The Phoenix Foundation ~ Nest Egg
Resisting the urge to just write "IT'S A LIE!!!" one hundred times... or just rambling about how good it is live and how it's one of those live songs that makes you go all giddy and silly and suck in your breath when you hear it and and and and... stuff. Ahhhh to hell with it.
It's no lie (ho ho ho!!) that this particular Phoenix Foundation song makes me incredibly stupid. And it's not down to the lyrics at all (because to be perfectly honest for the LONGEST TIME I thought he was singing "Our mystic may be rotten" despite the fact that I knew full well what the title of the song was.)
I did say stupid right?
Anyway. History. I remember noticing this song for the first time while I was getting baked at the Cuba Street Carnival in February 2005. Baked by the SUN of course *cough cough cough cough*... then after Pegasus actually came out I was listening to it for the first time while driving up Brooklyn Road (why I remember this I don't know) and Nest Egg started and I was so excited that I recognized the song. And that I knew the yelly bits were there. And I wanted to see people's faces when they heard it for the first time, without them realising the yelly bits were there so they could be all excited and gooey and stupid like I was.
I'm a sucker for songs that lead you one way and then sneak up and BOO! A big sucker. That's one of the things I like the most about seeing the Phoenix Foundation live... the way they all lose themselves in crazy land (or Crazy Town... hehehe) during certain parts of certain songs.
The greatest memory for me thus far regarding Nest Egg was when I saw them playing support for the Finn Brothers at the Opera House (I think?) last year. The crowd seemed to be largely ignorant of the loveliness unfolding on stage before them. And when the good old country strummy intro started and Sam began to sing about smelly mystics I sat up a little straighter and looked around excitedly.
The groove kicked it up a notch, more instruments jumping in. Old people swaying and waving their walking sticks in the air.
Jangley. Delicious.
Some old people with walking frames crowd surfed across the opera house horizon.
The band swayed along like they and I didn't know full well what was about to happen.
It's a lie!
Bang! Crash! Bandicoot!
They viciously attacked their instruments, at the same time as they were terribly tender... kinda like Buffy and Spike!
IT'S A LIE!
And the chaos slipped neatly into the groove of the song and people exhaled, like the little tremor was just that... until...
IT'S A LIIIIE!!!!!!!
Aftershocks! Hold onto your old man hats Wellington!
And up on stage Sam Scott turned into Don Music from the muppets. If he had been sitting at a piano he would have been bashing his head on the keys I'm sure of it. And it was and continues to be fucking awesome.
Of course I'm not the only one who thinks this song is the bees knees. Just be part of any Wellington crowd and see the faces of delight and glee when we get to play along with the band and sing the part we all want to sing and whisper and scream and bounce up and down excitedly.
See? Stupid. Me. Equals. Greater than 3.
<3