2004-05-02

Oh, god. The Bitchcraft…

This weekend was the weekend of our big Sydney show. Headliner at the Vic on the Park on a Saturday night.

Different girls prepare differently. I had a big weekend the weekend before, so decided that the week (including Friday night) should be nice and quiet. Indeed, on Friday night I was in bed by an exceedingly daggy 9.30pm.

Nods’ ramped up to the weekend with an impressive run of dates. Wednesday night gave us ‘Girls Night’ a regular dinner event, which was at her house this particular night. Wine is a big winner…Then Thursday night was her night to see the footy show live, which meant some boozin’ with Phoebe and Pat-oos. Friday night was the ANZAC league test at the local stadium, followed by a trip to the Cambridge Hotel from drinkin’ and ‘flying high’. Got home at 4am.

This brought us to Saturday, the day of the show. Girls gathered at Nods’ in Lambton at around 4.30pm, ready for the trip to Sydders in the XF, which we call Teneille. Nods drove, though I think it got quite difficult for her in Sydney, what with the trafiic, the turning and the narrow streets. Maybe she was also fee ing the fact she went out for the last three nights. So the sympathy level was only set on ‘courtesy’.

AM radio hits bring the ‘craft listening pleasure when they take road trips in cars with no CD players. Hits included Basement Jaxx “Good Luck” anything by Justin Timberlake and C and C Music Factory’s classic hit “Things That Make You Go Hmmm”.

Pulling into the venue at about 7pm, we were a little unsure and apprehensive, yet fricken excited. We are often unsure because we don’t know what will happen, and what people/other bands will think of us. Excited, because we hope that it will be a night where we can get pissed and rock the house.

Pretty much straight away we were told to sound check. The nice sound-bloke introduced himself and was a really nice sound-bloke in general. He asked me if we’d had car trouble, since we were a bit late and all. I just told him we had babies and that babysitting didn’t kick in until 4.30. I’d say that was one of the more interesting excuses he’d heard - making a difference from “We couldn’t find the bassplayer” or “ the car blew up”.

Tucking into drinks straight away, we found a table and waited for the hot rock action. We had to wait about an hour, so we settled into our own company and drinks. Was it going to be enough to keep the minds of the ‘craft girls busy? Uh, no. Soon, someone worked out we had a) a digital camera and b) tits. Before long we were passing the camera round, taking cheesecake shots of each other, shirts off, bras out. Lots of pushing up of tits and pouting into the camera. Many would be bored after say, 10 minutes. But we milked it for about three quarters of an hour. No one is the steadily filling pub really paid us much attention. Yet again, Bitchcraft provide a free live show. Fantastic…

Fingered Rogered Vulvas played first. Erica the Town Tryke who organised the show, plays drums in this band. Fuck, she plays drums in most chickcentric bands in Sydney! The band was pretty good, dark melodic rockin’ stuff with twin vocals and lots of humour. Dressing up is a staple of girl’s rockin’ in general: tonight FRV took on the westy hip hop look, with very scary fake moustaches drawn on.

Pussy XXX were next. The name promises a lot of these Melbourne ladies, I was even thinking that with a name like that they must be pretty full on. I was expecting simulated sex acts, hot, high brow sexuality and potty mouth. I was wondering if they would give us a run for our money…

Nah, they didn’t really. They were sassy and fun, with a lead singer who moved quite differently, using the mic stand well and having some attitude. MY GOD THEIR DRUMMER IS AMAZING!! A big sexxy mumma who bashed the drums with tribal gusto, standing up on her seat to bash drums harder. But other than that, they were adequate. Cool lyrics and grunting riffs. Nice.

It was our turn. The crowd had built up nicely and we were ready. After all, I was wearing my ‘mum on the piss’ high heels and had my vodka-lime-and-soda at the ready. The girls had spent some time deciding on a set list - something I am rarely interested in. Most bands I have been in there is usually someone who is very passionate about song order. So I leave it to them and play the songs in whatever order they decide. I really don’t mind.

I got on stage to find the first song on the set list was “Raise Your Fists”. I raised my freakin’ eyebrows. It is not our simplest song…

WE stepped up to the mics and asked the crowd if they knew if the Knights had won. No one did. So, we duly began our set. With the song at the top of the list. “Raise Your Fists”. We got through the first verse and then it dies in the arse. It was let out of the blocks too early, that song and we stuffed it up. No problem, we just stopped and laid into ‘Lip Service’. From then it was much better.

It would be fair to say we slayed them. By the time we played ‘Mummy’s Little Punks’, we had a mosh going on down the front. Sky from Fingered Rogered Vulvas sprained her ankle and some guy collapsed due to being over stimulated (both by the ‘craft and by his own ingestion of substances). Nods and I did a great ‘back to back’ move during “Why Couldn’t You Pick Someone Else?’. Gilli was pulling some great rock lurches, as only bassplayers can. I looked out to the crowd and I could tell we were now amongst fans. There was quite a contingent of the over 30’s in the fellas. Staunch dudes, with flannos or tatts, come out to check out a night called “Crass Special” with bands such as Pussy XXX. All of them were putty in our hands. Victorious, we played an encore as the crowd demanded it. Uh, so we whipped out ‘Raise Your Fists’ again, and this time played it until the end. During the middle shouty bit, I did indeed raise my fists. I saw fists raised in answer throughout the audience. That was pretty cool.

I love the part just after a great show. You pag around backstage to recover from the rock and reflect with bandmates about how sick it was. Then you go out the front and people tell you how much they enjoyed the set (negative and positive). Its so fun…

Interestingly, we had attracted several posses of dudes. We devised a plan to drop off the gear and go to the Town Hall hotel. This would entail Janice driving the XF, as both Nods and I had been drinking. Let me paint you the picture. Janice is lucky to be five foot. The XF is one of the longest makes of cars in the country and ‘ours’ is a station wagon. Janice needs pillows under her arse to see over the dashboard. She could only just reach the pedals even when the seat was brought as far forward as it would go - the combination of being sat higher up by cushions and wanting to reach the peddles and being lucky to be five foot was pretty funny. So Janice the spunky drumming hairdresser drove the XF down a tiny Newtown side street with great success.

Earlier in the night, we had trawled the venue for recreational substances. Gilli struck gold and had to go with old mate to his house to pick something up. He made her wait outside…

Bitchcraft were buzzing around the Town Hall having a good time. About ten dudes had followed us there, and we had easy company as soon as we arrived. I saw one of my flatmates from about 8 years ago, which was pretty weird. The dudes from Eskimo Joe were there also, and I really wanted to go tell them I loved their new song. Other than that, the place is too fricken huge, its like a big open night club. I got over it pretty quickly, as all the dudes were to choked up to really speak to us. I was amused by the fact that even if the five of us split off to talk to different people, within about ten minutes at least three of us would have gravitated back to each other. We just love our own company!

Part of this could be the fact that we just love talking constantly about how great we are and how much we rock. This may sound odd and blatantly conceited. But in reality, its endearing and gives us great confidence. I don’t think its that we have unreasonable huge heads. And we don’t go around trying to convince other people how great we are and how much we rock - we really couldn’t give a fuck about what other people think. We just think we are great and there is great admiration for how hot each of us are. Within our own world.

At times, we may come across as having pretty big personalities. This may be why none of the dudes would really talk to us. There may be more juice to the story of Bitchcraft’s Night at the Town Hall, but what goes on tour, stays on tour.

Janice and I left the pub first, with the other girls telling us they would cruise back to Erica’s house (where we were staying) in about half an hour. Catching a cab easily, we went back to crash out, bored of the non-talking boys and the trendy as fuck crowd at the pub. We talked and smoked it up. I snoozed a bit. Two hours later we heard the ladies approaching. The room became very chatty and smoky. I continued to snooze. Not much sleep was had that night as we ran through the nights events many, many times.

The next morning we were a bit worse for wear. Flatmate’s parents came over at 10am to mow the lawn so that was our cue to shower and pack up. Erica made us yummy coffee and toast from stolen bread - she is so nice to us even though we are heinous wenches.

A band decision was made to buy ourselves a hot brekky with our pay from the night before. Bitchcraft are pretty good with money. We cover our petrol, we pay for our own recordings, buy tshirts to print and produce our own CDs. This day, we were going to reward ourselves. Too often we are frugal with our money and we work very hard to get Bitchcraft out of the kitchen/office/salon.

Breakfast was great: the waitress fell over, Gilli kept moaning about “hitting the wall” and “fucking out” and we kept talking about how great we were. Girls drank diet coke and lemonade for brekky. I psyched up to drive home in the XF…

The drive home was fun, as we tried to milk every last ounce out of our Big Night Out. We stopped at Hornsby and Ourimbah and tried out a thing called ‘Truckie Dust’. It sure helped us to get home, as we sang loudly to tracks on the radio such as ‘Dirty Deeds’, “Land Down Under’ and ‘Australiana’. Every few minutes someone would ask when we were gonna turn around and go back to Sydney to do it all again. I mean, we really did slay it! On this trip we also came up with the concept for the naming and marketing of the new album. But that would be telling…

Landing at Nods’ house in Lambton, the red wine was broken out and we smoked it up. We talked more about how great we were. One of the best calls was “Well, we’re a good lookin’ band…” Soon, we went to a BBQ for Phoebe’s birthday, but I was in no condition. None at all. And besides, we all got bored cuz no one wanted to hear about how sick we were. Damn. So that got old really quick. I went back to Simi’s to watch American Idol and straighten my hair. We smoked it up. Nods’ soon tired of the BBQ and arrived at Simi’s too. Gilli rang to convince us all to got out and do it all again. But I was in no condition. We were all past it. I imagine Gilli was most disappointed.

Nods and I came home. I had my first cup of tea for 36hours. We smoked it up. Nods had fightin’ drinks. Nods offered to give me a crack whore tarot reading, which she did. Parts of the reading included insightful stuff like “this is where you are looking to the future…blah blah blah” and “well, I could go on more about that card, but then I’ll just be raving on…”. She even referred to one card as “old matey…he’s got his sticks and he’s going home”.

Once that was done, something possessed Nods to grab out the sparklers. We were well pickled by this time and the sparklers were moments of fun for the crackwhores we were. I then smoked it up. And we went to bed, happy rockers.