enmore theatre

The Damien Lovelock tribute aka "Damo The Musical" has outgrown Sydney's Factory Theatre and moved to the Enmore. Headliners are the Celibate Rifles, with special guests including Jello Biafra, plus Wigworld and the Centrelink Surfers. Tickets are on sale here. 

The Saints ’73-‘78
Kim Salmon and The Surrealists
Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Friday 22 November, 2024

Words: THE BARMAN
Photos: MURRAY BENNETT

Polarising was the Word of the Night. You could have argued that there was no way Mark Arm would successfully replace the late Chris Bailey in a reconstituted version of the Saintsand if you did, you probably didn’t go to the show anyway.

It’s a truth that Arm’s yowl is as far removed from the patented snarl of Bailey as Brisbane is from Seattle. If you didn’t take Arm at his word that he wasn’t trying to fill the original singer’s shoes, you were never going to dig this show. He clearly isn’t Bailey and didn’t try to be.

_{Murray Bennett photo}

I set out this afternoon towards the Enmore Theatre with every intention of taking some notes, keeping a rundown of the songs, and trying to come up with the sort of review that some people actually get paid to write.

Unfortunately, this grand plan fell apart by the time I’d been at the Warren View Hotel for an hour and met 26 (yes, I counted them) people I knew and ended up in more shouts than it was feasible to manage. Coopers Red is a great beer but a lousy friend when you’re trying to make a plan come together.

By the time I got to Phoenix (or at least the Enmore) it was 7.15pm, the Shy Impostors had just come on stage, and I was carrying enough Red on board to ensure that an in-depth profound analysis of the gig was as unlikely as AC/DC inviting Dave Evans back into the fold. So you’ll have to put up with this instead.

In days to come, when rock and roll has finally been relegated to the cultural nursing home to be read its last rites. It'll be a nice room with dappled sun, shared with other old cogders like Jazz and Rolling Stone magazine.

People will reflect that some of its best times were in Sydney in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. They’ll also realise how good things were, and how easily they slipped away.

This wasn’t going to be one of those high faultin’ essays on the fragility of cultural scenes and the futility of trying to recapture them (because, you know, things can never be like they were.) About how you can’t put your arms around a memory. Telling you: Don’t Look Back. But a story "angle" can just happen.

Sometimes we try to bury nostalgia or pretend it’s not a valid thing. It’s so easy to hope you die before you get old when you’re in the full flourish of indestructible youth…and then you want to take it all back when you realise that the future's not so much uncertain and the end is increasingly near.

So let’s make the observation that if nostalgia isn’t so much the elephant in the room at the Enmore Theatre tonight then it’s taking up much of the available space in the foyer. And that's fine. More than ever, with so many people who were influential in rock and roll dropping off the twig. We all crap on about how bad 2016 was for that sort of thing but of course it's only going to get worse. 

Right: Sluggo from Flaming Hands under the Enmore lights. Shona Ross photo