Celibate Rifles
Instore @ Whammo!
Sydney
Thursday, December 7, 2000
The performance was supposed to start at 6pm, but fortunately Nik Rieth was still setting up his drums when I arrived a couple of minutes after the appointed hour. The crowd was small, but growing, and the Whammo counter staff clearly had decided that there wasn't going to be any actual commerce taking place while the band was playing, so they'd grabbed some beers out of the store fridge and were making themselves comfortable (very comfortable!).
Seeing this, some of the punters (around half a dozen) disappeared and returned several minutes later, missing the Rifles' opening number but clearly drawing contentment from the brown paper bags under their arms. Re-establishing their territory in the cramped confines of the store, they each pulled out beers (except for the bloke nearest to me, who was drinking Jim Beam & Coke) and proceeded to make themselves every bit as comfortable as the staff.
The band were extremely relaxed as well and there didn't appear to be a set list, although obviously they intended to showcase the new album. After the opening instrumental warm up, Damien Lovelock turned to Kent and Nik and enquired along the lines of, "You wanna play 'Jesus'?" and since they were in agreement we got "Jesus on TV".
Unfortunately I didn't write down the set list at the time, so I'm straining a little here, but amongst the newies they definitely played plenty of the hard rockers including "Storm", "Hammer", "Paddo Sharps", "I Shoulda" and "Talk Back Saviour", which Mr Lovelock introduced by explaining that it had been intended to be topical when it was recorded, but they hadn't realised that it was going to take over a year and a half for the record to come out.
As a change of pace, they also played the lyrical and reflective "G's Gone", which forced Dave Morris to call for a brief halt to the proceedings while he changed the tuning on his guitar. For far too many bands this would have been a dead spot in the performance but, with Damien Lovelock out front, a break in the music never results in a interruption in the entertainment, as he uses every such occasion to regale the audience with opinions and asides. He even took the opportunity to embarrass a young man standing behind me by introducing him as his son (shades of "Ab Fab", how would you go about being a rebellious teenager in that family?).
In between the new songs, the set was thrown open to the ever increasing audience for requests, with some pretty predictable results, although I'm not complaining about the reprises of "Electravision Mantra" and "Tubular Greens" (even if Mr Lovelock could be heard to remark ruefully, "I guess that's what happens when you give people a choice..."). We even got an unexpected performance of "Glasshouse".
Having started a little late, the band went over time to give the assembled throng the advertised hour of harmony and tunefulness, finally closing the set with a cover of their own choosing, the Ramones' "Rockaway Beach".
Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the whole show was that the band was able to give such a great performance in spite of the rudimentary equipment setup of the venue. There was no foldback for each band member to hear back what the rest of the band were playing and aside from the guitar amps, there was only a small PA for the vocals. The drums weren't miked at all, yet even without any amplification Nik could still be heard clearly - shit he hits those drums hard! Okay, obviously the guitar amps weren't turned full up, but from where I was standing (in front of the high priced "collectables" case), they were still pretty damn loud.
For a band which has been so quiet for the last couple of years, it's good to have them back and in such fine form. Roll on Christmas Eve! - John McPharlin
