TEETH Blogs

Ivana Stab has a blog now and it must be pimped out for all to see. Have a look. And of course, ANNIE LY's blog is right here.

Divide and Conquer

He understood that to be real he had to attach his existence to a country mapped by centuries of wars and oppression and a flag painted with the blood of so-called patriots (brainwashed, poverty-stricken and desperate, clinging to God and their swords in hopes of a meal for every limb they lose). He knew that memorising an anthem written by a politicised poet who sold his soul for a pay-check and a hero’s medal would give his existence meaning. He was well aware that he would understand life by decorating his chest with borders drawn and redrawn in red ink by old men in suits carefully ironed by underpaid women (men who never saw the bloodshot eyes of hunger and bloodied knuckles but claimed to make pacts and sign treaties for them) (pacts and treaties agreed upon in language those bloodshot eyes could never decipher having missed out on basic education to look for God and food in cheap rooms of sleazy hotels). He had come to these realisations whilst pushing someone’s face into a river for being of a different skin colour, holding the neck tight, knowing that to exist meant to conquer.

By Ivana Rnjak

The Teenagers

Photo by ANNIE LY

The Teenagers existed in relative obscurity until very recently when their fusion of catchy pop songs, ridiculously cute French accents and deliciously ironic lyrics were noticed worldwide through the power of MySpace.

Saturday 14th June saw them perform the third show of their first Australian tour, this time at the Oxford Art Factory, home to Sydney’s tightest jeans and pointiest shoes. It was a sold-out show, leaving a line outside the venue and security guards warding off those without tickets trying to sweet-talk their way in.

Inside, after the support bands warmed up the crowd, The Teenagers hit the stage to a very enthusiastic audience. From the amount of people pushing their way closer to the stage and singing every word in sync with the band, one could assume The Teenagers had been around for decades. Such enthusiasm for a band is rare to witness nowadays at a gig that isn’t happening at Acer Arena. But any hope one had that the enthusiasm was there for the music withered when the band invited three girls on stage to be cheerleaders during the song Homecoming. The stage soon became packed with excited girls competing for the attention of their favourite band member and pushing one another to give kisses and pose for photos taken by their friends in the audience.

So all this enthusiasm, excitement and groupie-like hysteria for a band that has only just exposed their music to the world? The Teenagers have unfortunately been thrust into that dark world of Latest Hipster Fad. They’re one of those bands some people are afraid to admit liking because it’ll associate them with the screaming ‘fans’ who grind up against one another on stage next to someone ‘famous’ hoping that one day a photo of such antics will wind up on The Cobra Snake. Despite the fun songs they play, despite their stage charisma, despite their witty lyrics and lovable appearance, this is one aspect of their music career that will undoubtedly haunt them. It will sell records and t-shirts and tickets to places on the other side of the world from their hometown, but it will leave them branded as just another trend. The price of fame appears to be high in the new music environment.

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT, WHY AREN'T I SLEEPING?!

We made a zine in fifteen minutes last night.

And you can find it all over Sydney. Or read it on our Flickr.

We love Kinko's on Oxford St. <3

One Pill Makes You Larger

Sebastian is convinced life is a hallucination. All life – from our humble presence on Planet Earth to the supposed existence of a Solar System to the incomprehensible idea of a universe so vast it cannot be thought of in its entirety as it requires a thinking capacity far beyond our capabilities.

“What else can it be, other than imagined?”

He says that all these things we consider a given are so magical, they must be the product of some sort of chemical imbalance on a large scale. All life is just someone’s bad trip.

By Ivana Rnjak

TEETH Poetry

This is my face,
from outer space -
the Town Whore will now present
her speech: "they're going like
hotcakes, they are,
squire"
The end.

St Johns Road

the twelve-thirteen bus never arrives –
the dull grey stretch of
a million promised futures with
nowhere to go, is dusty
with sunlight and sweat;
I can’t walk down for fear of
being seen smoking

By Ivana Rnjak

TEETH LOVES STUFF issue two

Issue two of TEETH LOVES STUFF zine can be read here.

It features interviews with Only the Sea Slugs & The Vignettes, creative writing by Jasmina Berber & Ivana Rnjak, photography by Sagan Culph & ANNIE LY, drawings by The Fetus, Zigwamp & Leesy and much, much more.

MCA Zine Fair Wrap-Up

Photos by The Fetus.

Thanks to everyone who came to the TEETH table at the Museum of Contemporary Art zine fair last Sunday. We had an awesome time and spread the word of TEETH to a few more people. :)

The next zine fair we’ll be attending is at Kinokuniya on the 28th of June. Come down and say hi if you get the chance.

MCA Zine Fair

Look how hard Ivana Stab is working to put everything together in time for the MCA zine fair. ANNIE LY was so busy she couldn't even feature in the photo! Zomg! To show your appreciation for all their hard work, make sure you come down to the MCA this Sunday and say hi (and maybe pick up a zine or two).

THE NEW ISSUE OF TEETH LOVES STUFF WILL BE AVAILABLE THIS SUNDAY. For only $2 you can get 24 pages of awesomeness. There will also be TEETH badges for $1. Plus, free teeth! And lots and lots and lots of other good stuff. IT'LL BE SELLING LIKE HOTCAKES!

See you at the MCA!

TEETH Poetry

Dirty couches,
Cigarette holed pouches
And then the little person crouches,
Behind a wall because he wasn’t very tall,
He hangs for dear life before he falls,
And crawls
And rawls
And mauls,
At her stockings.

Impostor

I want to exist and nothing more but my heartbeat is slower than it should be and it is an unavoidable reminder that two months seems much longer when trying to trace its boundaries in a foreign language.

By Ivana Rnjak

Happy Birthday, ANNIE LY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNIE LY!

It's now officially ANNIE's 19th birthday. Ivana Stab will accept presents on her behalf...

Love and toothpaste and mind-rape.

Nowhere Places

Nowhere places all have the same layer of surrender covering them. It seeps beneath the skin and grows inside the residents. Their eyes become lifeless pools of no questions, no answers and flies litter their bodies. I float above that layer, drawn from it by the scratches on my fingertips and the sticky-sweet smell of a stranger’s aftershave. Sometimes the click of coins on metal surfaces pulls me down towards the layer but I always levitate just high enough to lightly skim the surface with my toes.

There are five down but there is still one more to go.

I levitate, listening out for growling stomachs and looking out for yellowing fingernails. We are all in this together but we are not alike. I watch as ants crawl up my legs and as pale boys roll their cigarettes in windy weather. The air smells like tobacco and nicotine-stained dreams of clear thoughts. No filters, no triggers. Five down, one to go.

One to go.

Words and photos by Ivana Rnjak

Something (else)

Version 1
Something about mispronouncing words and rolling bad joints and forgetting how to speak the first language I heard. Something about being a contradiction, a hypocrite, a big fucking mouth and a liar. Something about slipping beneath the surface and the water always dripping down my neck and my heart always dancing to an unsteady beat with my lungs. Something about clichés.

Version 2
She is daddy’s little girl in a too short skirt, rolling joints in her parents’ bedroom, a hung over mess of broken bones and decaying potential, with eleven stories to tell (with words that get lost midair in a cloud of thick smoke) to another nameless boy with a pierced tongue. She screams “pointless, pointless”, arguing for a left world in a right state of mind, ignoring education, devouring privilege and pushing through one more day in a dreamless daze, for something more than four hours of sleep, one meal a day, menthol cigarettes and rooftop parties. Screaming “pointless, pointless” for revolutionaries, for decadence, for freedom, for money, for a cause, for a voice, for something to swallow whole and spit out in seventeen brittle pieces, for memory and communication and a name, for something to say in a world free of constraints, expectations, restraints, for a face to recognise, for some sort of future, for today, for an ounce to cut up on clean white sheets, for legs and lips and metal rings, for something to point out, for something pointless.

By Ivana Rnjak

The Wahas

TEETH interviewed The Wahas about all things that are good. Here’s what the interview evolved into…

The Wahas became a band “about two years ago, in a car park”, a story kind of hard to grasp considering they’ve played as a support band for The Horrors on their Australian tour and have played at some of Sydney’s finest venues such as the Oxford Art Factory and the Gaelic Theatre and alongside Australia’s favourite new bands, including Ghostwood and Mercy Arms.

The Wahas hail from Sydney’s North Shore and have an average age of seventeen. They list everyone from The Birthday Party to The Pop Group to Gallows (to Kochie) as influences. And they make very good music.

The Wahas are...

Cass (tambourine, vocals) / Jack (bass, vocals) / Rupert (guitars, vocals)

Tom (guitars) / Xavier (drums)

Their debut EP ‘We Love The Wahas’ was released a little while ago and features some very good cover art. It is a very impressive EP, with lyrics by Rupert standing out, on ‘Collide’ especially. ‘Dodge City Showdown’ lasts almost seven minutes, with haunting vocals, deep drums in the background and a sound reminiscent of The Velvet Underground (think ‘Heroin’). The video clip of the single ‘New Suit’ featured on Rage!

However, the sound of The Wahas nowadays is very different to what is heard on the EP. When asked why they don’t play many songs off the EP anymore, they say it’s a mixture of being sick of playing them and trying to step away from that sound. The new songs are certainly a leap forward, with a variety of sounds and styles, but all with a distinct Wahas feel. They range from the fun of ‘Chorus Girl’, all tambourines and “la la la la la la” making it impossible to resist dancing, to the eerie Horrors feel of ‘Anne Frankenstein’, to the shrieking vocals by Jack on ‘Mother in Drag’. Whether a new release is in store is a secret, but considering the amount of amazing new material they’ve put together, it’s hard to imagine a new EP, or perhaps even an album, is too far away.

The Wahas say their best gig so far has been playing with The Horrors and the worst a gig at a skate park which didn’t go down well with the skaters (who pulled the plug on their instruments a few times). The ingredients for a good Wahas gig are “Red Bull, cigarettes, instruments, a crowd and a venue”. Something must have been missing at the skate park…

The dark side of The Wahas features people living in fridges, having strange sexual fetishes and Vegemite beards and can be seen on YouTube – check out “What Would You Do?”.

And now for the remainder of the questions which could not be cleverly incorporated into this article…

TEETH: What would you do if TEETH lived in your fridge?
The Wahas: Sue them for copyright infringement.
(Refer to “What Would You Do?” episode 6)

TEETH: Which members of The Horrors are your favourite?
The Wahas: The ones with the tight jeans.

TEETH: How do you handle being in school and having a music career at the same time?
The Wahas: Well.

TEETH: The Beatles or Elvis?
The Wahas: The Kinks.

TEETH: Do you believe in the tooth fairy?
The Wahas: We regret not keeping our teeth.

TEETH: What are your favourite Sydney bands?
The Wahas: The FolloW, Ghostwood, Bridezilla, Snout Cassette, The Stukas, Wifepunch.

TEETH: Which is superior – toothpaste or hairspray?
The Wahas: Hairpaste.

TEETH: Which bands would you love to play with in the future?
The Wahas: James Chance and The Contortions on Sunrise.

TEETH: Have you made any plans for life after school that don't include music? Eg. uni, nine to five, joining a cult?
The Wahas: Going on Sunrise.

The very best of luck to The Wahas with the Sunrise gig and with other music stuff too.

A big thank you to The Wahas for their TEETH support, interview answers which made us laugh and putting up with the rain during the photo-shoot, and to their lovely manager Natalie for making the interview and photo-shoot happen.

For more Wahas goodness, visit their MySpace or website.
To see all the photos from the shoot, visit the set by ANNIE LY.

TEETH Poetry

Captain Manwitch
Makes a sandwich
Puts it in a bowl
And smokes it.

3pm

A red haired girl reads the Herald. A boy in black smokes a menthol cigarette. A voice from another continent says something irrelevant and someone laughs. Coffee drinkers rush past. Rain falls lightly. These faces, they exist just for a moment.

Photo by ANNIE LY.

Words by Ivana Rnjak.

Rhymes About the Times

I exist in a world of ticket machines and five cent coins with bad weather and worse people, just another hungry stomach growling for more in this copyrighted, patented and trademarked world where everything can be sold and bought and traded and raped and where everyone is searching for a soul they lost the other day, talking about how absolute power corrupts absolutely but forgetting who they’re quoting and whose face they’re printing on oversized, overpriced t-shirts, trying to write rhymes about the times like a Bob Dylan lyric but unable, too dipped in downtown problems of pulled triggers and lit cigars, and still hoping a martyr figure hasn’t forgotten us.

Photography by Sagan Culph.
Words by Ivana Rnjak.

Seven

She says murder on Monday.
They say shut your mouth and turn away.

She jumps off the roof on Tuesday.
Her arm breaks in three places and she doesn’t scream.

She takes a bite out of a cloud on Wednesday.
It is tasteless but burns in her throat.

She dances with lightning on Thursday.
It calls her Suzie and she hitches up her skirt.

She runs with wolves on Friday.
They lick her wounds clean and she lures in the prey.

She says saviour on Saturday.
They say play careful dear and pat her hand.

She goes to the bloodletting on Sunday.
They cut three times and she falls asleep.

By Ivana Rnjak