Tag Archives: format festival

The First Annual Do What You Peel Festival

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FORMAT FESTIVAL 2012s FIRST ANNUAL DO WHAT YOU PEEL FESTIVAL, was the brain child of Radio Adelaide’s the Range presenter Casey Briggs, Format’s Managing Director Stan Mahoney and the Scenery’s Alex Gordon-Smith. Stan and Alex did all the cool stuff though. Stan got the street closed with his patented council whispering, much like his police whispering, but more vibrant. Alex came up with Mass Karaoke. And Casey used his maths degree to divide the live Radio Adelaide broadcast into separate yet equally important parts.

Radio Adelaide presenters from The Scenery, Behind the Screens, The Range and Streetcast joined forces to bring a three hour broadcast live from Peel St outside Format. They joined the South Australian Parkour Association, the Alley Cats, Choral Grief, Dancing Room, Collarbones, the Wild Things, artist Sam Howie, roving reporter John Dexter, handball curator Dom Mugavin, handball enthusiast Kat Botten and the unenthusiastic Matt Hayward in the live action festivities.

This was the fifth year of the Format Festival, which initially started out as a zine fair by one Ianto Ware. The consecutive Format Festivals have been an open call out to people with “ideas”, such as art exhibitions and installations, DIY fairs, weird group social experiments and live music extravaganzas. Behind the Screens’ Chrissy Kavanaugh and the Friday Range’s Casey Briggs spoke with Format’s Grandfather and Father, Dr Ianto Ware and the Reverend Stan Mahoney.

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The Scenery’s Alex Gordon-Smith and Streetcast’s lovely Jennie Lenman gave ya’ll a live first person description of the Peel St goings on. It’s not as easy as you’d think, except if you’re Jennie Lenman.

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One of the many special guests of the Do What You Peel Festival was the South Australian Parkour Association. The collective built a scaffold at the Hindley St end of Peel St to demonstrate their urban acrobatic

skills. They also helped paint the undercoat of the Format mural, which council failed to do because they didn’t have a ladder. Casey and Chrissy spoke with the president of South Australian Parkour, Travis Ronson.

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The Scenery’s John Dexterity Dexter acted as the broadcast’s roving reporter, always in the thick of it, trying to pry the facts out of the closed in secretive public (except for Dom, he was really great). Over this post we’ll have a few snippets from John’s day, all except the one when some jerk interrupts Angela and hogs the mic for himself, fuck that guy.

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As the date of the ‘Do What You Peel’ grew closer, the powers that be at Radio Adelaide were like “Alex, are you sure everyone that you’ve organised for the broadcast are going to be there” “Sure”, he said, confident that promises were promises, right?. No, not right. Due to various mis-communications and a case of “taking people for granted”, one of the programmed bands were unable to play.

Enter C. Briggs.

By a stroke of genius, unrelated to mathematics, Casey made the call to Collarbones asking if by chance they could play in Peel St. Fortunately they were more than happy to do so, and thus the day was saved.

An amusing side story though – Collarbones are Format alumni, and were clearly more than happy to play the street. We contacted them directly, rather than through their management (which I’m not sure even occurred to us). When their management eventually caught wind that Collarbones were playing the street, they lost their shit, fearing that the place they were actually playing that night “Rocket Bar” would feel slighted. So the guys asked if they could be billed as Sean Lockhart and Penelope Nettles, but Stan went for the Clavicle Brothers.

So here’s Sean and Penelope Clavicle’s cover of Ginuwine’s Pony featuring Paul the Hobo.

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Here’s John, with Hayward. I don’t think Hayward was wearing underwear, or something.

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Casey and Chrissy had a chat with Marcus and Travis from Collarbones.

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The Scenery’s Ryan Winter had been a busy man during the week. On the Sunday of the Festival he took a recorder down to the DIY fair to discover just what it was all about.

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Alleycats, organised by one Ben Reichstein, whilst a part of the Format Festival largely takes place away from it. Best described as a scavenger hunt on bicycles, people congregate at Format and then set off in competition. Casey and Chrissy spoke with Ben all about it.

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There has been a lot of talk about the Format Peel St mural, painted by artist Sam Howie with help from Tom Squires. Property Developer Zis Ginos’ son George certainly wasn’t a fan, nor a random council worker who without any authority demanded that Sam cease painting saying that “this isn’t art” and that there was “no way this was approved”. By the end of the same day Format had received an apology from council. I for one think that the mural was genius, there isn’t a day that goes by that people don’t stop to look at it, take photos and discuss what it is about it that they love/hate. That’s the beauty of the mural, the discussion that poured out of it.

Streetcast’s Jennie Lenman and the Scenery’s Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo spoke with the man behind the creation, artist Sam Howie to ask exactly what his intentions were with the wall. All you curious people, here it is straight from the horses mouth.

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The second live performance of the evening was by Adelaide’s The Wild Things, featuring Mark Curtis of Oh Minor and the British Robots, Luke Eygenraam of Central Deli Band, the Waterslides and Antony of the Future, photographer and all round sweet guy Hugh Langlands-Bell, and some guy who curiously shares two thirds of my name and can play an amazing array of instruments, Alex Gordon. I apologise, as I don’t know the track names, but they ended their set with this one

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Oh, and here’s John again with the lovely Kat Botten.

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…and then Mateo and Jen talking with the Wild Things

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Of course Do What You Peel wasn’t the only Friday event for the Format Festival. After the street festivities was the Steph Crase curated Great Band Party, featuring XiXi Cao, Big Richard Insect, Matt Banham, No Action, Summerflake and Good Heavens. Mateo and Jen caught up with Sarah from Sydney band Good Heavens, to chat about the formation of the band from the ashes of Wolfmother and the Red Sun band.

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The final day of the Format Festival was one that will live long in the memory, and also started our strange love affair with Melbourne band NOZU. I will hands down say that NOZU are the ultimate party music party band, never have so many hips moved so feverishly, and so much sweat turned a seedy basement into a tropical paradise through Sparkling Ale glasses. The Scenery’s Ryan Winter got a call from NOZU earlier in the week to talk the new album, and their expectations for the final day.

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Mass karaoke, the greatest thing to have ever happen. Imagine four hundred people, a choir, a dance group, a gigantic karaoke projection and a crazed man with glasses with a loud speaker all synchronised with an eighties love ballad. Radio Adelaide told me it was crazy, and that it would never work, but those of us that were there know. Credits – Stan Mahoney, Alex Gordon-Smith and Nick Moss aka big.dos. THE GREATEST THING TO HAVE EVER HAPPENED. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Apparently the broadcast run out of time to record the whole thing, but you’ll get the idea.

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The First Annual Do What You Peel Festival will sadly be the one and only, as Format is pushed out of its Peel St residence. That might be a good thing though, as who can really be arsed living up the expectations of such an awesome day.

Thanks to everyone involved, they are too numerous to list here, but you know who you are.

Love,

The Scenery

Oh and here’s a random photo of Alex and the Mayor. If you trawl the net hard enough you’ll find a picture of the Mayor dressed up in oversized baby clothes.

Night night.

 

Everyone blame Glans: Part One

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In the immortal words of MC Rakim, “It’s been a long time, I shouldn’tve left you” (without some podcasts to step to).

We are back. And we are recapping all that has been since we last spoke, namely The Scenery from September until now.

We shall be doing this with month by month recaps, before we re-format our website to suit our new doings.

As of February 16th The Scenery no longer broadcasts on community radio station Radio Adelaide, and instead we shall be releasing podcasts directly to our website, not to mention other forms of media. We sincerely thank Radio Adelaide, and are eternally grateful for all they done for us and IMPLORE you to subscribe to Australia’s first community radio station at www.radio.adelaide.edu.au/subcribe/

So there was September…

The ongoing Jade Monkey saga was a grievous one for the Adelaide live music scene. Many positives and negatives have since been born over the debate about Adelaide’s live music culture, that has seemingly drawn a line in the sand between the industry old guard, and the grass roots purveyors of culture.

The Scenery caught up with Zac the week of the Jade’s last show at it’s Twin Street abode.

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As it stands now the Jade Monkey are currently going through various legal processes in order the get a liquor license for a space at the rear of the St Paul’s complex. We wish Zac and Naomi all the best in their strenuous fight to re launch “The Jade”. We will endeavor to catch up with Zac in the coming weeks to keep you up to date with the Jade’s future.

By now you all should have heard of Fascination Street. A group of architects and designers who have furiously plied their wares all over our fair city. Their credits to date include Moving Music, Lost City, and The Depot to name a few. John caught up with Branko, Josh, Rene and Sarie back in September to talk about the idea behind Fascination Street, their motivations and their goals.

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September also saw Adelaide’s first glimpse at it’s Live Music Thinker in Residence, Martin Elbourne. Various stakeholders in the Adelaide Live Music Scene were invited to the World’s End Hotel to presumably rub shoulders with one another and get an idea of how M. Elbourne thought. The Scenery were in attendance and reported back as to how we thought the night went, and our impression of the man who is to save the scene.

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In a response to the growing criticism of the Adelaide live music scene, Fowler’s Live proprietor Peter Darwin announced his intentions to host a Music Awards ceremony for South Australian artists. There were many critics putting in their ten cents about the announcement, including one Ryan Winter and one Alex Gordon-Smith of the Scenery.

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It was that time of year again when we rustled up some torches and gum boots to go searching for the infamous Stan Mahoney and talk about the happenings of Format Festival 2012. Stan, along with gallery exhibition Rosanne Angry curator Amira H, joined Ryan, Alex and John in the studio to give us the low down on Format, the Festival, Rosanne and miscellaneous life advice.

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Don’t ask me why, but someone thought it would be a good idea to give Adelaide’s favourite seedy uncle Matthew Hayward his own segment. You don’t want to know how many takes it took…but here’s A Thought with Matthew Hayward.

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Finally. You may have heard the urban legend of ‘The Poisoner’, but you probably haven’t. In the interests of public safety, here’s the story behind the myth.

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And so we have it, the first, hastily done Scenery post in let’s not talk about how long. More to come imminently.

Your friends,

The Scenery.

 

 

The Carnival is Over

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On this episode Ryan and John were joined by Format Collective member Simon Gray, discussing the end of Adelaide’s festival season, the South Australian Screen Awards and Format doings.

So it’s come to this…

I stood looking up and down the line up for the Barrio ‘End of the World Party’, it’s last night as the festive season drew to a close. A group or friends were more or less lined up where the back Neon Lobster would have been, tempting me like midnight sprites to line cut, and offering plausible rationale for doing so. After battling with my conscience for some time, and faced with never seeing the bowels of the wonderful Barrio beast, I quickly buttered my way in as the line made it’s natural progression forward. We waited for forty odd minutes, which paled in comparison to the some who had been in line for up to two hours, before we made it to the glorious front. Before even quizzing us, our arms were loaded up with offerings as we made our way past the giant Barrio sign, and into the mouth of madness.

The great hype that surrounded the mysterious Barrio injected a pleasant excitement into the festival season that many Adelaideans take, not for granted but something else, like a cruise control mentality. It certainly exposed holes in the draw of the Garden of Unearthly Delights, that for many who patroned it in it’s infancy, has become a strange, unnatractive beast, more like a pen for ticket holders than a destination of curiosity.

Both Tuxedo Cat and Arcade Lane shone amongst the current barrage of buzz words being thrown about this city (renewal, activation, vibrancy) and continue to teach lessons about the potential of unused spaces and the need for small live/arts based venues.

Here Simon gives a Fringe show critique.

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Some may have noticed that the Format space, usually bustling with the goings on of the Format Festival, was a little subdued this year.

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The Scenery office was buzzing at the list of nominations for this years South Australian Screen Awards, with many a Scenery friend making the list.

We must congratulate and good luck:

Best Documentary Nominee Peter Drew for Adelaide’s Forgotten Outlaws.

Innovation in Digital Media nominee Dario Russo for Danger 5

Innovation in Digital Media & Best Feature Film nominee Sam Wright

Best Perfromance nominee Kieran McNamara for Steak Knife

Good Luck Chaps!

 

and as for us, we bid you adieu

Love,

The Scenery.