After the bizarre ride of last weekend we reach the airport and I’m nervous. My voice has taken a turn for the worse and it’s scratchy as hell and it’s painful to swallow and I’m supposed to do 4 headline shows in 4 days? My normal strategy when I get crook is kick into denial and today is no different – so business as usual, strictly that is.

Syd Airport en route

Launceston is a crazy town. We came here once during the 2004 election and a panel van drove around the town in circles with the phrase ‘Fuck off Mark Latham’ emblazoned across the whole vehicle. From memory Latham was attempting to scale back old growth logging. This time however, it’s all roses and the town is in fine form – tomorrow is show day so even though it’s wednesday, there’s party in the air. Well, a sleepy party. Our show turns out to be fun and we get a healthy crowd and I somehow splutter my way through despite a croaky voice. Had a few good conversations with local folks – shoutout to Ashley our street teamer who helped put posters up. We pack out of the venue and Launny shows her wild side…girls in high heels stumbling head first onto the road, fellas heckling anything that moves; late night pizza shop doing serious business as punters rifle through their wallets and purses like looking for lost jewelery in sand. Beautiful.

Hobart 7th & 8th Oct

The Republic Bar

I wake to find my voice has deteriorated more so I start enquiring about GPs and miracle cures. I drop into Launceston hospital who inform me I’ll have at least a 4 hour wait. I visit chemists and Coles trying to get a hookup – no offence to chemists but pharmaceuticals are the last thing I resort to. The drive to Hobart is a great one though, littered with old colonial buildings and classic green Australian landscapes. We’re squashed like sardines into our Tarago and we’re short of road music so we bounce to Outkast thru the speaker of an iPhone.

View from the front

We arrive in Hobart and I head to a GP that Colin Daniels (Inertia) recommends. He originally tried to tee me up with some celebrity vocal doctor that Pink uses but (probably fortunately) that falls through. Col has been a huge help – he’s the one that lent me his house to record half of Spitshine in. Once again I’m sent to a chemist – this time for 2 prescriptions. Crap. The show is great tonight even though we’re taking a risk doing two Hobart shows, and we sell a truck load of merch. Our motel is modest… yeah, that’s all I can say.

Next morning and I’m back on my concoctions though my voice has taken a turn for the better. We headed up Mount Wellington and kicked around in the snow before rolling back to a soldout show – and what a crazy gig. A few guys gave Polo Club a surprise when complimenting them on their gig, by punching Urban Monk in the balls, “Mad gig mate, you deserve a nut tap! Yeah NUT TAP!” I’m serious, these guys were trying to pay them a compliment. Another bloke regaled me with his thoughts on the show and then revealed it was one of his best experiences tripping ever, although he thought “we were playing a joke on him for about 10 minutes in the middle”. Awesome!

Little do they know we have 3 hours at best, before waking to catch connecting planes for our show the next day in Adelaide. Sorry guys, we’ve gotta leave.

___

Adelaide 10th Oct

An early flight after a late gig is always enhanced by 4 hours transit before the connecting flight and though 10 hours seems too long between leaving your hotel in Hobart and arriving at your hotel in Adelaide, we pull it off. Tonight is ill, we sellout Adelaide and we get mad love – I’m warming to this city every year. There are 100s of zombies walking the street in some kind of zombie festival and I’m ok with that too.

This feels like triumph to me and this tour is killin’ it now. After a day & a half on this prescription I dump it against doctors orders. Fuck it, I’m feelin better.

Tomorrow morning Jane and I wake up at 6am for a 14 & a 1/2 hour video shoot for Shruggin’.

Mama Chu's!

Who would’ve ever thought it’d come to this? A soldout Metro show on a rainy Sydney night with myself and Horrorshow calm as buildings. What to say? Horrorshow smashed the living shit outta this gig – I’d go as far as to say a career highlight – the crowd was young and hungry for them. It was a sight to behold. I sat side of stage while the One Dayers had kittens and Sydney celebrated another little notch in its development. Well done lads, I’m brimming with pride.

Our lighting guy, who I’d liaised with for months about tonight – got arrested 5 minutes before we went on stage. So much for the lighting show! We set a new Elefant Traks record for merch tonight – this is a blur. Our show was fantastic and I’m still trippin’ that we soldout. Onto the afterparty where we see this little poster on the wall… y’all guess where this character is from?

Fishos Manly Oct 3

We did the drive up the Northern Beaches and it was anyone’s guess how tonight would go. People turned up and turned out, bigtime! Just before we went on stage the venue soundman celebrated his birthday by reciting a poem on stage. It turned out to be a homophobic rant that linked pedophilia to drug taking homosexuals. Wtf? The Polo Club boys walked backstage looking like they’d seen a ghost.

Baroque Katoomba Oct 4

Another rainy night (3 in a row) but tonight was like firecrackers. It’s my old hometown and it feels like a million dollars when we have a special gig there. I meet a young fella who I coached when he was 10 (I used to coach under 10s and 12s cricket), it doesn’t need mentioning the fact that we won both years. Did I just let that slip? Cricket and hip hop have never come together like tonight. Awesome gig.

Elgusto and Polo Club head out to an after party while me and manager Mondo have an after party of sorts. We fold and count the merch at the hotel. Baby I’m craaazy..

In our infinite wisdom, we crammed 14 people into 3 station wagons and drove up the NSW coast. There’s Astronomy Class, Horrorshow, The Tongue, Hermitude, me and Jane as well as Mondo (manager) and our soundy Luke. This first leg is a one-off, Astro, Hermy and Tongue leave us after these 3 shows.

There’s something you can’t beat about opting for driving over flying; the mixtapes; the shit-talking; the friendly waves to the highway patrol who may have just fined you hundreds of dollars; the pitstops for shitty food; the busload of old women at Bulahdelah, all rocking that pimped out purple hair; watching a factory worker at Broadwater Sugar Plant trying to raise the Australian flag on their flagpole; the bikies camped outside a cafe on a rest stop; the progressively looser Astro car smokin’ & drankin’ (shoutout to Gusto designated driver); stopping off at Little Italy Museam north of Coffs where we find out the first Italian refugees arrived in 1881 (not the most popular of museams from our time there) while ‘We Get Around’ is playing on the car radio of the tradeys working out the front. There’s a lot to like about a good long drive up the coast. Me and Solo discuss new rappers like Wale, J. Cole & Drake.. I make mention that my favourite records of the last 2 years are from vets Q-Tip and Mos Def. Solo is across shit – I think he eats and breathes internet. Chips Tyzzle is dropping folk from Iceland or wherever..

First stop, Coffs Harbour. Everyone put on good shows and the night is messy. I’m holding it down sober – with 25 more tour dates and a voice that gets lost after raging tour weekends – I’m pretending to be pro. It’s working for the most part, though I think I shook one guys hand about 25 times who was drunk as shit (I’m not trying to be cold here, but after about 18 it gets really samey). Good guy though. Spent about 10 minutes chatting and signing some stuff for 2 guys at close, who then stole a shirt. Meanwhile, if you were deaf, you’d only have seen the haze in the backroom, not the cypher that kicked on well after closing time. I completely destroyed my ankle earlier on this week playing indoor soccer, so I’ve got an exaggerated white gangsta limp in full effect – and this traveling crew is full on proper noble gents, I ain’t carrying shit upstairs yo. The accom upstairs reveals bunks with no sheets. I probably would’ve been better off getting drunk.

On to Byron Bay – always a pleasure – it’s like a resort town nowadays. Japanese surfers working at the Sushi joint; glowing Belingen mums pottering around the Thai restaurant taking orders; Scandanavian girls making coffees – Byron is the place where George Clooneys go to rest. I worked away on the merch desk and tried to sneak glances of the Eels vs Dogs preliminary final. I actually dig the random conversations with fans, though it can be exhausting, and sitting on the merch desk is asking for it. Tonight a lady and her husband told me that 2 years ago, I’d signed a CD for their friend, who was arranging it for them, because they couldn’t come to the show as this woman was pregnant at the time. I had signed the CD and jokingly predicted the baby would be born on 5/6/08. They came tonight to tell me their baby was born on the 5/6/08 and maybe I have magical powers.

We finished tonight upstairs blasting Shane Skills opus. It includes the classics ‘Your mum’s a mole’ and ‘I like to smoke mull’.

Saturday and we’re at Sounds of Spring Festival in Brisbane. Some crew members are looking worse for wear and head home after their sets. I catch up with a few crew (Phrase, Drapht, Pez, 360 & Seth, Downsyde) but I’m confined to backstage of hip hop tent cos of my ankle, so I don’t get to catch up with my tight black jeans peoples. I caught the first half of the AFL grand final in the green room and it seems most of the music industry are Saints supporters. I reckon Tex Perkins and Paul Dempsey made grumpy frontmen that night. We (Urthboy) get a good response but something is missing – later we’re msg’d and contacted via myspace and email that the PA was dodgy on the bigger stage in the hip hop tent. You can plan for everything but…

As is the natural way of things at festivals, our rider is raided. We leave and party at our hotel. Cyphers on the balcony; Rage on the TV; Batla is speaking half Spanish half English so you know he’s had a big day. Good crew this one, made up of young and old(er) elefants. Mondo has done a stellar job (including 2 trips to the hotel due to lack of designated drivers, one had 7 people and about a 637 bags and 30 photos). Drama at the airport next day but it works out so I’ll spare you the blah blah…

Next week Sydney, Manly and Katoomba. I’m feelin it f’real.

Spirit of protest is alive, just different
Alex Kaiser
August 15, 2009
The Age

THE 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival is sure to trigger another round of reminiscing about the 1960s. The familiar and celebrated images of the era – civil rights protesters, a young Bob Dylan with acoustic guitar in hand, Vietnam War protests and Woodstock hippies – will be juxtaposed to represent the ‘’spirit of the ’60s”.
Romantic recollections about the 1960s form the impression of a ”golden age” of youth political activism. Nostalgic and hazy memories have created the idea that the ”Woodstock generation” was the first, and only, generation to be truly politically active. It’s understandable that people who were active during these years remember them fondly, but it’s time to move on.
Sixties nostalgia can be clearly seen in debates on politics in popular music. In particular, younger people have repeatedly been accused of failing to respond to the Iraq War in the way that the ”Woodstock generation” protested against the Vietnam War.
Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst, in a speech at the ARIAs in 2006, claimed: ”Vietnam inspired some of the greatest protest songs ever written. Not so now.” Hirst is not a lone voice here. Many media commentators and academics have echoed his sentiments, both in Australia and in the US.
Neil Young led the nostalgia brigade in the US while promoting his album Living With War in 2006. Claiming there had been no protest songs written about the Iraq War, Young expressed his disappointment that it fell to the ’60s generation to take up the job again. For Young, and many others, contemporary music simply cannot compare to the protest music of the 1960s.
The continuing glorification of 1960s music reflects a broader romantic attachment to outdated forms of political engagement. Prominent members of the ”Woodstock generation” have been highly protective of their idealised role as the first, and only, truly political generation. Younger people today are still judged in relation to the methods of political activism favoured in the 1960s.
This judgment is coming from a generation for whom ”wireless” is more likely to evoke images of listening to Sunday evening radio shows than high-speed internet. Society has changed, and so have the forms of contemporary political participation.
Protest anthems had their place in the ’60s, but this music appears anachronistic in relation to contemporary politics. If sceptics want an example of political engagement in contemporary music, they need look no further than Australian band The Herd. Their style is diverse – sometimes they attack with unrestrained venom, as in their controversial track 77%.
Their 2006 album The Sun Never Sets contains four tracks that relate to war. Each takes a different viewpoint and they vary their musical style accordingly. They don’t provide a simplistic ”NO WAR” message or a chorus that can be sung at a rally, but they do encourage listeners to consider and engage with the subject.
The Herd give their listeners the credit they deserve, rather than attempting to ram pre-formed messages down their throat. Their latest album, Summerland, has many more examples of thoughtful, engaged and intelligent political music – it is multifaceted music, a world away from the crude stereotypes that dominate mainstream media representations of younger people today.
The current generation of younger people are not the first to suffer from generational attacks, but recent examples display a more personal edge than those of the past. The branding of an entire generation as selfish, unwilling to make commitments, apathetic and apolitical is a serious affront. The use of derogatory and trite labels such as ”Generation Why?” appear to be standard practice. The assertion that younger musicians do not reach the standards of the ‘’spirit of the ’60s” is consistent with these broader attacks on younger people.
Woodstock should be remembered as a great music festival, but its inclusion in ‘’spirit of the ’60s” reminiscing helps to sustain negative representations of younger people today. Sure, celebrate Woodstock and the 1960s (at least, the parts people can remember) but don’t do it at the expense of younger generations.

Alex Kaiser is a PhD candidate in the school of social and political sciences at the University of Melbourne.