Monday, March 06, 2006

SAN SINGER SHATTERS ELBOW!

As some of you may have already heard, this message is to confirm that San Singer has shattered his elbow in an on-stage accident. The incident occured near the end of the band's performance at Ngee Ann Secondary School on February 28, as part of our "Riot Da Skool" tour of schools and tertiary institutions in Singapore.

San's had successful surgery to reconstruct the joint, and he revealed, "I jumped off a Marshall stack, the whole thing toppled over...and while I was trying to protect my guitar, I landed on my elbow. And now my whole elbow is made of metal. Actually titanium." You can view the entire statement here.

Although doctors are confident he will be able to play guitar again, it will require at least three months of intensive physiotherapy and rest. "Physiotherapy really hurts like a bitch, but I'll see you all soon in three to four months' time. Rock on!" said a clearly emotional San before flashing his trademark rock sign.

As a result, we've indefinitely postponed our upcoming Australian tour, which had been confirmed but not publicly announced. We still expect to play at the Mosaic Music Festival on March 19 and we're currently holding auditions for a short-term replacement guitarist. More news as and when they develop.

It was an unfortunate and sickening accident to witness, but we're grateful that he is otherwise in good health and spirits. We'll do whatever it takes to support him through his recovery. In the meantime, please send in your well wishes to our website guestbook, myspace or email and please continue sending your song requests to your favorite radio stations. If you can, spare some time to include him in your daily thoughts and prayers too.

Wayne Thunder

Saturday, January 14, 2006

The SUNS Live & Unplugged for radio!

Hey ya'all,

I've just heard our set live on radio! Actually. Pre-recorded in one take! It sounded awesome. Phew. I thought i made a couple of mistaks but the mistakes actually were in key so it didn't stick out. So all you SUNRockers that were smsing me, walandui, you almost crashed my mobile! I've never received so many sms in 10 minutes. Many thanks go out to Daniel Ong the dude who invited us into his show!

I'm sorry I haven't been updating the blog much. Things have been absolutely nuts since we got back cos we've been swamped with promotion & publicity work. We're doing so many interviews we're actually starting to run out of things to say to keep them interesting but we'll think of something.

Friday's the big show. We're gonna be supporting Reguritator and that's gonna be such a highlight event for The SUNS! I can't wait to share the stage with them. It's gonna be a massive massive festival. They're already expected thousands and thousands to turn up. It might turn out to be one of our biggest shows to date! So I hope I'll see all ya there armed with your cigarette lighters, mobile phones & devil horns!

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

More photos from THE SUNS 220 NSW Tour

Here's a couple of pics with loyal SUNRockers who travelled over two hours to catch our show. They are perhaps one of the nicest bunch we've ever had to know. They made our night by causing a riot in Wollongong... and by drinking themselves silly!





We climbed the skyscrapers of Sydney for this pic!




Goddammit that's huge!





They manufacture Malboro cigarettes in this building!





Crusin' on a bout we rented for 50 bucks with the opera house in da background.

Here's how we woke up our soundguy Rajiv every morning in his hotel room on tour.
1st prize goes to the person who guesses the butt!



The SUNS doing the toursit thing posing with the world famous Sydney harbour bridge.

One more show to go on The SUNS NSW Tour


Friday’s EP launch was totally wicked! To be honest, all the shows in the leadup had been slightly disappointing with either modest turnouts or brain-dead audiences but Friday’s show made up for it all. We were worried about headlining as all the past headliners we’ve seen at The Empire have suffered from late starts, with audiences either too tired to get into it, or just plain leaving to catch the last train home.

So with that in mind we had to be absolute Nazis about timing. Now if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being a stage Gestapo. I hate having to rush my fellow musicians into getting on stage and I hate giving them the dreaded “last song” signal, because I HATE being rushed myself. Ask San and Jboss! I’m the world’s biggest procrastinator, but in order for our EP launch to be a success, someone had to do the job, and I tried my best to be firm and tactful about it. Thankfully, to all the bands’ credit, they were fully supportive and cooperative so we managed to start reasonably early.

The Brazen Hearts opened the night and did a great job of warming up the room considering I had to push them to start early and cut their set a song short. Kampei were next and I was glad to finally be able to see them. I love their music and they played all my favorite songs. Even though their set was a bit messy from time to time, I’d much rather see an unpolished band with good songs than a clinical band with shithouse songs. I remember the first time I saw The Vaginals, they made mistake after mistake but I went home remembering their great songs and electric stage presence.

The amazing Bagster were up next and what more can I say! They played a totally sick set and brought a whole bunch of people up the front to really take the night up another notch. Mitch yet again demonstrated why he’s one of my favorite drummers in the world. More on Bagster later!

Much to our delight, from the moment The Lyrical Madmen finished their set, it was clear that almost everyone in the venue was there for us. Suddenly people emerged from the back bar, the front door, the pokies room, and next thing we knew the whole audience area was full! Personally, I think we played one of the best sets we’ve ever played. The Empire’s a very difficult stage from a sound perspective so it took Rajiv a song or two to get the PA system pumping, but as always he weaved his sonic magic and by the end of the second song the audience was completely into it and buzzing. We played for almost an hour! At the end of the night we sold a massive amount of merch, enough to recover all our living and transportation expenses for the last 3 weeks! Much thanks to all the bands, friends and fans for being so supportive.

Back to Bagster. We went to a party with the Bag Street Boys the next night and we discussed the idea of a Bagster/Suns national tour in 2006! We both play energetic, positive, fun music, we both don’t give a damn about trends and we stick to our guns because we believe in the music we create. So if we tour together it’ll give everyone in the country a chance to enjoy something unique and refreshing. Frankly, I think the scene’s way too saturated with the all the current “trendy” music. We’re dead excited about it, I really hope we can make it happen. There are lots of interesting things developing for us over the summer months so we’ll keep you posted. We’ve got one more show to do in Wollongong before we head back home to Melbourne. I’ve had a blast touring the past 3 weeks. I can’t wait for the next tour, but until then I’m looking forward to seeing my own bed again soon.

xxx
Wayne Thunder

Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Nyets and the sound of Puh-Too!

This whole week has been filled with spectacular highs and large doses of boredom leaving few of us supremely spastic...

Tuesday night was a show at the Spectrum nightclub. It was part of the Jaeger Uprising showcase and the third one The SUNS have played. The night started off well with The Wireflies taking me to orbit and back with their psychedelic porn rock! Evil Eye were next up and they obviously owned the crowd! Energetic and full of clichéd rock moves they played an entertaining set (provided you were into dull comedy). By the time The SUNS took the stage half the crowd had left the venue leaving just a handful of bootiful virgin listeners for the boys to deflower!!!

BUT...
What was to follow next was about the most bizarre reaction the band has ever had. The audience had suddenly mutated into a bunch of duhduhzoids!!!! Now there's probably a good explanation for this, so if you can think of one then please do me a favor and let me know. Never in my whole life in this industry have I ever witnessed a more dead crowd! Hell for second I thought the barmaid had fed me stale beer and I was now in the twilight zone! But reality set in and it was clear the crowds wasn't going to change their minds. My only explanation is that they weren't really music fans and just friends of the bands that had already played. But hey, I still give 'em 10 points for sticking around and giving us an applause that was loud enough to mask my farting (and I was farting a lot that night from my Subway sandwhich).

The rest of the week was all about killing time. San Singer and I came up with a new language to speak to each other in and also talked about making it into a short film titled "The Nyets" (Due to be released in Winter 2006). It's basically a story of two Indians who speak in the language of Nyet. The language consists of one word - "NYET". Mixed together with 1 part melodrama bollywood style and two parts emotion it just sounds like a whole bunch of shit!

See what life on the road is like? Now we've also managed to ass another word into the vocab of the Nyet, and that's "Puh-TOOOO". The story behind this word is very close to home for me... when I was around oh... say maybe 8 or 9, I used to share a bed with my bro and he was one twisted fire farter! So one night when I was sleeping I was awoken by this polyphonic fart that sounded like - PUH-TOOOO! So there you have it. Next time you guys come on down to a SUNSs show and San Singer is going Nyet or Puh tooo on the mic during sound check, you'll know what its all about... getcha pull on that one!!!z

Click HEAR of a preview mp3 sample from an upcoming episode of The Nyets

Friday was a big show at the awesomely awesome Marquee club supporting The Queers on their Australian tour. Another bonus was that we were supporting our fellow brothers from Melbourne, the mighty Mach Pelican!!!! Wollongong band Hytest rounded out the rest of the bill!!

The Suns opened up the show and I gotta say it was truly excellent, the sound rocked and we had the best light show ever too!!!! No disrespect to our brother Krish who usually handles the lightning for the Suns!! But this was full on fire in the sky shit!!! We had everything except the pyro!!!!! Hytest followed and from the minute we arrived they were really friendly to us. So I was really interested to check them out and they rocked hard!!! And then came those Japanese ninja's in leather jackets!!! And what can I say about Mach Pelican that hasn't already been said!!!!! I definitely lost my head at the front of the stage slamming with SAN!!! The next band I'm about to talk about played approximately 30 songs non-stop, back to back, and they had no setlist and they're Mach Pelicans biggest influence!!! I'm talking of course about The Queers!!! Apart from the fact that they were such great guys their set was punishing and relentless and definitely left a scar on my left frontal lobe!!!

The rest of the night consisted of drinking, admiring the lovely barmaid, playing pool with Atsu from Mach Pelican and I even remember mooning my black ass on a couple of occasions. Also to Lemar, the minister of sound working at the Marquee... thank you for being the coolest sound guy I've ever come across! And to those three lovely people I met that night, ya'll have been the nicest Sydney-siders I've met so far... and to the blonde girl with lovely blue eyes, you rock!!!!

Saturday night was party night and our tour manager Boon Scott took Wayne Thunder and myself to a karaoke bar, where we proceeded to get drunk with a few other friends and sing Chinese canto pop songs!!! The highlight of that session would have to be when Boon sang lead on "Easy" with Wayne and I doing the backing "ahhhs" and even managed harmony in our drunken state!!!! But enough was enough so Wayne and I decided to check out the "bootiful women" of Sydney but first. I had to have my hot dog and I did - two actually!!! From Harry's hotdogs somewhere in the city!!!!!

After about an hour of walking around aimlessly we got a call from Ozzy Osboon saying it was time to head back, so we caught up with the rest of the drunken crew and found San lurking in the shadows. Apparently he had been called in to drive us all back cos he was the only sober person around. So all in all I suppose it has been a great week. I can't complain, I mean what could be better than hanging out with a bunch of good friends playing music, getting drunk and enjoying the comedy that is life!!!!

So till next time, this is sound general Rajiv "Nyet" Naidu saying get your ass out there and support the local bands and don’t forget to say hi to me next time!!!


Saturday, November 05, 2005

The SUNBURN Effect

This is sound general Rajiv 'piss off me" naidu reporting direct live from behind the mixing desks of Sydney. Its currently 1.53 am on Sunday morning coming off another venomus SUNS show which was at Bizzo's tonight.

First off, I start from the beginning, that being Wednesday the 2nd... the ride was an absolute bastard. Four nutballs in an already packed van does not make for a very comfortable ride but hey, who ever said touring was easy? So yeah, we made it eventually in good time. I must say from my second impression of Sydney (the first being was when I was 8 and all I remember was this big ass hot dog I ate and these bastard flies... well the flies are still around, have yet to find that dog yet) It was hot, humid and being a human being who is incredible susceptible to heat I went apeshit!!!!

But on to better things we were greeted by the warm and accomadating Boon, who is the SUNS Sydney tour manager,and might I add an amazing intergalactic demonic metal bass thumper... that's right kids be very afraid! Dubbed Boon Scott or Ozzy Osboon, this supreme human being has been a great friend and host to the entire tribe from day one and has been looking after us over here.

Our first show here was at the Metro Nightclub. The venue was clean, classy and full of attitude perfect for a rock show. On one side of the ring we had Wolfmother playing a headline show at the main room and on the other side we had the mighty SUNS, and what can I say, I know for a fact my boys blew everyones boobs and asses that were present, hell I've been with these guys from day one and till today they still give me messy internal diarrhoea every fucking time!!! We made some cool new friends who dug the show and pledged their allegiance to the rising SUNS!

Next stop was The Harp, and that gig went off as always, kind of makes you wonder which bloody SUNS show doesn't??? Do they ever have a bad a day??? Bastards!!! Following that was a show at the mighty Empire Hotel, now this show I must say, put a big smile on my face!!!! One, being the self professed womaniser that I am, ahem, I was so happy to see some absolutley bootiful women there. I was just so motivated to make the SUNS sound mightier than ever in the hope that some lovely fair maiden may take notice of me. I think I speak for all the knob fiddlers out there when I say we are so under appreciated by the ladies, boo hoo hoo!!

Secondly the house engineer that was working the night was an absolute relic who beared a striking resemblance to Art Garfunkel and probably had pudding stuck up his ears because he apparently had no clue what to do with the bands that payed that night. And on top of that in between band change overs he was playing some wierd hickory dickory folk music!!! Now who in their right mind would play that in a room full of tattoed punks and misfits!!! go figure!!! still hats off to the lads for the courage to stick through it all!!!! And then my boys came, played and conquered!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which brings us to tonight. Now tonight's venue was absolutely cool, big spacious and once again it came with a complimetary sound duhduhzoid!!!! But still I must exend my thanks to the kind and lovely bar maid that served me beer the whole night. Do I even need to repeat my self at this point again... sigh... alright, yeah they did it again, they played their absolute best and got the best out of the crowd. ohh and might i add also that there were some absolutely bootiful ladies in the crowd tonight... ahem but yeah back to the SUNS... hahahahah!!!!! ( oh and check out the photo of the virgin crowd of SUNRocker converts! )

But you know, these last few days i've come to notice a strange effect THE SUNS have on people. I call it THE SUNBURN EFFECT. Every time these magnificent gentlemen step onstage, they have this uncanny ability of drawing each and every one present, right to the front, shake their bum bum and then just as they walk ofstage they manage to take that crowd with them, giving any band playing after them a serious case of SUNBURN!!!! Its venomous and its contagious!!!!!

All I can say is I've never met a more down to earth, hardworking, fun and most of all incredibly talented bunch of guys, I'm abolutely blessed to know these guys and incredibly honoured to be a part of this magical rollercoaster ride. And to each and every SUNS fan out there you are a big part of this journey. This is your sound general Rajiv "piss off me" Naidu signing off with tired eyes...

God bless y'all and remember to say hi to me next time

Friday, November 04, 2005

This Just In!

Papparazzi has managed to capture a photo of the now infamous Indian dancer that tried to make San Singer boogie on the dancefloor. Here's the a photograph of her dancing with Andrew, a Sydney Sunrocker. He's Smithtown Riot's manager.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

San Singer Forced to Samba on the Dancefloor!

SUNROCKERS!

We're in Sydney and it's fuckin' hot in here! We arrived yesterday afternoon just past lunchtime. Somehow we navigated the huge city without a map. We had to locate beloved tour manager Boon Scott who was waiting at armpitt st to hand us the keys to his house. We're crashing at his place ya see... It's such a cool joint. The suburb is actually called Bevrly Hills!!! And we got a gym, spa, pool and sauna. Pretty damm sweet if ya asked me! Anyway,we finally found Boon and he was drunk of his face cos it was his last day at work and he "didn't give a shit" anymore.

Finally, after baking in Sydney traffic jams we got home and all of us just crashed from exhaustion! We woke up soon after. Rajiv, Wayne and I didn't get much sleep cos JBoss was snooring louder than his t-bird lab systems bass combo. So we went to the Metro still exhausted. But after loading up all our gear over a super long flight of stairs we met up with JBoss's cousin and headed for dinner. Chinatown here is huge! And the food is definitely better than Melbourne. And cheaper as well! I had a killer tom yam soup and that cleared up my nose and warmed up my throat. Soon after we rushed back to Metro, just in time to get onstage to rock the house.

Metro's a real swanky club. The sound system there is awesome. We played at the transit lounge. Which is kinda like the public bar at the espy but bigger. Then main room is about the size of Gershwin. Would ya believe it? WOLFMOTHER we're headlining the show in the main room. These blokes sold out TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW on a WEEKDAY!!! Much respect goes to them and well deserved success. I really admire them for what they have achieved ( I love three piece bands ). Too bad we didn't get a chance to catch them live, the show was so sold out that punters had to stand near the entrance where they couldn't even see the stage... but they still went in anyway!

In the transit lounge we had about 50 payers. Most of them weren't there to see us but halfway through our set, we had everyone one clapping and cheering along. Even the fellas that were playing pool stopped their game to check us out. We won over a fair bit of Sydney rockers and managed to move a fait bit of eps and sell about a 100 bucks of merch. We only made 46 bucks at the door tho. But fuck it we had fun!

I suppose the highlight of the night happened when this drunk Indian grandma danced into the room and set her sights on me! I was standing there minding my own business when suddely outta no where, this grandma grabs me and pulls me onto the dancefloor and starts trying to samba with me. And all this shit was going on while an EMO band was rockin' onstage! I felt like really embarassed cos I can't fucking dance, but i didn't wanna hurt her feelings so I danced with her. But she wouldn't stop dude. In the end when the song finally ended I got the fuck out! All the guys in the band were laughing at me, those bastards... The lady then proceeded to hunt down another Indian guy. Some fella with dreadlocks called Andrew was next. For the rest of the night JBoss and I were trying to 'sabo' our mixer Rajiv. I had him in a elbow lock, pulled his ass and tried to shove him infront of the lady. But he is one strong fella and he went screaming like a banshee into the guys toilet!

So now its about 4pm the next day and i think and we've got about two hours to go before we head down to the Harp for our next show. Our tour manager Boon Scott is cooking up a storm curry for us. Rajiv is fantasising about Sydney girls ("Eh San, I want to kena some Sydney girl") but when I introduced him to the drunk auntie last night, he went running into the toilet. Wayne is fast asleep and concusted. JBoss is playing Prince of Persia on the playstation and I've gotta go. We're trying to organise a guestlist for Smithtown Riot who are nice enough to come for our show tonight. But the booker gave us the wrong number! Ah well... this is rock'n'roll.

See ya next time baby.

San Singer