Self – Released November 11, 2013
In late 2011 Dean announced he was going to live in England indefinitely. We decided it was important to play a last big hometown show with him, seeing as it was also 20 years since the band started. We called our buddies Violent Soho and Tape/Off who were into joining us for the gig, booked the venue and started rehearsing.
We chose a long and varied setlist, including a lot of songs we hadn’t played for over 10 years. We organised recording of the show and filming of a couple of songs. It was all a bit of a whirlwind but in typical Screamfeeder style it all came crashing chaotically together on the night.
There are a hell of a lot of mistakes in the performance. We left them in. Technical perfection wasn’t the aim of the night – we possibly should have rehearsed the old songs more however. Hopefully we made up for it by harnessing the energy and spirit of what the three of us are about as a band, as music fans and as people.
Matthew Dever recorded the gig for us on a pro tools rig by the side of the stage. It was chaotic – a lot went wrong. Some things we fixed, most we didn’t. Microphone stands kept falling over, there was a lot of spill between tracks, instruments went down from time to time. Kel’s bass cut out for ages. Dean’s snare mic fell off for a few songs; Matt replaced it in the mix. Darek’s guitar mic was lying on the ground for the entire section of the set he joined us for – from “Ice Patrol” onwards – we had no choice but for Darek to re-record it while mixing. He played it pretty much one take. There are two points where Tim overdubbed short sections of Kellie’s bass while mixing, but that was all the fixing-up we did. We could have cleaned up mistakes, fixed wrong chords, notes, lyrics and timing errors, but – we didn’t. This is a very warts-n-all recording, perhaps not for first time listeners of the band!
What we also did was to chop out long sections of guitar tuning, instrument swapping, and boring or inaudible banter. We’re doing you a favour, it’s not good listening. We also left out the part where we drew the winner of a raffle: we’d organised raffling a one-off screamfeeder “Bunny” distortion pedal, made by our friend Sylvain. Tim from Tym Guitars drew the winner (and donated the money to charity through his website). This wasn’t particularly good listening either. About 20 minutes of crap was chopped out altogether.
We were joined on stage by lots of guests, who sang on “You and Me”: Madeleine Paige, Branko Cosic, Amy Bennett, Nathan Pickels, Luke Boerdam and Seja Vogel. We were also joined by Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg (ex Pavement dude) who played guitar on our last song “12345”. A huge heartfelt thanks to all these people, as well as those who worked with us on the night or in the run-up, and everyone who braved the torrential rain on a Thursday night and came to the gig. Massive thanks also to Violent Soho and Tape/Off.
This sounds like a pretty crazy gig. But it was crazy in all the right ways. It felt like we’d done what we set out to do, it was super-fun, there was a lot of great energy in the room, a lot of smiling, sweaty, hi-5-in’ people.
Thank you everyone, we had a blast, we hope you did too.
To finish the story, Dean’s UK visit was cut short, he returned 6 months later and resumed his life in Australia. Like any band who announce they’re wrapping things up, we’ve inevitably started playing again.
Screamfeeder: Tim Steward, Kellie Lloyd, Dean Shwereb, Darek Mudge.
Mixed and mastered by Darek at The Shed, October and November 2013.
Live sound: Dave Nolan
Lights: Greg Dux
Guitars: Phil Usher
Photography: Stephen Booth
Sound Quality: B+ / Stereo multitrack desk recording + live mics, some sound & technical limitations. Performance: B-
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