Royal Headache: "Sydney Is Incredibly Paranoid At The Moment"

29 May 2015 | 4:01 pm | Upasana Chatterjee

The Sound Advice talk was part of Vivid Ideas

In a Sound Advice talk with Repressed Records and R.I.P. Society's Nic Warnock and double J presenter Myf Warhurst as part of Vivid Ideas last night, Royal Headache frontman Shogun tore into police a little more over what happened at their Vivid LIVE show the other night.  

When asked why he thought Saturday night unfolded the way it did, Shogun says, "I think Sydney is incredibly paranoid at the moment and everyone is obsessed with money and control.

"I felt embarrassed for them [the police], they basically became part of the performance and not a particularly pleasing part … they decided to run up the stairs and push a bunch of dancing kids around."

Both Warnock and Shogun clearly sounded exasperated about the occurrences of the night and having to talk about "the two minutes [that] overshadowed the rest of the gig" over and over, Warnock going on to say, "There was this funny occurrence of people reporting how that two minutes overshadowed the rest of the gig and people reporting on the reporting on the two minutes [that overshadowed] the gig ... now we're talking about it again. We're reporting the report. It's this vicious cycle of talking about the wrong thing."

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Warnock also had some criticisms about about large arts initiatives and festivals such as Record Store Day and Vivid Sydney.

"The problem with Record Store Day and the arts funded Sydney music stuff is that it's almost like, here is this one gestural period where you're interested in this world and then the rest of the year it doesn't happen, sooo... as much as I'm particularly thankful for Vivid, because it acts as a way in to our music culture, Record Store Day is supposed to do the same.

"I am cynical about RSD and it's become this opportunistic, awful day where it kind of is besides the point about the culture of buying records [and] being involved in independent music."

Suffice it to say, Royal Headache and Repressed Records sound ready to call it a day on talking about Saturday's gig, but let's not forget the music that got the band to where they are today.