Oz
Rock Fest 2 featuring:
Powder Monkeys (& Bored!)
Thermals
Mystaken
Muscle Car
Ampirellas
Pig Iron
300 St Claire
Roll Cage
@ Green Square Hotel, Sydney
Saturday, May 19, 2001
Perhaps I should take more notes (e.g. meaning perhaps I should have taken
some notes at least). What do I remember now from last Saturday's non-stop day
of rock? Well, to start with, the beginning and the end.
The beginning: arriving roughly in time for the 3pm kick off and finding the
side saloon bar (between the front bar and the band area) chock full of aging
punters (your actual bet placing, race track haunting variety); obsessively
perusing form guides, filling out reams of TAB betting slips and watching all
manner of racing on the TV (basically it seemed to be showing anything you could
place a bet on - if this was the right season for the goanna races up in Alice
Springs, then I'm sure there would have been some coverage of that as well).
In fact all afternoon and well into the evening, the single TAB window at the
end of the front bar seemed to be doing almost as much business as the rest
of the bar, even picking up some customers from amongst the passing rock crowd
as the day progressed. Hmm, I wondered, how are these people going to cope with
the racket when the bands fire up?
The end: nearly nine hours later, an impromptu Bored! reunion; the classic
Thomas / Nolan / Hemensley / Munday line up rounding out the night by playing
a handful of favourites (favourites by Bored! and favourites of Bored!), ending
with their characteristic interpretation of "Final Solution".
What else do I remember? Unlike the Big Day Inn back in January, this time
no one had thought to organise food for sale during the day, so some of us had
to make do with lots of lager and the fond memory of a late breakfast (later
I found out that some smarties had phoned for pizzas and had them delivered
to the front bar... wish I'd thought of that).
The
musical program got off to a late start at around 3:40 with Roll Cage.
Given that Roll Cage front man Ashley Thomson was not only playing in two bands
during the day, but was also the organiser of the whole shebang (both Saturday
at the Green Square and the preceding Friday night rumble down at Austinmer),
I was prepared to cut him a little slack while I basked in the inner glow that
comes from having arrived at the Green Square twice in a row in sufficient time
to see all of the performances of every band (plus I caught all of the Lipstick
Killers' supports at the Bridge last week - am I getting punctual in my old
age or what?).
Roll Cage is the latest in a long line of Ashley's musical projects, which
stretch all the way back to the Kelpies in the early '80s. Born of his desire
to step out from behind his drumkit and try on for size the mantle of a little
rock guitar godhead, Roll Cage features the highly esteemed Mr Thomson not only
on guitar and lead vocals, but also as chief songwriter and band spokesman.
Since the last time I wrote about this band, back in February, they've continued
to hone their sound and refine their repertoire (though perhaps "refine"
isn't quite the right word - back in March at a gig supporting the Crusaders,
which I'm ashamed to admit I was too lazy to write up for the bar, Ashley unveiled
the projected title track for their forthcoming "Summer Of Pussy"
EP and succeeded in causing almost every woman in the room to walk out in disgust
before he got to the first chorus).
This time it was just a short set featuring Roll Cage favourites like "Stolen
Car Blues" and "Wrapped in Plastic", together with tips of the
hat to influences such as Rose Tattoo and Turbonegrero, plus bass player Carl
Ekman's showcase cover of "Arnold Layne". When the set ended it sounded
like the volume on the TV in the saloon bar next door had been turned up to
11 1/2, thus providing an answer to my earlier ponderings...
Due to the extreme unrock earliness of the hour, the audience for Roll Cage's
set was predictably sparse but, as the sun sank lower in the sky, the room slowly
filled up. Filled up with people that is, there were already tonnes of noise
making equipment of every variety lying around everywhere. While many local
bands don't turn up to gigs much before they're due to go on, half of these
bands were from interstate so their gear was already packed and ready to travel
when they got up in the morning and presumably, having come all this way, they
wanted to soak up as much of the atmosphere as they could. Come to think of
it, I guess the atmosphere in the chartered bus coming back from the Friday
night show down south would have been pretty heady too.
Only the Powder Monkeys seemed to have organised supplies of merchandise for
sale though (copious quantities of their burning "Lost City Blues"
newie, on both CD and vinyl), despite both Muscle Car and the Mystaken claiming
that they'd brought some - or was I just too slow getting to the merchandise
table after their sets?
After
a short turnaround (much sharing of drums and amps was to be the order of the
day), the second band of the festival was 300 St Claire, who also played
a rollicking but short set due to escalating time pressures (not only had Roll
Cage started late, but Ashley was keen to slip an extra, unadvertised band onto
the bill - for reasons that will become obvious shortly). As if they needed
any extra constraint, halfway through their set the impetus of their sonic thrust
was brought up short by a broken string. This was overcome quickly enough, but
toward the end of their set they also had to cope with bass player Mark Maniac's
encroaching arthritis (I'm joking, it was just a bit of cramp apparently). They've
been concentrating on recording recently and they're now in the process of mixing
tracks for a release which hopefully will not be too far in the future.
Next
up was to be the seriously hard rocking, but unadvertised, Pig Iron.
This is another of Ashley's musical projects, a three piece with himself back
on drums and featuring Panadolls cohort Kenny Archibald on bass and vocals,
together with Geelong (but lately transplanted to Sydney) guitar God, Dave Thomas.
During the break which separated Pig Iron from 300 St Claire, the Oz rock veteran
standing next to me told me that this is what he and his mate had come to see,
"Dave Thomas' new band", and how stunned they'd been to find out that
the Powder Monkeys were also going to be playing. Frankly I was stunned too
- that they could know about the last minute inclusion of Pig Iron but not know
about the Powder Monkeys, when they'd been mentioned prominently in all the
advance publicity that I had seen. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to
clarify that with a well chosen question or two, as the band started up at that
point, making conversation both redundant and impossible. What they made of
the surprise Bored! reunion at the end of the night is anyone's guess, as I
lost them in the crowd after that. Perhaps they'd already known about that too.
Pig Iron's set was as solid a slab of rock as you are ever likely to hear;
opening with a cover of "Black Eyed Bruiser", closing with "Feed
the Dog". Should I call that a cover because it's an old Bored! number,
or not a cover since a member of Pig Iron wrote it? Stuffed if I know, leave
that one for the librarians I guess. Not surprisingly, there was some serious
ampage wedged into the 30 minutes or so between those two numbers, which some
would have enjoyed much more than other. One of the strange design features
of the Green Square is that the only women's toilet is out the back, through
the band room and behind the stage. During their thundering cover of Turbonegro's
"Get It On", one of the grannies from the gambling den next door decided
that she could wait no longer and made her bid for the bog, looking particularly
shell shocked as her route took her almost directly in front of Kenny's bass
amp. She must really have needed to go!
Strutter
(from Brisbane) were to be part of this line up, but had chosen that week for
one of their semi-regular break ups due to musical differences (I'm led to believe
that in this case this means the sort of differences which involve band members
punching out other band members). So what we got instead was the Aampirellas,
a side project for Strutter guitarist Richard aka "Evil Dick". Fronted
by a small singer playing a bass only slightly smaller than herself, the Aampirellas
proved to be a remarkable combination of light vocal pop floating on a sea of
raw and dirty punk that had a strange under taste to it, like chewing on sugar
coated rusty nails.
I vaguely remember that Muscle Car were originally on the bill of last year's
inaugural Oz rock fest, but cancelled prior to the show (as did Strutter, leaving
Melbourne the only city besides Sydney represented that year). This year they
actually made it (unlike Strutter) and while their gentlemen's blend of speed
punk and cock rock didn't seem to be to everybody's taste, they put plenty of
effort into their performance, which at least held the attention of most of
the audience and it looked to me like they ended up converting more punters
than they alienated.
They
were followed by the Mystaken, which this time featured a strangely disengaged
Sally Bailey out front. Her demeanour was not improved by some catcalls from
the back of the venue and then a broken string which she had great difficulty
fixing (compared with Mick Poole earlier in the afternoon, she seemed to be
making a real meal out of it).
Nevertheless, indomitable trouper that she is, she rallied toward the end of
their set to the point where the audience even demanded a encore, getting a
cover of the Cars' "Just What I Needed" as a result.
If anyone thought that the Powder Monkeys were going to be the uncontested
champions of the post sunset portion of these festivities, then the Thermals
had got news for them, setting the PA on fire and generally 
generating
enough heat to get the paint peeling off walls.
I could rhapsodise about these guys continually getting better with age like
a fine wine, but what is really needed to describe their performance is a heavy
duty metaphor, something industrial strength. Imagine two guys cutting up iron
girders with turbocharged angle grinders, while a third guy jackhammers his
way through a concrete slab.
This is music so strong you could build bridges or a six lane highways with
it and it's cranked out sharp and fast enough to restart the hearts of a hospital
ward full of cardiac arrest patients.
Aside from 300 St Claire, the Powder Monkeys were the only band from
last year's Oz Rock Fest to be back for this year's follow up. In the case of
the Yesmen, the reason for not returning was the recent sad, pointless death
of Sean Greenway. This fact was not overlooked by Powder Monkeys' bassist/vocalist
Tim Hemensley, who dedicated their set jointly to Sean and the slightly more
recently deceased Joey Ramone (on what would have been his 50th birthday, had
he held on just a couple of weeks longer).
Word
of mouth was that last night's gig had turned into such a riot that the Powder
Monkeys were not only banned from ever playing at the Headlands Hotel again,
but also the publican had to be physically restrained to prevent him attacking
members of the band. Tonight's gig might have resulted in less visible carnage,
but was an awesome performance nevertheless.
Highlights for me were a punishing rendition of "Get The Girl Straight"
(one of the highlights of the aforementioned new album) and an even newer song,
not yet recorded, called (I'm pretty sure), "Looking Through The Eyes In
The Back Of My Head".
Just when most of the audience must have been thinking that the evening had
nowhere left to go, they called for a short break to allow for a personnel shuffle
which left us with the generally acknowledged classic Bored! line up on stage:
Messrs Nolan and Hemensley, plus Dave Thomas, who had hung around after Pig
Iron's set and drummer Buzz Munday, apparently just visiting Sydney on holiday.
After a shaky start ("Well what did you expect after 10 years?",
Dave Thomas asked the crowd as one opening floundered), they thundered through
a short set, magnificently rounding out a day so good you'd just about have
to die and go to heaven to feel any more blissful.-
John McPharlin
1/2
BACK TO THE LIVE SHOWS
PORTAL
BACK TO THE BAR