So the time has come...

Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011

For a new blog update. I must unfortunately let you know that every single word of this update is the pathetic, honest truth.

On Saturday it was our drummer Cougar Jones’ manly birthday party for manly men. It was an underground arm wrestling tournament, and by far the most homoerotic thing I’ve ever seen. There was arm-wrestling, indian leg-wrestling, dice shooting, a dance-off, and as much 80s power rock as could fit on an ipod.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, our bass player London ended up having his humerus snapped into a million pieces during the competition and was rushed to St Vincents ER.

If you look carefully you can see the exact moment our career went up in smoke


London is going to be out of action for quite some time and will most probably miss all of the upcoming tour (yes, the one we are due to start this weekend) and is currently sitting at home feeling sorry for himself.

We thought we’d try and make the best of a bad situation and have a competition -




Send whatever you like through to The Snowdroppers, 42 King St, Newtown, NSW 2042 or email us and you’ll make his day.


Also, we're currently training up a replacement for the tour, so don't worry, we'll still be rocking out for the next few months. It is only bass after all. We did however have to cancel the Wollongong show, for which i can't apologise enough.

Watch this space for more updates as the tour progresses and we hope to see you at the shows soon.

So anyway, this party seemed to be a magnet for stupidity. Another of the guests was so drunk that he went to hug his friend, missed and fell forward and split his head open down to the skull, on the corner of a brick wall.

Another inebriated fellow was having a play fight in the toilets and slipped on urine and dislocated his knee. Whilst the paramedics (on the third separate visit for the night) were trying to load him onto the stretcher, one of the other esteemed gentlemen in attendance stole a Penthrox inhaler which led to him and his colleague arguing about whose turn it was with the “magic green flute”.

So, in the end there was three of them all in the same ER, the Incredible Hulk, a WWII pilot, and Heath Ledger’s Joker from the Dark Knight.

Here’s some photos.

PS. the Snowdroppers no longer recommend arm-wrestling or arm-wrestling related birthday parties for anyone, especially not aspiring musicians. Stick to video games and huffing glue, kids!

This is the birthday boy (The Bankstown Baby) with the MC for the evening, Dick Battington.

 

Tanned Man faces off against the Bankstown Baby.

 

Cut that cheese honey.

 

Indian leg wrestling.

 

Yours truly (The Marrickville Metro), Dick Battington and unnamed mexican wrestler

 

Believe it or not, The Milky-Bar Kid (the idiot in the black shirt on the left) was the overall winner for the night. He was strutting his stuff later that night on Oxford St and Silverchair’s Daniel Johns came up to ask him what the trophy was for. Milky explained he was the arm-wrestling champion of the world and Daniel Johns invited him to come drink french champagne with him. This actually happened.

Pauly










 

Dickheads

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It was the second worst strip club I've ever been in

Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Though, being the second worst strip club I’d ever been in also made it the third best, so perhaps I’m not the best judge of such things. And to be fair, the gap between it and the very worst (which was in Wellington for those keeping score) was considerable. And to be fair to Wellington, the ‘best’ was also in Wellington.

It was around 6am. There’d been a gig I went to see in Newtown and I was drinking with the dregs of the venue’s bar staff after closing time. I’d spent the last hour or two at the Townie making the usual mistakes; signing up to play guitar on the album of someone who’s music I’d never heard, and arguing about the meaning of ‘Once Were Warriors’ with a half-Maori half-Samoan Chef.

I’m not too keen on the idea of going to the Cross with about $3 in my wallet but the whole group is getting into cabs en route, because it turns out one of the bar girls has never had  the pleasure of “boobs in her face”, and Chef decides this must be rectified. I have to stop in the middle of my spirited “cook the man some eggs” monologue and hop in.

Alice Terry, who’s album I’ve just volunteered to play guitar on, takes a front row seat in front of one of ShowGirls’ finest ladies with the coolly appraising eye of a titty-bar connoisseur (which it turns out, she is). Chef buys her $40 worth of vagina in the face (which turns out to be quite a lot) and an old Asian man asks the girl I’m trying to hit on if she’ll strip for him. She’s quite offended, but I point out she is a pretty girl and we are in a strip club, after all. I’m sure we’ve all made the mistake of going into a Chinese restaurant and asking an old Asian man what the specials were, who didn’t even work there. No? Ok.

A few depressing Gwen Stefani hits later, one of the waitresses comes up and motions to me, shouting in an horrendous, possibly Scottish accent. What does she want? Money? A passport home? A delicious deep-fried snack? Oh, it turns out she’s asking if she can fondle my beard. I feel incredibly objectified but consent, wondering if I can parlay it into some sort of free drink. I can’t, even though this place seems to be based on the concept of trading body parts for goods and services.

Anyway, I was supposed to spend the day writing an informative blog about all the amazing places we’re going on our upcoming Lo-Fi Thigh High tour, but they’re all on the ‘upcoming shows’ part of the website and I’m tired, so just that look at that, dummy.

For anyone in Sydney, make sure you come to our final, homecoming date of the tour at the Metro Theatre, 9th of December. It’s the biggest place we’ve ever booked so if we don’t get enough people there it’ll look shithouse.

It’s going to be our first headline gigs in Tasmania, Byron Bay, and Broken Hill, and our very first time in Western Australia. Swan Lagers for all!

I was also going to tell you about how we’re going to be on the wiggles ReWiggled album celebrating their 20th anniversary, and how honoured we are to be alongside bands like Frenzal Rhomb, Jebediah, the Living End, etc and make it into some sort of joke that we were supposed to actually be on the Hi-5 tribute album and there was a pressing error at the ABC factory, but I’m sure you’ll hear heaps about it in the next few weeks. Here’s the tracklisting.
http://timberandsteel.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/rewiggled-a-tribute-to-the-wiggles/

Ps. Thank you to all for the kind words about our new song we put out the other day. You can still download it for free here, and it and another track will be available at the gigs on limited amounts of vinyl. With the best vinyl artwork since “Smell the Glove”. That’s a guarantee.

Pauly
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Hey, I'm bloggin here, Asshole!: The Snowdroppers in the USA

Posted on Friday, May 6, 2011

Well, it’s been a busy couple of months for the Snowdroppers. We did our first overseas trip (not counting New Zealand, obviously) after being invited to play at South By Southwest, which is like a really big festival in Austin, Texas of over 2000 bands. What we remember of it after all the free ‘Budweisers’ and ‘Pabst Blue Ribbons' [1] was a good week.

We did a couple of gigs in New York the following week. Like all good places to go including but not limited to Wagga Wagga, Woy Woy, and Duran Duran - New York, New York lived up to the hype. Los Angeles on the other hand was a bit of a disappointment. The gig was great fun, we played at the Viper Room on Sunset Blvd (the place where River Phoenix died).

But I must again quote Cougar Jones’ bon mot “Its like Hollywood on the Gold Coast, but in Hollywood”. The most famous person we saw was Greg Brady drinking a coffee at Venice Beach.

I’m Gonna Wash that (Big) Mac Right Outta My Hair: Some Enchanted Evenings in the South Pacific

After the USA we went to play a week of gigs in New Caledonia, a place none of us had any idea about - where it was in the world, what language they spoke, and if Johnny would drink too much and spend over an hour in the shower throwing up maccas on himself [2]. The gigs were mostly good, but we got upstaged at one club by a bartender, who, in the intermission, did a firetwirling/firebreathing act half naked and put some lit firesticks in his g-string whilst showering the crowd in rum. All to a trance remix of the Carmina Burana’s O Fortuna[3]. Eurotrash is alive and well and living in Melanesia.

Typical New Caledonians

Today we just got back from Bluesfest up in Byron Bay, where we got to play two shows. They were both great, definitely the biggest crowds we’ve played to so far.

(I didn’t have any photos of our crowd but I’ve put one on I got off google so you get the general idea)

It was a trip to be on the same bill as Bob Dylan, BB King, Elvis Costello and the rest.
Thanks to everyone of you who came along to any of our shows the last couple of months!

We’re gonna have a little rest now, unpack our suitcases and hopefully write a few more songs.

Pauly

[1] These are American alcoholic drinks: similar to beer
[2] The answers were: ‘sort of out in the ocean to the right of Queensland’, French, and ‘yes but only once’.
[3] ‘the song off the Big Beer Ad’ for those reading in Woy Woy

Ps. i also did a blog for Blunt magazine which you can read here

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New Zealand!

Posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010

We just arrived back from our first trip out of the country as support act for New Zealand(and one Cougar Jones)’s “It Girl” Gin Wigmore. Quite a big difference to go from supporting Grinspoon in regional Australia, to theatre and opera house dates in Aotearoa. For one thing, in New Zealand, southern cross tattoos don’t immediate signify you as a horrendous bogan, the pre-european culture is treated with more than token respect, and the beer is fucking atrocious.

Gin gets presents delivered to her before almost every gig from adoring fans. Hamilton was a particularly interesting haul consisting of wine, flowers, a 6 CD set of New Zealand’s Top 100 Songs (nearly all Split Enz, Crowded House, Bic Runga and Dave Dobbyn – no joke – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature%27s_Best) and some keychain led flashlights. Generally though, whatever isn’t crack cocaine or nudie photos gets thrown out, or given to whatever shmuck happens to be passing by.

I spend a couple of fruitless days trying to track down GAB, or General Alcoholic Beverage, which my friend Kris informed me was some sort of terrible no-name spirit sold for cheap to homeless people.

We run into some trouble on the drive from Hamilton to Palmerston North when we get lost and a blizzard hits, making it too dark to see the map. Luckily, I have my new flashlight key-ring (a late birthday present from Cougar) and before long we arrive in Palmerston North, the Jewel of the North Island. Gin cancels the next couple of shows on the tour for the hell of it (“me fans are a bunch of cunts anyway”) and we spend a great week or so getting high on salvia and shooting BB guns at sheep.

Here are some pictures!

Our first time touring away from the glorious Australian blokey-ness of the Hume & Pacific Highways. Would we miss the Big characters and Big adventures of this country? Fuck Yeah!

Is there irony in a Christchurch Museum display about earthquakes, getting damaged by an earthquake? I don’t know, I was too busy being appalled by their horribly out of date technology.

Drugs are not only legal in New Zealand, they’re also packaged in children-friendly garish colours!

Guns are also readily available and Kiwis have no qualms about handing them out to those on the Beardy, Lebanese, or Sri Lankian end of the spectrum, as Ru, Ritchie & myself found out here. How quaint!

Says it all really.

Shit. Fucking. Yeah. Booze is super-cheap in New Zealand owing to I presume low import taxes, good exchange rates and an ingrained national drinking problem, judging from the 24 hour supermarket/bottle-o on every corner.

ps. Here’s a picture I drew of myself as a bad-ass robot

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Catch up time

Posted on Wednesday, September 1, 2010

This “blog” is a little behind. What with all the excitement lately I forgot to do it. Here’s some I wrote a while ago.

We’ve been on the road again for the latest leg of the Grinspoon tour. Wagga Wagga, Orange and Bathurst involved a lot of driving time. Triple J really do just play the same twelve songs on repeat, don’t they? I guess I wouldn’t complain if one of them was ours, but it never is. I saw a big crow do a shit mid-air flying across the road, which is cool.

The crowd have been quite receptive on this leg, we have had a great increase in song requests from audience members. Although it would be great if they got the song names right. It’s “Fucked Up Blues”, not “Fuck Off”. As usual, being on the road, we have been solicited by numerous hysterical young girls. “Can you introduce me to Amy Meredith?” they cry. The one time a girl actually asked us to stick around for a drink, I forgot til we were in the van. Sorry Caitlin.

We are bonding with the guys from Grinspoon with their unique brand of humour. We never actually see the guys in person but they have begun leaving post-it notes on our equipment to rev us up before we play. “DON’T SUCK TONIGHT”, “PISS OFF BLUES FAGS”, and “YOUR BAND IS A SHIT BAND” have gone into the scrapbook.

Bathurst was an all ages gig, which is something we don’t get to do very often. It was quite cold but very fun and we were pretty energetic, I did a jump off the bass cabinet and hurt my groin. It was when we were waiting out the back to load the gear into the van, so unfortunately not many people saw it. The worst part is that this part of the blog is actually true.

When the club workers start to wheel in the drink trolleys, we play a game called “Guess Who(se rider this is)”; it’s pretty fun and easy. I’ve created an online version of this game using photographs, as below for you to enjoy:

 

Spot the Difference! If you look carefully there are several differences between these two pictures.

This game can also be extended to “Whose Groupie Is That?”

 

From L to R: Phil, Pat, Kris, Joe, Tim Rogers

And below…

I figure Grinspoon must also be fans of such games because the most common words heard from their dressing room are “Whose Line is it Anyway?”

Paul

Twitter: @pauly_kay

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