Yeah, sure there was another band on before the Crusaders, but I didn't get there in time for them and they didn't wait for me so I guess we're even.

Even without me, it looked like they must have had a pretty good crowd there for an opening act and despite the fact that clearly everyone (well, nearly everyone) was there to catch the Rifles, when the Crusaders came out they were wearing their Maltese Cross battle dresses, slammed straight into it without any farting around and soon had the ever increasing crowd nodding their heads, tappin' their toes, shakin' their tail feathers, letting their backbones slip, pumpin' their hips and by the end of the set all but whipping out their squishy bits and waving them around.

Half the band are also in the goodtime Thurston Howlers, another 60s fuzz combo which lurches from the polished and reverent to the seemingly indifferent and unrehearsed. Perhaps they've been getting enough irreverent action through this extra circular activity to leave their minds and spirits free to concentrate on being a little more serious in this band (but not too serious; while "Wave To The Grave" neatly ties up the two central threads of American International Pictures entire 60s output - the bikini beach movies and the mock gothic Edgar Allan Poe pastiches - into a monumental surf/punk edifice, their "Fisherman's Basket" consists of nothing more than naming the contents of a typical pub or cheap restaurant seafood platter to the backing of a Dick Dalesque surf beat).

Certainly tonight was all business and no bullshit. With the crowd so quickly on their side, they roared through a tight set that could not be faulted for pace or choice of songs, including sure-fire crowd pleasers like the aforementioned "Wave To The Grave", their necrophilic elegy "I Dig Your Holes" (disinterred and discussed in a recent review), the dark and menacing "So Pretty" and the thundering "The Freak".

Continuing the no nonsense nature of the evening, the Rifles opened up with "Jesus On TV" and then followed it with two of the newies, "Hammer" and "Paddo Sharps". Two observations emerge out of the dim fog of memory of the early part of the Rifles' set. Just before they came out, you could see them standing at the side of the stage (at least you could if you were right up the front where I was) and the bloke next to me went to great pains to point out to his mate who the singer was and which were the guitarists. Aside from the fact that this whole exercise in information sharing was pretty pointless, since their respective roles were about to become blindingly obvious in a couple of seconds, I found it heartening that a band which has been around as long as the Rifles is still attracting first timers to their shows.

The other observation is that they didn't bother to introduce either of the new songs (or any of the other newies peppered throughout the set) as new songs. In the barely four months since they premiered the new album to fairly reserved responses during their harbour cruise, the new songs have been integrated into the set and accepted, nay embraced, by audiences to such an extent that neither band nor audience now needs to deal with them as "new"!

The new songs may no longer be new, but some of the older songs were very old: for example "Ice Blue" from "Sideroxylon" and "No Sign" from the marginally more recent "Turgid Miasma Of Existence". Both slotted seamlessly into the set and sat comfortably alongside more recent material. Verily, that which was old was new again.

How did the audience take all this? Well, to put it mildly, they went apeshit. Being right up the front against the low (slightly below waist height) stage to grab a few happy snaps to go this review, I sure found myself suffering for my art as a mosh developed behind me. Let me elucidate the situation in this way: crushed nuts may be great on your ice cream sundae, but I can assure you that they bring no joy when they're nestled in your trousers.

However this was just the beginning. Over the past few years it has seemed to me that the character of the mosh pit has changed: I always thought it was a brainless way to try to derive pleasure from live music, but these days it's blatantly vicious as well, filled with dumb cunts who don't want just to commune with others of their lowbrow ilk, but who apparently can't be happy unless, at the very least, they're annoying the shit out of anyone near them who clearly doesn't share their simplistic sense of fun.

Tonight this translated into some dumb bitch jostling me every time I tried to capture an action portrait of the band and constantly elbowing me in the kidneys when I wasn't. Fortunately her energy and/or attention span didn't extend beyond three or four songs and aside from some dip stick who tried to root me with his hip bone at one point, I only had to put up with the usual pummeling to the upper back and shoulders from moshing morons throwing themselves at the edges of the crowd around them.

Perhaps they're locked into some existential dilemma and feel that they can only prove that they really exist by observing the impact they have on others? Well, while we all want to "make our mark" on the world, unlike these sad losers the rest of us have set our sights a little higher than just being skid marks on the soiled undies of life. It's a pity they don't have the intelligence to do the same.

Why, you may well ask, do I put up with such stupidity? Because despite appearances "it's no fool's paradise, it's such a wonderful life" and the Rifles make it so.

- John McPharlin

BACK TO THE LIVE PORTAL

BACK TO THE BAR