I got a tip today about a new club opening in Brisbane. A couple of DJs who used to kick around the valley in my younger years are opening a club called Overdrive on Friday 13th at the old Lands Office hotel (cnr George St and Mary St.) Does that place even exist any more? I thought it closed long ago…

Anyways, these guys are promising to play all the music you dance around your lounge room to because it isn’t played in clubs anywhere. I’m going to try and track them down and figure out exactly what kind of music they are talking about, but if its anything like the stuff they used to play, we’re talking Beasties, Bjork and Blur.

So far, alls I can tell you is it opens at 9pm, its free before 10pm, and closes at 5am; they are promising cheap drinks, plus anyone who attends on the opening night gets free membership. I’ll report back when I’ve chatted to the boys and got a little more information.

Last week, I saw the Dropkick Murphys and Sick Of It All, two bands I’ve listened to for a very long time, but never seen live. I discovered Sick Of It All like I discovered a lot of new music, from snowboarding movies. The Dropkick Murphys, I discovered in a drunken haze somewhere or other .. possibly while also listening to Flogging Molly and The Gourds.

The show was at the Tivoli, and I do believe more of my friends turned up to this show then any other concert I’ve ever been to. It was a great night!

Sick Of It All were a lot more hardcore than I remember. When the ‘Murphys came on stage, even Al said “I asked those guys to take it easy, but like always they didn’t listen…” Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have any Sick Of It All albums - maybe I should have done a bit more research before I went there. But that’s ok - my time was well spent waiting in line for booze and catching up with friends.

When Sick Of It All left the stage, the “Let’s go Murphys” chant began and didn’t stop until the show got started.

The show was great, and the crowd was rougher than Queens of the Stone age at the Arena a few months back. In fact, my slight friend Ryan and I started a circle pit, the physical abuses of which I haven’t enjoyed for a couple of years. There was crowd surfing and moshing, all to the slowest punk music there is - Celtic punk (aka Irish drinking punk.)

I came out of there drenched in sweat, with a ‘Murphys football jersey and a smile on my face. Too bad it was a school night and nothing was open afterwards.

On June 21st, Brisbane will host Fête de la Musique for the very first time. Fête de la Musique is a free multicultural, multi-community event which began in Paris in 1982. Every year on June 21st, hundreds of cities worldwide celebrate this event.

Presented by Brisbane City Council, Brisbane Marketing and Alliance Française, Fête de la Musique offers free concerts in a variety of indoor and outdoor locations, not traditionally dedicated to music. There will be a number of performance spaces throughout the Queen Street Mall and Fortitude Valley malls with a huge finalé concert scheduled at Reddacliff Place at the top of Queen Street Mall on George Street.

This event is a unique opportunity to encourage major music institutions, like orchestras and operas, to perform outside their usual locations. Being a multicultural event, many styles of music will be represented, including classical, jazz, rock, electronic, rap, pop, folk and traditional.

This is a non-profit event and artists can perform as many times as possible during the day. When a schedule is available, your intrepid reporter shall provide. What this space for information about what’s going to be a massive free music festival!