The Gifthorse

Photo taken by me at The Gifthorse's last Melbourne show, January 2010.

I didn’t know The Gifthorse for much of their lifespan, but there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish they were still around.

LAST NIGHT I DREAMT OF SOMETHING MORE / AND IT OPENED UP MY TIRED EYES.

I first heard about the band through Hoist Rocky Online – a now-defunct internet forum frequented by people with an interest in the regional city of Rockhampton’s live music scene. There were plenty of Rocky ex-pats living in Brisbane and they all raved about The Gifties.

I bought their self-titled album at Kill The Music and fell in love with it almost instantly. I was in the death throes of my first long-term relationship and not coping very well. I was sick of my music course at uni and how they all fawned over synths and computers, sick of bloated alternative and hard rock, sick of calculated and polished pop songs, sick of music and everything to do with it.

The Gifthorse were something else. Their music was raw, simple and real. It was just what I needed; just five guys, all awkward and weird in their own way, making honest and heartfelt music. Their live shows, like all good live shows, were a mixture of joy and catharsis.
Lead singer Shane Collins was utterly commanding, a mixture of a gospel priest and Henry Rollins, preaching, pacing and singing his heart out. I always got a feeling that the rest of the band were concentrating as hard as they could on putting the largest amount of emotion and feeling into their playing; Grimaces, yelled harmonies, mic grabs and the occasional smile.

EVERYONE’S GOT A FEAR OF SOMETHING / WE’RE ALL CUT THE SAME WAY / HOW CLOSE HAVE YOU BEEN?

I remember trying to engage guitarist Stevie Scott in conversation up their then-up- coming EP From The Floor Up while he was tattooing me in mid-2009. “I’m really excited about your new EP,” I said to him, grimacing as the needle ran over the muscle along my spine.

“When’s it coming out?”

He took his foot off the pedal, wiped down where he’d just tattooed and changed his gloves. “You know my band?” he asked in his thick Scottish accent. Yeah, I do. I really like you guys. He mumbled a thanks and told me the release date, but he seemed unconvinced. Maybe he was concentrating on not fucking up the tattoo, maybe he thought I was some kind of annoying fangirl, maybe he honestly just didn’t give a shit.

The tattoo and the EP both turned out great.

A SUITCASE / FULL OF NOTHING NOW / I TAKE IT EVERYWHERE I GO / TO REMIND ME I COULD’VE BUILT THIS THING A HUNDRED TIMES / BUT I THROW EVERY CHANCE I GET AWAY / SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE.

“The Gifthorse are fucking dead!!!” read their MySpace page. They’d just announced an Australian tour with Polar Bear Club and released a really solid 7”. Why end it all now? It felt like a waste. I’ve never got a straight answer on why they broke up but as I understand it, half the band was over the touring and broke-ass aspects of being in a band and the other half weren’t.

I happened to be in Melbourne when the Polar Bear Club tour rolled through town, so I headed over to the East Brunswick Club to see The Gifties play their last Melbourne show.
They played a cracker of a set, but nobody was really that into it except for me and a random guy who I ended up making out with later on in the evening. I’d heard stories from touring bands about how Melbourne crowds were spoilt and aloof but I’d never quite believed it. Growing up in Queensland, you’re led to believe that people in Melbourne know better than you when it comes to anything cultural. Well, fuck that. Melbourne didn’t know shit when it came to The Gifthorse.

SOME CALL IT HOPE, I CALL IT OVER.

I was running a fever the night of The Gifthorse’s last show, but there was no way I could miss it. At any rate, my friends Will and Josh had driven eight hours from Rockhampton for the occasion and I wanted to see them. It was a sweltering Brisbane February night, humidity mixed with sweat.

We crammed into Fat Louies pool hall, a loveable dive of a venue in the CBD. I tried my hardest to stick it out, but I ended up leaving halfway through the second song of the The Gifthorse’s set, delirious with pain and fever. I drifted in and out of consciousness on the cab ride home, furious and exhausted. The next morning I woke up passed out on the floor covered in an angry red rash.

I drove myself to hospital where they stuck me on a drip, did a blood test and sent me home. As it turned out I had glandular fever, no doubt caught from the random I’d made out with in the crowd at the show in Melbourne. My liver was shutting down, my tonsillitis was the worst case my GP had seen in years and I’d have to spent the next two months in bed.

Totally worth it. Viva la Gifthorse.

STAY THE SAME / I’LL NEVER CHANGE / I’M ALWAYS GONNA BE THIS WAY / ‘TIL THE SKY CLOSES IN.

To hear more of The Gifthorse’s music, check out a live set on Moshcam. All their releases are available through iTunes and Poison City Records.

Finabah – where are they now?

Everyone has a past life they aren’t proud of. In mine, I worked as a music publicist.

Before that though, I worked as a pizza waitress at a death trap dive of a cafe in the hilly Brisbane suburb of Paddington. The boss was a sleaze, my co-workers were addicts of varying persuasion and I kept fucking up people’s orders.

Brett Wood at Starving Kids Records offered me a job as the label’s publicist and I jumped at the chance to get out of hospitality. My first client was a pop-rock group from Toowoomba named Finabah.

I signed them up for a six-week campaign, focusing on the launch of their “Sugarcoat” EP. The music they played then and now is unrecognisable from what they sounded like when Bizoo spoke to them way back in the day – it’s very very commercial-oriented pop rock, similar to Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte and Kisschasy.

I didn’t love their music but plenty of people did. They had (and still have) a sizeable and very devoted fan base, with many of them sporting tattoos of the band’s logo. The band was well-known for their strong work ethic and on-stage theatrics – they’d end every set with the bass player throwing his bass around his body like a hula hoop and the singer spinning the mic like a yo yo while the guitarist and drummer worked themselves into a frenzy.

Bass player Brendan was the self-appointed manager of the band and a real sweetheart. He worked full-time managing a Just Jeans store, with the band work taking up all his spare time.

Things went crazy for them when they won the 2009 New Artist 2 Radio competition, giving them heavy rotation on all Austereo stations (Nova, MMM etc) and landed a spot on the Rock The Schools tour, where they played high schools across Victoria and New South Wales.

They recently won another Austereo competition, which gave them a slot on a Rock The Schools tour in Western Australia, ten grand and mentoring with SonyBMG.

A recent hometown show with Amy Meredith saw the band pull 400 people to the indoor bowls club on Annand Street, which is a feat in itself.

They’ve come far from their beginnings as a metalcore band in Toowoomba and for that, they should be congratulated.

Written for the anthology release Bizoo: The best, the worst and the trash that never made it.
To find out more about Bizoo, the book and the tour, visit their website.

Triple J Magazine – Uni Towns feature (Toowoomba)

Published in the March 2011 issue of Triple J Magazine.

The NBN – why we need it

I remember how excited I was when I bought my first electric guitar. I’d saved up all the money I’d made working in my Dad’s hardware store on school holidays and purchased a blue Les Paul knock-off.

My Dad was considerably less excited.

“You’ve already got a guitar,” he grumbled, pointing to my old acoustic in the corner.

“Why do you need an electric one?”

I tried to explain that my acoustic couldn’t be plugged into an amp and cranked up in a band. It was too big and bulky for my small frame. I certainly couldn’t use it to shred out solos.

The acoustic guitar I’d been given to learn on was great for bashing out a few chords, but I wasn’t going to be able to play the instrument to its full potential if I didn’t upgrade to something better geared for it.

The National Broadband Network is like an electric guitar, with the current high-speed broadband network the old faithful acoustic.

Sure, it’s served us well for years and why bother dropping a lot of money on something new, shiny and noisy when there’s nothing wrong with our current system?

That may be true, but the NBN will serve us better, especially in rural areas.

With the network set to deliver download speeds up to 10 times faster than we experience today, the potential uses of the service are endless.

Politicians against the NBN are framing it as a faster way to download pirated media, but the same fast speeds allowing unsavory activities will also facilitate and advance live streams and web conferencing in the business and health sectors.

Think of the time and money people with chronic health problems in rural areas will save by being able to speak with their health care professionals online, as opposed to driving to a major centre and staying overnight.

Think of the educational opportunities open to people of all ages who live outside major centres.

So, don’t argue against the need for faster internet. Think of all the possibilities it could bring.

Originally published with additional multimedia content at Finda Toowoomba.
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Rage against the bullies

IT’S this week’s viral video sensation.

An overweight school boy is taunted and punched by younger, smaller bullies before losing his temper and bodyslamming his tormentor.

Both boys received suspensions and mobile phone footage of the fight at Sydney’s Chifley College in Sydney  was online by Monday afternoon

It soon went viral, attracting thousands of comments in support of the bullied teenager, Year 10 student Casey Heynes.

Heynes’ father told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph that his son had been bullied throughout his schooling life and was worried about what will happen when he goes back to school.

“There’ll be reprisals from other kids in the school and he still has to go to school somewhere,” he said.

“He’s not a violent kid, it’s the first time he’s lashed out and I don’t want him to be victimised over that.

While the video has inspired websites, video mash-ups and countless Facebook support pages, it does raise the question – is violence against other students ever ok?

What if the violent act is provoked, or in self-defense?

It’s a hard call to make on a complex issue.

Casey Heynes’ father told the media that Casey had been brought up not to hit people and inferred that Casey’s tormentors had clearly not been raised the same way.

But Casey didn’t just hit another child – he picked him up and slammed him down on the concrete before storming off, leaving the child to limp away.

He may have endured years of taunts and abuse from his peers, but the parents of the boy he attacked would be completely justified in feeling horrified at what happened to their son, even if he did have it coming.

But this is 2011 and advances in technology mean the arena of humiliation doesn’t end at the school gates. Video can be uploaded to the internet from phones within seconds of the event happening.

If Casey had just taken this kid’s abuse, let the punches keep landing, he may have felt the whole world would be laughing at the fat kid who was too scared to fight back. He’d be right.

So yes, he could’ve kept copping the abuse, yes he could’ve walked away, but he’d been trying those tactics his whole life and they obviously just don’t work.

Casey might’ve lost his temper, but at least he might finally get some respect.

Originally published with additional multimedia content at Finda Toowoomba.

Survivors left exhausted

Barry Bull is deflated and exhausted.
“I just want to get out of here,” he said sadly, standing in the shaky carport of his family home in Postmans Ridge.

Flood water and raw sewage washed through the bottom floor of his family’s house on January 10 as he, his wife, his adult daughters and his son-in-law cowered upstairs from the terrifying flood.

Finda first visited the Bull home  three days after the flood, when the family were cooking on a camping stove and shoveling toxic mud out of their home. Their backyard was covered with silt and rubbish. Few of their belongings were salvageable.

It’s now a month since the flood and there is some good news.

Most of the hard rubbish has been carted away and they’ve  put a fence up so their three dogs could come back to the property. The youngest, a pure-bred border collie, took out plenty of awards at the sheep dog trial at last week’s Allora agricultural show.

“My wife was thrilled,” smiled Mr Bull.

Local contractors donated materials and labour to re-tile and repaint his house and an electrician friend rigged up a double power point so the family could charge their phones and turn off the noisy diesel generators they’d been using.

“I had the local tiler ring up and tell me he was going to re-tile the house and I couldn’t choose what colour tiles I was going to get,” he said.

“A bloke rocked up at 7pm after working a full day and worked until midnight to get the job done. It was a similar story with the painters.”

A football team from Muswellbrook in New South Wales dropped off brand new whitegoods to the Bulls, and a friend of their daughter’s donated an entire lounge suite.

However, tension is beginning to show in the community as the shock wears off and the reality of the situation sinks in.

An earthmoving company from the Gold Coast came to help with the clean-up, volunteering their heavy machinery and labour to remove the wreckage of ruined houses.

“They were doing a wonderful job until the council came and chased them away,” Barry said wryly.

“The council reckoned they were taking work away from the local guys who want to get paid to do it.”

A young man walks quickly through the car port towards a demountable building on the other side of Mr Bull’s house with his head down, avoiding eye contact.

His name is John Warhurst. He has been living in a demountable building that the Department of Communities gave to him and placed in the Bull’s yard at John’s request. Mr Bull’s daughter Charlotte and John had spent hours combing paddocks and creek beds for a trace of John’s father Bruce, who was last seen by his family when he bundled them into a car and sent them to safety on the day of the disaster.

“The DNA tests identifying John’s father came back this week,” Mr Bull said quietly as John drove away.

“His mum wants to rebuild the house, but John isn’t so sure.”

Although he’s deeply grateful for all the help and generosity his family have received, Barry Bull can’t help feeling guilty.

“I feel bad having people come here to help, because I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. If someone could take this off my hands I’d go now.”

Originally published with additional multimedia content at Finda Toowoomba.
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