Club Clearview, Dallas, Texas
June 7, 2000
"No,
I HAVEN'T ever wrestled an alligator," said the Onyas frontman/guitarist Mad
Mack in response to some wiseacre in the audience during their soundcheck. "Because
in Australia, we have crocodiles." The Thursday night crowd, largely composed of the support bands and their friends and relatives, had thinned out by the time Brisbane-via-Melbourne's finest hit the Club Clearview stage at almost 1:30 AM (and Texas clubs have to close at 2), but that didn't stop the Onyas from blasting through a raging half hour of full-on thrashin' Aussie punk. (I'd been warned that Onyas set might run as short as 12 minutes, depending on the band's level of inebriation, but no worries -- they made it all the way up to the timebell in Dallas.)
"There's a few more here than when we played the Orbit Room three years ago," Mad Mack allowed as the three-piece churned through an adrenalized set. The spirits of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and AC/DC are present. The banter came almost as fast and furious as the music. "This bloke in the Fells shirt has been tellin' me that you lot are a bunch of fuckwits."
Mad Mack looks so quintessentially Australian, stripping down to shorts and Les Paul for the set, that you find yourself searching the stage for the barbecue grill and surfboard. On "our first single, 'Beer Gut'," he even performed a behind-the-head guitar solo accompanied by the title organ, and later played and sang a bit from in front of the stage (with the help of a couple of fans who moved mic stands).
The Onyas lyrics reflect the same kind of low-key humor. Standout toons included "Night Rider," "Get That Shit Off of Your Face," and the self-explanatory "My Dick Is the Size of a Blister, I Need a Fuck, How Old Is Your Sister?" If this is typical Oz Rock Action, America needs more, More, MORE!!!
Of the supports, the Forty Fives from Atlanta, Georgia, were a stunning surprise, purveying nothing but pure high-energy garage glory to give the Mooney Suzuki a run for their money, with a crisp, powerful drummer and a keyboard player who plays like a demon and puts out more energy onstage SITTING DOWN than some entire bands do standing up. Their originals uniformly burn, and the set also included some smokin' sixties covers: the Pretty Things' "Come See Me," Sam Cooke's "Shake," and a Zombies toon which this writer couldn't recognize in its pumped-up, accelerated version. Garage maniacs in the western United States need to be on the lookout for these guys as their summer tour continues.
Biggest disappointment of the night was the Rock and Roll Disciples, a kind of poor man's Gluecifer (they even LINE UP ONSTAGE the same way as Oslo's "Kings of Rock;" devil signs up, everyone!) whose fans showed up en masse (and evidently on short notice) to give their heroes a riotous reception that couldn't disguise the paucity of song ideas (which was not abetted by the crummy mix which totally buried the lead guitar). The frontman had a certain distinctive (if obnoxious) stage presence that reminded this writer of nothing so much as a Black (as in evil) Encino Man obsessed with his own cock. Next!
Opening (and playing their first-ever show) were the Sunday Drunks. While less explosive and exciting than the Onyas or Forty Fives, the Drunks' confluence of poppy frontman, rootsy lead, and punky riddim boyzzz showed real promise.
- Ken Shimamoto
