Classic or Dud: INXS - Kick

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2012/11/11/inxs-breaks-up/

With the 15th anniversary of Michael Hutchence’s death approaching later this month, INXS took to the stage in Perth, Australia, on Sunday night for what appears to be the final time, as Australian media are reporting that drummer Jon Farriss announced during the concert that it would be the band’s last-ever performance.

According to the Syndey Times’ Perth Now site, Farriss took the mic from Irish singer Ciaran Gribbin — who joined INXS last year — during the band’s slot opening for Matchbox 20 and said “I’m getting teary” as be broke the news before the band launched into “Need You Tonight.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reports: “He said they didn’t want to reveal anything ahead of the concert, but it was ‘the last time’ they would perform together. Farriss thanked the audience for their support throughout the years.”

The band’s management has not yet confirmed any split.

Since Hutchence’s death on Nov. 22, 1997, INXS has used several lead singers, including reality show winner J.D. Fortune. This fall, the band released a 25th anniversary reissue of its 1987 blockbuster Kick. INXS reportedly had been working on new music with Gribbin.

opening for Matchbox 20

Way to go out, boys!

the Syndey Times’ Perth Now site,

oh, sure

dud

so...the last 15 years were about...what?

Making money while still possible.

"Tearful, uplifting scenes today from reunion of Ciaran Gibbins and his family as he is returned home after a year as an INXS prisoner of war..."

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oFOut1CjZhw/TNv4yjXYsQI/AAAAAAAABF4/F1Kh0rj_Luw/s1600/lt.col_stirm_pow_returns_vietnam_war_mar171973.jpg

HAHA!

one of those album foldout sleeves that makes an instant poster for your wall! love this..

http://www.vinylclocks.com/wp-content/uploads/inxs-kick-vinyl-clock-gate-80s.jpg

PR is out now - last line:

As Jon Farriss says, “INXS’ touring days could never last forever. We wanted it to end on a high. And it has.”

lol

http://i.imgur.com/gFuzh.gif

did anyone else watch part 1 of the lolfacepalmfest tv movie that was 'Never Tear Us Apart: The INXS story'

As my sister described it: it's like an INXS episode of Home And Away. So bad. SO MANY HILARIOUS WIGS though. omg.

I'm gonna have to see if I can torr3nt part 2. It's just too craptastic to miss.

zeitgeist thraed Veg

thx sic :)

Classic, especially because of 'Mediate' -- deep, mysterious and white-rappy in an entirely enjoyable and non-cringe-inducing way -- a solid mid-80s companion to 'West End Girls' in those regards.

test

I just finished part 1 and it was absurdly wonderful. Reminds me of that hilariously bad Def Leppard biopic where Anthony Michael Hall played Mutt Lange.

omg totally

I wish this mess was shorter so I could view the two movies as a double feature. So much cheesy fun.

"Bono" just appeared in part 2 and HOLY FUCK.

ugh I still don't have part 2 yet, I MUST GO TO THE T0RRENTZ

I just binged and watched the whole thing at once. I was caught up in the rapture.

masturbate asphyxiate...
"kick" indeed.
jockoes in the 6th form used to throw our pussy galore / black flag / goth obscurant cassettes outta the window and put this half-baked simpering drivel on

jockoes otm

jockoes get put in the bin. we put their inxs cassette in the kettle.

jocko homo imo

i didn't watch any of this but i know the dude who played tim farriss.

he has a familiar face

The dude who played Michael Hutchence is one of the stars of that Black Sails pirate show. I had no idea, but here he is right at the beginning of the first episode.

lol! I was toying with maybe watching it

Did you catch the second half of Never Tear Us Apart? Did you laugh heartily at Bono?

loooll yes did I ever!

That second half was hilariously bad. The earnest cheese of the first half went funky in a bad way.

totally

best australian dramedy since HAWKE

any boss who doesn't let you read HAWKE LIVEBLOG THREAD is a bum

can't they just put out a version of kick with all the 12" mixes on a second disc - don't want to have to pay $80 for a frickin box set

new sensation towers over most of the rest of this album.

how did I never see Hawke wtf

richard roxburgh as hawke

just gonna let you marinate on that for a bit

fucking hell

i need that in my life

while we're on a roxburgh tangent, i've been enjoying the hell out of rake lately.

that reminds me, must get crackin on rake before it leaves iview

My top fifteen

uh looks like 14, Al. good selections tho

'To Look At You' suspiciously absent.

oh good -- I can add "This Time"

yes!

Sharp looking band all around too, at their best. Kirk Pengilly was kinda perfect nerd aspiration for 1987. (Some years after that, not so much.)

garry gary beers was a pretty regular outlier in that regard

behold

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/F2MMKD/inxs-australian-rock-group-with-garry-gary-beers-about-1985-photo-F2MMKD.jpg

When I was 12 or 13 or so my first concert was going to be either U2, INXS or Peter Gabriel at their popular peaks. Picked U2, adult me might have picked PG, younger me might have had the most fun at INXS, in retrospect.

They're a weird one, too good to dismiss as a singles band, but just short of a consistent album band. Love all of Listen Like Thieves and Kick, though, I think. MH one of the last gasps of a great traditional rock band frontman.

U2 > INXS.

great band. i think they're pretty undeniable up to and including Welcome to Wherever You Are.

oddly, I like the Kick singles least.

This was a must have in 87

"never tear us apart" is good

"need you tonight" is pretty indisputably classic, the main riff at least. love the way hutchence sings 'i'm lonely...can't think at all'

Was the title track a single? Or just a solid deep cut? (If a title track can even be a deep cut)

I'll tell ya, it didn't feel so at the time but those X singles were a tonic on top forty radio in 1990-1991. I even have a fondness for "Bitter Tears," thanks to that house-influenced piano.

I thought Not Enough Time and Heaven Sent were both underrated (undervalued?) later singles.

I keep thinking X was a year late in retrospect -- not that they weren't still getting hits and all that but if that had come out in 1989 I think they might have gelled here even more strongly and kept them going longer.

^^^ to your point: looking at what made the top forty and ten in December '91 versus January-February when "Disappear" was a hit is like, I dunno, December 1914 and looking at March or April. Not much had happened but everything had happened.

Instead Michael went for art and Max Q. Hey, it was his life.

i was v lukewarm on them when X came out, but now I like that album way more than I ever did at the time. And Welcome To Wherever You Are is pretty good in retrospect

xp VG I'd hate to out-Oz you but that'd be a Tim Farriss there, six strings on that guitar. GGB was on bass duties.
Also for all y'all, hesitant recommend of Beck's record club version with St Vincent and Angus Andrew from Liars, among others - the version of New Sensation is superb. It's listed on his record club page but the links seem to default to the homepage. http://recordclub.beck.com/recordclub/

we can stop the world and let off all the fools and let em all live with their guns

otm

Revive otm. I’ve never been an INXS fan but tonight I was at friend’s house, who is a huge audiophile, and he played this album on the dolby atmos format and oh my god.

due to the lack of quality finds in the charity bins i have resorted to picking up stuff i would normally gloss over.
subsequently in the last couple of weeks i have picked up Listen Like Thieves/Kick/X/Welcome To.
i used to have no time for this band, but now, these albums are really hitting the spot.
i think a lot of the love is down to the sax excess. makes me realise how rare it is to hear a sax on a track now.
the production values are insane, and as Moka says, even on mid-level equipment these albums sound really good.

well, i thought Mystify was a lovely documentary that told a tragic story really well.

Yeah I agree. There's a revealing incident that I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it but it explains a lot about him

Noel Gallagher is a cunt btw

Don't remember seeing Noel getting any shit at the time for the Hutchence comment at the time. Guess everyone just wanted to be in their 'gang' at that point

as i said elsewhere, i hope that a young band do to NG what he did to Michael.

Sleaford Mods (not exactly young fellas but whatevs) constantly have a pop at NG which riles him up

also, as the final chapter was tabloid excess, i tuned out and cared not.
it really was horrid for all concerned.
no-one came out of it well.
i loved loved the final few mins that showed him and andy adlibbing Mystify in the studio which given how massive that song became is quite something.
and i would never ever have gone to see them live as i was a full on music snob when they were at their peak, but, damn, they looked insanely good live.

There's a revealing incident that I don't want to spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it but it explains a lot about him

the before and after is quite startling.

I was too young and didn't give a toss about music in the late 80s to bother with them and by the 90s, I was all about the grunge and indie.

"Need you tonight" & "Never tear us apart" are mighty singles

there are quite a few songs i could add to that mini list, all of which probably feature on their greatest hits compilation to be fair.

I'm about halfway through the Hutchence doc and it's pretty good, and makes some smart choices. The first is that it discards the talking head format and just uses voiceover interviews, which is kind of key, because a) it keeps the focus on Hutchence and b) he's so magnetic and charismatic it's hard to keep your eyes off him to begin with. Second, it doesn't really hinge on INXS, choosing instead to tell his story through his romantic relationships, which could be a cheesy or tacky tactic or simply salacious, but it instead provides a pretty intimate portrait of this guy who feared loneliness and craved personal connection and loved nothing more than to share his love of life with someone else. Third, it's called "Mystify" rather than "Never Tear Us Apart," which I'm sure had to be in consideration at some point but which would have been a little too on the nose.

Curious where the story goes ... just kidding. Sigh.

It does make me want to put on the Max Q album, which I forgot existed.

Third, it's called "Mystify" rather than "Never Tear Us Apart," which I'm sure had to be in consideration at some point

probably would have caused confusion with the 2014 biopic

cf

The Australian Zeitgeist Tracking Thread

and

Classic or Dud: INXS - Kick

Sic, I dunno exactly where you're from, but I noticed Hutchence's accent to be very mild. Was that just me?

He spent some formative years in Hong Kong and there was always an Englishness to his accent which was noticeable to us Strayans.
I found the doco pretty good, and sad of course, pretty compelling to see INXS completely run off the rails after his head injury and the terrible way it wasn't treated. One thing which pissed me off mightily was the hamhanded use of image stabilisation, I felt like I was drunk or looking at some bad 90s video concept during all the live footage.

He lived mainly in Hong Kong as an adult too afaik. Generally his accent sounds perfectly reasonable for someone from Belrose / Frenchs Forest - loads of my schoolmates' parents from one suburb away had full on seth efrican accents in the decade after Kick times.

I see the doco is available streaming from the library on Hoopla, will check it out just to see this image stabilisation hoo-ha.

Until the doc I'd never even bothered to notice that Chris Thomas produced "Listen Like Thieves," "Kick" and "X." Now clearly he was the right choice, but they by and large sound like such outliers among his credits. That is, "Original Sin" was produced by Nile Rodgers, who seems like a perfect fit for this material, but INXS is so slick and shiny compared to a lot of Thomas's usual stuff. I guess it's a testament to his talents that he could shift gears so seamlessly in service of a band's vision.

Chris Thomas also produced four Roxy Music albums, which I don't believe is too much of a stretch. Interestingly, INXS worked with Nile Rodgers before Duran Duran did.

When NR&”C” played a 1200-cap room in Sydney circa 2010, they played Original Sun for the first time ever, and Nile shouted out / thanked a Farriss (…and Pengilly?) in the vips. The Farriss and his entourage then fucked off halfway through the next song.

How did I never weigh in on this one?

I wouldn't say "dud," but "classic" seems like kind of an exalted term of INXS. That said, their "on" moments ("Burn For You," "Don't Change," "Listen Thieves," and ... some others) are pretty goddamn great.

I still have the Max Q album, as well.

"Listen LIKE Thieves," that is.

"This Time" was pretty great, as well.

Oh I'm a complete idiot, this is just about KICK. Please ignore me (more than you probably already do).

Good to see you here Alex!!

LLT >> Kick

I understand why the latter was the breakthrough, though.

otm