At Manitoba's in Manhattan with Manitoba.
10 things I can remember from 2009:
Worst show: The Saints, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Brisbane Riverstage. Devatastatingly, heart-wrenchingly bad. The band was slated (and advertised) to play (I’m) Stranded in its entirety, as part of Don’t Look Back, and as they had done in Melbourne at The Forum the previous night (I was there too, and while not indicative of the disaster to unfold, the band were upstaged by X performing At Home With You). As horns wouldn’t be needed to perform the album, no horn players were flown to Brisbane.
Word has it that a certain singer had a little tantrum minutes before showtime and refused to play the album. No pleading from the other musicians would sway him – and so the band came out and launched into Swing For The Crime. Sans horns. In the end, the band didn’t even play (I’m) Stranded the song, to the disgust of local fans. The singer played the fool all the way and performed the next two gigs in Sydney in his pyjamas. In short, a disgrace, one missed entirely by the Courier-Mail’s music journalist who labels it the best thing on the day, an opinion that would haunt him for weeks afterwards.
Cue…
Nine better things than the Saints at ATP:
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at ATP. Awesome. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! was the first Bad Seeds album to surprise me in a decade (since The Boatman’s Call) and might be the best of his career. On stage the Bad Seeds were re-energised and breathed new life and fire into material that was getting tired and stale.
2. New Christs, The Step Inn, Brisbane, September. No one who saw the Gloria tour will dispute that Younger and company were in top-notch form and Gloria boasts their best material since (yeah, we know) Distemper.
3. Eddy Current Suppression Ring, The Step Inn, Brisbane, January. The best performance I’ve seen yet from arguably the best live band in the country, playing to a room full of Triple J-primed dills unprepared for the band’s lock-step rhythms and perfect grasp of pacing, dynamics and power. Can’t find a duff song on either of their two albums yet.
4. Laughing Clowns, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, February. This was only a couple of weeks after the ATP debacle. Ed Kuepper looked and played like a free man.
5. Hits, The Step Inn, Brisbane, September. Supported the New Christs and would have wiped the floor with almost any other competition on the night.
6. Wolfmother, Terminal 5, NYC, November. Hush yo’ fussin’. God or the other dude hath wrought a singer who looks a bit like Jim Morrison, sings a bit like Robert Plant and put him out front of a band that sounds like Black Sabbath. How could it fail? It can’t, of course. The Yanks went nuts – after all, this is the kind of music they used to regularly invade small Central American countries to.
7. Ian MacLagan, Joe’s Pub, NYC, November. The ex-Small Face delivered a beautiful set of well-worn songs with style, grace and considerable geezer charm. Elvis Costello was seen propping up the bar and hopefully was taking notes on how to age gracefully without trying so damned hard.
8. Heartless Bastards, Terminal 5, NYC, November. Supported Wolfmother (you can tell I didn’t see a lot of shows this year – too many nightshifts. But these guys were the goods, with a singer coming on like Nico trapped in Chrissy Hynde’s body.
9. Travelling from Chicago to the small town of Appleton, Wisconsin, November. Cows, big red barns, and the I-94. Yep, THIS I-94! Who gives a fuck about Route 66 or Highway 61?
Time to stop for an Eskimo Pie. I-94 was full of holes and he hit every one.
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