Save the Hoey

I heard today that one of Sydney's music institutions, the Hopetoun Hotel (known affectionately as The Hoey) has been closed until further notice.

This seems an appropriate place to post this, seeing as I spent the better part of my late teens/early 20s in this venue listening to music. It was a weekend ritual: Friday night; get the train to Central, do the massive walk up that ridiculous hill that is Foveaux Street, get stamped, buy a schooner of New, run into people, watch music, drink more beer, go home. Or to the Townie.

I saw a lot of great Australian music at the Hoey. Bands like Swirl, Bluebottle Kiss, Big Heavy Stuff, Crow, Further, Smudge, Sneeze, Ratcat, International Karate... The list truly does go on. The Hoey is an iconic venues, one where so many bands have cut their teeth, and where many a music fan has honed their love of local bands. It felt like OUR venue, you know? One where you could just turn up when a decent gig was on and you would know half the people there.

The reasons for the indefinite closure? Noise complaints, lack of security, lack of money and... well, lack of money.

A lot of people are getting behind this though, so you should too.
There's a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=142845142317&ref=mf
And a Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/savethehoey

SAVE THE HOEY!

Songs

In my day job I'm a sub-editor I have developed a dislike of bands with non-band-like simplistic names that are difficult to fact check. Like Songs for example: a band name that defies any useful google/bing search, even if you are as specific as possible (unsurprisingly, a search like "songs band music sydney" yields no useful results).

But I shouldn't judge by name alone, because if I did I wouldn't like half the bands I do; and its also quite unfair for a band like Songs who, once you manage to locate their presence on the internet, are actually quite good. A little on the experimental indie side, they remind me of a more laid back Velvet Underground, a more cohesive Sonic Youth. There is a lovely lo fi quality about them - gives their music a nice raw quality. Could this be the return of true 'indie' music? Songs seem to be doing a lot of shows around town lately; ample opportunity to check them out.

To save you from performing a fruitless net search like myself, here is where you can find this awesome four-piece on the interwebs:

Official website: http://www.songssongs.net/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Songs/38313259952?ref=ts#
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ssongsssongs

The Crayon Fields

There is something wonderfully geeky about this mild-mannered band from Melbourne. And that's not just cos it seems like 99 percent of the band members bear nerd glasses. This music is moody, melodic and cruisy. It reminds me a little bit of Belle and Sebastian meets Papas Fritas. I really dig that spacious echo-ness that seems to canvas their music. It gives the songs like Mirror Ball a wonderfully nostalgic sound.

Please check out this lovely band's MySpace page for more tunes.