us it was just a song, a moment in time, and after it was written and recorded we forgot about it. We only had to sing it every once in a while but a lot of journalists took it to heart, which says it all. If you think it is about you then I suppose it is about you. Everybody is over it. We just get on with doing what we do.”

The positive reviews that Pull The Pin has received suggest that journalists have indeed got over their animosity towards Stereophonics. The strength of the long-player seems to come from the fact that it plays like an amalgamation of all that was good about their previous recordings and is equally rocky, melodic, upbeat and contemplative. “That’s what we felt when we were recording it. We had the punk rock elements and the really dark elements which we took from bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana and then country elements as well. I think we’ve got to that place where we’re really comfortable with doing all those types of music and if they do fit on the same album then we might as well just put them on there.”

It seems like it’s been ages since the release of their previous album, Language, Sex, Violence, Other? but Jones is keen to dispel any suggestions that the band spent a couple of years just chilling out with their feet up. While they may have been out of the public’s consciousness, they were busy times for Stereophonics. “I suppose from an outside point of view it must have seemed like we were away for a couple of years, but myself and Kelly made a documentary from 10 years worth of footage, we released a live album and we recorded Pull The Pin all in the time we were away from the public eye and then started releasing things the following year. So we were busy, but I suppose from a fan’s point of view it did look like we were doing nothing for two years,” he chuckles.


















As well as keeping him busy, trawling through countless hours of footage for the documentary certainly brought back some happy memories for the Jones. “Just to actually watch yourselves play to 100,000 people at Glastonbury, you could tell that the band really did explode at that time. To watch it all back, it was a good laugh.”

With over ten years worth of releases under their belts, a greatest hits compilation is surely only a matter of time away and Jones admits that their record label is keen on the idea. Such a release often signals the end of the road for a group, so I ask whether his band have ever discussed their future in these terms. “Whenever we take any time off it always feels like I’m unemployed,” he laughs. “So for the band it’s whatever fits. Kelly and I are always telling each other that if one of us doesn’t want to do it or if it doesn’t feel good anymore then we shouldn’t really be doing it. We’ll do it as long as it feels good.”

With albums still hitting the top of the charts and fans still clambering for tickets all over the globe, one guesses that it will continue to feel good for quite some time.