"Hello Sailors!"

The Sailors
Whopping Big Naughty
The Thermals
Real Meek
@ Green Square Hotel, Sydney
Saturday, July 21 2001

Big night tonight at the Green Square, with one more band than usual squeezed into the line up, but I'm there in plenty of time (so what's new about that, right?). Headlining are Melbourne's Sailors (pictured right) but first to the supports...

First up (and not too long after I arrive I must admit) are the Meek, or Real Meek as they are calling themselves now apparently, though they haven't gone so far as to change the name on the skin on the bass drum yet.

They're a trio with a singing drummer (which is a pretty big ask - even Nik Rieth doesn't sing all the time) who mix 60s garage, 70s punk and 80s power pop in strange and mysterious ways that have seen them compared to everyone from early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd through the Real Kids to the MC5. From show to show their sound does seem to slide around a bit, genre wise. I first caught them supporting Challenger 7 almost exactly 18 months ago, at the Green Square as well as it happens, and Challenger 7 front man Ian Underwood said that they were friends who'd been rehearsing "for about three years" and that this was their first public outing. However their set that night left me thinking that maybe they should have kept at it in the rehearsal studio for another couple of years before venturing out, as it just didn't come together at all as far as I was concerned.

I then caught them again about four months later, coincidentally at the Green Square once more, supporting Brother Brick and the Bloodsucking Freaks, and they flat out killed. Since then they've been praised publicly by Sydney rock identities as diverse as Ashley Thomson (he also remarked, "they look like a real bunch of losers as well", which is quite an accolade within Mr Thomson's lexicon) and You Am I's Russell Hopkinson (both drummers; coincidence? You decide!).

As Forest Gump was fond of saying, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get". Come to think of it, he was only repeating something his mommy had told him and for these guys, homebrew might be a better analogy - even with the best ingredients, no matter how many times you think you've got the mix fine tuned just right, next time round it's still just as likely either to come bursting out of the bottle or else turn out flat as dishwater. I've seen this band play several times since that memorable night, but they have failed to achieve quite the same level as during that landmark performance... until tonight, when miraculously they nailed it completely once again.

With the drummer doing all the singing, the drumming tended to be relegated more to a supporting role rather than rhythm anchor; the bass was way up front, becoming practically the lead instrument, while the guitar provided as much subtlety of light and shade as you'd expect in any film noir cinema
classic. The result was a riveting fusion that was short on pretence or posturing, but long on grinding pace and raw guts, bordering on the primal. Like just about every other Sydney band at the moment, they're rumoured to have a few demos recorded and are looking for a patron to pay for the mixing and pressing. If these ever see the light of day it'll be interesting to observe which version of their sound they've managed to capture on record.

Next up were the Thermals, playing unaccountably low down on the bill considering the number of times they've headlined here. They seemed to be treating it as a breather from their regular shows, eschewing all of their own originals in favour of a full set of covers - and what a collection of covers they'd chosen! In the musical equivalent of dropping their pants in public, they ran us through a range tunes that wouldn't have been out of place on seventies AM radio or Countdown (in fact some definitely were shown on Countdown during its heyday), plus one or two slightly less well known (dare I say "underground"?) classics, culminating in a finale that saw Scott Morgan rubbing shoulders with Rod Stewart (and not the "good" Rod Stewart of Jeff Beck Group and "Gasoline Alley"; this was the satin suited and blow dried Rod Stewart of "Hot Legs"). Although none of it was their own material, they attacked everything with a joy and an enthusiasm that stems, I suspect, from re-establishing contact with some of the sounds that inspired them to start playing in the first place.A while ago they were talking of having the inevitable handful of demos recorded, but despite no EP ever eventuating they have continued to record privately and now have an entire album's worth of tracks in the can. Once again, rich patrons please feel free to apply in writing on the back of a signed cheque...

The Crusaders were supposed to have been up next, but it turned out that they had been forced to cancel at almost the last minute, so we got Whopping Big Naughty instead. Strangely they announced that this was their CD launch (it had been billed as the Sailors' CD launch in all the adverts I had seen) and stranger still, a significant proportion of the audience clearly had come to see them play; the only adverts I had seen all still listed the Crusaders, so I'm buggered if I know how they knew.

They have been described in some quarters as "a classic rock band" and "one of the few great, true rock & roll bands left" (well, in their record company promo for their new album at least), though Drum Media came closer to the mark with its passing reference to their "shambolic majesty". Tonight the core trio was joined for some songs by Catherine Brownhill on violin, but I have yet to warm much to this band. Throughout their set singer/guitarist Justin Hayes (who also travels under the pseudonyms Stanley Claret and Justin Credible) kept threatening to give away a free copy of their new album for the correct answer to a simple question, but the only question that interested me was: why can't the previous two bands get someone to put out their records?

The Sailors came across as the quintessential don't-give-a-fuck pub band, although their songs contained far more references to penises and rectums than any other pub band I've ever heard. In fact, their repertoire featured a seemingly endless parade of toe touchers, tail gunners, turd burglars, pillow biters, pile drivers, sausage jockeys and chocolate canyon raiders (the song about the pirate with a wooden third leg, I think that might have been "Swashbuckling Faggots", was priceless). If ever I were in prison with these guys, I'd be actively trying to avoid taking any showers until I'd served out my sentence.

They are another bassless trio, in the same manner as the Thermals, and they also have a singing drummer, though he does get some occasional help from the guitarists - not only through their singing, but also constant quotations from Nostradamus' book of predictions, together with plenty of incitement and general abuse of the audience. While their aim seemed to be to entertain as much as to shock, they were still a belligerent and gloriously outrageous rock act that could only have been stopped by uninhibited use of an elephant gun at close range.

When not falling back into the drum kit or breaking strings on their guitars (fortunately a bill with three support bands ensures that there are plenty of spare guitars available, although the Thermals did seem to hasten their packing up when they saw that initially the Sailors were needing to borrow another guitar after every song), they were happy to get down off the stage and mix it with the audience, who in turn generally preferred to retreat in preference to going eyeball to eyeball with these aggressive and uncompromising degenerates.They also had a CD of their own to launch, "Violent Masturbation Blues". Looks like the only things they don't pull are their punches!
- John McPharlin

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