Nanker Phelge
Orange County
Midnight Goblins
@ the Excelsior, Sydney
November 4, 2001
I actually thought I was going to be on time for this show. I'm sure other Sunday shows I have been to at the Exe have always started at 6pm, so I got there dead on 6pm, but the opening act were just winding up the last song of their set as I fronted the ticket collector at the entrance (although no tickets are actually collected, or issued, of course - the entrance ritual instead revolving around the stamping of unwashed wrists) and they were already packing up their equipment by the time money had finished changing hands. My understanding was that they were calling themselves the Midnight Goblins, though the core of the performers came from the loose collective that performs there most Sundays under the name Domino. Someone else on the Divine Rites list thought that they had in fact gone on under the Domino name.
After the Penny Ikinger EP launch at the same venue the following week, I bumped into Leigh Ivin (who's part of that floating pool of musicians who play there regularly on Sundays) and he said candidly that he didn't think they'd played all that well that afternoon, as that particular line-up hadn't had much in the way of rehearsal. They were just expecting the usual select crowd of Sunday regulars and ended up kicking themselves when they saw how many extra people turned up because of Nanker Phelge and Mr Younger. At the time I didn't yet realise that the name they'd played under that afternoon might be an issue, so I didn't think to ask him about it.
All that was irrelevant at the time though because, after what seemed only a short delay (which was passed cheerfully in the company of the I-94's own Barman who, while not a smoker himself, nevertheless was propping up the cigarette machine, beer in hand, when I arrived), Nanker Phelge were soon set to crank it out, with Mr Younger standing exactly where he stood on December 23 last year. The New Christs played two sets that night, while Deniz Tek was headlining up the road at Bar Broadway (but no, let's not pick the scab off that old sore). Deniz doesn't come this way all that often these days, while the New Christs were clearly unstoppable in their current form, with recording of a new album already in progress and a European tour tentatively arranged for early in 2001, so I elected to skip their second set in order to catch Deniz. That was the last show they ever played. Who fuckin' saw that coming? Not me, that's for sure.
Anyway,
here he was again at last. Nanker Phelge are not the New Christs of course,
nor are they intended to be. After the dust had settled from the New Christs'
astounding implosion, just Mr Younger and drummer Stuart Wilson were left. Meanwhile,
the Navohodads (Brendan Kibble, Brad Fitzpatrick and Mark Busby) had found themselves
drummerless while Tim Denny was off in Montana (the Australian power pop band,
not the US state). Necessity being the mother of how about we just get together
and play a few old favourites for the sake of it, Nanker Phelge was thus brought
forth into being (Rolling Stones aficionados will doubtless pick up on the reference).
The band was envisaged as a strictly limited-life proposition, being put together to play at a birthday party for Brad Fitzpatrick's brother and with a repertoire consisting of covers only. I'm reliably informed that no public performance was ever originally contemplated, though they did play a secret warm up gig in the children's ward of Concord Psychiatric Hospital. No bullshit! Apparently Stuart works there and got them the booking; the audience, as might be expected, went crazy (okay I admit it, I'm ashamed of myself, but I just couldn't resist). Luckily for the rest of us, when the other band booked for this afternoon bailed out of the gig at fairly short notice, people who knew people phoned around and before you knew it, hey presto, Robert's your paternal relative and there they were.
Right from the first few notes, they left the audience in no doubt as to where their intentions and influences lay, kicking things straight into high gear with the Kinks' "I Need You" and following it up with the Who's "I Can't Explain". Ever since he started doing that cover of the Who's "The Seeker" with the New Christs, I've occasionally tried to imagine what Rob doing "I Can't Explain" would be like, since it's so much more of an obvious precursor to his own style of music. It turned out to be every bit as good as I had hoped and anticipated, so I probably had a self-satisfied smirk plastered right across my dial all through their performance of this song.
During the little medley that used to spring up out of the middle of "Born Out Of Time", Mr Younger has canvassed a wide range of classic songs over the years, so it comes as no surprise that he has a broad interest in and affection for sixties music. The only real surprise was just how many Who numbers peppered the set. For completists, here's the full setlist:
I Need You
I Can't Explain
High Time Baby
All Or Nothing
Lost Woman
Bad Boy
Sorrow
Get The Picture
Circles
I Can Only Give You Everything
Daddy Rolling Stone
The Last Time
You Can't Do That
Midnight to Six
Till the End of the Day
Anyway Anyhow Anywhere
While the performances of these songs weren't wildly different from the originals, they were certainly a cut above the usual reverent but derivative reproductions you tend to get served up on tribute albums. Great songs don't deserve to end up just gathering dust in some industry Hall Of Fame or being constantly recycled in seemingly endless but uninspiring K-Tel and Time-Life compendiums (compendia?). They are meant to be played and enjoyed live. Though they be classics all, Nanker Phelge breathed a little new life into them, reminding us in the process that these songs derive from a time when rock'n'roll was created by people who were passionate about it (and both wanted to and expected to play it live), not assembled by committee in a sterile studio, with an eye as much on the marketing as on the music (and where the completely interchangeable puppets, er performers, are probably the least important component of the final package, which relies far more heavily on slickly choreographed video clips and well managed promotional interview "opportunities" than anything as risky as a live performance).
Brad Fitzpatrick deserves special mention and not just because it was his brother's birthday party which was the catalyst for this whole extravaganza. When stepping out with the Navohodads, his guitar playing has always been tasteful and assured, but usually fairly restrained. Tonight any hint of restraint was cast to the four winds very early on, as he cut loose continually in some spectacular displays of string bending, fret bashing and general guitar neck strangling, even getting carried away enough to indulge in some Townsend-like arm windmilling at times.
He also joined drummer Stuart Wilson in supplying backing vocals. I'm told that Brendan Kibble was supposed to be contributing to the backing vocals as well, but when they got there they found that the Exe couldn't muster enough microphones to go around, so he happily volunteered to stand back and just play. He said afterwards he enjoyed it just as much that way, even if the rest of the band would have preferred him to sing as they had rehearsed. As things progressed, they had to make running adjustments to the backing harmonies to cater for the absence of his voice. Standing in the audience, none of this was apparent to me and we the audience collectively lapped up what we were being given. Regrettably all cries for an encore, which was as keenly sought as it was well deserved, were firmly denied. We can only hope that the band members were sufficiently buoyed by the experience and its response by the audience to extend the life of the band to include a few more outings, before it's finally backed into the garage and put up on blocks forever.
Between sets, I took the opportunity to ask Brendan Kibble what was happening with the Navohodads. He said that Tim Denny will be tied up for a while yet with Montana, since they still have some touring around to do to promote their new/first album, but he's got almost enough songs for a new Navohodads album and he hopes the band can get back into the studio eventually and then maybe get over to somewhere like Spain where, as is the case with so many other Australian bands, they are far more popular than here. Our conversation was cut short at this point by an almighty cry of "Jihad!", followed by something about doing five lines of anthrax, and then Orange County took off in full flight.
Orange
County is really a rock'n'roll band just masquerading as a country & western
band. On previous occasions I've seen them playing support (and holding their
own) for both the New Christs and the Celibate Rifles. They don't take themselves
too seriously, despite the effort they put into looking the part, and they can
always be relied upon to stage a lively and entertaining display.
Tonight's performance was no different, though their normal country tent revivalism was receiving a bit of a religious boost from some added Islamic fundamentalism, even if their "jihads" and their "yeehas" did tend to blend together into one as the night wore on.
Aside from the encores, a rollicking "Chinese Rocks" and one of the
most disturbed covers of CCR's "Fortunate Son" you're ever likely
to hear, the rest of their set was original (at least I didn't recognise any
other covers), including one tender song dedicated to "Rory and anyone
else who's ever had an A.V.O. against them" [side note for non-Australians:
an A.V.O. is an apprehended violence order, the result of a court ruling that
the recipient of the A.V.O. can and should be immediately arrested upon approaching
within a 
specified
minimum distance of the plaintiff; in some quarters, it represents an even more
final and eloquent end to a relationship than the traditional serving of the
divorce papers or the dividing up of the record collection].
As always the singer, the Reverend Carl Musker, indulged in plenty of heartfelt
praising of the Lord, often accompanied by sudden and violent prostrating of
his body amongst the foot pedals and empty beer cups on the stage, as well as
carrying the bright light of the Christian message (particularly the eleventh
commandment: Thou shalt kick out the jams) right off the stage, down onto the
dance floor and straight up into the faces of the audience, or at least those
who didn't back away fast enough. Jihad! Er, I mean yeeha! -
John McPharlin
