Суббота 28 Апр 2012, 23:27
I headed out last night to the Astor Theatre to check out this gig. Met up with bunches of friends beforehand and then settled in to watch the first band. I don't know if I'd even heard of The Fleshtones before this show but they sure were entertaining. They did a lot of on-stage choreographed moving, with in-sync kicks from the guitar players and a strange sort of contortionist swapping of guitarplaying duties without the instruments actually being swapped (I think I took a pic but it's probably a bit blurry!). There were also frequent treks into the crowd to play guitars and/or sing down on the carpet. At one point, people were invited up on stage (including one Dom Mariani and one of his sons, unless my eyes deceived me) to play the actual music while the musicians responsible for said music hopped down onto the floor to…do pushups. Yes. Because that's what a real rock star does! The musos also challenged punters in the crowd to do their own pushups, if they wanted their drinks back at least. I was glad they didn't ask me! I suck at pushups.
Eventually when it was time for the Fleshtones to end their set, they exited stage…via the front! Some of my friends who were just arriving at that time told me later, "Oh, yeah, I saw them go past…that was weird!" hehe. It was a bit weird but funny too, and it's good to see people being individuals ;)
Next up on stage was Redd Kross, who I had never seen in concert either. After they started playing, my hair stood on end and I got electrocuted (just kidding, really what happened was that they blew my socks off in a metaphorical way 'cause I wasn't actually wearing any socks, ya know?) and highlights would have to be the stereotypical ones for me: Jimmy's Fantasy, Crazy World. But the whole show was amazing and it made me question why the fuck I have yet to buy any Redd Kross albums. You can get them off Amazon so I may have to do that, but I want to check 'round local places first just in case I strike gold. And YES, I do still buy CDs and I'm proud of that!
I had definitely already got my money's worth for this gig even before the main act appeared on stage, but seeing Hoodoo Gurus play their first album all the way through, and then play some of their biggest hits from other albums, was definitely an amazing experience. The album Stoneage Romeos is one that apparently not all fans knew, because we saw a bunch of the audience looking a bit bewildered at what they were hearing for the main part of the show. The tracklist on the original release of the album is:
I Want You Back
Tojo
Leilani
Arthur
Dig It Up
(Let's All) Turn On
Death Ship
In the Echo Chamber
Zanzibar
I Was A Kamikaze Pilot
My Girl
But I'm fairly certain they played it in a different order, perhaps the order shown on one of the re-releases (2002 and 2005), because "Tojo" was definitely later in the show than it appears in the list above, and "My Girl" was played just before they "flipped the record over" to start the other side. ;) Anyway, I had a great time singing along with what words I knew (not many), and hanging out with two friends who knew basically every word. At one stage my friend took off her bra and threw it on stage (she had originally worn a daggy bra but her 9-year-old fashionista daughter told her, "Mummy, you don't look very nice", and advised her to change, so she opted for a nicer bra. hahaha). It lay there for a while, but eventually got picked up by Dave and thrown toward the drumkit. The audience seemed to enjoy that part. :P So if you see any videos of the Astor show on YouTube, and notice a bra being bandied about, you can say you know a person who knew the person whose bra that used to be.
Basically it was a rockin' night, but it was also a night where I rushed home in absolute desperation to have a shower and wash away the sweat of Perth's unwashed masses. hahaha. Oh I know that's mean, they were washed at some point no doubt, but despite the thunderstormy goodness happening outside, it was really quite humid, so the inside of the Astor was STEAMY AS.
In conclusion… "Great gig, bravo, bello!"