Kaiit Killed It // Live

Hellooo friends, and welcome to another blog post.

Today’s post is gonna be a rundown of what was one of the most wholesome gigs I’ve ever attended. On the 12th of July, I got to see Kaiit, who I consider to be somewhat of a Melbourne legend.

She played at Max Watt’s theatre in the city, so it was another Friday night of meeting my friends, this time Dan and James who also play in a band with me, at the station and hopping on a train, then a replacement bus into the city. We got there considerably early, having our wrist stamped at around 8:15, so by the time we got into the venue it wasn’t too packed at all.

After a drink and a quick suss of the first opening act we decided to head back out into the city for something eat, with Subway making do, before returning to MW for Maya Hirasedo, the second opening act.

I’ve actually mentioned Maya on the blog before, so you can read that post HERE. She did a fantastic job of getting the vibes up and the place continued to fill up more and more as she performed.

Finally, it was time for Kaiit. While waiting for the boys to get another drink, I held the amazing spot we’d got on the steps above the pit that served as more of a moshing area compared to the rest of the space where the standing and dancing was a bit tamer. I also bumped into another friend who was making his way through, so him and his mate ended up joining us for the concert.

When it came time for Kaiit to come on stage, we were absolutely blessed to have her mum, come on stage and pay respects to traditional owners of the land, and throughout the performance there were elements of Indigenous and Polynesian culture which made my heart swell so much, it was such a beautiful and respectful display from such a beautiful artist.

Kaiit was phenomenal. Amazing. So, so, wholesome. She was constantly emphasising how grateful she was to have a sold out show in her hometown, and when she wasn’t saying it, it was coming through in her singing.

If you haven’t checked out her music, especially since you started reading this post – please do. Kaiit is so insanely talented, and if you’re someone who calls to artists like Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Nai Palm, Jill Scott, Amy Winehouse, Kehlani or any female artist who sits in that pocket for inspiration or killer tunes, then you will 10/10 enjoy all of Kaiit’s music.

 

 

There were definitely crowd favourites. 2000 n Somethin went off, despite how mellow and ambient it is. Everyone in the crowd, sang every single lyric. My pals and I literally stood up on the steps with our arms around each other screaming all the lyrics. Like I said, a wholesome, wholesome gig.

When she sang her latest single, Miss Shiney, there was this huge cheer from the audience, and it was such a beautiful song to highlight her band and their musicality, especially her backup singers, who had two of the most angelic voices I’ve ever heard.

 

 

Natural Woman was sung later in the show, and it was such a great vibe. One of my friends new the rap just as tightly as I did, and we had the best time vibing off each other and singing lyrics to the others in our group. This song is one of the smoothest songs Kaiit has ever released in my opinion, and it translated perfectly live. Smooth like honey.

Her encore, was definitely one of my favourite encores so far this year. She came out to the sounds of one of her most loved songs, OG Luv Kush pt.2, the perfect way to end the show. She literally floated on stage, joint in mouth, with four spares to throw into the audience, and everyone went absolutely mad.

Kaiit absolutely killed it. Her Melbourne show was the perfect display of what makes her such a loved artist not only here in the city, but all over the country and around the world. Even as we were walking back to Flinder’s Street station and on the bus/train ride home, all the three of us could talk about was how she smashed it.

She’s gonna be huge. I’m telling you. Pinky promise.

x

Priya

PS:
Feel free to follow me on my social media!
Instagram: YouShouldHear
Twitter: YouShouldHear
Instagram: priya_francis (personal)
Spotify: priyafrancis

G Flip // Live

Hello hello hello!! Welcome back, hopefully it hasn’t been too long.

Today’s post is yet another concert review and wrap-up.

Quite a little while ago, I shared two posts in particular; Kick Ass Females and Australian Music from Australian Artists. Both these posts featured one of the most prominent up-and-coming artists (in my opinion) at the moment, G Flip. She’s actually quite local to the area I live in, a bunch of people know her around here, and she’s become a bit of a hero.

If you’re not entirely sure who I’m talking about, G Flip is a kick-ass, 5-foot-something drummer (thought humbly also a multi-instrumentalist) and singer who’s first released single, About You kicked off on Triple J Unearthed a mere four hours after it was uploaded. Since then her trajectory has been on a steady incline and she returned to Melbourne for two shows at The Corner Hotel.

I invited my close friend and drummer James to join me for the gig, and we were both super excited for what we were sure was to be a great show.

We got inside the venue about ten or so minutes before G Flip came out and revelled at how packed it was. Her sold-out show just about filled the venue, and everyone was super eager for the set to begin.

When she finally came out, the crowd lost it.

If there’s one thing I noticed throughout the show, was that although the lead singer, supported by a two-man band on stage, whenever she stepped behind the drums, her singing wasn’t impacted in the slightest, and vice-verse. She was able to walk the line of each instrument and performance perfectly, delivering a high-intensity show that had everyone screaming and singing along.

G Flip performed a bunch of her well know songs, About You, Killing My Time (personal favourite) and Bring Me Home, as well as newer releases like I Am Not Afraid and Drink Too Much which genuinely blew the lid of the place, as well as a handful of unreleased songs and one of the best covers of Proud Mary I have ever got the privilege of hearing live.

Stupid was an unreleased track I’m super excited about. It was a great song, a bit of tongue-in-cheek story-telling that hooked us all from the get go and unlike other artists I’ve watched live, I loved that G Flip actually took the time to explain some of her songs before performing them, giving us all some context and inviting her inside her a head little bit.

Drink Too Much was definitely a highlight for me. It was also clearly a crowd favourite. G Flip had a bit of a synchronised dance with her band mate and really played up to how cheeky and playful she is on stage, and the audience loved every moment of it.

As we left the gig, James mentioned something that really stuck with me and I agree with 100%. One of the best things about the show was how authentic and real G Flip was throughout the entire time. She allowed her personality to come through, she took moments in between songs to banter with the audience and let us into her life a little bit.

She shared stories about how her dad used to work at The Corner, how many artists she had lined up to see at the venue and how insane it was that she was now selling it out. She also delivered a very convincing argument for the support of Malteser gift-boxes, a few of which she threw out at the audience at the end of the show.

It was genuinely like watching a friend up on stage, joking around with everyone in the audience, doing a little jig in unison with her guitarist and laughing as she saw the crowd’s reactions to some of the tricks she pulled out of her bag.

It was a very humble performance, authentic like I mentioned before and not in the slightest bit contrived or pretentious. It was a really great gig and I’m so glad I got to finally catch G Flip live.

x

Priya

PS:
Feel free to follow me on my social media!
Instagram: YouShouldHear
Twitter: YouShouldHear
Instagram: priya_francis (personal)
Spotify: priyafrancis

Tentendo Is THE Mood

Hello friends, and welcome back to another slightly aggressive music recommendation from me to you.

Today’s post is all about a Melbourne musician who I really only discovered earlier this year through the rabbit hole that is Melbourne-based musicians and the ever growing beautiful collaborations that continue to come out of some of my favourites. The music scene here in Melbourne is one of my favourites, and I don’t think any city can beat it.

That said, Tentendo may be one of my favourites to come out of it.

Originally a bass and guitar player, he moved to production after an injury that put his playing on pause and that’s where the magic happened, although he still continues to play bass with Billy Davis but that man and his music is a whole other story.

I listened to his song Dance With Me a song which features an incredible Melbourne rapper, Jordan Dennis, after hearing about it through Jordan’s Instagram and I featured it on my post all about Australian artists.

//source//

The song has everything I want in a song, a fat bass line, a really funky drum kit that requires you to groove to it and a catchy as hell hook. The production of the song and Jordan’s energy on the vocals made it one of my favourite songs of the year so far.

My favourite song from Tentendo’s collection is Ghost, featuring Melbourne RnB singer, Blasko. If there is anything you do with the information within this post, make sure it’s listening to Ghost. I listened to this song and promptly had to pick my jaw up from the floor.

I don’t know if it was how unexpected that build up to the hook is and how subtle the ‘drop’ is, but whatever it was, Tentendo spun some magic to make it happen that smoothly. It’s a sound you simultaneously want hug and get down to.

His first official feature on his Spotify page, One Stop Shop, gives me mad late 90’s RnB vibes, and I’m 100% here for it, as I usually am. It’s sung by another Australian singer, JANEVA, who gives me chills.

His most recent track, Waves, is noticeably a bit more chilled out. It’s very ethereal and features Blasko, Jordan Dennis and Rahel.  Each vocalist contributes something beautiful to each verse they take and it combines to make a really pretty track with heaps of lovely layers that just compliment each other and the funky kit that’s still present.

//source//

To be quite frank, for me personally, Tentendo is four for four with all the tracks on his Spotify. While Ghost and Dance With Me are clear favourites, One Stop Shop and Waves are just as catchy and tasty to listen to, so I recommend you give his Spotify a good run through.

Melbourne is so bloody rich in musicians and Tentendo, in all his production magic and perfectly executed collaborations, embodies that perfectly. Make sure you check out his Spotify, his Instagram and his SoundCloud, and keep an eye out for Tentendo. I know I will.

x

Priya

PS:
Feel free to follow me on my social media!
Instagram: YouShouldHear
Twitter: YouShouldHear
Instagram: priya_francis (personal)
Spotify: priyafrancis

Finally Another Gig

I know what you’re saying.

“Priya. You can’t possibly be growing any savings by going for so many gigs.”

And you’d be right. My bank account is constantly in a state of despair, shaking it’s fist at me as I continue to sign myself up for pre-sales and wait in criminally long online waiting lines for ticket sales, but alas, I can’t be stopped.

 

However.

This particular gig, was one of my own.

You may have remembered I mentioned that I had an upcoming performance in my Week In My Life, as within the week I had a rehearsal with my band.

Well, that was tonight (9/08), and yes. I am freshly showered, after spending the day anxiously waiting for my drummer and guitar player to pick me up, panicking that we were late, getting head shots, grabbing a traditional cheeky Nando’s for lunch, sound-checking and then performing to around 300-400 people, including family and friends who had come along to support. It was a hectic day. But I enjoyed it immensely.

The gig was at a large artist showcase, where artists, designers, hair and makeup artists, jewellery designers, dancers, photographers and musicians are selected to showcase their work. We were one of the three acts performing that night.

If you caught my ‘Week In My Life‘ post, you’d recall that for the last couple of Sunday’s I’ve been rehearsing with the boys in the band, trying out some songs, picking and scrapping songs and writing some of my own. About two weeks out from the show we even ended up swapping a song for a different one that had come up with while we were mucking around and jamming, but we finally settled on the set list of covers and original songs, which looked something like this;

• Sunday Morning – Maroon 5
• Stockholme – ORIGINAL
• Who’s Loving You – Jackson 5
• Toast – ORIGINAL
• Finesse – Bruno Mars

Compared to the last time I had played the showcase, it was a lot more energetic and up tempo, definitely down to the addition of our drummer. Even the original songs, which the boys helped me finish were some of the grooviest I’ve ever written, and we got loads of compliments on my song Toast.

//possible single cover??//

That said, it was a long day in the lead up to the 20 minute set.

The boys picked me up around 3:20, and we made the mad dash of a drive to get just outside the city before 4:00, considering out head shot time slot was between 3:40 and 4:00. We definitely broke some speeding laws.

Taking head shots was both awkward and stupidly hilarious, as none of us are professionals in front of the camera, which resulted in all sorts of stupid conversation and questions arising in an effort to get ‘candid’ shots, which also resulted in the photographer pausing in between takes to laugh at our stupidity.

After we had our photos taken, we decided to run the risk of potentially losing our incredible parking spot, and head out for an early dinner. As has become the tradition during rehearsals, we headed to the nearest Nando’s for a feed.

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmiUEh2hK84/?taken-by=priya_francis

 

By the time we finished up our dinner, it was time to head back for the sound check.

Sound check went great. It was the perfect opportunity to run through a couple of our songs, and we got a few claps from some of the artists who were setting up their work around the huge function hall.

Once we were done with soundcheck, it was basically an half an hour long waiting game for the doors to open, which we spent going around and looking at some of the art, chatting to (up) some of the artists, talking to one of the other bands and overall preparing for our set since we were first up.

A little after 7:00, the doors open, and people started to make their way in. A few moments later, and all our friends, as well as my family had joined us, and it was a great couple of minutes catching up and chatting with everyone.

A bit closer to 8, I was tapped on the shoulder by my guitarist, and so we headed towards the stage to get ready while the MC opened the night and began our introduction.

Honestly, the set could not have gone better. All of us improvised a little bit, much to the excitement of the other two musicians on stage, and having the boys behind me made me all that more confident. My guitarist absolutely nailed all his solos, and our drummer was a huge standout, especially during Finesse where he got a huge solo in place of me singing the bridge.

It was heaps of fun to get up on stage again, especially with the boys backing me up this time. Definitely keen to get going again.

x

Priya

PS:
Feel free to follow me on my social media!
Instagram: YouShouldHear
Twitter: YouShouldHear
Instagram: priya_francis (personal)
Spotify: priyafrancis

CHANGES Music Summit 2018: A Volunteer’s Experience

Hello friends, and welcome to another blog post.

I had a few second thoughts about sharing this post, because I wasn’t sure if my experience was deep enough to merit an entire blog post, but I’ve just finished up my second and final day, and thought…’what the heck, my blog, my posts‘, so here I am.

Over the 4-5th of July, the CHANGES Music Summit took place in Melbourne for the first time ever. What is it? Well, if you head to their website, this is the rough gist of it;

Over two days, CHANGES will outline the future of the music industry. Across the realms of music, tech, talks and ideas, CHANGES has assembled a roster of ground-breaking voices to ignite one question: what’s next?

Headquartered within the stunning ACU Melbourne campus, on July 4 and 5, CHANGES will begin to draw a roadmap for the future.

It sounds cool, right?

The summit covered changes throughout the entire industry, ‘music, tech, talks and ideas’. A plethora of subjects were covered over the two days such as;

• The Changing Mindset Of Contemporary Artists
• The Importance Of Covering Artists Outside of The Mainstream
• It’s Not Digital Marketing: It’s Marketing
• Elevating A Visual Experience With Technology
• DIY Party And Event Projects
• Gameboy Music Workshop
• The Benefits Of Being Multi-Disciplinary
• Women In Music – Hearing Voices You Can’t See

and a ton more.

Not only that, but from around 6PM onwards, the summit transformed into the music festival, and instead of stages that you would have at a regular festival, iconic live music venues, some that I’ve mentioned in my Music In Melbourne post, became stops to see up and coming as well as well-known Melbourne artists, allowing live pass and summit pass holders to travel around the city, and catch some amazing acts.

However, I found out about the summit, through my university email inbox. I often take it for granted, because on the odd occasion that I choose to check those emails, and go through the pile of mostly junk, I’m always certain to come across some sort of opportunity, tickets available, free passes, internship offers and so on.

A couple months ago, I came across an email seeking volunteers for the CHANGES Summit, and without really giving it much thought, decided it would be cool to give it a go and fill out the application. I’m telling you, the second I closed the tab on my phone, the entire thing was forgotten.

Which made it all the more surprising for me when I received an email last month telling me I had been selected as part of the volunteer roster for the summit. The best part, I had a free pass for the day I wasn’t rostered on. Hence, my short volunteering stint began.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having been rostered on for a half day shift on the first day of the summit, I was quite pleased considering some of the the talks I was keen on seeing were the following day. The day before the festival kicked off, I headed to Fitzroy, catching a tram out of the city, to find out where I would be stationed, get my volunteer pass and my T-shirt. It was a short, quick, fun meeting, and I met a couple other people from my university course who were all going to be in and around the event.

For the first day, my role as an Event Runner had me stationed at the CHANGES Hub, which was the first port of call for anyone and everyone who was going to be attending the summit. Considering I started at 1 and finished at 5, it was a pretty breezy shift, taking into consideration most people arrived earlier in the day. My role quickly turned into one of security/attendee assistance/registration.

I spent quite a while keeping people out of the staff and volunteer areas, helping them with  problems that arose with finding schedules and maps and knowing where they were meant to be, and when the next wave of people came in, I ended up helping out at the registration desk, finding people their passes, putting on live past wrist bands, printing out new name stickers for passes and watching as industry professionals struggled with the sliding door that refused to open on command unless you were one centimetre away from it.

It was a fun shift, and a lot of the other volunteers were students like I was, either interested in music, event management or festival work. It was a great atmosphere.

The second day was a lot more chill, considering I didn’t have a shift, so once again, I caught the tram in and headed towards my first talk, Music Passport: Live America.

The talk was really interesting, and covered a lot of grounds around the export of live Australian music in the USA, festivals like SXSW in Austin, making decisions surrounding taking bands over there for managers and labels, the costs involved, the processes and so on.

Following that session, a couple other volunteers and I headed back to the Hub, for the all ages lunch showcase, with RAT!hammock playing that afternoon. If you’re looking for a funky, bedroom-pop, Mac DeMarco type sound, definitely check them out because I loved their set! My favourite song was definitely Mud, though all the songs they played were really good, and easy to listen to.

After RAT!hammock, I caught one more keynote talk, one that I was really keen to listen to, and that was The Benefits of Being A Multi-Disciplinary. The talk was incredibly interesting for me. While being a musician, working towards songwriting and maybe performance one day, are my main aspirations, they haven’t stopped me from becoming a ‘slashie’, as they say; someone with a couple of slashes in their title. For example, old blog favourite, Donald Glover. He’s got all the slashes. If you looked at his title it would probably be something like;

Rapper/Singer/Songwriter/DJ/Record Producer/Actor/Comedian/Writer/Director

Along the way, I’ve kind of picked up my own set of skills, and while I’m not incredibly mind-blowing amazing at all of them, I’m good enough that I can list them as a skill set, which in turn makes me more valuable to hire or work with. Things like photography, videography, music journalism, blogging, editing and producing (we are getting there) can be added to my singer/songwriter/musician title, and help me hopefully get more jobs that carry more weight. I know a lot of us bloggers are already ‘slashies’, due to the nature of the endeavour requiring not only a lot of extra out-of-pocket work, but also different avenues to make money and sustain ourselves at the same time.

Uppy, the speaker, a radio host at Triple J and currently a Music Director at Red Bull Australia, also gave seven key tips to help us ‘slashies’.

• Ask questions from colleagues: there is always something to learn, and if you can dip your feet into all aspects of a project or work, then you can gain more insight and knowledge into how those roles are filled, the skills needed and how you can make it work for you.
• Find someone you trust who can mentor you.
• Read about the stuff you can read about: Keeping on top of everything that’s out there for you, puts you a step ahead.
• YouTube is a rad resource of how to do things.
• Attend music conferences and summits: they are one of the best places to network and navigate the industry, make connections and form relationships you can rely on further down the track in the future.
• Consider doing an online course or qualification if the traditional educational route is more your jam: while DIY self-taught work ethic is well respected, so is someone with a degree or qualification that guarantees their value.
• Take care of yourself because burnout is real: the point of being a ‘slashie’ is to be good at a lot of things, which doesn’t work if you yourself aren’t in your best form.

I made sure to note those tips because I could see how well they could lend themselves to all types of career movement and trajectory. Those tips, as well as the entire session were really worth the time it took to get to and from the summit.

Although it started out as a mindless process for me, one I forgot about almost instantaneously, the CHANGES summit was an amazing experience. I really enjoyed attending the festival, meeting all the amazing people I did over the two days, and opening myself up to the real inner workings of the music industry and the people within it. Who knows, I’ll probably be back at the summit next year, either as a volunteer or a regular pass holder!