_{Ross Knight.}  

COSMIC PSYCHOS
+ ZEKE 
Metro Theatre, Sydney
Saturday, January 13 2024

Nice Day To Go To The Pub? Aren’t they all during an Australian summer? Tonight in Sydney it’s muggier than a brickie’s armpit and there’s no reason to break convention, but, fuck me, The Sir John Young Hotel on Sydney’s George Street sure has changed. 

It’s been re-named “The Resch” (gee, wonder where they dug up that one), the front bar has been opened up and there’s not a TV set in sight. All that polished concrete makes for a brutalist existence. Of course, it lacks live music, with a DJ setting up while we sip our beers, and the usual crowd of pre-Metro gig people absent. The schooners have not unexpectedly crept up close to the $10 mark. That’s life in Sydney!

Pat Todd
+ Mad Macka
Golden Barley Hotel, Enmore, NSW
Saturday, 25 November 2023 

Australian music legend and label owner Sebastian Chase once said to me: “Punk rock is folk music with volume - street music, if done right”. And with local bands like Cosmic Psychos and X, a case can certainly be prosecuted that street music and its stories can be  found in bars and pubs across the land.

Mad Macka has played his fair share of pubs and bars for almost 40 years, originally with The Onyas and lately with Cosmic Psychos. Macka’s music mirrors what you’ll still see and hear in drinking establishments across the land: cynical yarns by blokes on the punt and into their sixth schooner.

_{Lemon Twig Brian D'Addario.}

The Lemon Twigs
+ Jack Ladder
Manning Bar, Sydney
Saturday 28 October, 2023

Photos: Shona Ross

The Lemon Twigs are Long Island, NY, resident brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario and are on their second visit to Australia since 2017. They’ve been on the playlist in our house for four or five years at our youngest family member’s insistence and it was deemed compulsory we attend this show on their short tour.

The show at the Manning Bar was opened by Jack Ladder who had done a spot on the NSW Spencer P Jones Tribute bill a few years back. My recollection from then was that Ladder did a set of acoustic tunes solo and was well received. Tonight, he appeared in a duo with an Epiphone parlour guitar and an accompanist and started off in much the same vein. 

The Exploding Universe of Ed Kuepper
+ DC Cross
Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood, NSW
Saturday, 2 September 2023 

Photos: Vic Zubakin / Look Sharp Photography

Ed Kuepper is a deep thinker.I imagine he puts a lot of time into considering his next detour, which is usually unpredictable and highly creative.

Ed annually tours with a re-invention of something from his past. Tonight, he’ll show off  this year’s model - and add another chapter to his almost five-decade-long career.

The post lockdown tours of 2021- 22 with The Dirty Three’s Jim White were notable for re-invention. Those shows were dark and adventurous, exploring some obscure tracks and well as better-known Laughing Clowns material. The performances were all about atmosphere, and full of light and shade.

Prior to that, we had The Aints! tours, with Ed re-staking his claim to his roots in proto-punk, while giving a nod to Crazy Horse. 

The Loud Hailers.
Hollywood Hotel, Surry Hills, NSW
Thursday, August 14, 2023 

Photos: Nick Bleszynski 

Sydney was once a dangerous place.

As a teenager from the bush, I had read about live music venues like French’s and The Southern Cross Hotel; actually being there was a baptism of fire. 

It was the music that attracted me to the inner city in – particular, Surry Hills. It was the heart of a city where there was a pub with music on every corner, and where you could see your first band at 8pm and move from one venue to the next. You could still be watching a band at 3am in Kings Cross – even on a week night.  

It was dangerous yet romantic, a place of beauty with a view of its Harbour but one with a dark undercurrent of lawlessness, corruption and gangs that went back to the Rum Rebellion.

Cable Ties 
at Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Spawn 
at The Catfish, Fitzroy, VIC
Friday, 4 August 2024

I missed the supports for the Cable Ties  (pictured right) album launch tonight at Max Watt’s, not because of any indifference on my part – Maggie Pills, Porpoise Spit and Our Carlson are all acts worthy of checking out  – but because I was waylaid at The Catfish in Fitzroy caught up in Spawn’s sprawling psychedelic journey. 

I first saw Spawn at the Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood in late 2020. Coming a few weeks after the Victorian Government had released the shackles of the second lockdown of that year, the gig was liberating, a timely reminder of the critical importance of live music to the contemporary social and economic fabric. 

The fact it was also a benefit for Spawn bass player Jewel De Gelder, who, tragically, would pass away a couple of years later, added a layer of poignancy. 

Spawn is a band rife for observation, analysis and cerebral contemplation. Come for the stoner-psych riffs and pot pouri of cultural influences, stay for the trip. The concept of a personal journey is caught somewhere between the cynical discourse of the corporate management industry and the slightly disconcerting hand-produced flyers advertising self-help retreats for members of the information class lost in a middle-class existentialist void. 

But when you’re at a Spawn gig, you’re swept up in a spiritual quest. Close your eyes, feel the mood, roll with the moment. Sabbath-strength riffs, a sitar wielded like a stoner-rock axe, an Eastern musico-cultural inflection that renders 60s raga-rock a cheap middle-class white boy imitation in comparison. As for Sarita McHarg’svocals, wow, that’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before, in this world at least.