MESS COHERENCE
🎸🥁💃🏻🍀🎤
MESS COHERENCE 🎸🥁💃🏻🍀🎤
MESS COHERENCE
WILL NEXT BE PERFORMING AT 8PM ON SATURDAY THE 16TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2023
@
TATLER LANE
IN LAUNCESTON.
AS SOON AS I’VE TAKEN PHOTOS OF THE BAND I’LL POST FLYERS HERE AND ON TELEGRAPH POLES AND IN PECULIAR SPOTS AROUND TOWN. ENTRANCE IS FREE. CANAPES WILL NOT BE SERVED BUT YOU CAN BUY ALL SORTS OF ABSOLUTELY SMASHING THINGS TO EAT AND DRINK. PLEASE COME ALONG. BRING GRANNY.
TATLER LANE HAS A BOOZY, EATY, ENTERTAINY, NIGHT-TIME ANCILLARY IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE COFFEE-Y, BREAKFASTY, LUNCHY VENUE. BUT LO! BE NOT FLUMMOXED: AT NIGHT THE ENTRANCE IS ROUND THE BACK, NOT THROUGH THE FANCY SWING DOORS AT THE FRONT.
Mess Coherence is (currently) what the band’s called. What do you think? Of the name, that is. Naming a band is difficult, complicated, requiring time and inspiration, discrimination and imagination, and leaving all involved with sweaty brows and itchy elbows. First we were called The Esteemed Elders of West Launceston. Not bad, I thought. Others dissented. Then it was Mess Coherence. Then it was Barsoom. Each time we played a gig we had a new name. Barsoom went in the bin and Mess Coherence came back out of it. We’ve been playing together for a few months, the better part of a year, perhaps. Rehearsals are conducted in our living room. I’ve been recording and intend (time permitting, etc., blah blah) to mix good bits, and possibly bad bits, and put them here: a portrait of a band evolving, finding its feet, of four individuals coming to terms with each other’s limitations and learning to lean into each other’s strengths. We’ve played a few gigs. We weren’t brilliant. People could see the “potential”. A back-handed compliment perhaps, taken at face value, with grace. We were over-enthused and under-rehearsed. Sloppy. Messy. Hence the name. Note that the band’s not called Messy, it’s called Mess Coherence. We start with a mess which, by a process of extended imagination, a bit of frustration, and increasing amounts of trust and faith follows the apparently lazy, but actually intrinsically focussed and disciplined, ambling, flaneurish approach into becoming something coherent. In part it’s about the glory of fucking up, traipsing gaily along the razor. We don’t want it to be shit. And it’s not. We’re good, interesting, intriguing, exciting. We want it all to breathe. Someone picks a song and brings it along to rehearsal. Mostly covers thus far, which has been liberating for all of us. We all write songs. We’ve all made records of original music. We used to be the sorts of persons (tossers!) that thought cover bands were a bit shit, not quite proper. A band was allowed to play a couple of covers (never more than two) as long as they were self-deprecating and cleverly chosen. But only original songs were truly acceptable. Even if they were rubbish. Which they often were. We’ve all played with lots of people, in lots of bands, in lots of places, in lots of bunkers, on lots of stages.
The song arrives at rehearsal a polished, finished thing lovingly crafted by someone else. We deconstruct it, torture it a little, let things fall apart and re-congeal as they want to, outlined by the whim and whimsy and the temperaments of the band members and the caprice of the weather and the inherent, or imposed, fluidity of the song. We perform the metaphorical opposite of cosmetic surgery. We come to offer the equivalent of the Ginny version of The Master and Margarita as opposed to, say, the Pavear and Volokhonsky.
MESS COHERENCE are (currently):
KATHY - EDWEENY - WILLY - BENNY
To the uninitiated and the great unwashed that’s: Kath Ellis, Edwina Blush, William Bowden, and Ben Birt
THINGS WOT WE FOUR DUN BUFFOR
Below you’ll find the great Fishbomb album recorded by Kath’s previous band, Sydney-based Kathellisism. Originally they were called The Church of Kathellisism, and before that Hubris. A long story, obvs. They were/are absolutely smashing. Fishbomb, their only album thus far, is marvellous. In another reality it landed them on Top of The Pops and Eurovision. In this reality Kathellisism didn’t become superstars (yet) because Kath had to become an integral part of Mess Coherence first.
I was going to make the rapturous claim that The People That Love Me is one of my favourites songs off Fishbomb (the Kathellisism album above) but that would be silly. They’re all my favourite. I shot the video above in Kath’s flat when Kath was at work.
Look! It’s Edwina! Blush! Oh, no, I don’t mean… Erm.. Blush isn’t an imperative. Well, obviously it can be. With an exclamation mark after it it’s reasonable to assume that it is. Blush is Edwina’s last name. There’s an exclamation mark after it because I was excited to see her video on Booszjie (though I really shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, having put the video there myself) and because she deserves one, always. I get excited singing with her on a regular basis. Edwina Blush. She’s HUGE! And I don’t mean fat. Though her songs and her singing could be adjectivised thus. She’s in the band. Mess Coherence, that is. Clicking Edwina’s name in the middle of this paragraph will take you to her website.
And that’s me, trying to be inconspicuous, feeling like a bit of a wanker, filming myself with my phone, walking around San Pedro and La Valle la Luna in the Atacama Desert. It’s one of the songs off the album below.
Both the Ben Birt album and the Kathellisism album were mastered by the inestimable William Bowden, aka King Willy of King Willy Sound. King Willy Sound is where all the best records get mastered. The lion’s share—all the best sounding stuff— of the music recorded in Australia is mastered by William. He’s an artiste par inoccullence. When he’s not getting songs ready for the radio he does all sorts of interesting artisticy things. Lots of them are TOP SECRET. William is the drummer in Mess Coherence. He sings too. We all do.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
I realised the Kathellisism video posted above doesn’t actually have Kath in it. So below is one that does. Kathellisism performing Shallow Princess at the Festival Mata Air in Jogjakarta. The Air in Mata Air is pronounced I-yur, air in Indonesian translates, literally, to water. Air is water, water is air, yeah yeah. Mata means eye: the eye of the water: a spring. It’s a water festival. It’s great. Go check it out. I filmed the video. The quality is crap. It was a rubbish camera and I was far away, up a tree if I remember. The place was going nuts. The stage collapsed at the end of their set.
And while we’re at it, here’s another video of the same song, the album version, also filmed by me in Kath’s flat.
More? Why not? Here’s another video I made with a phone in the Atacama desert. Mess Coherence are (currently) (mostly) a covers band. It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me is a Billy Joel song, ergo: when I sing it it’s a cover. Mess Coherence don’t sing it.
SAI BOB
SAI BOB
And in the name of symmetry, to complete the trilogy, and because this is a website and you don’t run out of room on websites (Where do they put it all? Very big hard drives in very big drawers? In skyscrapers? In the sky? In the next dimension? It’s all pretend, isn’t it? The pretend never ends…) here’s the third video I made on my own with my phone in the Atacama desert. Kath was very sick at the time, confined to a hotel room with a bucket, a box of tissues, plenty of damp towels and gallons of water, while I went awandering. Sai Bob is not a cover. It’s a song I wrote with my mates Paul Murphy and “Diamond” Dave Warton when we were headed to the Tamworth County Music Festival. Naked Cowboys we called ourselves. But that’s a story for another page.