Peter
Fenton
+ Sounds Like Sunset
+ Devoted Few
Thursday, January 31 2002
@ the Annandale Hotel, Sydney
Since I wrote about Peter Fenton's show at the Hoey towards the end of November
last year, he's not only played there a second time, but also at the Annandale
at the end of December and now here he was at the Annandale once again.
Aside from featuring at these two venues, he's also featured in the letters
page of the Drum Media, being one of those named in the small coterie of musicians
indicted by "Skinnyboy from Stanmore" for hogging all the decent gigs
at the "premiere venues" like the Hoey and the Annandale. Four gigs
in just over two months, what a selfish bastard (even if two of the four have
been on Thursdays, rather than the Fridays or Saturdays so sought after by Skinnyboy).
In putting forward his case, Skinnyboy pretty much blew off his own foot, not
only by the petulant presentation of his argument, but also by phrasing it in
terms of a conspiracy by the promoters to only book bands who'll draw good crowds.
Most punters would probably agree that a stance like that falls more into the
category of commercial reality than conspiracy.
This is unfortunate because there is a genuine problem and Skinnyboy did have
the bare bones of a valid point buried underneath his ill considered rhetoric.
Back in the halcyon days, or rather nights, of the '80s, even Tuesday and Wednesday
night gigs tended to be comparatively well attended. So a band could start out
playing a few nights early in the week, pick up a decent following (presuming
they were any good of course) and advance through the weeknights to playing
Fridays and Saturdays.
There were lots of bands playing lots of gigs at lots of pubs. Sadly this is
no longer the case. Not only are there less venues/opportunities for bands to
play, there are also far less punters prepared to bear witness at those that
do remain. Which is the chicken and which is the egg?
The conventional wisdom now presumes that poker machines are the problem, but
while they certainly haven't helped the situation, especially where pubs have
simply swapped the band area for a back room of wall to wall few pokies, it
seems to me that the rot had set in and attendances were falling long before
the pokies became an issue. Putting in the pokies was not an attempt to drive
out the bands and the punters who followed them; it was a misguided attempt
to lure back some of the punters who were already deserting the pubs in droves,
based on the false assumption that those punters had strayed off to play the
pokies in the licenced clubs. However in most cases they weren't going to the
clubs instead; in fact they weren't going anywhere - they were just staying
home.
Blame random breath testing for this? Sure that would have to be a factor.
Long gone are the days when you could soak up a skinful, stagger out to the
car park and drive home using both sides of the road, the median strip and as
much of the footpath as you needed.
Blame techno music and disco as well? It is an absolute blot on the sonic landscape
for sure, but does seem to attract/siphon off significant audience numbers,
which might otherwise come to listen to real music, as you could see from the
news footage of the good size crowds getting the sniffer dogs run over them
outside various Oxford Street premises during the recent spate of police raids.
A bloke at the camera store where I buy my film blames "that fucking proof
of age card. I started going to pub gigs when I was 16 and I don't reckon I
looked over 18, but as long as I didn't make a dick of myself the bouncers didn't
give me any grief". That's an interesting perspective, which I hadn't come
across before, at least not quite in those terms.
If the proof of age card has contributed to the problem at all, then surely
Countdown did so to a far greater degree - by fostering amongst those too young
to go to the pubs yet, the conviction that what you heard on commercial radio
was all that counted and that anyone who wasn't on a multinational record label
couldn't be worth listening to. Sure Countdown supported the likes of the Sunnyboys
and the Church early on, but pretty soon any crap picked up by one of the big
record companies and promoted on the radio was getting the Countdown seal of
approval; eventually it seemed that only big record company crap could get the
Countdown seal of approval.
So while the likes of the Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty, Eastern Dark, Harem
Scarem, the New Christs, the Screaming Tribesmen, X, etc, etc produced fresh
and original music that went completely unnoticed, Countdown turned into a continuous
parade of talentless non-entities like Rupert Holmes, Bertie Higgins, Patrick
Hernandez, Roger Vadourous and others of that sickening ilk (and compared with
that lot, Leo Sayer was practically fuckin' Shakespeare, Mozart and T.S. Eliot
all rolled into one). By the time the Countdown kiddies were old enough to get
into a pub, most of them had little inclination to do so, instead favouring
discos where the sounds were exactly like what they heard on Countdown.
Whatever the cause, the problem undeniably exists. Is forcing higher profile
artists to make way for unknowns on popular nights the solution? I don't think
so. Is persuading more high profile bands to play on the unattractive week nights
the way to go, thereby drawing out more people earlier in the week and increasing
the exposure of the other, lesser known, bands on the same bill? Not really,
since we already know that the average punter just doesn't want go out early
in the week anymore. Even "name" bands frequently have trouble getting
much of a roll up outside the weekend.
Is there any chance of commercial radio taking up some of the slack? In your
dreams maybe. Is FBi Radio the answer to everybody's prayers then? Geez, we
all certainly hope so, since in other states the local public radio clearly
gives the local bands the sort of exposure they used to get in the past by playing
those gigs early in the week. If FBi Radio isn't the answer, are we fucked?
Probably.
What else could possibly help? Well over the last four decades the ABC has
been a conspicuous supporter of Australian music, despite appearances to the
contrary in the wake of the shallow and inept "Long Way To The Top"
(and if you think the show was shit, you should take a look at the pathetic
souvenir book of the series the ABC shop was flogging in the lead up to Christmas).
Oh yeah, you reply, what about Countdown? Fuck Countdown, remember Beatbox?
In fact, remember GTK? Get a local band that can actually perform live, stick
'em in a bare studio and film them playing half a dozen original songs, which
can then be shown later, one song at a time. No self-consciously arty sets,
no distracting graphics, no inane presenters, no studio hatched Barbie and Ken
dolls. Imagine if that show had kept going through the eighties, what great
live-in-the-studio performances we'd now have from bands that instead have left
no visual record of their passing.
How about the ABC running Studio 22, or something similar, all year round?
The only problem with Rage is that a band has to have a film clip to be eligible,
so it's the same eternal vicious circle - can't afford to make a film clip until
you get noticed by somebody and can't get noticed by anybody until you have
a film clip to show... Once a band has appeared on Studio 22 (or a resurrected
GTK), then they would have something that could be recycled on Rage. I don't
know how much it costs to make an episode of Studio 22, but it's got to be a
lot cheaper and more cost effective than broadcasting fucking interminable operas
live from the porcelain palace out on Bennelong Point for the enjoyment of about
1% of the national viewing population.
But I appear to have digressed somewhat. What I started out to talk about was
this show at the Annandale.
Having
caught the tail end of the Devoted Few's performance at the Hoey earlier in
the month, I was keen to give them another listen. Regrettably their forthcoming
album, which was referred to last time as being released in "late February",
was this time referred to as being released "sometime this year" (which
apparently means May at the earliest), so going out and catching them when they
play live looks like being the only way to hear their music, at least in the
short to medium term.
In the meantime I've learned from a little research that the band is fronted
by former Bluebottle Kiss bass player Ben Fletcher (he's still with Bluebottle
Kiss, but now shares the guitar duties with frontman Jamie Hutchings), Bluebottle
Kiss drummer Richard Coneliano and three other musicians completely unconnected
with the 'Bottle: guitarist Daniel Graham, bassist Adam Crusher and Skye Sams
on keyboards.
Unfortunately this time the keyboards were not only situated so far off to
one side of the stage as to be almost invisible, they were also so far down
in the mix as to be inaudible for most of the performance as well. Nevertheless
the guitars were able to shoulder enough of the weight of the melodies demanded
by the dense, almost mystical, lyrics that my disappointment was diminished,
though not completely assuaged.
Sounds
Like Sunset took an inordinate amount of time to set up and were almost 10 minutes
past their start time before they got going. Throughout their short set (they
ended five minutes early as well), there were long pauses between songs while
the two guitarists either changed guitars (they seemed to have five guitars
between them) or retuned or sometimes did both. Due largely to this, the set
failed to gather much momentum. To my ear none of the songs really came together
either, although a couple did come close. Still, I'd be interested to catch
them again on a better night.
Fortunately for Peter Fenton (and those who enjoy what he's doing), a decade
of ups and downs, the occasional small success notwithstanding, appears to have
bred more than enough resilience to cope in the face of any amount of jealous
resentment, especially when it's so misplaced.
When I last saw Fenton at the Annandale just over a month ago, supporting Dan
Brodie, he had three other musicians with him (bass, drums and keyboards). Of
those musicians only Ben Fletcher, on bass, was present again this time; there
was no keyboard player at all, Fenton swapping his guitar for the keyboards
when necessary, and the drummer had been replaced (apparently at less than 24
hours notice) by Richard Coneliano from the Devoted Few. However perhaps the
universe can only tolerate a certain level of entropy, even on a night when
Fenton is playing, and as the previous act apparently had used up all of tonight's
quota, Fenton's set went very smoothly.
When things do go well, as they did tonight, a terrific sense of triumph suffuses
the proceedings. Fenton jubilantly leans back from the microphone and practically
wails his vocals, as much to heaven as to the audience. However, even at his
most cheerful and seemingly carefree, there's still a smoldering, unsettling
intensity lurking just beneath the surface of Fenton's songs, which hint at
startling possibilities - as well as formidable risks and disappointments -
presently unseen, but waiting ever so patiently for an opportunity to reveal
themselves.
When things don't go so smoothly that feeling of triumph is supplanted by a
quixotic nobility, a sense that even while defeat is being wrestled from the
jaws of victory, the end result is still more of an achievement than a failure.
Tonight was all triumph though, with the tortured inner beauty of the songs
laid bare; loss, hope, suffering, defiance, tenderness and aggression melded
together into a cohesive whole, with the spirit rising above it all in unrestrained
exultation.- John McPharlin
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