Sat 10 Oct 2009, Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Back to the Corner Hotel again. They have had lots of things there lately. I'm a bit late getting there and they seem to run their shows pretty much on time. I get there as Killer Birds are finishing up their last two songs. A 3 piece girl punk/grunge band, seems a shame that I got there late. They seem to have a pretty decent rocking 70s old school punk sound. Their webpage mentions The Runaways which seems to fit. I make a mental note to check them out again.
Dr El Suavo takes the stage, as the MC for the evening. It is a fairly strange act, a mildly crude comedy act with magic tricks wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and a fez. The magic is inoffensive, lots of stuff you can pick up at magic shops like the 3 rings that magically link and unlink or bottles that hide shot tumblers inside. Even if you don't know the exact trick behind each, you have a pretty good idea how it is done. I guess he can cover that up by with his crude stage act. I guess also by working in props like dildos and drinking a lot of his props after each trick. It works for what it is, that 15 minutes or so between acts is generally pretty boring as they set up for the next band. He stands in the corner doing his act while they set up the stage. Kind of entertainment multi-tasking.
Useless Children take the stage next. It seems like the sound sucked all night at the show. Generally the Corner has decent sound but something about it is just muddy and buzzy all night. Useless Children are a noisy trio (girl drummer, which seems to be a pretty common arrangement for Melbourne bands). I can't really distinguish any of the vocals above the noise. The girl on drums sings most of them, growling through most of it. The rest of it is a decent wall of sound but nothing grabs me in it and I zone out a bit during it. The crowd is a fairly young one tonight with lots of different punk t-shirts. The guy in front of me has a Minor Threat one on and my mind wanders thinking of different Minor Threat songs I like or trying to think of the noisiest punkiest show I can remember seeing (I come up with the Cro-Mags, they were Harley's War that night though).
Mostly they kind of remind me of all those bands on old Maximum Rocknroll compilations, the ones with like 70 different bands. The Flipper or Dead Kennedys track was pretty decent but then there were about 68 other bands that kind of all sounded the same, whether they were singing in English or Italian or whatever.
Dr El Suavo comes back on and does some more tricks involving rubber chickens and then does his straitjacket escape. He yells at the audience to pay attention and clap while he dislocates his shoulder and suffers for the trick.
I guess a lot of the shows I've seen so far in Australia are a lot of them that I heard back in the 80s, some of my Australia imports. So most of them are on their 20-30 year reunions, reliving past glories and the rest of that. The Hard-Ons are doing their 25th anniversary, although they point out they were broken up for a number of those years in between. So far it seems like it has been a decent strategy, I see bands I liked way back when and get a handle on other bands around through the opening acts. I had a Hard-Ons record back then, mostly I just liked Girl In A Sweater and the rest of it was decent bubble gum punk. At least that's what I remember, I haven't heard it in a while. They play Girl In A Sweater for their encore then something quite speedy after that. The rest of the set was nice but not great. Or maybe it was just the sound, something about it was really awful.
So, another oldies band ticked off my list.
