This Friday we host Sydney band The Buoys for an acoustic in store for the release of their new album Lustre. While we just host album release in stores in the current location, if you were around a decade or so back, in our old Crown Lane location (now where Kneading Ruby is), gigs and in stores were a massive part of the shop. My column about some of Wollongong music’s history a couple of week’s back was popular so I thought I’d continue the looking back theme for this week’s Counter Culture column, and highlight some of the most memorable in stores we hosted in the Crown Lane space.
Kicking it off is a show that featured Melbourne band My Disco with locals Ohana. This was in 2008 as Ohana were launching their great full-length release Dead Beat. My Disco was an early favourite amongst the shop crew and staff, so it was an epic line up. The space was big but still not big enough to hold everyone that was there, with lots of people spilling out to the street. Both bands were in fine form, and it will go down as one of the best post punk shows to ever happen in the ’gong. There is very little photo documentation of it on-line, and from memory it is the show that got us shut down from having ticketed shows for a while, but it was one of the best nights there. Over the years following I’ve met so many people that were at that show who I wouldn’t have known at the time and have reminisced about how great that show was.
In 2011 we released the self-titled full length from local duo Mother & Son and to celebrate we hosted the album launch. It was another huge night, we’d had a couple of years hiatus from hosting actual shows after the above shut down, but we had returned and Mother & Son assembled a great line up that included Melbourne bands The Yard Apes and Midnight Wolf, alongside Newcastle band The Gooch Palms playing one of their first ever shows. Mother & Son were always a great band live, and the aforementioned album is a local classic, go and give it a listen if you aren’t across it. Here are some very lo-fi photo's from the night!
This show is something I covered recently in the Spunk Records feature but in 2012, US artist Bonnie Prince Billy wanted to play a show down this way on his day off, after a sell out show at the Opera House. Our good friends at Spunk asked us to host it and it was such a special Tuesday afternoon, what was intended to be a couple of solo acoustic songs turned into an hour-long full band set. Here is some video from the day.
The first ever show from The Pinheads happened on Record Store Day 2014, it would be our last Record Store Day in Crown Lane and during parts of the set I thought it would be Jez’s last day on earth as he climbed precariously through the beams while the rest of his band play below. Thankfully he’s still here and that show set the standard for the early chaos of The Pinheads and goes down as one of the favourite all time instores at Music Farmers.
