From: a.norrish@trl.oz.au (Reg Trademark)
Subject: Live reviews - Shamen, Nick Cave, PWEI, Primal Scream, Lush
Summary: I'm poor now
Keywords: Melbourne, Australia
Organization: Telecom Research Laboratories
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 10:04:53 GMT

It's been a bonanza of imported talent in Melbourne, and as there's 
been no other reviews, you have to suffer mine.

The fortnight started with the Shamen at the Metro (Tues. 1 Dec.). I 
like the Metro a lot. The sound system is pretty clean, (probably 
because it's a permanent nightclub rather than a beer barn where 
bands play occasionally). The same for the lighting. The nightclub 
gee-whiz stuff like lasers, mirror balls was used during the DJ spots 
with great effect, but there was an almost HM stage lighting rig set 
up, i.e. a million spots in a 1,000 x 1,000 matrix. The air 
conditioning actually works there too.

I turned up early for a change, one of the rare times a support 
interests me. Soulscraper (for it was they) played their 
techno/thrash/industrial/noise for a half hour, including the ep 
tracks. They made full use of the lightshow (again, rare that a 
support is allowed to do that), but didn't really pull it off. I 
thought they played too loud to be distinguishable from each other. 
When I last saw them, they had tons more samples, including a great 
song with the Reagan 'We begin bombing in five minutes' looped over 
and over. That went for about 10 minutes though, so they may have 
dropped this track because of their short allocation.

Mr. C. was next up with his DJ spot. Pretty forgettable start, his 
tracks plodded along, there were gaps between them (sacrilege for a 
DJ!), he announced them in a deadpan tone. His saving grace was one 
turntable blew up, forcing him to play someone else's stuff while the 
crew attempted a fix. Much better. He did get going on other decks 
later, but I didn't notice.

The Shamen stooged me, turning up on stage with no dropping of the 
house (not House) music. I was standing next to a mid-house PA stack, 
and thought I was getting a poor sound because of a delayed front-of-
house, but I realised they were not sounding good at all. Mr. C. was 
bopping around in a camp, sped up 80s robot dance while The Other One 
(name? can't remember) played his space guitar. The lone stage diver 
was told off in a sharp tone (I bet his ears were burning, ooh). 
There were the filler tracks from the latest LP, I went to the bar. 
Everything turned around when the black female vocalist came out to 
do 'LSI'. The sound was magically reversed, instrument-wise, and the 
vocals were full, not corny cockney all of a sudden. When it came 
together, I was very impressed. There was a beatbox version of 
'Ebeneezer Goode', a fair job of 'Pro>Gen', an excellent 'Make it 
mine', a very short 'Hyperreal' (if it was there at all). Again, a 
dance act skive off after a very short set (~ 55 minutes), but I 
think worth it.

Oh yeah, Joey Beltram was there, but after hearing some cool stuff 
from Ollie Olsen, some mediocre stuff from Richie Rich and they still 
hadn't fixed that turntable on stage, I left before he actually made 
it on stage. (Whoop whoop, girly home-to-bed non-raver alert!)


Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds played the Palace on Fri. 4 Dec. The 
Palace is everything the Metro is not. With a huge roof at the front, 
a mezzanine floor over the back bar area, a cavernous stage and a 
hand-held paper windmill for an air conditioner, you can (a) stand up 
the front, see very little and hear properly, (b) stand under the 
mezzanine, see more but hear a compressed sound or (c) stand on the 
mezzanine, see everything, hear everything and be taken away in an 
ambulance suffering from heat exhaustion. (You can go in the VIP bar 
if you know Molly Meldrum, but on extremely sweaty nights, e.g., when 
Nirvana played, the glass in front of you fogs up and you have to 
drink with the plebs after all.)

Not terribly interested in the supports, I rang the venue to find out 
the running times, and we promptly arrived 15 minutes before Saint 
Nick was due to preach to the masses. Imagine my surprise (C. 'Viz' 
comic) when we learned He'd been on for 10 minutes already.

I encountered dickhead No. 1 of the fortnight, after moving from the 
back bar area because of constant chattering, I ended up in the front 
part of the Palace in front of a person who would not shut up. I can 
handle talking between songs, I can handle spurious 'Whoooh!' cries, 
I can handle people remarking to each other 'That's a '67 Grolsch 
Phantom 12 string' 'Nah, It's a copy'. What I cannot take is people 
having entire conversations after they, and more importantly I, have 
paid money to see the band. Usually this happens during the low-level 
songs when it's easier to talk, otherwise they have to scream to make 
themselves heard during the louder ones. One song sort of went 
'Christina the astonishing'...'Yeah, I went round to see Andre the 
other day, yeah he's got a grant from the arts council.'...'Behaved 
in a terrifying manner'...'He's sculpting a horribly lacerated femur, 
It's called 'Cut myself shaving''...'She died at the age of'...'A 
sort of post-feminist biting satire on society's ills'. SHUT UP for 
Gods sake!

Anyway, grown men cried at his rendition of 'Long time man' (best 
Nick Cave track IMHO), pedants gasped at minor lyric changes in 'Jack 
the ripper', Blixa Bargeld played his guitar every three minutes. A 
fine selection, dating back to the first album, played well, although 
it's a spectacle as well, to see the man jerk around in his pinstripe 
suit and almost bark the lyrics. His voice continues to amaze me, 
from crooning to sneering, never out of breath. Without doing 
anything wrong, unfortunately last in the running of best gig of the 
fortnight.


Pop Will Eat Itself played the Metro Tues. 8 Dec. Again, I only 
turned up to see the main band, so no support review. I thought the 
ghost of John Lydon had come to haunt us when 2nd banana rapper 
(Graham?) bounced out in his pyjamas and orange dreadlocks. 
'England's finest' was followed by 'Eat me, drink me...' and the 
crowd was going wild. Stage divers were forming orderly queues by the 
PA stacks, Clint Poppie told his single joke again. The 'Big Three' 
from 'This is the hour...' were brilliant, 'Can U dig it' 
particularly so, minimal input from the 'Cure for sanity' and a 
surprising beef-up of mediocre 'Lifestyle' tracks. Tracks like 
'Teenage Grandad' and that one where his house gets ransacked sounded 
lame on the LP, but killer live. Louder, fuller. Lame singles like 
'XYZ' and 'Cicciolina' were gratefully passed over. Unfortunately, no 
black female vocalist therefore no 92 F. The full frontal four guitar 
force of 'There is no love' blasted dickhead No. 2 of the fortnight's 
chattering into oblivion. Also extremely well done were the samples 
coming (I think from vinyl) from the guitarist. Multi-talented or 
what? (That's not real music - Hippie muso purist ed.) They had a 
strobe (always scores points with me, I enjoy being hypnotised) and 
gave the monkey men bouncers a serve too (another plus).


Back to the Metro on Thu. 10 Dec. for Primal Scream. Dr. Alex 
Patterson was guest DJ, doing no Orb-like sounds, not really techno 
either, just fine dance music.

Primal Scream came on and immediately started their trippy dance 
stuff. The 'Loaded' prototype 'I'm losing more..' reinforced its' 
place in the most sexy, emotional song stakes. Bobby 'Stick Insect' 
Gillespie sat out a couple while Denise (??, I'm terrible with these 
names) Johnson (?? again), the black female vocalist (look, I'm not 
harping on this point, but the three I've mentioned have such 
powerful voices) did 'Don't fight it' and 'Screamadelica'. There was 
a drum kit on stage, but it was used for only the peripheral 
percussion, a drum machine doing most of the work. The bass was live, 
but the guy was in darkness. The guitar on the new stuff was 
extremely close to Keef Richards. The samples were there, (perhaps 
too often with 'Come together'). Dickhead No. 3 of the weekend also 
unfortunately turned up, gracing me with obscenities when I politely 
(well, at first) asked her to move elsewhere to talk about Camus' 
'The Outsider', or whatever. 'Loaded' made *everybody* move, even the 
original gig-statue i.e. me. They went back to their leather clad 
past with 'No fun' before calling it a night.


It was 30 odd degrees celcius in Melbourne on Fri. 11 Dec., not ideal 
weather to see Lush at the Palace. When we arrived (fashionably late, 
dahlings) I was surprised to see a half empty car park, followed by a 
half empty Palace. The poor attendance was a godsend, I was allowed 
the luxury of standing up the front, seeing properly and being 
comfortable. Dickheads were nowhere to be found (and I should know, I 
think I sometimes must have a sign on my back that says 'Please stand 
next to me and talk. Failing that, please walk through me even though 
there's plenty of room'). Honestly, if you weren't there on Friday 
night, you missed the concert of the year, and of the 90s so far. 
(Still no-one beats the Tackhead concerts of the late 80s). If I see 
a mediocre performance by a band, I may enjoy it, (due to just seeing 
the band) but I won't praise it. This concert however, was perfect. 
It was incredibly loud (although not painful to me, the two people I 
went with both moved to the back), but the mix was faultless. No 
instrument overpowered any other. The vocals were neither lost nor 
too prominent. The effects were crystal clear, even stereo mixing a 
la Adrian Sherwood. The *only* mistake came as Emma was harmonising a 
couple of times and got feedback. That's not to say it was a safe, 
just-like-the-reckord-man gig. The two girls attacked their guitars, 
(blowing the 'ethereal' tag out of the water) while the boys in the 
rhythm section kept everything going. (Snare drums ahoy!). The one 
show-us-your-tits type heckler was destroyed not by wit but by some 
crushing foul language, to the great enjoyment of the crowd. Like New 
Order, I can never remember their song titles, but they did the 
singles, there were tracks off the early eps, the dreamy ones were 
there too, with beautiful (a word I rarely use, these were truly 
beautiful) harmonies. I was looking for the keyboards for a while 
until I realised the sound was a human voice. Talking later, we sort 
of guessed that their show would only ever be either a killer or a 
shocker, never inbetween. If something goes wrong, the music is that 
complex that everything would fall apart (like those My Bloody 
Valentine gigs). I was glad I saw a killer. Again, gig of the year.

Andrew 'stop gushing you prat' Norrish.

'You're the most selfish person I've ever met' - Me to dickhead No. 3
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