RADIO BIRDMAN
@ The Arena, Brisbane
Saturday, May 25 2002

If I tell you that the first half of tonight's show seemed just a little light, would you understand that I'm not talking about a comparison to some band you saw down at your local watering hole last week? Oh no, I'm saying it solely in reference to Birdman's two previous shows this week. This time they seemed to take a while to get settled, due at least in part to equipment problems that saw, at various times, roadies scurrying onto the stage and both Deniz and Rob separately exiting stage right to (presumably) discuss the situation with someone on the sidelines.

I must acknowledge that these events didn't seem to affect Jim Dickson as much as the others, or indeed much at all. Right from the start he looked ready and raring to go all night. Close to two hours later, as the band left the stage after its second encore, he still looked like he could go on all night. Perhaps it was something to do with being a Brisbane ex-pat back in front of his home crowd; perhaps it was something to do with being part of the hottest rockin' and hardest-working band in the history of this great brown land of ours.

Sections of the audience weren't any less eager than Jim either. Even before any of the band members had stepped onto the stage, there were plenty of Yeah Hups erupting spontaneously from various parts of the audience. As soon as the lights went down, the audience's temperature rose. I reckon it must have reached boiling point somewhere between the first and second chords and then just kept on rising!

I was right down at the front happily taking photographs, until half way through the second song when I suddenly found myself underneath a rogue crowd surfer and a couple of bouncers, who were clearly keen to outline the error of his ways to him. Needless to say, I finished the roll and then beat a hasty retreat. The arrangement was that I was only allowed to film for the first three songs anyway, so it wasn't like I was being a coward or anything and discretion being the better part of getting the fuck out of the way, it seemed like the sensible thing to do...

Whether it was the stop/start nature of the set to begin with, the larger grouping than previously of the band's poppier songs herded up towards the front of the carriage or the way the band were playing them this time, I don't know, but the band sounded a lot more power pop than on the two most recent encounters of the loud kind. Of course the band has always had an element of pop to its sound (they don't sing "Do The Pop" for nothing), but this part of the set showed a deft grasp of power pop dynamics; a bit more of the nimble thrust and jab than the subsequent merciless flogging of punter and instrument to which the set ascended in its closing stages.

It goes without saying that the audience loved it. As long as they could sing along, they were ecstatic, be it "Do The Pop", "Smith and Wesson Blues", "Non Stop Girls", "Murder City Nights", "Hand Of Law", you name it. Strangely "What Gives?" didn't provoke nearly as hearty a sing-a-long in Brisbane as it had done in Sydney though and this despite it being almost this generation's equivalent of "Roll Out The Barrel", or any other of those war time favourites you used to see being flogged on TV adverts for K-Tel compilations. Aussie pub rock in Aussie pubs in the late seventies and early eighties? That was our war time!

Once again it was "Dark Surprise" that brought things to a head, seemingly taking its lead from last night's "Descent into The Maelstrom", while "Maelstrom" in turn took its cue from a combination of Kinks and Kruppa, Gene that is, with Ron Keely going into a "swing" overdrive while the guitars ground out a ferocious mixture of English mod pop, together with a little raw Yank garage and Mr Younger set himself on top of it all and rode it out into the sunset intoning/crying "Alive alive alive... I'm alive". What a fuckin' monster way to end the set! Look out, it's Bruce Banner and not only has he transformed himself into the Incredible Hulk, he's going to beat us over the head with the ABC's entire record library of popular classics (at least the ones that haven't been knocked off yet, like some of those early Birdman JJ tapes, which are now lost forever apparently).

Encore anybody? Oh, yeah! "Man With Golden Helmet" promptly took up where "Maelstrom" left off, followed by Transmaniacon MC" and the best version yet of "New Race". The fans were going wild in the bleachers, let me tell you.

Another encore anybody? You betcha! If neither "Down on the Street" nor "Waiting For My Man" improved on previous renditions, they didn't fall any more than a whisker short of them either. "I-94", which then followed, was definitely the best version yet of that song on this tour. The band was on fire and we're talking incandescent now. I'm all out of superlatives. Where could they go from there? You'd have to think that's gotta be it, but it ain't. "You're Gonna Miss Me" they told us, in a version so sharp you could cut yourself just by listening to it. With the exception of those of us making the pilgrimage to Melbourne in a few days time, that then certainly was it and we are going to miss them. There's no more to be said (except that Giants of Science were the support again tonight and were clearly happy and relaxed to be in front of their home crowd).

3/4

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