Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Chet Faker at Red 7



I remember when I was a kid and I thought that at some point in my life I would know all there is to know about music then when I was in Junior High a Borders opened up about 30 miles from my house and my world was turned upside-down. Borders stocked import singles. Not only that, their selection was massive compared to Ames, which is where I did the majority of my music shopping previous to Borders' opening. In that moment in my life I was really into Oasis. The internet was just a baby and I was reading about other Brit-Pop bands on Oasis Message Boards. I was using a 14.4 modem so basically all I could really do was read about these bands until Borders opened and suddenly I could touch a Blur CD and ogle non-album track CD singles from Oasis.

What does this have to do with Chet Faker's Thursday night appearance on Red 7's inside stage? Very little but if you buy yourself a ticket to the show we can discuss the incoherence of this post before or after Faker's set. During the set, we're going to stare in rapt attention and document the experience using only our five senses without the hinderance of technology.


Chet Faker - Terms and Conditions video via YouTube

Ok, now that the business is out of the way I can get back to my story about the magic of Borders. Once upon a time kids, people paid for music. The end.

Seriously though, when I realized that Oasis was releasing songs that were only available to people in England or via import I was a bit crushed. I realized that even if I knew everything there was to know about American music, there would be an entire world of music that wasn't even available in this country. Then I fell in love with Blur and discovered that Blur was so popular in Japan that they released things that you could only get in Japan or through VERY expensive importing. It seemed like my quest to know all there is to know about music was futile and it was. Now I'm in my early 30's and I realize that I know only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what there is to know about music and I can't even remember things as well as I used to so, that fraction is fracturing more and more each day.

This brings me back to Chet Faker. He's from Australia and he's fucking awesome. I first discovered him while making my SXSW 2012 Spotify Playlist. There was only one track with Chet Faker on U.S. Spotify and it was actually a track from Ta-Ku that featured Chet Faker. I prefer to post an artist's most recent solo work when making Spotify playlists for SXSW but it was the only track available so I added it and it quickly became one of my favorites. Subsequentally I discovered Electric Wire Hustle, Flume, Hiatus Kaiyote and a host of other Down-Under artists fusing, Jazz, R&B, and Soul music with electronic textures. Chet Faker is connected with all or most of the artists I listed here and seeing him perform in a venue the size of Red 7 Inside is certainly worth a $10 ticket and your time.

Remember internet 1.0? Hello my future girlfriend. This is what I sound like. I am 11 years old, in the 6th grade in New Mexico. Please PM me if I'm on Yahoo! chat. Bye. Thanks for stopping by!