Sydney, Australia - July 31, 2003
|
Online Review
at The Metro
by Missy Sharkey
Yep, I'm still feeling the buzz - what a night.
On the road trip home while listening to my favourite road trip tape
(teenage fanclub, bowie, sonic youth, buzzcocks, undertones, st etienne,
mercury rev, charlatans, kim wilde(!), ratcat, beck, white stripes, brmc,
bjm, etc) i thought of heaps to write for y'all about the dandys show in
Sydney last night but of course with a blank email page in front of me my
mind is empty!
A few stream of consciousness things then. The show was brilliant. I have
only one complaint. They didn't play rave-up (courtney played a few bars
of it and I saw that it was on the set list but they weren't sticking to
that anyway, of course). They pandered to the audience a bit with all the
"rock hits" (courtney's words) ie boho, solid etc, but that was OK, such as
when he got the crowd to sing all the choruses of Get Off while he did
harmonies with Brent - that sounded great. Best version of Ride I've heard
- grunge betty had so much energy - (courtney did the solo grunge betty
thing for a few bars after the song ended) - genius was good although not
the best ... Good morning - TBA version (courtney talked about TBA and how
this was the version from that but no reaction from the crowd). I Love You
was played quite differently to versions I've heard before. Loose -
wow! felt like 20 minutes of pure rock and roll adrenalin! The crowd went
nuts for minnesota and junkie and peter's windmills displayed such flair on
boys better that it was quite mesmerising. No falsettos from monkeyhouse
that I can remember. WUTBF, YWTLH went down like a treat with the crowd of
course but the surprise stand-out of the night was You Come In
Burned. Amazing! Courtney was brilliant playing his drums ... he did it
so well and of course looked fab at the same time and he sang it
note-perfect, you'd swear it was the voice track of the CD, but the song
itself just soared. I hope the alternate version of monkeyhouse sounds
like that! Oh - I yelled for "sometime sunday" and being up the front
courtney heard me and talked for a bit about how that was an old song on a
really old tape of theirs that they didn't know how to play any more, and
then guess what! peter started playing it, the sweetie! well 20 seconds'
worth anyway! as with the 2001 and 2000 shows that I have seen be-in
opened the gig and country leaver closed it (although the set list had
rave-up last). Throughout, Courtney was asking Zia and/or the crowd for
the next song to play leaving only the first few chords for Peter to
recognise the song and quickly change guitars/click pedals and get
playing! All seemed in really good form - happy, lots of energy. Zia
looked great!
A surprise at the end - a security guard told me and the guy next to me to
stay put while they emptied the room, so we did, and he said we'd been
"chosen" by Zia to get backstage passes and go party upstairs with the
band. This was pretty cool, I guess she'd recognised me from last time we
partied, but as it turned out the after-party was open to the public anyway
and all the band came out for a couple of hours including Peter who was the
chattiest I'd seen him, talking guitars with lots of people! I thanked him
for playing sometime sunday and he said he was the only one who knew how to
play it anymore. After waiting for ages for all the drunk teenage girls to
pull themselves off courtney (literally) and stop taking photos of him with
their new trendy and expensive mobile phones (which they were drunkenly
dropping in their drinks) I was able to talk to him for a while which was
great. To cut a long story short I remember he said that You come in
burned, last high and welcome to the monkeyhouse were his favourite tracks
off the record, that capitol records were *really* messing them around and
this record was basically to meet contractual obligations (hence the
alternate version perhaps?) that was also in response to my asking him
that if rave-up was a head-fuck, godless like plugging your nervous system
into the galaxy and good morning like mainlining the universe, where was
the equivalent on monkeyhouse?? when I asked about the future/next record
- "urban psychedelia" is where it's at. I think that's what he said. my
memory - what memory ...
what else. brent was hopeful that the alternate version of monkeyhouse
would be released and said he thought Australia was the best place in the
world (so I said what about new zealand...?) and when we talked about the
BJM he said best band in the world! travis said he and zia were thinking
about getting healthy in preparation for having kids!
My favourite moment - courtney when the buzzcocks' ever fallen in love was
playing ... he was grooving and singing along ... charisma in spades ....
you can almost see it shimmering from him like fairy dust ;-)
i love this band! they are the best people - other bands should take
note. the good humour with which they talk to everyone, sign autographs,
get their photos taken, put up with inquisitive fans like me asking heaps
of questions, is beyond belief!
today they did a free show at the Fox studios for Channel V (cable tv) but
sadly I couldn't stay in Sydney for it. now I can't wait until January,
to enjoy it all over again! oh and justin, if you're still reading! the
metro doesn't check for cameras/recording devices or anything for that
matter so will try to record it next time if they play there.
thumbs up for DW in 2003
|
|
|