My five best and worst gigs

I am flip-flopping on the question of the US bailing out its auto industry – this article from the New York Times scared the hell out of me. I am not going to stand resolute and Bushlike on free market principles while the global economy collapses. But I still hate the idea. Something needs to be done about companies that are “too big to fail”. My idea – I think it’s not a bad one – is that when a corporation becomes so large that its economy starts to resemble that of a developing nation, the IMF should come in and do an audit, as they do for developing nations.

But I don’t want to talk about the GFC today. I recently convinced my father to take me to see Leonard Cohen in January. This is good, as I couldn’t have justified the $145 ticket price for myself. If this review is anything to go on, it should be a special show. It will mark a milestone for me – he is the last of my musical heroes, excluding people who have died and bands that have broken up, that I am yet to see in concert.

I think after this show I could never see another gig and still feel satisfied that I saw the best bands and musicians of my time. There are plenty of things I wish I had done in my life that I didn’t do, but going to gigs has not been one (well, I still regret missing Summersault.) If I never see another gig I will still be able to tell my children, should I ever have them and should they have good taste in music, that yes, I saw all those people. (Contrast to my father, who spent most of 1965 in London and didn’t go see anybody. I’ve quizzed him about this. “Why not?!” I demand. He shrugs, looks sheepish, and says he was too busy drinking at pubs.)

I still love music, but over time I've become more passive about it. I've come a long way from the time when I would make special trips into Sydney to go to Waterfront and buy records based on their textaed sticker recommendations. These days I'm content to let others do the work for me, and will only check out a new band if a few people whose opinion I respect tell me I should do so. And I no longer care about good seats (or standing right at the front), or whether a band or person is "cool" or not. I guess it comes with getting older.

Anyway to celebrate my seeing of everybody I love I have compiled a list of my five best gigs, and as a bonus my five worst as well. In no particular order. The best ones first.

Tori Amos, State Theatre, 1994. The entire concert was just her and a piano, excluding two songs with tape backings – Cornflake Girl, which was kind-of dissapointing, and a cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, which was seriously amazing. If there is anything that all these gigs have in common, it is that in each there was no holding back – everything was given in the performance.

This concert did have one downside. I went with my father, who had picked up on my mid-nineties enthusiasm for Tori. And he had a cough. The audience was made up mostly of earnest young girls. All was fine until Tori launched into her a cappella song about being raped, “Me and a Gun”. And the whole place was all reverential silence. Except for my father, who coughed throughout the song. So it went, “There was me and a gun [cough cough] / and a man on my back [cough cough cough].” I hunkered down in my seat; I don’t know that I’ve ever been so mortified. I thought we were going to be set upon by angry young feminists.

I feel bad telling this story, when my dad has taken me to see so many concerts I could not have afforded myself. It wasn’t his fault, but it happened.

Bikini Kill, Wollongong Youth Centre, 1997. I went to a lot of great shows at the Wollongong Youth Centre, but this was by far the best. The Youth Centre used to be the Wollongong Art Gallery, and in high school our class was invited, along with other classes, to paint flags for it, which were then hung in the hallway. For some reason me and a bunch of my friends painted ourselves as horror movie characters; I was a small vampire. So it was always a little strange to go there and see this horror-movie depiction of myself hanging in the hallway.

The show: I was friends with Laurie, who was in the support band, and I helped him bring in his gear. Kathleen Hanna moved a guitar case out of the way and smiled at me! There were about 300 people in a room that could hold about 200, Bikini Kill seriously rocked and were all punk-rock meets Toni Basil. People kept calling for “Carnival”, and Kathleen Hanna demurred. She said it was an old song and they were over it, and instead we should all go form our own bands and cover it. Then they came back for a second encore, and played it. It was great.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Annandale 2004? I wasn’t a fan before the show – in fact I had to be pretty-much dragged to it by Bree. Since then I’ve listened to their big album a few times. It’s decent, but I don’t love it. But I’ve never seen a better rock show. Hard to say why; it’s a mysterious thing, when a band rocks so well that the entire audience is captured by it and transported somewhere. Commitment and intensity have a lot to do with it.

Jens Lekman supporting some lousy Candle Records act who I forget, Bulli Family Hotel 2005. A weird return for me to the pub where in 1990 I filmed a terrible horror movie, The Third Floor, with some friends. I’d never heard of Jens Lekman and went, I suppose, for the lousy Candle Records act I forget, and also because it promised to be a fun roadtrip back to my old stomping grounds with Tahlia and her friends. Jens performed solo, half the time accompanying himself on his ukulele or whatever-it-is, the other half a-cappella. Again, a performance of total mesmerising honesty. It is the only time I have ever been at a gig where, after the support act finished, half the audience immediatley stood up and went to buy his album. It started a long musical love affair with me and Jens.

Patti Smith supporting Bob Dylan at Wollongong Entertainment Centre, 1998. A really weird audience; it was the grand opening of the Entertainment Centre and most people seemed to be there to support the debut of a worthy Wollongong venture, or else because they liked Peter Paul and Mary’s covers of Bob Dylan back in the sixties. Anyway, Patti Smith was the support; me and a bunch of other people who were actually there for the music stormed the front of the stage, in the process severely pissing off the connected socialites of Wollongong who occupied the front-row seats. One snotty twenty-something in the front row kept hissing at us, “Please return to your assigned seats!” The security guards tried to clear us out and Patti Smith stopped the show and started arguing with them, saying she liked us there. They said it was a security issue; Patti asked us if we would show co-operation by sitting down for a song. Which we did. And she rocked out angry and hard, and then we stood up again, and it was great.

Bob was OK; I’ve seen him better. The lukewarm response of all the non-fans who were expecting a greatest hits package from a genteel folky ruined it a bit; it was Patti who made it one of my top five concerts.

Looking at the list in total, the most obvious question is, why are sexually liberated feminist rock chicks so prominent? It's not really representative of my whole music collection. I have no idea.

Now, the five worst:

Sonic Youth, the Metro, 1998. I don’t know what I expected, but by the fifth 10-minute improvised feedback jam session I was wondering what crime I had committed to deserve dropping fifty bucks on this show. Some would call it genius; it sure did nothing for me.

Cat Power, Newtown RSL, 2001? Chan was doing a tour in which she played songs to accompany a silent film. Except the video player didn’t work, so there was no film. After the first song they gave up on the movie, and during the second, the lights guy turned the lights up on Chan, who was playing on a completely dark stage. She paused mid-song to snarl “Turn the fucking lights down, please!” So the rest of the show was Chan doing very slow, dreary piano ballads in the dark in a very noisy room. I think I lasted about an hour and a half of this before giving up and leaving.

Bob Dylan, State Theatre, 1992. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen The Bob five times. I’ve seen him great, awful, and indifferent. I saw one show where he sang like it was 1965, full-voiced and bending his notes and hitting the high ones with his triumphant sneer (it was the night after he won his Academy Award; perhaps he was happy.) I saw a show a couple of years back where he seemed completely drunk and spent most of the night trying to play piano solos which were far beyond his abilities as a pianist. But this show – the first time I saw him – was truly, memorably awful. He had a backing group that made every song sound identical, and mumbled so terribly that you frequently had no idea what he was singing. Songs went like this: [three minutes of screeching hard rock and mumbling] “Like a rolling stooone” [four minutes more of screeching hard rock and mumbling]. He also hardly faced the audience. During the depressed post-show analysis, the conversation went like this:

“I kind of liked Desolation Row.”

“He did Desolation Row?!”

“What was that song about buffalo?”

“What song about buffalo?”

“He said it was about buffalo before he started. I heard it clearly. He said, ‘This is a song about buffalo.’”

(Ohmygod! The web is amazing. 16 years later I can confirm he really did do a song about buffalo! And he did do Desolation Row, too, although not Like a Rolling Stone - that was a hypothetical example.)

Sebadoh, The Metro, 1999. Probably should have been a great show. The three songs I got to hear were certainly pretty good. Unfortunately I was talking to Mel beforehand in Alexander’s, and she had an abstract Swatch watch which she completely misread, so we missed almost the whole thing. They broke up a couple of months later.

Cat Power supported and backed by Mick Turner and Jim White of the Dirty Three, Thirroul Beaches, 1999. Yes, the worst concert of all time. It should have been one of the best.

I feel bad that Chan has two spots in my five worst concerts, particularly as she has such a reputation for giving bad shows. I should say that I’ve seen her 3 and ¼ times, and she’s only been bad once – the previously discussed Newtown gig. This was the ¼ time, and it wasn’t her fault.

I was so excited about this show! It was bizarre that it was even taking place. Back before Cat Power were huge, she did this tour of Australia with the two talented people from the Dirty Three. And for some reason, they were playing at a local pub near my home in Austinmer. It wasn’t a place known for gigs; it was taking place in a seriously tiny back room.

But somehow I missed the important piece of information that that it started – I don’t know why – at six thirty. So I got there at 8.30, expecting a great night, and caught two or three songs before the whole thing ended.

My friend – who hadn’t even been into Cat Power until I got her into them – was also there. And afterwards I went and saw her. She said, “You missed a great show, man.”

I asked what she was doing now – I was still ready for an evening. She said she was just going home.

So I went home, very disapointed with the evening.

The next time I saw my friend, she said to me, “Wow! You missed a great night the other night.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We stayed at the bar afterwards. And we were drinking with Chan and Mick and Jim!” (They were on first name terms, now, it seemed.)

“You were?!” I said.

“Yeah! And we stayed out with them really late. And guess what! After the bar closed, we all went to Austinmer pool. And we went midnight skinny dipping with Chan Marshall!”

“…”

“What’s the matter?”

“…”

Worst gig ever. I couldn’t listen to Cat Power for two years after that.

Anyway, what’s your best and worst?

posted by Nicholas @ 5:29 PM