Latest news with #TheBirthdayParty
Indian Express
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Theatre of the absurd: 4 plays where nothing makes sense
What if a play made no sense? No plot, no clear message, no satisfying ending. Just strange conversations and a creeping sense that something's not quite right. That's an absurdist play. Many might ask, what's the point of an absurd play? That's exactly the point, there isn't one. It is a niche genre and deliberately so. It doesn't try to please. It doesn't offer answers. In fact, it's the absence of them that matters. Absurdist plays are made to frustrate, to unsettle, to leave us uneasy and unsatisfied. In a world that is obsessed with clarity and productivity, these plays do the unthinkable, they embrace silence and confusion. They don't offer meaning, they stare into the void and ask us to do the same. Waiting for Godot 'Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.' Two men wait. They talk. They wait some more. Nothing really happens. And that's exactly what Waiting for Godot is about. It perfectly shows how empty and confusing life can feel. Two men are waiting for Godot, but who he is, we never quite know. There are no explanations, no resolutions- just waiting. Beckett's shows that repetition is life. It's waking up every day and hoping that today will be different. This isn't a play about action, it's a play about the lack of it. The conversations go in circles. The days blur. Every moment stretches into the next with no clear direction. They wait. And in some way, so do we. Rhinocéros 'Solitude seems to oppress me. And so does the company of other people.' A rhinoceros charges through a town. Then another. And another. Eventually, nearly everyone has turned into one. This metamorphosis is a critique of herd mentality. The lone man, our protagonist, who refuses to transform becomes the tragic hero. The play's absurdity is in its logic- as more people become rhinos, their transformation starts to feel almost normal. This play shows how absurdity masks itself in ideology, and how easy it is for rational humans to trade thought for brute force. What's harder than standing alone? Staying human when everyone else charges the other way. The Balcony 'The pimp has a grin, never a smile.' In a brothel built for fantasy, men dress as bishops, judges and generals. Not for sex, but to feel powerful. Outside, a revolution is raging. Inside, power is just a game of dress-up. The brothel is a stage within a stage, where authority is not earned but performed. Power here isn't real. While, the revolution outside is tearing down real systems of power. In this play, fantasies blur with reality. And as the outside world collapses, the inside reveals something far more disturbing- that perhaps all power has always been just a performance. The Birthday Party 'What are you but a corpse waiting to be washed?' Stanley lives a quiet life in a shabby seaside boarding house. Then two men arrive. They say they are here for a birthday party. Balloons are mentioned. A drum is played. And just like that, everything unrolls. Stanley is interrogated, broken down, undone. But why him? Who are these men? The play offers no clear logic, only absurd menace heavy enough to suffocate. The pauses aren't empty. They're filled with dread. And the ending? Unresolved- just like life. Harold Pinter gives us no closure, because real fear doesn't follow a script. (The writer is an intern with
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rock Icon Turned Down Collaborating With Controversial Goth Singer
Rock Icon Turned Down Collaborating With Controversial Goth Singer originally appeared on Parade. Nick Cave collaborating with would have been something special back in the 1980s. Even in 2025, it would have been huge, but Cave revealed that a partnership between these two underground rock icons was not meant to be. Cave first found success in the late 1970s by leading the post-punk band The Birthday Party. In the early 1980s, Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, incorporating darker sounds and themes into their music, making them contemporaries of the goth movement of the time. A star of that movement was Morrissey, lyricist and frontman for the gothic rock band The Smiths. And these two nearly worked together on a song. 'I've never actually met Morrissey, which is probably why I like him,' wrote Cave in a recent edition of his newsletter, The Red Hand Files. Cave acknowledged Morrissey as 'undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off.' But Cave considers him 'probably the best lyricist of his generation — certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle.' Nick revealed that through 'a few pleasant email exchanges,' Morrissey asked him to sing on a new song with a 'lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro.' 'It also seemed that he didn't want me to actually sing on the song,' wrote Nick, 'but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written.' 'Although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn't my thing. I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve. So...I politely declined. I said no.' In recent decades, the 66-year-old Morrissey has drawn ire over political views and statements. In 2019, he wore a pin in support of For Britain, a far-right political party, per The Guardian. He also has a history of inflammatory remarks about race, the #MeToo movement, and more, often leaving fans feeling 'betrayed.'Rock Icon Turned Down Collaborating With Controversial Goth Singer first appeared on Parade on Jun 17, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 17, 2025, where it first appeared.
The Age
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Four local music legends got together. What happened next is a gift
When we were beautiful and young, there was still time for every little thing,' Mick Harvey sighed on his fifth solo album. His mind was partly on Mutiny In Heaven, the film about his old band The Birthday Party. And partly, as always, on myriad other projects. Another year has flown. Or is it two? He and Adalita, who still leads Magic Dirt when she's not years-deep in a solo record or more transient collaborations, are sitting on a couch in his North Melbourne studio to talk about one they've been holding close until time allowed. Bleak Squad is an elegantly brooding rock quartet that sounds exactly like the sum of its exceptional parts. Guitarist Mick Turner is still best known from Dirty Three, despite sundry other bands. Drummer Marty Brown is from Art of Fighting, as well as countless other gigs and studio productions. We're talking, to cut to the obvious rock'n'roll epithet, about a supergroup. 'No, we're a supper group,' Harvey responds. Adalita smiles. She's probably heard that one before. Whatever they call it, it's a gift. 'I had some bits of songs sitting around; I always have – ideas that didn't fit anywhere else,' she says. 'It was like, finally, I had somewhere to put them. And it was so natural, right from the start. Like we'd been playing together for years.' 'It was very casual. No egos, no expectations,' Harvey says. 'It wasn't burdened with any of that. It was completely open. Marty just said, 'Come in, bring three or four ideas, we'll see what happens'. So that's what we did.' Over four days at Head Gap studios in Preston, the four distinct musical personalities became a band with unexpected ease. 'A song would become so much a [result] of what everyone had contributed that I started forgetting whose music it was in the first place,' Harvey says, still surprised at how readily a whole album began to present itself. Strange Love is due in August. We'd need to find a less cluttered room to draw a map of all the tangled connections that led Brown – a prolific studio operator and artist manager as well as musician – to envisage a smooth, cohesive bond with the three 'living legends'. 'I've worked with them all enough to know that a fast, easy, improvisational kind of music is achievable,' he tells me later, by phone from Ballarat. 'Some people need things to be more rehearsed, or it's like, 'I've written this...' and they might be more demanding about what it could be. 'There was none of that... I knew we could all just relax together and jam some bits. But yeah, I was surprised by how well 'jamming some bits' turned out.' Everything Must Change, the first song unveiled last week, is a portentous illustration. It began with a nebulous handful of chords presented by Turner – overseas as we speak, with his duo Mess Esque ('the Micks are always overseas', Adalita says). Harvey threw in a string of apocalyptic lyrics, then encouraged Adalita to intrude. 'You tapped into something,' he tells her, 'and made it an even more surreal kind of excursion, which was fantastic. It messes with your head. The construction is kind of unfathomable to me. It was like a mystery, in a way.' Loading 'Like a gothic Alice Through the Looking Glass,' Adalita says, still riffing. 'I was just hoping to come up with something. That's always my fear.' She spins a telling metaphor for her writing process: 'like dredging a lake'. Fear, mystery, surreal, gothic, apocalyptic... Bleak Squad isn't all bats and dungeons, but fans of any of its members will recognise a through-line of clamorous gloom, unsettled energy and ghostly beauty, an entrenched darkness of the soul that gives their name just the right touch of gallows humour. 'It's not about any particular style,' Harvey says. 'It's about a kind of attitude and approach to things.' 'It's got that sort of dark, noirish edge,' Adalita says, but 'of course it offers comfort because it's music. Music can be a real companion. It can give people solace.' 'I've been associated with a lot of music that people have declared to be depressing over the years,' says Harvey, 'and I know that fans of that music don't find it depressing at all. They find a release. They find a space where they can feel inspired, to go beyond feeling isolated.' 'A kindred spirit,' Adalita says. They're anything but bleak company, these two. Asked to search their memories for their first formal collaboration, they arrive at the Suburban Mayhem movie soundtrack of 2006. Harvey won an Australian Film Institute award for the score. He asked Adalita to sing songs by Gun Club, Bauhaus and Magic Dirt. 'I was a little bit scared of you then. I'm not any more,' she says, laying her beanie on his black velvet lapel. 'Everyone's scared of me,' Harvey says, blinking. But he's spooked by something else. 'You know we're the only ones still going from that [recording session]?' They count off absent friends. Rowland S. Howard. Spencer P. Jones. Magic Dirt's Dean Turner. Drummer Peter Jones. Producer-engineer Tony Cohen. The thought hangs heavily. 'You do carry all of that stuff,' Harvey says. 'Everybody who you work with, you get something from them. Sometimes I'm not sure which bits [of music] come from me, or from Rowland, or anyone else. They're all in there.' There's no time to dwell. That's the only commodity in scarce supply, Brown acknowledges, as Bleak Squad plan the road ahead. 'It's been quite … hard,' he says, laughing. 'I've been shocked by how busy everyone is, but schedules are worked out so far in advance that we can map out when we're all in the same country, at least.' So far, just four dates are booked for August and October. Harvey says 'we could ramp it up a bit early next year – although Mick Turner's probably madly booking stuff right now for his half-a-dozen projects'. 'We're experienced enough to understand about give and take,' he says. 'Everyone gives space to other people in the musical process, but then you also understand when people aren't available. It's been difficult, but nobody's been getting pissed off.' He turns to remind Adalita of the 'three or four unfinished songs' they really must revisit. 'Ooh, I'd love to hear those tracks,' she enthuses. 'We might have to fill the set out a bit?' Strange Love will be released on August 22. Bleak Squad play Queenscliff Town Hall on Aug 1, Meeniyan Town Hall on August 2, Sydney Recital Hall on Oct 11 and Melbourne Recital Centre on Oct 16. Legends unite Often brilliant, usually brief, sometimes bruising, 'supergroups' are known to form when distinctive talents, famous names and stolen moments collide. Here's a mixed dozen playlist. Cream (1966–1968): The term was coined for blues-rock giants Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, and largely defined by their unsustainable combustion. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1969–2013): Again, the harmony was purely musical but their on-and-off union remains the gold standard. Asia (1981–): Never mind art. Refugees from Yes, King Crimson and ELP turned UK prog into '80s FM gold. Power Station (1984–1985): Robert Palmer, bits of Duran Duran and Chic added up to serious '80 club muscle. The Highwaymen (1985–1995): Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson. Country's Mount Rushmore. Trio (1987–2002): Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt. Is your heart broken yet? Traveling Wilburys (1988–1991): Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne. An old-timers' backyard jam that swallowed the pop charts. Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band (1989–): Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Sheila E., Dr. John, Billy Preston, Colin Hay… scores of stars on an evolving jukebox roadshow with no reason to quit. Monsters of Folk (2004–2009): Conor Oberst, Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis. Indie-folk's polite Avengers. SuperHeavy (2011): Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman and Dave Stewart. What do you mean you never heard of them? Hollywood Vampires (2015–): Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry toast ghosts of rock's past with whatever Beatles, Eagles, Guns or Roses drop by.
Sydney Morning Herald
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Four local music legends got together. What happened next is a gift
When we were beautiful and young, there was still time for every little thing,' Mick Harvey sighed on his fifth solo album. His mind was partly on Mutiny In Heaven, the film about his old band The Birthday Party. And partly, as always, on myriad other projects. Another year has flown. Or is it two? He and Adalita, who still leads Magic Dirt when she's not years-deep in a solo record or more transient collaborations, are sitting on a couch in his North Melbourne studio to talk about one they've been holding close until time allowed. Bleak Squad is an elegantly brooding rock quartet that sounds exactly like the sum of its exceptional parts. Guitarist Mick Turner is still best known from Dirty Three, despite sundry other bands. Drummer Marty Brown is from Art of Fighting, as well as countless other gigs and studio productions. We're talking, to cut to the obvious rock'n'roll epithet, about a supergroup. 'No, we're a supper group,' Harvey responds. Adalita smiles. She's probably heard that one before. Whatever they call it, it's a gift. 'I had some bits of songs sitting around; I always have – ideas that didn't fit anywhere else,' she says. 'It was like, finally, I had somewhere to put them. And it was so natural, right from the start. Like we'd been playing together for years.' 'It was very casual. No egos, no expectations,' Harvey says. 'It wasn't burdened with any of that. It was completely open. Marty just said, 'Come in, bring three or four ideas, we'll see what happens'. So that's what we did.' Over four days at Head Gap studios in Preston, the four distinct musical personalities became a band with unexpected ease. 'A song would become so much a [result] of what everyone had contributed that I started forgetting whose music it was in the first place,' Harvey says, still surprised at how readily a whole album began to present itself. Strange Love is due in August. We'd need to find a less cluttered room to draw a map of all the tangled connections that led Brown – a prolific studio operator and artist manager as well as musician – to envisage a smooth, cohesive bond with the three 'living legends'. 'I've worked with them all enough to know that a fast, easy, improvisational kind of music is achievable,' he tells me later, by phone from Ballarat. 'Some people need things to be more rehearsed, or it's like, 'I've written this...' and they might be more demanding about what it could be. 'There was none of that... I knew we could all just relax together and jam some bits. But yeah, I was surprised by how well 'jamming some bits' turned out.' Everything Must Change, the first song unveiled last week, is a portentous illustration. It began with a nebulous handful of chords presented by Turner – overseas as we speak, with his duo Mess Esque ('the Micks are always overseas', Adalita says). Harvey threw in a string of apocalyptic lyrics, then encouraged Adalita to intrude. 'You tapped into something,' he tells her, 'and made it an even more surreal kind of excursion, which was fantastic. It messes with your head. The construction is kind of unfathomable to me. It was like a mystery, in a way.' Loading 'Like a gothic Alice Through the Looking Glass,' Adalita says, still riffing. 'I was just hoping to come up with something. That's always my fear.' She spins a telling metaphor for her writing process: 'like dredging a lake'. Fear, mystery, surreal, gothic, apocalyptic... Bleak Squad isn't all bats and dungeons, but fans of any of its members will recognise a through-line of clamorous gloom, unsettled energy and ghostly beauty, an entrenched darkness of the soul that gives their name just the right touch of gallows humour. 'It's not about any particular style,' Harvey says. 'It's about a kind of attitude and approach to things.' 'It's got that sort of dark, noirish edge,' Adalita says, but 'of course it offers comfort because it's music. Music can be a real companion. It can give people solace.' 'I've been associated with a lot of music that people have declared to be depressing over the years,' says Harvey, 'and I know that fans of that music don't find it depressing at all. They find a release. They find a space where they can feel inspired, to go beyond feeling isolated.' 'A kindred spirit,' Adalita says. They're anything but bleak company, these two. Asked to search their memories for their first formal collaboration, they arrive at the Suburban Mayhem movie soundtrack of 2006. Harvey won an Australian Film Institute award for the score. He asked Adalita to sing songs by Gun Club, Bauhaus and Magic Dirt. 'I was a little bit scared of you then. I'm not any more,' she says, laying her beanie on his black velvet lapel. 'Everyone's scared of me,' Harvey says, blinking. But he's spooked by something else. 'You know we're the only ones still going from that [recording session]?' They count off absent friends. Rowland S. Howard. Spencer P. Jones. Magic Dirt's Dean Turner. Drummer Peter Jones. Producer-engineer Tony Cohen. The thought hangs heavily. 'You do carry all of that stuff,' Harvey says. 'Everybody who you work with, you get something from them. Sometimes I'm not sure which bits [of music] come from me, or from Rowland, or anyone else. They're all in there.' There's no time to dwell. That's the only commodity in scarce supply, Brown acknowledges, as Bleak Squad plan the road ahead. 'It's been quite … hard,' he says, laughing. 'I've been shocked by how busy everyone is, but schedules are worked out so far in advance that we can map out when we're all in the same country, at least.' So far, just four dates are booked for August and October. Harvey says 'we could ramp it up a bit early next year – although Mick Turner's probably madly booking stuff right now for his half-a-dozen projects'. 'We're experienced enough to understand about give and take,' he says. 'Everyone gives space to other people in the musical process, but then you also understand when people aren't available. It's been difficult, but nobody's been getting pissed off.' He turns to remind Adalita of the 'three or four unfinished songs' they really must revisit. 'Ooh, I'd love to hear those tracks,' she enthuses. 'We might have to fill the set out a bit?' Strange Love will be released on August 22. Bleak Squad play Queenscliff Town Hall on Aug 1, Meeniyan Town Hall on August 2, Sydney Recital Hall on Oct 11 and Melbourne Recital Centre on Oct 16. Legends unite Often brilliant, usually brief, sometimes bruising, 'supergroups' are known to form when distinctive talents, famous names and stolen moments collide. Here's a mixed dozen playlist. Cream (1966–1968): The term was coined for blues-rock giants Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, and largely defined by their unsustainable combustion. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1969–2013): Again, the harmony was purely musical but their on-and-off union remains the gold standard. Asia (1981–): Never mind art. Refugees from Yes, King Crimson and ELP turned UK prog into '80s FM gold. Power Station (1984–1985): Robert Palmer, bits of Duran Duran and Chic added up to serious '80 club muscle. The Highwaymen (1985–1995): Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson. Country's Mount Rushmore. Trio (1987–2002): Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt. Is your heart broken yet? Traveling Wilburys (1988–1991): Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne. An old-timers' backyard jam that swallowed the pop charts. Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band (1989–): Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Sheila E., Dr. John, Billy Preston, Colin Hay… scores of stars on an evolving jukebox roadshow with no reason to quit. Monsters of Folk (2004–2009): Conor Oberst, Jim James, M. Ward, and Mike Mogis. Indie-folk's polite Avengers. SuperHeavy (2011): Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman and Dave Stewart. What do you mean you never heard of them? Hollywood Vampires (2015–): Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry toast ghosts of rock's past with whatever Beatles, Eagles, Guns or Roses drop by.
Scoop
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
The Jesus Lizard Returning To New Zealand This October
Press Release – Jesus Lizard The quintessential punk band of the 90's – the Jesus Lizard, returns to New Zealand shores for the first time in 27 years this October! Playing two exclusive shows only at Auckland's Tuning Fork and San Fran in Wellington on the 11th and 12th respectively. After initially calling it a day in 1999, the Jesus Lizard officially return full time to save us from the current state of musical mediocrity with their latest album, Rack. A blistering resurgence of the so-called 'noise rock' they helped define alongside contemporaries Big Black, Flipper, The Birthday Party, with their previous and most noted albums Head, Goat and Liar. For those of us who live in fear of the reunion album and subsequent tour, the Jesus Lizard thankfully display not only the same chaotic and dark nihilism of their earlier careers but also the maturity and seasoning of a band riding a wave of renewed and reinvigorated form. Once slated by famed engineer Steve Albini as 'the greatest band I've ever seen' the Jesus Lizard not only lived up to this lofty praise in their prime but continue to do so in their advancing years. David Yow still leads the charge as the maniacally possessed frontman entering crowds with reckless abandon and a stamina that much younger vocalists would kill for. The original rhythm section of David Wm Sims and Mac McNeilly further continue to prove why they were and are the best bass & drum combo since Jones and Bonham, anchoring the ship as Captain Yow and first mate Denison navigate the wild seas of their songs. And while he may not always feature (as he rightly should) on many modern music journalists 'best guitarists lists', Duane Denison could perhaps be the most innovative and idiosyncratic punk rock guitarist EVER. However, each member is a sum of their parts but combined they are as Albini also once said 'the purest melding of the sublime and profane.' Whether you are a longtime disciple of the Jesus Lizard, seeing them when last here in '98, or perhaps your fandom is more recent and have only seen videos of their legendary live performances, you will know that these shows are not to be missed. Tickets go on sale through on Friday 8th May. But get in quick, these shows will sell out fast!!!! Saturday 11th October 2025 – The Tuning Fork, Auckland (All ages)
