Gabe and I chatting about Maths, Attending a Punk show & Partying at the Kings Arms

Last weekend my brother drove up from Wellington. I hadn't seen him in agesss and his friendly face was a sight for sore eyes. His hair had been cut short having grown out from a number one buzz cut and he looked as healthy as one can living in a flat haha. Gabe had until very recently been grappling with some serious problems in maths and physics at stage 3 inside the dungeons of Victoria University. He had driven up with his friend Gus who also flats with him and studies maths too. I was also super surprised at Gus' hair that was strikingly similar to my my niece Desdemona hair colour being coppery red.

A day or so or after they arrived Gabe was explaining how there's a blurry line between the disciplines of both "Maths and Physics saying how 'they seem to seep into each other, or collide" he also mentioned how "If you don't have enough maths, you can't really do physics at the highest level. He told it was because there are a lot of random variables in physics with a kinda of lazy good as it gets mentality prevailing. That's why I think Gabe likes Maths it's just more robust and pure as it tries to avoid flawed foundations as much as possible.

The chat with Gabe also tied into how I had been reading about the philosopher Bertrand Russell
and how as a boy he became obsessed with finding out the true foundations of maths
in-particular trigonometry. Russell wasn't satisfied with the claims of maths that took a similar
position to physics where you couldn't be absolutely certain how or why underpinning factors
were a given. Sadly for his sake Bertrand's pure maths obsession didn't cease leading to him
writing a right a mammoth of a book called the Principia Mathematica. The book took him over
9 years of 12 hour days to complete. What a jail sentence! but it could make for fun heavy reading
for Gabe if could bear to turn the pages of such a fear inducing book, hide your calculators.

After mulling over the importance/irrelevance of maths Gabe convinced me we should go out
as it was Friday night. So amongst the wind and rain we ran out into the drizzly night while
scanning online for something to do on our phones. Thankfully early in the week my friend
Temuera had messaged me about a gig happening at the Kings Arms but for some reason
I had convinced myself it was at Neck of the Woods. Probably because I really like the later
venue as some of Tem's cool friends work there. In fact the last gig we went to see saw a
fast as hell rapper from Bone Thugs 'N' Harmony preforming a secret show to hype the
Blockparty festival he was playing the next night. However, equally awe inspiring was the
gig before that I attended with Tom Scott and his musician mates going ape shit and throwing
down a rowdy ass hip hop set. I'm telling you the bass and low end of that gig was intense
plus the energy from the Auckland crowd was hyped turning the charm and enthusiasm
way up for the local muso, music meshed everyone together in a good buzz.

Anyway it finally clicked that the gig was at the Kings Arms. I had previously heard an advert
on BFM early in the week advertising a Third3ye show. My neurons made the connection that
this was the gig Tem said was happening. On route to that gig we decided to drop into another
a punk show at Obie Dobie at 300 dominion road. I got us some drinks and low and behold my old mate Ben Olsen was screaming his lungs out with his latest band Riot Carcass. His vocals were
shredding and the backing band made up of guitar, bass and drums (classic set up, tried and true) were holding down some meaty riffs with the occasional callous cymbal crash thrown in. Ben and the gang played a solid set almost nose to nose with the audience as there was not stage. The crowd consisted of some direhard music fans, other band members and random dudes. There were also people outside puffing away on death inducing cigarettes while the music from the gig leaked down for blocks which was rather funny in itself. In between bands once Ben finished Gabe and I charged outside for a bit of air and to rest the old ear drums. I just remembered before the punk gig Gabe and I had searched in vain for earplugs at the local Countdown in Mt Eden but there were none, shame on you Countdown for not stocking such a basic commodity in your overpriced shelves. Once the next band took the stage we decided to bugger off as they were a bit indie and mellow for our taste.

Out in the cold we were throwing up not literally just to get a burger or not. We foolishly settled
on Burger Fuel. I got some 10$ thing that was pretty much just a meat patty in burger bun.
I mean pretty uninspiring for the price tag, never eating their again. People say Burger fuel its not the same as it use to be but I think folks we all need to admit to ourselves that the food was
always shit even from the beginning. On a funny side note another one of my friends worked
at the Burger fuel in Mt Eden for ages and he said that under his contract he could eat a burger every shift he worked there. But apparently the rules changed so new employees didn't get a a free burger so it was just him all on his lonesome after his other co-workers had moved on cooking up these monster burgers every shift for himself while the other employees just looked on hungrily. Anyway Gabe ate some Japanese burger thing with some mad stuff inside it that just looked like deep friend onion rings, his burger looked much better than mine but still rather drab after a while we decided to leg it to the next venue just before the rain came down which was a good call, well a cheap call.

When we jumped into the fray of second mosh pit of the night after paying our
ten dollar door charge we grooved along to Bailey Wiley mid-set firing the crowd up
with a pretty electrifying and sexual music that reminded me of Beyonce lyrically, musically
and visually. Eden was djing behind her playing beats for her to sing over, I remember him
from Mt Albert Grammar he played the drums and was a real nice guy. The way Bailey moved
around on was primal and the music exceedingly dance-able. The next guys up on stage where
the headliners called Third3ye with Basil djing, beat matching and scratching behind them
on the dj decks taking over from Eden. On stage Third3ye explained to the crowd how the
show was slightly different to a normal release party. Together they had decided to preform
all their new songs live before recording them and releasing the latest record. Such a move made perfect sense to me, because the more you can play the songs the better the music is gonna be when you record it. When you kind of know the songs by instinct instead of counting bars and crap like that you can do some nice stuff. The guys started to do their thing by firstly shouting out Fuck the Police before expanding our minds with some spiritually infused eastern by way of NZ rap songs. My favourite part of the set was when one of the Mc's started talking about souls, he said their was definitely a few old souls in the building as well as some young ones it made me laugh when he made it clear that he didn't discriminate between souls! The guys new songs reminded me of Cyprus Hill and people started lighting up the ganja towards the end of the set.

Gabe was consistently up the front moshing in the crowd for the whole Third3ye set blowing off some post exam stress. I went outside into the garden area of the venue and gazed at the stars and bricks that made up the music venue tortured by loud music. My brother eventually came outside and I let him know how there had been a bit of a commotion over developers trying to pile a shit ton of apartments on the music venue. He thought it was all rather funny. I told him how Dad probably thought the business had been their for long enough that they might have bought the building and probably hated the idea of bowling the place.

It kind of surprised me to hear of people who still have a decent bone in their body choosing art and commerce over just pure commerce. But I think its probably the right decision as no one wants to get dragged into the fatalistic frenzy of the Auckland property boom this late in the second half. But lord only knows how much they would stand to make if the owners flogged the place. An image of a yuppie chasing a carrot attached to a bag full of millions rushed through my mind or something stupid. Everywhere people were smoking cigarettes i asked Gabe if he was still smoking he said nah price was to much for him now "30$ bucks for a smoke, bugger". So we just chilled with our beers watching people smoke away their money on $30 dollar cigarettes.