Photo by Paul Hudson. CC BY 2.0 on Flickr.
"King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at the Moth Club."
One of the side-effects of emigrating to a new country is a tendency to give anything associated with one’s childhood home more credit than it probably deserves. As evidence I submit my enduring zeal for Vegemite, Australian Rules Football, and maintaining that by failing to pronounce the name of a popular vine-ripened fruit a “tomahhto,” 350 million Americans can, in fact, be wrong.
Consequently, my beloved wife of thirty years, familiar as she is with the various side-effects of marrying foreigners, has reacted with weary acceptance to my recent enthusiasm for an Australian prog-rock band named King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which has emerged from my hometown of Melbourne to take the world, if not by storm, then at least by surprise. As bizarrely unconventional as their name suggests, King Gizzard’s six-man lineup of musical mad scientists makes music that spans a mind-boggling range of genres: from psych and prog rock, to synth-pop, hip-hop, jazz fusion, heavy metal, and on and on. During its fourteen-year history the band has somehow managed to release twenty-six albums (five in 2022 alone), while touring constantly, attracting an internationally fanatical base in the process. “Harmless enough,” my wife probably thought about her fifty-something-year-old life partner’s interest in a weird experimental rock band whose music she’ll go to considerable lengths to avoid. That is until word emerged that King Gizzard would be playing a November date in New Orleans during its latest world tour. “Find someone else to go with,” she pleaded, then watched with increasing resignation as my efforts to recruit any friends willing to subject themselves to this strange sonic escapade came to naught. Eventually, true to our marriage vow (richer or poorer, in sickness and health, good taste or bad, etc.), she relented and agreed to go with me to the concert.
Initially she was a trooper. As we parked in a badly-lit potholed gravel pit somewhere in back of the New Orleans Convention Center and joined a cheerful gaggle of Gizzheads (for that is how they’re, or we’re, known) streaming towards Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World, it became clear that we’d be the oldest people there by a generation or two. As we passed through the metal detectors and approached the entrance, my gentle wife, who likes gardening, regarded a group of Gizzheads wearing lizard costumes and lining up for the red port-o-lets with alarm, while waves of surf rock unleashed by the opening band crashed over us. And as my former countrymen took the stage and launched into their opening set with a track from their tongue-in-cheek but definitely heavy metal album (named PetroDragonic Apocalypse, in case you’re interested), she looked at me as if I were a stranger. After four or five songs she’d heard enough and made for the doors, preferring to spend the rest of the night out by the river, looking at the moon.
So, imagine our surprise when, while making our way through the crowd, we were hailed by a fellow concertgoer who, presumably recognizing me from the photo on this page, proclaimed her love of Country Roads. Hallelujah, we were among our people after all.
When I set out to write this column the day before the concert, I had a different idea in mind. The first version emerged as a rather predictable rumination on the joys and challenges of 2024 as this eventful year draws to a close. But as the word limit approached and I ran out of examples of things to be thankful for, what I’d written seemed neither illuminating nor particularly entertaining. I left for New Orleans with a vague plan to get up early the next morning and try again. Well, sometimes inspiration appears in the unlikeliest places. Sometimes it’s wearing a lizard costume.
One of the best things about making Country Roads has always been meeting the people who read it. That, and the opportunity it provides to dip a toe into other subcultures—to try and understand what’s special about them, and to share that with a community of open-minded readers who’re curious to know better this diverse, endlessly interesting place we call home. So, if you’re reading this, fellow Gizzhead, this one’s for you. Thanks for making my day, and at the end of a difficult year, reminding my wife and I why, after thirty years, publishing this magazine remains the pleasure and the privilege of our lives.
—James Fox-Smith, publisher
