David Bowie Tribute Round-up

“So inviting, so enticing to play the part"

Will the real David Bowie please stand up?

With the Brit Awards announced this week, we come to the end of the music awards season, and hopefully, the end of the Bowie tribute season.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Bowie. Possibly I love no musician more. Even some of my family members suspect that Bowie figures higher in my pecking order than they do. I have all of his albums; in most cases I have a copy on vinyl, cd and download – this is my contingency plan to ensure ongoing Bowie availability should some mysterious audio format virus strike the world. Plus I have several compilations and a few live bootlegs.

I saw him perform on his 1983, 1987 and 2004 tours of Australia; in 1987 I went to three of four nights at Kooyong. And I still haven’t quite forgiven my mum for not letting me sleep out at the MCG to get tickets to his 1978 show. Sure, I was only 14 at the time and as it happened, many of those who did sleep out were ambushed and bashed by skinheads, but that is hardly the point.

Under the influence of my friends Mark and Phillip, I became a Bowie fan. I may not have dyed my hair to a Bowie hue, but I smoked Gitanes because Bowie did.

Bowie continued to be a major connection with subsequent friends, David, Dino and ultimately my wife, Angela, as I continued through the several stages of fandom from aficionado to tragic. I even liked Tin Machine and while some may disagree with my assertion that they were the precursor to grunge, showing that Bowie was again ahead of the pack, then most people would at least concede that the two Tin Machine albums are far superior and came as a blessed relief after the two Bowie albums that preceded them; Tonight and Never Let Me Down.

I visited the David Bowie Is… exhibition twice, I still wear t-shirts bearing his image, and at the time he died I was awaiting delivery of my pre-ordered clear vinyl edition of Blackstar. Apparently these were selling for close to $1,000 on eBay in the days after his death – my friend John advised me to strike while the grief was still strong.

In any case, I’m comfortable with my Bowie fan credentials; I may not be the most avid, have the most memorabilia, or dress up as him, but when I heard that he’d left a fortune of approximately $100 million on his death, I was happy in the knowledge that I’d contributed my fair share.

Bowie’s death seemed to resonate with people and affect them quite deeply – more deeply than you’d necessarily expect for an avant-garde rock artist who had been out of the public eye for the best part of a decade. Perhaps because his death came out of nowhere, or perhaps because his career was so varied that he connected on some level with people across different generations. Everyone, it seemed, felt the need to publicly declare their grief and celebrate his career.

The tributes came from the public as well as from collaborators Iggy Pop, Brian Eno and other fellow musicians – even Kanye West tweeted a tribute without any reference to himself – world leaders, the international space station, the Archbishop of Canterbury and even the Vatican.  A constellation of stars was named in his honour – to go with the genus of spider that already bares his name – and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a UN resolution was passed in his honour or that a momentary truce was declared in Syria.

Inevitably of course, the industry felt the need to pay musical homage, from epic productions at award ceremonies to concert halls, street parties and small tributes to tiny crowds. They ranged from well-known artists to the obscure and of course the quality varied from the classy to the cringe-worthy and the just plain crap. You have to take into account that many of them were hastily arranged with minimal rehearsal time, but I sat through some of those posted on YouTube so that you don’t have to.

Lady Gaga at The Grammys - The most widely anticipated tribute was at the Grammy award ceremony, where Lady Gaga, Nile Rogers and a cast of thousands performed a tribute to either Intel or Bowie – it was hard to tell. They performed a medley of 10 Bowie songs in just over six minutes. You do the math – it was not so much a medley as musical speed dating. Under Pressure was represented by just seven notes of the bass riff.

The songs were Space Oddity, Changes, Ziggy Stardust, Suffragette City, Rebel Rebel, Fashion, Fame, Under Pressure, Let’s Dance and Heroes.

Lady Gaga was certainly energetic and did her best, and there were some good ideas: lighting effects providing the make-up and a moving piano, but the problem was the concept – trying to cram his entire career plus a couple of costume changes into a few minutes. Sometimes less really is more.

Interestingly, of the 10 songs the Grammys decided best represented Bowie, not one of them was ever even nominated for an actual Grammy award. Bowie received 10 Grammy nominations in his lifetime, but the first didn’t come until 1984. He only won once, and that was for the video, Jazzin’ for Blue Jean, which almost all Bowie fans agree was the nadir of his career. He never won for his music.

When you consider all of those groundbreaking genre-bending albums Bowie made between 1971 and 1980, the Grammys didn’t acknowledge any of them in their day. Not one of them! He did win a lifetime achievement award in 2006, but that is the Grammys way of saying, ‘Oops, we seem to have overlooked you when you were actually creating music’...here, have this.’

Lorde at the Brit Awards – This was better than the Grammys – largely because they performed a song in its entirety. They still did a medley of eight songs, but it was instrumental with the focus on video footage of Bowie. Similar to the Grammys, the songs were Space Oddity, Rebel Rebel, Let’s Dance, Ashes to Ashes, Ziggy Stardust, Fame, Under Pressure and Heroes. This performance had the advantage of featuring Bowie’s actual touring band – including Mike Garson, Earl Slick, Gerry Leonard and Gail Ann Dorsey. Plus the fact that there were no vocals meant the change form song to song wasn’t quite as jarring. Then Lorde joined the band and performed Life on Mars.

Lorde was magnificent; confident, poised and assured in her own interpretation of the song. She even seemed to giggle at the line about Mickey Mouse growing up a cow, as if she’d never heard it before. 

It is interesting that both award ceremonies chose women to interpret his songs. It would have been good to hear Lady Gaga given the same opportunity as Lorde to interpret one song properly. However, we can at least be thankful that the ARIAS were held before Bowie died, sparing us an embarrassing Australian tribute. Not that there couldn’t be good ones – see Sarah Blasko below, but you just know they’d get someone naff.

Bruce Springsteen – on the opening night of The River tour on 16 January, Bruce talks about the support Bowie gave him early in his career, and how he caught a Greyhound bus to meet up with Bowie on his Diamond Dogs tour. He then rips into the Rebel Rebel riff and plays a rousing no nonsense rendition with his band.

Jon Bon Jovi - performs a sprightly version of Heroes with fiddle and honky-tonk piano accompaniment. I didn’t think it was possible to make this song sound anything less than profound and stirring, but Bon Jovi goes beyond that and makes it sound rat-arsed ordinary. Like a Bon Jovi song in fact.

What makes it worse is that he appears to be playing it at some sort of sales conference, or dentist’s convention, if the banners behind him are any indication. Given his impressively youthful looks, perhaps it was a conference for an anti-ageing serum. I felt positively unmoved upon hearing this tribute, so it is highly recommended if you want to wind down the grieving process.

There is, however, a connection between Bowie and Jon Bon Jovi. I remember sleeping out with Angela in Lonsdale Street to get tickets to Bowie’s 1987 concerts – yes, those were the days when your dedication and the seat you got was measured by how long you were prepared to sleep on the footpath. We got second row. The Bowie fans were lined up outside the Comedy Theatre Box Office, while around the corner there was another large contingent of fans – all girls – waiting outside the Regency Hotel where Bon Jovi were staying. Sorry, that’s it, a boring story perhaps, but it is still more interesting than Jon Bon Jovi’s tribute.  

Elton John – is performing a private concert at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on 13 January 2016. The clip on YouTube picks him up thanking Bowie for what seems like an introduction to a good sound engineer. He then performs five minutes of meandering piano tinkling that might or might not be Space Oddity, before launching into his own Rocket Man –– so it was really more of a tribute to himself rather than to Bowie. But that’s Elton. It should be noted that Bowie turned down his knighthood – not so Sir Elton. We should just be thankful that this tribute wasn’t as nauseating as his tribute to Princess Di.

Madonna – in the days after Bowie’s death, Madonna was perhaps the most vocal in declaring what Bowie meant to her and what a profound influence he was, so it is hard to understand how she managed to put together such an embarrassing shambles of a tribute. Performing her Rebel Heart tour in Houston, Madonna berated the audience saying, “if you haven’t heard about David Bowie then look him up motherfuckers.”  So touching, so condescending. Remember when she lived in the UK and started to sound like she’d been raised on a home county manor, well now she sounds like she’s straight outta Compton.

She performs an unwieldy, off key version of Rebel Rebel as her skirt tumbles off her to reveal a shorts jumps suit. With a heaving, undulating bosom like a Carry On wench, she jumps and struts about unsteadily, providing unwelcome gusset shots to the unwitting people in the front rows, all the while exhorting the audience to “come on!” At the conclusion of the song, which ends with her in mock collapse on the floor, she jumps up and shouts, “That’s how we do it motherfuckers!” It’s not how Bowie did it. He had style.

She then favours the audience with a lecture on Bowie’s importance. Among his many attributes she includes that he ‘opened the door for transgenders’. Okay, so he wore a dress for five minutes in 1972, I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing as ushering in gender reassignment surgery, but hey, transgender is the new zeitgeist, so Madonna is just after easy applause here.

There is also a wonderful Life of Brian moment when she is congratulating herself on being ‘different’ and asks of the audience in that rock and roll call and response way, “Is it okay to be different?”

“Yeeeees!” comes the response, proving that none of them are.

“Yes motherfuckers” she shouts, holding out the mike so that the audience know it’s their turn.

“Yes motherfuckers” they shout back in unison

“I said Hell yes motherfuckers” she shouts again.

“I said Hell yes motherfuckers” they replied, with a little less unison this time.

“It’s okay to be different motherfuckers” she shouts again

“It’s okay to be different motherfuckers” the crowd respond, their collective voice now growing much more ragged.

Calming down she added condescension to insult, saying “You don’t understand, he fucking blew my mind.”

Far from a tribute, I thought this was disrespectful to Bowie and her audience. This performance put me off not just Madonna, but Houston, and I’ve never even been there. If I had a ticket for her Rebel Heart tour that is about to hit Australia, I’d probably tear it up now.

EL VY with Jon Batiste and Stay Human - EL VY, the side project of Matt Berninger from The National and Brent Knopf from Menomena and Ramona Falls, teamed up with Jon Batiste and Stay Human, the house band on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, to perform Let’s Dance. I like the choice of song here – not Bowie’s best necessarily, but one of his best known, and a song that sends a signal of celebration. Perhaps weirdly, for a band consisting of 16 people (EL VY - 4, Stay Human - 7 plus a 5 piece string section) it sounded a bit empty, but then they would only have had a day’s rehearsal at most. Having said that, it was a very polished performance with Berninger, one of the few singers with the requisite style and baritone to do Bowie, in good voice. As is his wont, he looked downwards and grasped the mike tightly, as if he’s strangling it, while the Stay Human crew bopped about round him. It even featured a sort of tambourine and tap solo from one of the Stay Human players, while another added a nice sax solo to conclude the song. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues indeed.

Ewan McGregor – As part of a Bowie tribute at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles on 8 February 2016, Ewan McGregor joined the band to sing Heroes. It’s actually a pretty good performance too. There’s a precursor to this one – McGregor sang part of this song during the film Moulin Rouge, plus Bowie appeared on the soundtrack to that film singing Nature Boy. This one should be easy to find on Youtube as the version I watched features the raised iPhones of hundreds of other people filming it.

Gary Oldman – At the same concert, another British film luvvie, Gary Oldman, performs The Man Who Sold The World and duets with guitarist Jonathan Clarke on Sorrow. Oldman’s reading of The Man Who Sold The World is excellent apart perhaps from the ‘woh oh’s’ at the end. It’s no mean feat to cover both Bowie and Kurt Cobain and pull it off, but then Oldman is one of the best method actors in the world – if anyone can channel Bowie, he can.

Nirvana and Beck – Beck joined Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl to perform The Man Who Sold The World at a pre-Grammys function. An accomplished and respectful, if uneventful, version, though Beck nailed the ‘woh oh’s’. Perhaps could have been improved with Lady Ga Ga’s walking piano, but otherwise, it lost nothing by discarding all the excesses of the official Grammys tribute.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – This footage of RHCP performing Starman suffers by simple virtue of having been filmed from some distance at the sort of massive amphitheatre where they play. I’m not a particular fan of the Chilli Peppers, i.e. I prefer Starman to every single one of their songs, but they do a pretty good version here. The guitarist, who according to Wikipedia is now Josh Klinghoffer (yes, that’s how little I know about them), is not quite Mick Ronson, but then, who is? However, given Anthony Kiedis’ moustache and white singlet combo, he is clearly trying to channel Freddie Mercury so perhaps Under Pressure might have been a better choice.

Rick Wakeman - pays tribute on BBC Radio 2 by talking about recording Life on Mars and then simply playing it on piano with no vocal. The absence of the vocal is particularly poignant given the circumstances, and the performance is given additional gravitas by the fact that it was Wakeman who played on the original recording.

Sarah Blasko – recorded Life on Mars in the JJJ studios as part of the Like a Version series, where performers cover other artists’ material. In comparison with Wakeman’s virtuoso playing in his solo tribute, the keyboard playing on this one sounds like basic chord plonking. However, you can hardly blame someone for not being as dexterous across the keys as Wakeman, after all, he did have the advantage of recording the song with the composer. Also, in defence of Blasko’s keyboard player, unlike Wakeman, he probably doesn’t have in his discography a prog rock opera as ridiculous as The Six Wives of Henry VIII or Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

That aside, Blasko’s extraordinary emotive vocal is where this tribute grabs you. It’s the best vocal version of the song I’ve heard other than Bowie’s own. If someone is going to represent Australia in the Bowie tributes, I want it to be Sarah Blasko. It was perhaps more intimate than Lorde’s version, but performing in front of two people in a radio station rather than thousands at the Brit Awards will help with that. What I’d like is to hear Sarah Blasko singing Life on Mars accompanied by Rick Wakeman.

Melissa Etheridge – relays an anecdote about meeting Bowie and talks about the song that she thinks gives courage to those who feel they don’t fit in – and then proceeded to play a sublime and heartfelt version of Heroes solo at the piano. This is the one that made me cry.

Arcade Fire - who had performed with Bowie (he also had a guest vocal on the wonderful Reflektor), paid tribute by holding a street parade with the Preservation Hall Brass Band through the French Quarter of New Orleans. The members of Arcade Fire and the brass band marched along, or rather struggled through the crowd of onlookers, with Win Butler in a pink suit singing Heroes, Rebel Rebel and Fame through a megaphone, while thousands of people, many of them in costume, watched on, danced and sang along. They turned a New Orleans funeral procession into a joyous Carnivale that truly celebrated Bowie’s music. This is the one that made me smile.

The people of Brixton – The street vigil in Brixton on the night Bowie died turned into a mass a capella sing-a-long of Space Oddity – no stars, no instruments, just Bowie fans (and lots of media) raising their voices to sing in celebration. The best bit was when they had to make the ambient whooshing space noises between verses. Perhaps it was a little bit staged, but this is the one that made me cry and smile.

There have been numerous Bowie tribute nights held at various venues around Melbourne, but I haven't been to any as yet. Partly I'm giving the performers time to rehearse, but also, as much as performers may feel the need to pay tribute to Bowie in song - and if I could sing I probably would as well - I'm not sure I necessarily want to hear people other than Bowie sing these songs. Regardless of the quality of the performances, these star tributes simply highlight that no one can do Bowie quite like Bowie - except perhaps for The Thin White Ukes - a marvellous Australian trio who play Bowie songs on ukeleles - who I saw supporting Robert Forster. Perhaps the best way for me to pay tribute is to go to my music room and play the Bowie albums, and ruminate on why none of the celebrity singers thought to pay tribute with a heartfelt cover of Glass Spider or The Laughing Gnome. 

Encore – If, as Madonna claimed, Bowie opened the doors for transgenders, someone else might have to leave it ajar. Anohni – formerly Antony of Antony & the Johnsons – boycotted the Oscars ceremony this week after she was not invited to perform her nominated song, Manta Ray. Other nominees in the Best Original song category had been invited to perform, but not Anohni. Whether this was a deliberate trans-gender snub, or the organizers just wanted better known singers is hard to know, but it was a missed opportunity. Given the trouble John Travolta had pronouncing Idina Menzel’s name, somehow turning it into Adele Dazeem, it would have been interesting to see what he made of a name like Anohni.

Sufjan Stevens - 27 February 2016

Sufjan Stevens

Hamer Hall, Melbourne

Saturday 27 February 2016

$85

Songs In the Key of Death

During the encore, Sufjan Stevens revealed that when he was putting together the setlist for this performance, he’d been listening to Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, marveling at the positive, celebratory nature of the music. He then looked at the setlist he was writing and realised that all of his songs were about death and wondered where he’d gone wrong. In his mind re-titled his show, ‘Songs in the key of death’.

He wrestled with the possible meaning behind his obsession with mortality and rationalised it philosophically, turning it into a positive about celebrating the moment and the music within us. I’m paraphrasing, for this speech, his only non-musical exchange for the night, meandered a tad. But he needn’t have worried on our behalf, because by this stage he’d well and truly won over everyone in the auditorium.

The first part of the show was a truly mesmerizing marriage of musicianship, performance, songcraft and lighting effects.

After opening with the atmospheric instrumental, Redford (for Yia-Yia and Pappou), Sufjan and band moved through eight consecutive songs from his most recent album, Carrie & Lowell, starting with the album’s opening two tracks Death With Dignity and Should Have Known Better.

The album deals with Sufjan’s upbringing and the death of his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia and alcoholism. It is a deeply personal and confessional album full of slow, sparsely accompanied songs of loss and forgiveness, all sung in Steven’s soft falsetto. Just the sort of thing for a Saturday night out then.

I was at the show with Anglea, my band buddy John and his wife Sue. John had secured us good seats in the stalls. Unlike most venues in Melbourne, Hamer Hall is a proper concert hall designed for music. The acoustics are excellent – too good in fact; at times I could hear the people in my row singing along under their breath. It doesn’t work for every gig – rock bands can feel incongruous, something to do with the venue’s formality, soft furnishings and smiling bar staff – but it was the perfect venue for this show. The suite of soft, elegiac songs on Carrie & Lowell capture feelings of sadness and melancholic nostalgia, and Stevens and band played them with an exquisite light touch. With Sufjan front and centre on guitar or seated at a piano, the band kept to the sidelines, shadowy figures moving from instrument to instrument in the background, while dazzling lighting effects alternated with projections of old family footage on a series of screens behind the stage. The screens were arrayed like lancet windows in a church – nine tall, thin screens with an arch at the top - creating a reverent and evocative atmosphere.

One of the most powerful moments of the show was when they played Fourth of July with Stevens at the piano. It is a heartrending song about his mother on her deathbed that ends with the sobering refrain, “We’re all gonna die” which Stevens repeated over and over, building with intensity each time until it exploded in a cathartic crescendo that, despite the central tenet of its message, was paradoxically life affirming.

Whatever feelings of sadness these songs evoked in the audience, they certainly had an affect on people’s bladders. Such was the procession of people clogging the aisles to get to the toilet between songs that the band could have been forgiven for thinking we were staging a mass walk-out. Of course it is also possible that people were simply overcome and were going to the bathroom to get toweling to dab their tears or to weep in private.

The Owl and the Taneger and a trio of songs from The Age of Adz, interrupted the run of songs from Carrie & Lowell, but they returned to the latter album to play Blue Buckets of Gold. As on the record, this song provided a beautiful and moving finale. In this live rendering, however, its minimalist keyboard motif morphed into an extended ambient lamentation with white strobe lights flashing through two of the screens, drenching the entire concert hall in celestial lights, like a meteor shower. As the sound swelled, so too did the light show, adding purples and reds in a frenzy of effects and flashing colour, concluding with a manic strobe display like a time lapse of a lightning storm. It was a startling climax and triggered an immediate standing ovation as the band took their leave.

After the intensity of the first part of the show, the band set up a lighter mood for the encore. The lights were up meaning we could actually see the five musicians. They all gathered at the front of the stage and arranged themselves around one central microphone with acoustic instruments. Sufjan had the banjo and he picked out For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti from the Illonois album.

The group ran through a series of crowd favourites including All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands, The Dress Looks Nice on You, All of Me Wants All of You and To be Alone With You. The acoustic arrangements were augmented by beautiful four-part harmonies that were reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel or even The Seekers.

I missed the names of the band members when Stevens introduced them (was there a Casey and James, and was the bearded chap introduced as Zorka the Explorer?), but they were all accomplished multi-instrumentalists. Dawn Landes, whose name I did catch, was a stand out; her harmonies in particular lifted songs to another plane.

The show concluded with an acoustic version of Chicago that had the half the auditorium, if not quite harmonising, at least singing along.

When we left there was a man on St Kilda Road charging $2 to look at Jupiter and its four moons through a powerful telescope. Angela and Sue had a look, but I felt that I’d already had my mind-blowing celestial experience for the evening. What could Jupiter offer that Sufjan hadn't already provided?

This photo was taken by Justine Schaible and was published in The Huffington Post on 8 June 2015.
It shows Sufjan Stevens and band performing Blue Bucket of Gold in Los Angeles on 3 June 2015.  

Setlist

Redford (for Yia-Yia and Pappou)

Death With Dignity

Should Have Known Better

Eugene

Drawn to the Blood

The Only Thing

Fourth of July

No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross

Carrie and Lowell

The Owl and the Tanager

Vesuvius

I Want to be Well

Futile Devices

Blue Bucket of Gold

-----------

For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti

All the trees of the field will clap their hands

The Dress Looks Nice on You

All of Me Wants All of You

To be Alone With You

Chicago

Encore: In case it wasn’t already obvious, I’m the sort of music tragic who makes lists, mental ones at least. Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell topped my best album list for 2015, beating out Father John Misty’s I Love You, Honeybear, Courtney Barnett’s Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit, Low’s Ones and Sixes, Jason Isbell’s Something More than Free, Robert Forster’s Songs To Play and Tame Impalas’ Currents. All of these artists played in Melbourne in the past nine months, or are set to in the next month.

Georgy Girl - The Seekers Musical - 24 February 2016

Georgy Girl – The Seekers Musical

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne

Wednesday 24 February 2016

$90

The Carnival Continues

Musicals are not really my thing, either on film or on stage. In general I’d rather sit through a curling tournament or an episode of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, but I was taking my mum to the theatre to see the new production of Georgy Girl – The Seekers Musical. She was a bit of a fan of The Seekers, as were most Australians in the late 1960s, and I figured that even I’d know most of the songs. Plus she hadn’t been to the theatre for many years. Besides, it could have been worse; she might have taken me up on my alternative offer to take her the Edinburgh Military Tattoo that had just wound up at Etihad Stadium. I’ll take Morningtown Ride over bagpipes any day.

So we were at Her Majesty’s for a mid-week matinee. Even at 50+ I was comfortably the youngest in the theatre by a good decade, aside from the cast. It’s fair to say that of all the legacies from the 60s, an appreciation of the Seekers’ music hasn’t traversed the generations in quite the same way as the enthusiasm for recreational drug taking. I also imagine that there has been minimal take-up of Ticketek’s specially priced $60 tickets for under 30s. On the upside however, politicians and demographers are constantly reminding us about Australia’s ageing population, which suggests this production might have a long run ahead of it.

The Seekers are just the latest in a long line of heritage musical acts to get the jukebox musical treatment – there’s been Queen, ABBA, Dusty Springfield, Buddy Holly, The Four Seasons, Johnny Cash and numerous others. Like Georgy Girl, they are all exercises in musical nostalgia. That’s not such a bad thing; I foresee the day in 20 years when I’m hobbling in to Her Majesty’s on my walker to see Nick The Stripper – the Nick Cave musical. Incongruously perhaps, Nick Cave is one of my links to The Seekers, thanks to his recording of, The Carnival is Over on his covers album, Kicking Against the Pricks.

Prior to Georgy Girl, the only stage musical I’d seen live is Shane Warne – the Musical, with Eddie Perfect playing the spin king. I also watched a live ABC broadcast of the musical, Keating! and noted that Mike McLeish, who portrayed Paul Keating in that production and was also in the Shane Warne musical, was on board here as Seeker, Bruce Woodley. It’s a small world indeed, but evidently an even smaller world in Melbourne musical theatre.

Other cast members in this production of Georgy Girl are Pippa Grandison as Judith Durham, Phillip Lowe as Keith Potger, Glaston Toft as Athol Guy and Adam Murphy as Ron Edgeworth. Durham’s husband and the show’s ham narrator. The show was written by Patrick Edgeworth – Ron’s brother – which probably explains why Ron got all the good lines. I always thought Athol Guy to be one of the great names in Oz rock, so I’m impressed that the producers found someone with an even better name – Glaston Toft – to play him in this production.

The production had all the elements you’d expect from a stage musical; a clunky script, over the top costumes, cultural clichés, awkward acting and cheesy, exaggerated gestures and choreography from the chorus members. Mum and I had good seats in the stalls, so we had wonderful proximity to enjoy the full melodramatic overstatement and overacting of the chorus members’ heightened performance. For all that, they did work hard.

On the other hand it also had some impressive singing from the four principal Seekers, who managed to capture the harmonies and ensemble singing that made the group famous in the first place. And that of course is the main point. In particular Pippa Grandison was at least Judith Durham’s equal as a vocalist.

All the main songs were aired: I’ll Never Find Another You, A World Of Our Own, Morningtown Ride, The Carnival Is Over and of course, Georgy Girl, as well as numerous others. I didn’t realize bruce Potger had written I Am Australian – they did that too.

Covering a 50-year timespan in 2.5 hours was always going to result in something of a potted history, a point the narrator Ron Edgeworth conceded in one of his many asides. While it is understandable that the script focused primarily on the 1960s era, major latter day events such as Judith Durham’s car accident and husband Ron Edgeworth’s diagnosis with motor neurone disease were given a cursory treatment by comparison.

This production hasn’t changed my mind about musicals. Possibly the only musical I’d be interested in attending is Lazarus, the musical David Bowie penned based on The Man Who Fell To Earth featuring some of his songs, and which opened off Broadway just a week or two before his death.

Mum said she quite enjoyed it, although she said it was a bit loud at times. That’s the thing with musicals I suppose, the music. I made a mental note now that Lemmy is dead not to take her to the Motorhead musical should it eventuate.

Vampire Weekend - 6 January 2014

Vampire Weekend

Gang of Youths

Festival Hall, West Melbourne

Monday 6 January 2014

$88.74

The Vampire Chronicles

Most parents avidly track the various ‘firsts’ of their offspring; first steps, first word, first Christmas, first day of school, first day of high school, first pimple, first drunken experience etc.

Another momentous first is the first concert. This milestone has taken on greater significance since the advent of the music quiz show Rockwiz, in which host Julia Zemiro routinely asks contestants to name the first concert they attended. It is vital that your answer be either ultra cool: The Clash, Nirvana, Bob Marley, or ultra cheezy: Air Supply, The Spice Girls, One Direction. In other words, it should inspire either awe or laughter. Anything in between is pointless. Of course it’s a bit of a lottery when you’re choosing years in advance, after all, one generation’s cool is another’s corny.

My wife Angela and I were conscious of this when for Christmas in 2013 Santa decided to bestow a ticket for Vampire Weekend on our eldest son, Oscar, who was 14 at the time. Should Julia ever pose the big question to him, we hope Vampire Weekend will still have some cachet. The good news is that I also received a ticket from Santa!

Vampire Weekend, along with Gorillaz, is one of the few bands our entire family quite likes. Their latest album, Modern Vampires of the City, has been on heavy rotation in the car. We love their infectious, upbeat songs and we sing along loudly, notwithstanding that the lyrics are obtuse and make very little sense. Which is great because it doesn’t matter so much when you get them wrong – which we frequently do.

They remind me of early Talking Heads with their quirky song structures and staccato rhythms, with a trace of Paul Simon circa Graceland. They even have a song about architecture (Mansard Roof).

Going to your first gig at Festival Hall was a rite of passage for people of my generation and earlier, not because it was an impressive building or boasted superior acoustics. Quite the opposite on both counts – architecturally it is what is known in the industry as a shit-hole and acoustically it is a shit-box. However, for many years it was the only rock venue in Melbourne that wasn’t a pub, so if you were under 18, or under the age when you could pass for 18, that was the only place you could go to see bands. I remember going to a Battle of the Bands contest there in the late 1970s only because The Sports were paying at the end of the competition. It was the only way I could see them.

In the way that one generation likes to pass on traditions and rituals to the next generation, especially unpleasant ones, it was only fitting that Oscar’s first gig be at Festival Hall. 

We had General Admission floor tickets (non-licensed area) so that Oscar could get a real sense of the buzz that you can get from being in the crowd at a good gig. Also, because the seated areas on the side at Festival Hall are among the worst vantage points you can get for comfort, sightlines or sound anywhere in the world.  The back row at Wembley would be better.

Oscar picked up a tour t-shirt and we stood back a bit from the throng, but still close enough to get a god view. While we waited for the band to come on I began to get a sense of how young the crowd was. This shouldn’t have surprised me given I was with a 14 year old, but even so, I wasn’t ready for the teeny-bopper squealing that erupted every time one of the band members wandered on stage to plug something in or move a mike stand. The band must have been lapping it up, because I couldn’t work out why the roadies weren’t performing these perfunctory tasks.

I looked around and noticed that I was comfortably the oldest person in the area by a good 20 years or so. Feeling somewhat conspicuous I made a point of keeping up the conversation with Oscar so that I looked less like a paedophile and more like a father accompanying his son to a gig.

When the band emerged on stage together to start the show the screaming reached a deafening pitch. I concede that lead singer and rhythm guitarist Ezra Koenig is a handsome man, notwithstanding the khaki onesie he was wearing. It was like a boiler suit. Had it been yellow I would have sworn I was seeing Devo. Bass player Chris Baio is okay looking I suppose, drummer Rostam Batmanglij is tall and beardy, and at least has ‘Batman…’ as part of his name, but guitarist Chris Thomson could possibly be cast as a hobbit in a Lord of the Rings movie. I don’t mean that unkindly – he was in my view the star of the show – it’s just that I didn’t quite understand the teeny-bopper squealing that accompanied their every gesture.

One of the good things about an audience made up predominantly of young girls, however, is that I can actually see without too much difficulty. That’s not the only good thing, but it’s the one I’m prepared to admit to. Most of the bands I see seem to appeal exclusively to tall males, so it was a relief to not have long-necked oafs in front of me.

The band launched into the quirky, up-tempo Diane Young from their latest album, followed by the Paul Simonesque, White Sky from Contra, then Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa from their first LP. They picked up the pace again with Unbelievers and Holiday and got the audience bouncing and singing along enthusiastically.

Even slower numbers like Step, got everyone singing, particularly three young girls just to our right who stood facing each other rather than the stage and sang the words loudly at one another. They also managed to carve out their own dancing space with their exaggerated moves, but no one begrudged them. Vampire Weekend was very much their band and they were having the time of their lives, utterly oblivious to the other 5,000 people present.

The band maintained a frenetic pace and energy and worked their way through a good mix of songs from their three albums. There really were no dull moments - Oscar’s favourite songs Horchata and A-Punk all came in the first half of the show, but they also got around to playing two of my favourites, Oxford Comma and Cousins.

Most eyes remained on Koenig and he is a magnetic frontman, but guitarist Chris Tomson was the real revelation for me – he reminded me of Joey Santiago from Pixies in that he was happy to stay more or less in the background, but his musicality and virtuosity provided much of the colour and momentum of the show.

The set ended with Giving Up the Gun and the relatively slow and reflective, but fabulously catchy, The Obvious Bicycle. By this time they could have played anything and the audience would have roared along.

They had the confidence to commence the encore with another gentle number, Hannah Hunt, before busting out a couple of infectious showstoppers, One (Blake’s Got a New Face) and Walcott. As we escaped Festival Hall Oscar and I, like everyone else, left the hall singing a lyric about escaping Cape Cod. As first gigs go Oscar had seen a beauty.

Check out some great photos of Vampire Weekend's Melbourne show by Katie Fairservice on fasterlouder.junkee.com at this link - http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/vampire-weekend melbourne/755033#&gid=1&pid=1

Diane Young 

White Sky

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa 

Unbelievers 

Holiday 

Step 

Finger Back

Horchata

Everlasting Arms 

Cousins

California English

A-Punk 

Boston (Ladies of Cambridge) 

Ya Hey

Campus

Oxford Comma 

Giving Up the Gun

Obvious Bicycle

- - - - - - - - -

Hannah Hunt 

One (Blake's Got a New Face)

Walcott

Encore – Festival hall figures prominently in Melbourne’s musical history. It was where The Beatles played in 1964, just three days after I was born. Most big acts of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s have played there: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Queen, The Clash, you name it. I was taken there as a child by my parents to see Andy Stewart, a kilt wearing Scottish singer. My eldest brother David took me to see Leo Sayer ‘s Just a Boy tour. One early gig I went to featured The Angels, Cold Chisel, Flowers (Icehouse), The Boys Next Door and La Femme. The Boys Next Door were heartily booed throughout their set by Chisels fans, which of course simply encouraged Nick Cave to up the barking and hee-haws.

Despite my misgivings about the acoustics and the sightlines, I’ve been back numerous times to see loads of bands; Elvis Costello, The Police, Fleetwood Mac, Madness, REM, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, PJ Harvey, Morrissey, Radiohead, Pulp, Pixies, Iggy Pop, The Strokes, The Sex Pistols, The Motels, Coldplay, The The, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and now Vampire Weekend, among others. And I’ll probably keep returning so long as the bands keep playing there.

Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses - 1 May 2015

Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses

Friday 1 May 2015

Northcote Social Club, Northcote

$27

MA15+ - Strong Tex Scenes

The Beasts of Bourbon, The Cruel Sea, Tex, Don and Charlie, The Man in Black – The Johnny Cash Show, The Dark Horses, T’n’T, Tex Perkins and his Ladyboyz – there is of course one common denominator in all of these bands – Tex Perkins, the deep-voiced Renaissance man of Melbourne rock.

Everyone has their own favourite iteration of Tex – mine is The Dark Horses, pleasantly laid-back and atmospheric music that is both tough and tender. Tex sings with the urbane voice of hard-won experience while the Dark Horses accompany him with immaculate touch and restraint. 

This restraint has an air of thoughtful melancholy that made Tex and the Dark Horses a suitable soundtrack to end a harrowing week in international news. The week had been dominated by the devastation of the earthquake in Nepal and the executions in Indonesia of convicted Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. It wasn’t a night for chirpy pop, but some slow, mellow, reflective rock.

I met my friend and regular band buddy John in the front bar. He’s a Collingwood fan so we got in some beers and watched the Collingwood v Carlton game on the various screens while we waited for Tex to come on. As a result we missed the support act, Zevon and the Werewolves of Melbourne, who we assumed to be a Warren Zevon covers band, but I later discovered are actually an accomplished blues band. I suppose we shouldn’t have assumed anything – it’s not like Powderfinger were a Neil Young tribute band or Oh Mercy a Dylan tribute act. In any case it was good to be able to chat, take in the footy and enjoy a Coburg Lager before heading into the band room.

When I say chat, John was actually haranguing a couple we had got talking to about the quirks, foibles and genius of Ryan Adams.  We’d secured tickets the day before for Adams’ forthcoming Melbourne show*, so John was just getting in the mood by extolling his many vices and virtues. We’d also scored tickets for Blur’s July show after I spent some agonising minutes punching keys into the system right at the start of the presale.

So with July’s gig guide sorted, and Collingwood thrashing Carlton, we were relaxed as we wandered into to see Tex and the boys.

The band began by building a typically slow, intricate soundscape with piano and picked guitar, over which Tex contributed a whistling refrain, giving it a sort of Morricone western feel. I wasn’t familiar with the song, but if the chorus was any indication, it might have been called Lucky Me (Oh Lucky Me as it turned out).

And we were lucky, because after the second number, another gentle song with minimal instrumentation, Tex announced that they were playing their forthcoming album from start to finish. After two tracks it was a case of ‘so far, so good’.

Some people like to hear the hits, or at least the familiar songs when they go to a gig, and so do I to a certain extent, but I always really enjoy it when artists play their works in progress, or new, unreleased songs. You feel privileged to hear them before they become part of common musical currency. It also bestows bragging rights in the event that the song does become a classic, “Oh yes, I heard them play that before it was a hit. Of course it was much better then.”

The album continued with a standout song called Tunnel at the End of the Light, through to an impassioned cover of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They ‘to close out side one.’ Between sips from a ceramic mug that might have contained whiskey, lemon infused tea, or possibly cocoa, Tex said that it was the only cover they would be doing for the show and he didn’t want anyone telling him it was their best song of the night.

Side two began with Slide On By, a slow burning blues number with a distinctive and devilish riff. This was followed by two instrumental pieces; the first a delicate acoustic track that drifted by at a leisurely, unhurried tempo. The second was a mellow piano based track with a hazy electric guitar motif that slowly built to a crescendo of sorts. The western overtones of these pieces suggest they’d work well as a soundtrack to a Cormac McCarthy book. They’d have been even more effective if not for the three women who pushed in right next to me and proceeded to yak all the way through the rest of the show. I’m not usually a ‘shoosher’ but I came very close on this occasion.

The final song of the set focused on various last moments. Suitably melancholic, it was a song that made for a subdued ending, though was quite in-keeping with the overall tone of the set.

As Tex had promised, the band returned for an encore to play some of their older tracks; So Much Older from 2011’s Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses album, Cold Feet from 2003’s Sweet Nothing, She Speaks a Different Language from 2009’s Dark Horses album, before finishing with Getting Away With It, also from Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses.

It was perhaps risky for them to play an entire set of new, unreleased material, but when performed so beautifully, they did indeed get away with it.

* I never got to that Ryan Adams show. On the day of the gig my son Oscar was injured playing football and I was in hospital with him. Turns out he had fractured three of his transverse processors – little jutting bones connected to the spine. So instead of enjoying what John later described as one of the best Ryan Adams shows he’d seen, I was bedside at the Royal Children’s Hospital listening to Oscar recount his injury. I think we all know I was the real victim.

Oscar's x-ray with arrows showing fractures

 Encore: After the gig I bought the vinyl edition of Everyone’s Alone and was informed that everyone who purchased tickets online would receive a free download of the album once it was released. Sure enough, a month or so later I was sent a link to download the album, Tunnel at the End of the Light and it is every bit as subtle and polished and as their performance of it that night. That’s one way to combat illegal downloading – make it legal.

Setlist

Oh Lucky Me

All is Quiet

Tunnel at the End of the Light

Right Here in front of you

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They

Slide on By

The View South

Un Sound

Last Words

- - - - - - - - -

So Much Older

Cold Feet

She Speaks a Different Language

Getting Away With it.