"Kim Salmon plays The Scientists"
Kim Salmon and friends
@ the Annandale Hotel, Sydney
Friday, December 1, 2000The purpose of the evening was to promote the new retrospective "Blood Red River 1982-1984", put out by Citadel conveniently just in time for Christmas. There's no doubting that Kim Salmon has moved on from those days and that music, but the price of progress has been the abandonment of some great songs.
Clearly, for many, this has been a very high price to pay. Despite the appalling weather, a good crowd had turned out on the promise of getting to hear all the early classics and wade knee deep into the swamp together one more time.
But before all that, there was the inevitable support. I'd never crossed paths previously with Luxedo, so I had no idea what to expect. What they provided was a potpourri of modern music, or at least the bulk of the relevant bits, to pave the way for what was to come, which was what everyone had come for. From the opening drone which slowly metamorphosed into something approaching country and western a la Tex Perkins, their set progressed through the Cramps with detours into power pop, though strangely blunted in its guitar attack, to the Tea Party, but fortunately stopping short of their excesses.
After the usual hiatus to change over of equipment, including the alarming installation of some rap/hip hop DJ accouterments, it was time for a little scientific musicianship and out strode Mr Salmon and his cohorts for the night (actually the regular rhythm section from The Business), dressed in white lab coats with at least one pen sitting proudly in each top pocket.
Aside from a brief guest appearance by Boris Sujdovic, Kim Salmon was the only Scientist on stage all night and Boris was just one of the many guests who made short appearances in a non-stop (or rather stop/start) parade of faces, which continually broke the mood and rhythm of the show. Each guest only sang one song, with the exception of Escobar, who were more than one person and don't sing but operate the aforementioned electronics and DJ accouterments, and Brad Shepherd who was the last guest of the evening and also got to do two songs. Possibly this was because he was in full-on rock god mode and no one was game to go on after him... in fact a couple of the advertised guests didn't front at all, so perhaps they were out the back refusing to take the stage?
However the highlights of the evening were due entirely to the songs themselves, rather than to the presence of any guests; particularly in the case of "We Had Love", for which Morganna (from Nitocris) had to continually consult her lyric sheet as she went along.
The last three songs of the night were encores, sung by Kim on his own and ending with a glorious rendition of "This is My Happy Hour" which, aside from being an appropriate way to end the night, only served to underscore the complete redundancy of the preceding pageant of guest performers.
Apparently for Kim, the price of progress has been even higher than it has been for his fans, and has been paid for by the aggravation from those same fans who still insist on crying out for these oldies. While killing time before the show started, I'd been loitering by the merchandise desk where the compilation CD was on sale, along with four Luxedo CDs (but strangely nothing else from Mr Salmon's recent oeuvre), when a disdainful, slightly dejected voice at my side suggested that the comp was an excellent buy because it contained "all the hits that everybody seems to want...". When I turned to face my interlocutor, he turned out to be none other than the chief scientist himself!
Perhaps this cavalcade of stars, rather than being a mere promotional stunt for the CD release, is his way of distancing himself and quarantining future "regular" performances from any audience expectation that the old tunes might ever get a run amongst his current repertoire.- John McPharlin
