FEATURED FRIDAYS: My Favourite Video – Wolf & Cub
Joel Byrne is the lead vocalist and guitarist of
Adelaide-based pyschedelic rock band Wolf and Cub.
His favourite video is She Said by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
I love JSBX. Push comes to shove, I think they’re my number one. This clip isn’t especially amazing, but it’s decent – real decent – and I’ll stop whatever I’m doing at the time to watch it, because I love the JSBX and anything and everything that they do speaks to me.
It’s funny because, The Black Keys are one of the biggest bands in the world at the moment, and it distresses and confuses me that the JSBX aren’t just as big. Perhaps my love of the JSBX is making me ignorant. In that case, then, ignorance is bliss.
Wolf and Cub‘s new double A-side single, See the Light/All Through the Night, is available now via Bandcamp.
The band will play three shows in Adelaide, Melboure and Sydney this March and April. For details, head to the event page.
Watch This Now: The Vasco Era – “Child Bearing Hips”
This one nearly slipped my radar completely, I’ve gotta be honest – that is, until their national tour with Papa vs. Pretty was announced last Friday. How exciting! Two of Australia’s best live bands rocking it up around the country. Having seen our boys The Vasco Era tear it up at both Goodgod Small Club and the Changing Lanes festival over the past month or two, I can vouch for their wild and exciting live show. They’ve also got a clever idea or two for their clips, and that’s where Child Bearing Hips comes into play.
At first, the contrast of the thudding rock drive of the song mixed with a girl letting her hair fly out of the car window in slow motion feels quite peculiar – where is it going, you’re bound to wonder? That opening sequence, however, is incredibly arresting and subsequently mesmerising – and it leads into a gorgeously shot tale of starcrossed lovers. I’m not entirely sure if the two main characters are Lucille and Sam, from the band’s last studio album Lucille, but whoever they are, they sure know how to speak volumes without actually saying a word. Watch this one right to the end, it’s very much worth it. Oh, and don’t forget to see the boys on tour next month!
Old Favourites: Van Halen – “Hot for Teacher”
“I think of all the education that I missed…”
The 80s is a fucking insane era of videos. Truth be told, I’d barely know where to start if I was to rattle off my favourite videos from this period – there’s some brilliant defining moments of pop culture locked into that era, from the epic Thriller to the unforgettable (for different reason) Never Gonna Give You Up. One thing’s for sure, though – there is no way said hypothetical list would go past this deadset classic from Van Halen, where school couldn’t be cooler and the teachers couldn’t be hotter.
Let’s go back to 1984. David Lee Roth is an international sex symbol, Eddie Van Halen is the reigning guitar god and they’ve unleashed the mammoth 1984 album. How do you truly hit a home run when shit is this good? Simple: Create a defining video of both your genre and your decade. Join sweet little Waldo on his escapades back to school, as the new teachers parade about like super-models, mini-DLR rules the classroom and the real EVH does a motherfucking guitar solo while walking on top of the library tables. It’s cheesy as hell, and its legend was slightly tarnished when scenecore fucks Escape the Fate tried to copy it. But it’s a video that has stuck with me for years since I first saw it, and never fails to capture my imagination. CLASS DISMISSED!
