I am on edge all day.
I am in a high state of excitement.
I am going to see Teaparty LIVE.
Fourteen, I heard the album 'Transmission', temptation being the first track I ever heard. Third track - Psychopomp. First song I ever truly would have cut my throat over. Still, that song remains precious to me. Still, it haunts me. Brings tears to my eyes. Makes my blood thicken and glow.
Teaparty are my inspiration, the black shadow that has cast it's spell on me in the middle of the night. The music I write to. The music I die for. I am a slave. I am proud.
Hang around the Palais for forty-five minutes. The sun is hot. There are other groupies. We can hear someone playing inside. It is not Teaparty.
I see Jeff Martin very quickly. He is quiet, dressed in black, he looks formidable. Black hair, black suit, even though it is hot. He signs an autograph, takes a photo, and is gone.
The man behind the voice is real.
Dinner on St Kilda pier as the sun lowers. Foccacia, coke, a weird duck thing and cigarettes.
I'm still mad. I say, IloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteaparty
Have you ever waited you whole life for something you didn't even realise you needed?
So we go. Our seats aren't the best, but we can see, and the warm-up band, who are good, are loud, if not indistinct. I sit. I chew my nails. I shift positions. I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
IloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteapartyIloveteaparty
And then the lights go down. The audience, a full house, start screaming. A veil drops, revealing three hexagons, three shimmering hexagons surrounded by lights. The crowd screams screams screams.
It's time. It's finally time!
Then three figures are on stage, reaching for instruments, beginning to play. Playing the music that has been twisting in my mind for years on end, playing the music, and it's loud, it's clear, and the voice.
My god. His voice.
He looks like a dark god, Jim Morrison but more sinister. And the music, it burns, it scorches the air with it's intensity.
Interzone. Of course. Interzone loud, Interzone real, not made shiny for a record label, Interzone played how it was meant to be. They play on. More songs, new ones, old ones, my every favourite song playing one after the other, loud and hard and fast. Fire in the Head. I almost cry.
Jeff Martin swaps instruments after almost every song - sometimes halfway through. He plays some electronic device, dependant on the movement of his hand in the air, with the flair of a maestro. He talks to the audience. He screams to them. He sings and bleeds and plays. Lullaby. Angels.
I've never seen anyone perform like this before. I've never heard sounds so full.
The crowd is intense, fanatics gathered to glory in their god. They turn their sweaty faces to the light, to the music, with urgency. Some, like me, know every song and every lyric, and roar with approval as the first few bars begin to play.
Psychopomp. Live. Don't you fade away...
They bring out a stool. He plays The Badger. It is sweet, and complex, and the crowd adores it. He plays Walking Wounded, sitting on his stool with an acoustic guitar across his knee.
He takes another instrument. I don't even know what it's called, it looks like a lute. It is thick and bulbous, and he caresses it as he begins to pluck at a tune. I'm going to need your help with this one he murmurs, and taps a beat. It spreads, and everybody claps in time, their hands over their heads as he begins to play, a tune I've never heard before, but it sounds eastern and hypnotic, and makes me think of the desert and snake charmers and the sweet spell of incense, and he sings, he chants, he lifts his voice and cries out to the heavens, he weaves magic in a foreign tongue, and even though I don't know the language, I know he speaks of love, I know what he sings is beautiful, and people clap louder, people scream, caught up and torn away, leaning forward, wanting it, wanting him, wanting the music...
And then, with his snake-charmer voice and his devil eyes, he slides into a familiar tune, a familiar pattern of notes, a song I know, all this, it was the complement, the beginning, the other, unseen half.
Halcyon Days.
Alone
left here in dust
amidst my fears and doubts
life's shattered dreams
I could have done without
now chthonic life
has set it's sights
on making me a slave to it's ways
I wait for return
until then my soul it burns
and it burns
only for you
It is beautiful, it is sensuous, I want to dance, I want to cry. I abandon my place as the song ends, as another begins. I cannot get to the front so I settle for halfway back as they play on, as more songs, more words I know and more pain I have bled fills the air. He talks to the audience, he tells them that Melbourne and he have had a love affair, he murmurs intimately into the microphone.
Another song starts. Temptation.
This is the killer. This is the one where the performance skyrockets and does not come down again. This is the one that has the crowd screaming and laughing and crying and dancing, with their arms in the air
we conceive and believe in a god we can't feel
I can't feel it
I can't feel!
The night goes on, the music must. Cathatik. He asks the audience for love, for support, for prayers for a friend who is dying, and plays Requiem. Tears in my eyes, sweat on my body, I love love love love love love love
Mantra - love is all we have, love is all we need
and you know it's just too good, it's just too much, because it's so hot, so heavy, all of it, all the music
Correspondences
so damn fucking painful and beautiful and clean and rewarding, and it just doesn't stop, just doesn't let up
Save Me, and in the middle, smack bang in the middle, they slide into a different tune, integrating one that is not their own - Last Goodbye, by Jeff Buckley, and damn he sings it well, and it's so DAMN HAUNTING and then back, back to the tune, the melody, to Save Me, to everything and all and my god
he finishes, they finish, they take their bows and walk off stage
but the crowd, the hungry beast wants more, and even as the tech crew clamber over the stage they scream, we scream, clap our hands, and those in the dress circle, I can hear them stomping their feet
a beat ripples through the audience, paced clapping that gets faster and faster and louder and faster
and they come back onstage
I scream until my voice is hoarse
they come back onstage and my lord they are brilliant, they are just brilliant, performers without being showy, because they don't need smoke and mirrors for they are the real deal
A Certain Slant of Light
she don't know
please stop her pain
and it fucking hurts get it? cause I don't think you do, I don't think you fucking understand that this is the music I have cried over, this is the music I would die for, this is the music that has altered my perception of the world and dug it's claws into my soul, this is the music which keeps me up at night and makes me stop breathing and listen again and again, this is the music that makes me think maybe I'm not the only one
they go.
the crowd screams - five minutes?
I scream, I cry and sweat and fucking JUMP when they prowl back onstage - one more, until we meet again - you fucking betcha
He plays the Badger again, but dirty this time, like a fairytale all fucked up, with this nasty harsh beat in the background like a creeping seething heart
I can't cry out enough. I can't dance enough, I can't move enough, I can only raise my hands, can only only only do what I cannot prevent myself from doing
One more song. One more. The perfect one. The only one.
Sister Awake. The story of the muse. All my sisters are out there, he says.
And he sings. He plays and sings, and it's sweet, you know? It's really sweet, but, yeah, fuck yeah. I know what is coming.
The audience claps, the audience, all of it, keeps time, knowing, knowing, what is coming, waiting, waiting as he sings
I am the sun in the flame
cold from the flame turns away
and in these winds came a change
she awakes...
Everybody sighs as he puts down the guitar and those eight bars, those eight perfect bars play, as he goes to the edge of the stage and takes a drum between his knees, as the eight is over and he lifts his hand
one breath
and an EXPLOSION of sound rips forth the nightmare and the dream the wanton destruction and beauty the snake coiling and the strike
but then, not done yet, not nearly, there is a strange thumping beat, one that does not belong to this song, one that is furious and violent one that gives me pause until I realise, oh yes I fucking realise
Paint It Black
you fucking genius, you play us so, manipulate us into feeling just what we want to feel and thump and scream and defy the night with our rage, with your song, with the violence you install with just a beat, with the heft of your voice
I see the girls walk by
dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
until my darkness goes
another verse, just enough to make us crazy to rise the bloodlust to makes us scream and wail and then back into Sister Awake, and the transition is brutal, beautiful, and listen to you listen to us worshipping our god offering our souls and in return we will take everything you can give and more, we will tear you to shreds and feed on your heart but it is not enough, it will never be enough, even as the lights flare and the song ends and you draw the last vestige of music from deep within your chest I know
it's not over
it's never over.
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