A TALE OF TWO TAVERNS (or NO VISIBLE SIGNS OF SUPPORT)
Danny McDonald
Friday June 14, 2002
@ the Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills
Celibate Rifles
Friday June 14, 2002
@ the Northpoint Tavern, North SydneyIt's a hard life for support acts. Plenty of people wouldn't be caught dead watching a support act, just on principle, and even when a support act does garner a bit of a crowd, chances are the punters have simply turned up too early for the main act and are aggrieved (and consequently unresponsive or sometimes even downright hostile) at having to bide their time while the support act plays. However, given that radio play lists tend to be tightly closed to the majority of local bands, especially those still up and coming, playing as a support act is the only way to get the music heard by anyone beyond close friends and family.
This sad state of affairs was reinforced for me recently by an email from John Sandow, keyboard player for Rebecca Hancock and the Prison Wives, who supported Ed Kuepper at his last Annandale Hotel show. He (John that is, Ed's feelings remain unknown to me) seems to have enjoyed the review, although he comments that he couldn't help noticing there was something missing from it, namely any reference to his band's performance. Any disappointment on his part at having played an honest set, only to be ignored by some self-appointed, cloth-eared critic is entirely understandable.
It might be a consolation, though I suspect it isn't, that in my case missing a support act is usually a result of personal disorganisation and all round general slackness, rather than any arrogant disinterest in the labours of the "lesser" bands on the bill; I do feel a tinge of guilt when I have to report that I've missed one (or more) bands at a gig, even if it hasn't been a deliberate decision on my part. However, tonight I've managed to slight a total of seven other bands and it was deliberate decision, so I've got even less of a defence than usual...
Given that such is the case, Messrs Sandow, Hancock and the rest of the band (Mark Bradridge on bass and guitar and Nick Fisher on drums) can perhaps at least take some slight solace from being in good company. This evening started off for me at the Excelsior Hotel where P76 front man Danny McDonald was playing a solo set to launch both his own solo single "Rock & Roll Records" and the band's latest single "Sleeping In", as part of the Reverb Music "First Birthday Bash". Through a combination of lateness in arriving and a desire to catch the Celibate Rifles over at the Northpoint Tavern, immediately after Danny's set, I managed to miss Appleseed, Isherwood, Michael Carpenter, Soap Star Joe and Bionic Beat Boy. Actually, even if the Rifles hadn't been playing elsewhere that night, the Devoted Few were headlining up the road at the Hoey for their own single launch, so whoever was following after Danny at the Exe was still going to be out of luck.
Having played a show in Melbourne last night and then jumped into his van and driven up to Sydney for tonight's show, Danny apologised for any consequent tiredness or deficiencies in his vocals, but then that's the sort of defence that most performers feel the need to put up when they step out on their own with songs that they know the audience are already familiar with in more "corpulent" full band form (Ray Davies' solo show several years ago at the Seymour Centre remains for me the ultimate yardstick against which all other solo performances of band material are measured, though over the years Louis Tillett has handed out more than a few object lessons in this area as well).
Tonight Danny didn't have anything to apologise for, even if there were one or two spots where his vocals might not have been quite as perfect as they are on the P76 album ("Into The Sun", reviewed here late last year when the Bar went power pop crazy in the run up to Christmas). Even so, perhaps I'm being overly picky due to recent repeated playings of Astrid Munday's new "Apparition" album, courtesy of the Bar's chums at Laughing Outlaw Records, which sets some pretty high standards for pop vocals, in terms of both range and depth.
Starting off with the chirpy "Let's Get Back To Where We Started", Danny took the audience through some of the highlights of the P76 album (but, as I said in that album review, it's pretty much all highlights) plus both sides of his solo single, pausing only briefly for a bit of merchandizing (singles, albums and tee shirts all available at modest prices). I'm not sure if the sales exceeded the cost of the petrol for the trip up and back, but he looked pretty happy after his set and anyway, as already noted, what alternative is there for anyone who hasn't been extruded pre-packaged from the "popstars" assemble-a-radio-friendly-muppet-strictly-by-the-numbers machinery.
Since the Rifles show at the Northpoint Tavern was to be their last before they go into the studio to record their next album (and how heartening it is that they're getting to it so much quicker than their last album, which only saw the light of day after a six year silence), my path was clear (and took me straight out through the Exe's front door). Once again taking advantage of the fact the Exe is right opposite the headquarters of Legion cabs, I jumped into one for the quick trip over the bridge to the Northpoint, where I found a Jim Beam promotion in full swing. Ominously, I was searched by the bouncer at the door and once inside found at least double the usual number of bouncers there - did the management of the Northpoint already know something that I was only going to find out later, probably to my regret?
Walking the ten paces from the door to the bar, I was nearly knocked over by a bloke who could barely stand up, let alone walk and then was elbowed aside by another bloke whose jacket stank so strongly of cheap weed that the cops wouldn't have had to bother bringing in the sniffer dogs - any old Fido could have fingered him from the footpath outside, probably even from across the road (for the benefit of those outside Sydney, there's been a furore lately about the use of sniffer dogs in public places; well not so much of a furore really, in fact the government seems to have gotten away with abolishing a significant part of our basic rights, like probable cause and the presumption of innocence, with barely a ripple of dissent from the general public).
By this stage I'd already missed two more bands here as well, Silencer 7 and the Riff Randalls, but I was fairly blasÈ about such things by now and all the more so once the Rifles came on because boy, did they ever put every pompous stadium band to shame! After this show, those pretentious bastards who have balloons or ticker tape dropped into the stadium as their big finale will look like the wankers they are. In what I'm fairly sure is a first for Oz Rock, the Rifles had actual punters drop from sky, well from the ceiling anyway - two mugs who'd either been refused entry or been tossed out and had managed to get into false ceiling above the stage.
Exactly where they'd come from or where they thought they were going to get to may well ever remain a mystery, but when the ceiling gave way, there was no hiding their presence any longer! Fortunately for Kent, Mick Poole the roadie was bending over Kent's spare guitar when the first moron burst through the ceiling, landing on Mick's back and knocking him flat to the floor so that his body protected the guitar (which miraculously even stayed in tune throughout this debacle).
Seconds later a second knobhead crashed through the adjacent part of the ceiling and similarly fell to earth, though without finding anyone else to break his fall. Several punters in the crowd near me muttered fatalistic concerns about the likelihood that much of the dust raised by this comical catastrophe was asbestos ("Fuck, now I'll have cancer tomorrow as well as a hangover..."), but no one showed any signs of retreating and despite it all, the band still kept going and everyone managed to finish the song at roughly the same time. As one of the bouncers grabbed hold of the first low budget Icarus, apparently he even had the nerve to ask with feigned innocence, "Hey, how do you get out of here?". He immediately found that the bouncer was very to keen to show him!
Even without this spectacular diversion, the show would have been a cracker with old mates like "Kev The Head" rubbing shoulders with Johnny, Bill Bonney and Mr Kemper (of "Temper Temper Mr Kemper" fame), a dramatically extended "Oceanshore" and a couple of new songs, "Seems Much Better" plus another, the title of which I didn't catch (regrettably the foreshadowed "Welcome to Buttland" didn't eventuate).
I think the band (unlike the bouncers) were as amused by the alcohol fueled behaviour of the audience, even those not plummeting to earth from a great height, as they were inspired by it. When the bouncers asked them to ask the crowd to move back from the stage, they did so, although Damian pointed out politely that the audience was unlikely to stay back for any length of time and was proved right as soon as the next song started. While the bouncers wrestled with the audience, the band left them to it and just went about its business.
The band's business, of course, is Rock Action and tonight it was very much business as usual - a typical high octane/hard driving which wound up with their dual odes to/indictments of contemporary consumerism, "Wonderful World" and "I Shoulda", followed by an energetic if under rehearsed "Rockaway Beach" as a tribute to the lately departed Dee Dee (at one point Mike Couvret looked at Dave Morris with a disturbed expression that seemed to ask, "Are we all playing the same song?") and the aforementioned Bill Bonney.
For an encore they did Dee Dee proud this time, with a forceful "Chinese Rocks", followed by "City of Fun" (a cover which the band never seems to tire of) and then a rocket fuelled "Back in the Red", this last after some discussion and debate with the audience. Throughout the latter part of the show there had been the usual cries for "Back in the Red" and to a lesser extent "Electravision Mantra", so Damien threw it open to the audience, saying he could hear calls for those two, plus something else which I've forgotten but which doesn't matter anyway as they didn't play it, since he adjudged that "Back in the Red" had the most support from the audience, so that's what we got.
Interestingly, only the first of these was on the setlist I obtained after the show, with the assistance of the largely recovered though still slightly shell shocked Mick Poole. While I'm sure we're all relieved that he wasn't seriously injured, if it had been more serious I would have loved to have seen the look on the compo clerk's face as he read the statement of claim... I can't help thinking that it would have been a strong contender for a spot in one of those best/most unbelievable claims of recent times summaries that periodically circulate on the internet. Anyway, for encores the actual setlist reads "TUB" (presumably referring to "Tubular Greens"), "LET'S DO IT" and "CHINESE" which is proof, as if any were needed, that the Rifles remain flexible and ready to respond to the wishes of the audience... at least when they feel like it.
The Celibate Rifles go into the studio to record their next album in a couple of weeks and have no more gigs planned for the immediate future; Danny McDonald will be back up in Sydney, with the rest of P76, in October; Rebecca Hancock and the Prison Wives will be playing at the Rose of Australia on the 19th of July. - John McPharlin
3/4
