ROSE TATTOO, X and VOODOO MONKEYS
The Metro, Sydney
Saturday, June 19

The legendary X (pictured below) play rarely these days, so the I-94 Bar staff were happy to emerge from the burrow to see them as special guests on a bill with late '70s comprades, the reformed Rose Tattoo. It also was the first time in years that X mark II - bassist Ian Rilen, singer-guitarist Steve Lucas and drummer Cathy Green - had trod the boards, so a good crowd was in force at the Metro, Sydney's premier live music venue, on a Saturday night.

First, some background: Ian Rilen IS rock and roll. He lives and breathes the stuff. A founding member of the Tatts (and writer of their first hit, Bad Boy For Love), he quit because they weren't extreme enough. Not only is he the loudest bass player in living memory, he and his instrument become one and the same when they hit the stage (a la Keith Richards).

X emerged in Sydney in 1977 and have been around, in various configurations, almost ever since. Four albums (one live and only one of the studio efforts less than wonderful) are testament to their durability. Rilen is very much in demand these days as a bass-for-hire (playing with Paul Kelly, Ian Moss and, last year, Rose Tattoo), and as front man for his own band, Skindiver, while Green and Lucas have musical projects of their own. Through thick and thin - an overdose death, another from natural causes, record label signings and droppings, moves interstate and the occasional break-up - X has always been X...simple, visceral and primal. This is a band that has a lot of history to live up to.

But first on the bill were the Voodoo Monkeys, an amped-up rockabilly band without the affectations that such a description usually carries. Part-Cramps, part-surf band and driven by a powerhouse left-handed drummer, they charge through an enjoyable set, before making way for X.

First up is TV Blues, the same song that kicked off their second album (and Green's first with the band), At Home With You, which dominates their set tonight. The ageless Rilen prowls, struts, rocks his hips grimaces and swaggers from one side of the stage to the other. Lucas howls and cradles his guitar and Green holds down the beat. Then it's into The Feel, Oxford Street Nick, Halfway Round the World, Moving On, Going Crazy. And More is one of the few songs to surface from the flawed album of the same name. The cover of Roy Orbison's Dream Baby gets a run (the same song that the White label misguidedly issued as a dance floor re-mix!) before they crash into a gut-rumbling I Don't Wanna Go Out. Dipstick and a few other highlights from the X-Aspirations album miss out as the band runs overtime, and it's over all too quickly. In two words: Fucking Great.

Headliners Rose Tattoo (right) amble onstage 40 minutes later to the delight of a charged crowd, with the Metro floor covered by more beards and beer guts per square metre than it's seen in quite a while. Many are clearly diehards and it's worth remembering once thing: Before the midday talk show appearances and TV charity work of singer Angry Anderson, before the lightweight, latter-day, glossy metal-pop ballads and crap peddled by bands erringly carrying the Rose Tattoo moniker - there were the REAL Tatts. They were a close-cropped, colourful gang, with a menacing presence and steeped in the heavy blues tradition of Australian pub music. Most had been around the Australian music scene for a while, but they had nothing to do with the halfbaked glam and excerable prog-rock bullshit that littered stages worldwide. And they could level a crowd with music that was more roll than rock, as loud as all fuck and underpinned by a swinging rhythm section and killer slide guitar. Twenty-three years on, with almost all-original members on board, that's what you get again - music that goes for the guts and gives the flick knife a turn for good measure.

Love or hate him, Angry Anderson has a terrifying voice and superb command of the stage. Get Me Out of This Place opens proceedings before Nice Boys (Don't Play Rock and Roll) staggers with its power and precision. Almost all the first eponymous album gets a go, as does the anthemic We Can't Be Beaten and the swinging Juice on the Loose from Scarred for Life. The Butcher and Fast Eddie is a change of pace that gives various band members time for a gasper. For all the singer's inbetween-song raves about "the streets" being for "the working class", am I the only one to see the irony of him swigging from a bottle of (non-working class) Crown Lager?

Shaven-headed Peter Wells spends equal time mugging it up with Angry and familiar faces in the crowd and is clearly in the driving seat, yielding centre stage to Mick Cocks for an obligatory solo just once, and thoroughly enjoying himself all night. The man's slide gives the Tatts a cutting edge imitators can only dream about. He's been in the Sydney press this week, talking about a California-based tribute band and a forthcoming European tour. Is it any wonder bands who would be too young to have ever seen the Tatts, and ponces like Guns and Roses, have tried to replicate them?

The encores end with Suicide City and an Anderson onstage collapse that would have looked suspiciously James Brown-like if not for the fact that he looked short of a gallop at other stages of the evening. The roadies carry him off and the crowd reluctantly file out. Next stop - the festival circuit in Europe. If you're over there and reading this, ignore the metal shit that they'll no doubt have to share a stage with - this is one touring act worth catching.

- The Barman