OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN SUN JUNE 12 2011

OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN

Adelaide Festival Theatre

Sun June 13 2011

“Maybe I hang around here a little more than I should…” the voice from off stage is unmistakable. Olivia Newton John singing a refrain from one of her biggest hits. The Adelaide art orchestra and Olivia’s regular band (including long time Bowie bass player the barefoot Gail Ann Dorsey) have taken their places and the near sell out audience is a-quiver with anticipation.

The collective musician’s then strike up Have You Ever Been Mellow the breezy country hit from 1975 and Ms Newton John struts onto the stage looking a million bucks. Waving, huge smile beaming, her voice is great and the audience gives her a thunderous welcome. A Little More Love has people clapping along, and the usherettes rushing to tell people off for taking photos on their phones (and in one instance trying to get an autograph mid song). Sam from 1977 is next and it’s a bit cheesy but a lot of music from 1977 was, but Olivia makes it quite beautiful in a way I have never considered the song before. Xanadu comes next with the orchestra subbing brilliantly for the ELO and by the end of the song Newton John’s voice which was strong but struggling slightly with the high notes, has warmed up and now she is soaring. Two more songs from the same soundtrack follow Magic and Suddenly. Both are met with rapturous applause. The Cliff Richard part of the Suddenly duet is taken by a backing singer who is pretty per functionary, but does give me some unintended giggles with the clumsy Johnny Young Talent School hand gestures and choreography with Olivia.

I always forget that her early career was as a country singer. In the early 1970’s she was an Aussie girl living in London and having hits in Nashville. So these are mostly clumped together. If Not For you, Let me Be There, Please Mr Please, Jolene, If you Love Me and Don’t Stop Believing. It was fun and a bit of a sing-a-long (why can’t Australian audiences clap in time?).

The band start playing a slow Latin take of Physical, before ONJ stops them with pre-planned ‘Let’s do it the original way’. It’s during this song the first outbreak of dancing is lead by a gentleman in the sixth row I shall now dub Mr Fabulous. He’s having a ball. It’s Livvy. She’s singing Physical and he’s going to DANCE! Tepid joining in soon leads to most of the crowd on their feet dancing. Soon we are following aerobics instruction from Olivia and some people in the front row get to sing into her mic (nice going George). After this excitement everybody needs a rest and sits back down for two newer songs which are both about her struggle with breast cancer and the changes that have lead to in her life. Help me Heal and Not Gonna Give in to it, have both become anthems for people fighting cancer and to those who have lost people they care about to the disease. Keeping the atmosphere melancholy and as a nod to the fact this is a cabaret season she tackles Judy Garlands Over The Rainbow with flying colours.

Through out she tells little stories and excuses herself when she needs a sip of water. Even at sixty three years old she remains the perennial Aussie girl next door. The orchestra is somewhat under utilized to be honest. They did recreate the orchestrations that were on the originals but could have been used more effectively in other areas. In fact I was horrified when one number had synthesized strings its beginning, when there was a whole orchestra sitting behind the keyboard player with nothing to do. But that and the fact there was no merchandise (no t-shirts, posters or programmes) were really my only quibbles all evening.

Running out of time now and there’s still so many songs to do. How will ONJ do it? With a montage of course. Well it’s a medley. There is string of truncated hits in quick succession (The Rumour / Make a Move on Me / Totally Hot / Deeper than The Night / Twist of Fate). The last song in particular is a corker. From the 1983 movie that tried to recreate the on screen chemistry with John Travolta, movie was a not a hit but the single was. And speaking of Mr Travolta.

Olivia, her guitarist and her backing singers are donning leather jackets that can only mean one thing. They are starting the campest bikie gang ever. No wait it’s the songs from Grease! Now you maybe surprised that for many years these songs (with the exception of Hopelessly Devoted) were missing from Olivia’s set list. But not tonight. Outgoing Cabaret Festival director, David Campbell appears in a matching jacket and the two of them belt out a fantastic You’re the One that I Want, complete with dance moves, choreography and goofy expressions (mainly from Campbell). It blows the roof of the joint. People quite rightly go bananas. It is just plain fantastic. Olivia is having a ball and we are right there with her. A mass sing-a-long on Hopelessly Devoted and then boys vs girls on Summer Nights are likewise excellent and have everyone on their feet – again led by Mr Fabulous. They finish with the closing song from the movie We Go Together and as we are all singing along and dancing in our seats Olivia turns and waves as she leaves the stage.

An avalanche of applause brings her back for a two song encore. Grace & Gratitude from the 2006 album of the same name and finally I Honesty Love You.

After over ninety minutes of hits, sing-a-longs and dancing (lead of course by Mr Fabulous) everybody streams out into the night singing bits of Xanadu or Hopelessly Devoted.

Ian Bell

SET LIST

Have You Ever Been Mellow

A Little More Love

Sam

Xanadu

Magic

Suddenly

If Not For You

Let Me Be There

Please Mr Please

Jolene

If You Love Me

Don’t Stop Believing

Let’s get Physical

Not Gonna Give In To It

Help Me Heal

Over the Rainbow

Country Roads

Medley: The Rumour /Make a Move on me / Totally Hot / Deeper than the Night / Twist of Fate

You’re The One That I Want (with David Campbell)

Hopelessly Devoted

Summer Loving

We Go Together

Grace and gratitude

I Honestly Love You

GLENN SHORROCK 45 YEARS OF SONG

GLENN SHORROCK

45 YEARS OF SONG

Dunstan Playhouse

Sat June 11 2011

Glenn Shorrock has had an amazing career. It’s all too easy to forget this. We live in a country where our rock royalty is doomed to play leagues clubs, RSL’s and Kerri-Ann morning television. At least there is no Hey Hey house band anymore. Believe me when I say ‘royalty’, mainly because it’s true. As a member of THREE of Australia’s most successful bands, The Twilights, Axiom and the Little River Band, Shorrocks voice has been on some of the most classic songs in Australian music history.

When Shorrock walks on stage at the Dunstan Playhouse for his second show of the day, the 67 year old is looking great and begins with the highly appropriate Days on the Road from LRB’s 1976 After Hours album. With a crack six piece band being enhanced by a four piece string section and an absolutely killer four piece horn section we are off to a good start.

“Hi I’m Glenn Shorrock. I come from Elizabeth.” He deadpans. “I hope you like old songs, coz I don’t know any new ones.” It works for this audience Glenn. Made up mainly 40 something’s, 50 something’s and 60 something’s. Follicly challenged and up for reliving the music of their youth. There is a great deal of dad chair dancing and singing along from the delighted crowd.

After telling the story of his first band The Twilights winning the Hoadleys Battle of the Bands in 1966 where the prize was “72,000 Violet Crumbles”, they bang through Needle in a Haystack and 9:50, with great pep and vigour. During 9:50 I am struck by the horn section in particular. Understated, yet utterly compelling and adding deliciously to one of my favourite songs of the era. He moves onto Axiom the short lived supergroup of sorts which featured Shorrock and Brian Cadd. So four songs in and we are already at A Little Ray of Sunshine. He let’s us know that “Brian Cadd wrote it. I sang it. I’d like to sing it for you now, despite all the things he did to me.” A timelessly classic song from the late 1960’s, which between Shorrock’s rich and full voice and backing vocals of the band it is a glorious moment.

As Glenn moves to the Little River Band material and am reminded about just how exciting it was to have an Australian band doing so well on the world stage in the 1970’s. It seemed unreal that LRB who were on Countdown all the time and playing in your town quite regularly, were filling stadiums across the globe, having top ten singles in the USA and selling millions of records. Long after the bands flame had faded here the USA were still giving them hits and screaming for more. Quite right too, they were all exceptional musicians and they had three great songwriters and their timing was impeccable. So we have Walk Away, It’s a Long Way There and Shut Down Turn Off . Introducing Reminiscing from 1978, Shorrock tells us it one of the most played songs on radio, with over five million plays in the USA alone (I’m no mathematician but it’s roughly 420 times a day for 33 years). It is also the song Fran Sinatra called “the best love song I’ve ever heard”. And who would argue with the chairman of the board? To finish the first set they band through a powerful version of the Fab Fours Please Please me, before heading off for “a cup of tea a Bex and a good lie down”.

The second half kicks off with Siene City from After Hours. A lot of these songs are prefaces with stories and vignettes form his life. The inclusion of this song is made a lot more interesting by the story of him falling for a Swedish model and wanting to “..Get back to those eyes.” There are plenty of dad jokes as you might expect. Glenn makes ‘oh my back’ gestures and flicks his long gone imaginary hair out of his face. His solo version of Bobby Darin’s Dream Lover ramps the crowd up before LRB’s Happy Anniversary comes to an abrupt halt when he messes up the first line. Shorrock and the band fall about laughing and then start again.

“This next song is about women’s lib. Remember that? We let that one get out hand didn’t we fellas?” The fellas all laugh. So do the women. It doesn’t sound the slightest bit misogynistic when he says it and it has no malice in its intent. It’s the introduction to one of my favourite LRB songs Emma. Again the horn section lifts this song to all new heights – so hats off to you guys! Home on a Monday has people tearing up with nostalgia and sounds marvellous. Help is on its Way brings the set to a close and the audience to its feet. A standing ovation and well deserved.

He returns quipping “I’m glad you did that, I have another song to do.” Named one of the greatest Australian songs of all time by APRA in 2001, Cool Change (First Under The Wire 1979) never charted in Australia but was a top ten hit in the USA. Written by Shorrock and clearly one of the LRB songs he is the most proud of, it’s given pride of place in the set. They finish off with another Beatles number Golden Slumbers from Abbey Road. They do a great job but I am a bit perplexed at the inclusion of two Beatle covers when there are so many of his own classic songs left unplayed. Axiom’s Arkansas Grass and a whole bunch of Twilights material would have made me slightly happier, but it’s a minor quibble in what was a fantastic night with a real Australian music legend.

Ian Bell

SETLIST

Days on the Road

Needle in a Haystack

9:50

A Little Ray of Sunshine

Walk Away

It’s A Long Way There

Shut Down Turn Off

Lonesome Loser

Reminiscing

Please Please me

Seine City

Soul Searching

Dream Lover

Happy Anniversary

Emma

Home on a Monday

Help Is On its Way

Cool Change

Golden Slumbers

ANSUYA NATHAN - LONG LIVE THE KING

ANSUYA NATHAN

LONG LIVE THE KING

Artspace Theatre

Sat June 11 2011

Apparently there is a rule somewhere that in order to qualify as ‘cabaret’ there has to be at least two songs in a one hour show and there should be some laughing involved.

Lone Live The King a one woman show by Adelaide born actress director and producer Ansuya Nathan is an excellent piece of work; it has some songs and plenty of laughs, but is it cabaret?

From the Cabaret Festival guide it superficially looks a lot more comic. It is actually a theatre show and a very good one, but it’s probably not cabaret. Nathan has woven a funny, moving and clever show together based on the true story of her parent’s arrival in Adelaide on the same day Elvis Presley died. Meena the heavily pregnant Elvis fan, and her husband (a Beatle fan and ladies man) are Australia bound when they hear the news from a heartbroken Elvis fan steward over the planes tannoy. As they arrive in a new country, to start a new life Meena struggles with the fear of being a first time mother, in a land far away from home, in a world with no Elvis.

A skilled stage performer Ansuya Nathan jumps character with easy. From the heavily pregnant Meena, to her emotionally distant mother, to her swarthy player husband, a gesture or a facial expression is all it takes to tell us exactly who is on the stage at any point.

In an hour we are taken through the courtship of her parents, the arrival of this Indian doctor and his wife in 1970’s Elizabeth and a relationship falling apart. There are a lot of laughs but as a deft storyteller Nathan melts themes of fish out water alienation, loss of innocence, fear of impending motherhood, post natal depression, loneliness and love together with great poignancy.

Elvis as something to believe in, is a great metaphor for this story. When your parents, or your mother or your God let’s you down, there is always the King. Especially in the context that he was gone, making the idea of Elvis more eternal.

When she dons a simple white Vegas jumpsuit and quiff wig to bring to life the early comeback Elvis it is a great piece of conjuring. Likewise she later does the same thing with just a white glove and it’s like you are seeing Elvis bust some classic moves (just from the cheap seats).

There were some technical issues early in the set with a terrible buzzing coming from her headset microphone, making some of well written and engaging dialog difficult to hear. Eventually they switched it off all together, which was a relief to be rid of the buzz, but made it more of a struggle to hear if you were further back,

There was some talk afterwards with people saying things like “It wasn’t what I was expecting”, which was also true for this reviewer. I didn’t expect to see a warm, funny, moving and fantastically well executed piece of theatre by an extremely talented Adelaide performer. And that is what we were delivered. And for that I would say Thankyouverymuch!

Ian Bell

THE MAGNETS REVIEW JUNE 10 2011

THE MAGNETS

Dunstan Playhouse

Friday June 10

At the end of the day acts like THE MAGNETS are why we need a Cabaret Festival. Six fantastic performers with a show that would be comfortable at the London Palladium or at The Sands in Vegas. The Magnets were breath taking.

From the moment the lights go down and the British a cappella six piece is spotlighted in a silhouette freeze, it is a slick, razzle-dazzle showbiz ride of the highest order. The opening number is a mash-up of Lenny Kravitz smash Are You Gonna Go My Way with Fatboy Slims Weapon of Choice, kicks things off and immediately shows what we are in for. Every sound we hear is coming from the mouths of the guys on stage, but it sounds like a full band with a drummer, rhythm section and a dj plus six singers. It is remarkable.

They introduce the guys, there is some classic banter. Blur’s Boys & Girls is next and I getting goose bumps. Taking liberties with the arrangements of these well known songs is part of what makes this a great show. Their take on Lady Gaga’s Poker Face slows it down and doo-wops it into new territory. Thanks to a cold bespectacled James Fortune is having a little trouble at the start of a frantic quasi-gospel take of Blondie’s Call Me, but it’s soon corrected and back on track. There is a moment during Living on a Prayer Bon Jovi’s monster 80s hit were my companion got “double goosebumps”. High praise indeed.

Interesting that they chose Working Day & Night (Off the Wall )when there are so many other better known Michael Jackson songs, but it worked fantastically well. While powering through these songs they are dancing, flirting with members of the audience, pulling off visual gags which sprinkle the stardust over the music. Did I really just say ‘sprinkle the stardust’? A jack-swing version of Let’s Swing by David Bowie segues into beat-boxer Andy Frost’s amazing ‘drum’ solo. He mimes all the different ‘toms’ and effects and then plays the entire music by himself. When he dropped a grab of Seven Nation Army the hairs on my neck rose. There’s a breakneck medley of 26 bands in seven minutes (in alphabetical order) in A to Z in which the audience is encouraged to yell out the artist when they know who it is. Great fun. A fantastic take on Jimi Hendrix’s Crosstown Traffic with the entire audience on its feet doing three part harmony was a highpoint. The finished with a great version of Human by Las Vegas band The Killers ending up back in the silhouettes they started in. The standing ovation was complete with thunderous applause as they reprised the Human chorus in the audience and then headed out to sign CD’s in the foyer.

Utterly brilliant show. Catch it if you can.

Remaining shows at the Dunstan Playhouse Sat June 11 at 6:15pm and Sun June 12 at 8pm.

Ian Bell

THE MAGNETS INTERVIEW MAY 2011

THE MAGNETS

Making music using only their gobs.

Nic Doodman is 15 minutes late calling from the UK. He is extremely apologetic, in a very British way, when he does make the call. I tell him its fine but he’s clearly unhappy that he may have appeared impolite and apologises emphatically for any inconvenience.

The Magnets area six piece a cappella outfit from the UK who have been playing for over ten years. They are one of the very few a cappella outfits that do not use any backtracks or drum machines when they perform. Every sound they make comes out of their mouths. Their amazing vocals and slick showmanship have seen them touring with Tom Jones and playing some strange places including Buckingham Palace and Elle McPherson’s living room. With several sell out Edinburgh Fringe festivals and extensive European tours under their belts The Magnets are heading to Australia for the first time as part of the Adelaide Cabaret festival.

Nic is the guy behind the Magnets. The earliest version was put together while still at university in London. After meeting the others in auditions for a production of Guys and Dolls he saw they were kindred spirits who loved to sing.

“I grew up in New Jersey in America and there is a very strong tradition of male a cappella singing that harks back to the doo-wop singing in the 1950s. And you had barbershop quartets. So when I was at high school in America I was a member of an a cappella group and when I went to London to continue my study there wasn’t any a cappella groups, so I started my own. But it was at that musical that I met the other guys that would become The Magnets. The idea at first was that we could get into functions, balls and dances for free, if you are performing you don’t need a ticket and we had no money in those days. And to meet girls! Then we started busking in Covent Garden and we would put the hat down and could end up with forty or fifty pounds for half an hour. We’d take that and go to the pub, get some beers, have some food, meet some girls. It could have been something that stopped when we left university, but the more we did it the more people like it and we started doing our own arrangements and writing our own songs and it just carried on from there really.”

That collegiate choir tradition in the States does not seem to happen anywhere else in the world does it?

“No it doesn’t, but it is starting to get more popular because things like the TV series Glee.”

I was wondering wether I should mention the G word.

“(laughing) Oh yeah. In high school I was in a group not dissimilar to the one on Glee. The background knowledge that people get from Glee has been quite good for us quite frankly. Rather than needing a lot of explaining about what we do people have some idea. We are nothing like a show-choir mentality, but in terms of doing songs vocally in an interesting way it’s pretty similar. It hasn’t changed what people expect from us but we don’t have to explain what we do as much as we once did.”

I’ve always had a bee in my bonnet about a cappella acts that use backing tapes, drum tracks and samples, but The Magnets get an amazing sound from just six guys are 100% vocals only right?

“Well thank you. I have never understood the use of backing tracks either. If you are going to be a cappella you don’t need them. It’s a lot of work and it has evolved over the years, and maybe if you’d have heard us when we started out it wouldn’t have been very pleasant (laughs). But over the years we have spent a lot of time in rehearsal rooms working out what we are capable of doing and what sounds we can make, plus we’ve done....I couldn’t even tell you a number but thousands of gigs over the years and all over the world and it has developed and got better over time.”

Your beat boxer Andy is incredible does he have a hip hop background?

“He has a background in drumming. He left school at 15 and was the youngest professional drummer in the UK. So hip hop beat boxers make some astonishing noises but the difference is that he makes slightly different sounds and he is a musician. So he knows when less is more and most hip hop beat boxers aren’t doing an hour and a half show. He also knows how to frame. He knows when there needs to be a break or a crash or a fill so he is a remarkable musician.”

Twenty years ago I saw another English a cappella act The Flying Pickets in the same venue you guys will be in for the Cabaret Festival.

“Oh really? Everybody in the a cappella world knows the Flying Pickets, especially in the UK where they famously had a number one hit single with Only You (a cover of the Yazoo song). In fact they are still going as a matter of fact. I know some of the guys very well, and they still tour a lot in places like Switzerland and Italy.”

Europe does seem to love this style of music you have a huge European tour coming up later this year; with I notice a lot of shows in Germany. The Germans do like precision is this why The Magnets particularly popular with the Germans?

“We are very popular in Germany and they do like precision harmonies. We’ve done a lot of gigs there and have built up quite a following there. It’s a place I never would have thought to have gone. When you come from Britain you don’t really think about it as a destination. It has nothing to do with historical things it’s just we, as a nation, tend to aim for places that are hotter, sunnier locations. But it’s a brilliant place we love playing there now.”

Ordinarily Australia would be precisely the hotter place you’d be looking for but its winter here at the moment.

“It is just getting lovely here at the moment and we are about to leave the British sunshine and head down to the Australian winter. (Laughs). But this is our first trip and we are doing some TV shows and hopefully people we hear about us and invite us back in February / March to do more festivals.”

Your set is a mix of originals and covers what sort of things can we expect to hear?

“You’ll never hear us do a cover in the style of the original. We do Bossa Nova Bon Jovi and a dance waltz version of Kraftwerk’s The Model. There's a rockier version of Let’s Dance by Bowie. So what you will get is songs people recognize done in a way you’ve never heard before. So people are usually surprised by the song choices, the arrangements and also that we can make all those sounds with our gobs. And charmed. There is quite a lot of charm in the show and we try to make sure everybody leaves singing and dancing.”

One of the highlights of the show is called ‘A to Z’ where they do songs by artists starting with each letter of the alphabet.

“So we do 26 different songs in seven minutes. We encourage people to yell out the artists as they recognise them. So we start with AC/DC a great Australian band and end up with the Zutons. There’s a movie one too which goes from the A-Team to Zulu.”

We have mentioned a couple of odd gigs the band has done, what’s the weirdest?

“I’ll give you three and you can decide. Singing a mile and a half down a salt mine in Switzerland. Second one would be carting all our gear in cable cars and singing on a mountain ledge in Austria. And the third singing in a swimming spa in East Germany. So there was the swimming pool and then us and the audience was in the pool. It was very weird. In the last song we stripped down to our underwear and jumped in the pool.”

THE MAGNETS play the Dunstan Playhouse on June 10-12.

Ian Bell

DANDY WARHOLS HQ MAY 26 2011

THE DANDY WARHOLS

HQ

Thursday May 26, 2011

At some point my companion at this show lent into my ear and said “All I want THEM to do is get off….the stage!”. It was a pretty harsh assessment of the night proceedings in my opinion. They’ve always been a little eclectic those DANDY WARHOLS, capable of writing fantastic indie dance floor filling classics that will stand the test of times. They are also capable of overly long self-indulgent droning stoner rock jams. I have been buying Dandy Warhols records since Dandys Rule OK? in 1995 and I’m a bit horrified by the mathematic evidence that equals SIXTEEN years, which doesn’t seem possible. So I love the super catchy dance tunes just as much as the space-jam freak-outs, in fact on that first album there’s a track called Its a Fast Driving Rave-up with the Dandy Warhol’s Fifteen & A Half Minutes. It actually runs for about 18 minutes with intro and outro and is one of the most brilliant funky riff heavy Hawkwind-esque and thoroughly epic tracks you will ever hear.

However in a live context the juxtaposition between those two aspects of The Dandys can mean that many people are there to hear the poppier Triple J hits get a bit restless while they are doing the jammy stuff. They tend to play a long set and tonight was close to two hours. But with almost no lighting on the band just blinding spotlights behind them it’s hard to see the band (and would have been a nightmare for the photographers, but I notice FL did a great job!).

Opening with Mohammed and Solid from the classic Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia from 1999 they are off to a strong start. Through the dark and spotlights we see that Courtney Taylor-Taylor is rocking a Evan Dando 1995 hairdo (The Dando Warhols?) and what looks like a white school shirt. Peter Holstrom is his usual uber cool self. Drummer Brent De Boer is up the back in the dark but you can see his fro from the moon. And Miss Zia McCabe remains the coolest indie girl ever, white jeans and black tee with what looks like a ram skull with wings (bit hard to tell in this light) she’s by her bank of keyboards, sample drums and tambourine. I don’t quite remember which song it was but she did a whole song with one hand in her pocket – damn! Lou Weed from the first album is a great addition for older fans but is still not the turbo boost we need. That comes with We Used to Be Friends from their Duran Duran inspired Welcome to the Monkeyhouse album, now we are cooking! Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth is next and the heat goes up a notch, people are dancing and singing along. Even after over a decade this unlikely alternative classic track about heroin being ‘so passé’, drips indie cool from every pore. We move back down a gear for Holding Me Up and Beast of the All Saints. More Duran inspired goodness with The Last High which is excellent. I Love You is a great example of Dandys doing the droning mantra thing really well. From Come Down their second biggest album is it instantly greeted with a lot of love from the crowd. The first of the new songs is The WOW Signal, it’s a great song album should be out later in the year.

The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Trucker (Earth to the Dandy Warhols) receives a huge cheer from the punters and gets people dancing again. At the end Courtney tells us he is “sweating like Jeffrey Dahmer” a reference to the serial killer. Good Morning from Come Down takes us to another new song called Rest Your Head. Zia tells us it’s the first time they have ever played the song live, so the HQ audience can pat itself on the back for being the first people to hear it. The rest of the band leave the stage for a “loo break” and Taylor leads us through a solo sing-a-long of Every Day Should Be a Holiday. Someone behind me is complaining loudly to their friend that the lights behind the band that constantly blind the audience “are giving me a headache”. I might be reaching for the Panadols myself shortly. You Come in Burned and Wasp in the Lotus glide us toward the final run of songs, and what a run. Four tracks in a row from Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia. Four! Hot Damn! Horse Pills has the whole dance floor jumping and people singing at the top of their lungs, but then they start Bohemian Like You and the place goes berserk. Yes it’s a blatant Stones pastiche but I don’t care. Nobody else here cares. It’s an indie pop anthem of the highest order in every sense of the word. Godless is next and it’s walking, dreamy pace lets us keep singing along and get our breath back before they zap us with Get Off. They finish off with Boys Better from come down making everybody happy, none more so than the guy in front of me has been yelling out for it between every song. I was beginning to wonder if he knew any other songs at all. Still he was very happy when they finally got round to it! After some whooping and hollering Zia returns to the stage and tells us they don’t really do encores (evidenced by the fact she has already chowing down on the backstage pizza when she reappears). But sings The Daisy Song solo a Capella and thanks us for coming.

It is not often that I would I’d say I’d prefer to see a band at a festival, but The Dandy Warhols at Parklife last year or their BDO sets a few years ago were more concise, with more hits per square inch (and you could actually see them on the stage). I’ve been somewhat tortured about writing a Dandy Warhols review that isn’t universally complimentary. I love them. I love the records. And I had a great time at HQ, but it was really only a good gig and not a brilliant one.

Ian Bell

SET LIST

Mohammed (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Solid (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Lou Weed (Dandy’s Rule, OK? 1995)

We Used to be Friends (Welcome to the Monkey House 2003)

Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth (Come Down 1997)

Holding Me Up (Odditorium or Warlords of Mars 2004)

Beast of the All Saints (Earth to the Dandy Warhols 2008)

The Last High (Welcome To the Monkey House 2003)

I Love You (Come Down 1997)

The WOW Signal (new song unreleased)

The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Trucker (Earth to the Dandy Warhols 2008)

Good morning (Come Down 1997)

Rest Your Head (new song unreleased)

Every Day Should Be A Holiday – Courtney solo (Come Down 1997)

You Come in Burned (Dandy Warhols Are Sound 2009)

Wasp in the Lotus (Earth to the Dandy Warhols 2008)

Horse Pills (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Bohemian Like You (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Godless (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Get off (Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 1999)

Pete Int Airport Intro

Boys Better (Come Down 1997)

The Daisy Song (Zia a Capella)

GARY NUMAN HQ MON 16 MAY 2011

GARY NUMAN
SEVERED HEADS
HQ
Monday 16 May 2011

Everything old is Numan again.

When this tour was first announced I had the same rollercoaster reaction I had when he visited the East coast two years ago.

NUMAN OMG.
Got to go, got to go.
Oh, hang on Numan is all ‘industrial-y’ these days.
Slump, sigh, inner turmoil.

I didn’t make the trip in the end. Reaction from that tour had been mixed to say the least, with a common criticism from older Gary Numan fans being they didn’t like the old material getting an industrial make-over. Gary was a massive influence on the likes of Trent Reznor, but his more recent albums have seemed a little like the influencer was becoming the influence-ee, with albums like Exile, Pure and Jagged all having a distinct Nine Inch Nails-esque flavour. It’s not that those albums are not good, Exile in particular I loved; it’s just not the Gary Numan I want to travel to the other side of the country to see.

So when they announced this tour I did the same rollercoaster but there came an extra bit of the ride.

He’s doing all of his classic third album Pleasure Principle?
In the original style it was recorded?
Plus the hits?
And it’s coming to Adelaide?
And the support is SEVERED HEADS?
Hellayeah.

When I arrived the legendary Severed Heads are already on stage. Not that you would have noticed. The out front sound level for them is pitifully low. It is seriously about half the volume it should be. The Heads themselves look somewhat uncomfortable and bemused by being in front of a crowd of people, most of whom clearly have no idea who they are. Tom Ellard is cracking wise between songs “We love you Adelaide, you don’t love us, but we love you!” And at least they seem to be finding the tepid reaction of the crowd amusing. Mostly the Severed Heads show revolves around some impress computer graphics projected onto a large screen. The guys themselves are lurking in the dark. There are some newer tracks, after all they have been making new music til 2008, but the best reactions are for Heart of the Party (1995 – “Who will tell my drunken friend, that she will die and go to hell?”) and Dead Eyes Opened (originally released in 1984, but a revamped version in 1997 was huge hit). Reworkings of songs like Petrol (1986) and Pilot in Hell (Cuisine 1991) were ambient and captivating if hard to hear. Ellard leaves us with, “Right that’s it from us, we off to the old folk’s home.”

The audience is full of faces I would expect to see. There are long time fans, aging Goths, Nine Inch Nails and Foo Fighters fans there to see this dude that Reznor and Grohl (not to mention Manson) have been going on about for years. Even people who have come to Numan through his cameo on the Mighty Boosh. But there is also a large contingent of the old school Numan fans, many of whom don’t go out much these days (several of them told me this themselves). But here they are, out on a cold school night, decked out in their leather coats, big boots with the buckles, and the eyeliner – the uniform of the Numanoid. I discover later that a bunch of the most Numanoid-y of these Numanoids were actually from the UK and USA and were following the whole tour. He inspires this kind of dedication.

As the four piece band takes their places a large image of Gary from the cover of Pleasure Principal is projected on the big screen behind them, it send a wave of excitement through the room. The man himself appears and the man starts into Airlane. The older folks who bought an actual record of Pleasure Principal in 1979 were in for quite a treat. The whole album played in full (if not sequential order) in fully authentic 1979 futuristic moog and polymoog sounds. Of course these days you don’t need actual Moogs to make Moog noises but that’s okay. Gary seems pretty subdued during this first bracket. There is little movement, and not much…spark. Some may say he was always cold and detached back then and that was part of his Bowie-esque appeal, but it’s more than that. It is utterly glorious for us to hear these songs the way we originally heard them, but there is the impression that it’s not quite so glorious for Gary himself.

Opening with Airlane it is immediately obvious that those sounds, that seemed so very futuristic in 1979, still maintain an alien steely feel of detachment which remains impressive 32 years later. It was these sounds that paved the way for Depeche Mode, OMD, Ultravox, Human League, Duran Duran and all the other ‘synth-pop’ in the early 1980’s. Airlane is followed by Metal a track that was sampled by Hip Hop legend Afrika Bam Baa Taa and covered by Nine Inch Nails. The powerful descending chords of M.E. (so effectively sampled by Basement Jaxx on Where’s Your Head At? quickens the pace but people are still a little restless. It might be because whilst Pleasure Principle is a classic album it’s not packed full of hit singles. Complex was a top ten single in the UK but I don’t think it was even released in Australia. So it’s not til the album section of the evening finishes with Cars that people get truly energized. As well they should all these years later Cars is an incredible song, its oscillating keyboard line starts and it is thoroughly electrifying. When the drums kick in its goose-bump and dancing time.

A quick equipment change (keyboards are swapped for guitars) and a smiling, playful and totally pumped up Numan reappears. Clearly this is the part of the show he has been looking forward to. He is bouncing up and down and can’t wait to get started. And what a start, a blinding version of his much covered Down In the Park. Delivered with ferocious energy it is a definite highpoint of the night. Such a popular song raises hopes this second potion of the show will be full of ‘hits’, which is sadly not the case. Instead he sticks to mostly later songs from the last decade, including three brand new songs (The Fall, When The Sky Bleeds He Will Come and Everything Comes Down To This) that are due to be on his yet to be released Dead Son Rising album. And again, I have nothing against the newer style Numan; Everything… in particular was a great song. But I guess I’d have rather had We Are Glass, We Are So Fragile, or This Wreckage, but I hold on to some hope we might get a Telekon tour at some stage. So apart from the brand new songs there is Pure and A Prayer For The Unknown (both from Pure 2000) and Halo and Haunted both from 2006’s Jagged. But the end of the second movement was a fantastic Are Friends Electric, a song that has been covered and sampled countless times with good reason, and tonight it is nothing short of epic. The final song of the set is I Die You Die from Telekon, which is also bloody great.

A bunch that brave the freezing cold, are rewarded with autographs and photographs with the man himself. He knows more than a few by name. These are the US and UK Numanoids who have come half way round the world to follow the tour. “This is it for us Gary,” says the tall man who looks like an extra from Underworld a vision in full length leather coat, buckle boots and Lycan hair cut, “We have to head home soon.”. It’s quite sweet and Gary thanks them for coming and shakes his hand.

And so three decades of Numan fans retreat into the dark, buckle boots clinking into the night.

Ian Bell 2011.



SETLIST

Airlane (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Metal (Pleasure Principle 1979)
M.E. (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Tracks (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Observer (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Conversation (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Engineers (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Complex (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Films (Pleasure Principle 1979)
Cars (Pleasure Principle 1979)

Intro/Down in the Park (Replicas - Tubeway Army 1979)
The Fall (new song – unreleased)
Pure (Pure 2000)
When the Sky Bleeds, He Will Come (new song – unreleased)
Haunted (Jagged 2006)
Everything Comes Down To This (new song – unreleased)
Are Friends Electric (Replicas - Tubeway Army 1979)

Halo (Jagged 2006)
A Prayer for the Unborn (Pure 2000)
I Die You Die (Telekon 1980)