Photo:
If you wanted to be churlish, you could dismiss tonight’s line up for the Best Of V as nothing much more than a collection of reunions and rehashes: the New York Dolls are back together again with just two of their original members; Phoenix offer what has sometimes been described as eighties retro; Jarvis Cocker is giving it another go five years after Pulp’s last hurrah; and Pixies, well, you surely know the story there.
To go with the excitement of seeing the Pixies again, there’s naturally a measure of anxiety. What if they don’t pull it off? New York Dolls immediately do something to set our minds at rest by proving that reunions can work. Where once they were celebrated for their energy and sloppiness their performance tonight is all about energy and precision. David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain, the two survivors, are clearly the stars of the show but they’ve chosen their new band mates rather well. The Dolls’ fashion sense, once seen as outrageously camp, is now relatively tame, but Johansen does find the time to distribute some flowers to the audience. These could well be gladioli, perhaps in a nod to one Steven Patrick Morrissey, their biggest fan and architect of their reunion, but you’ll need someone with a little more expertise to confirm that. Is it time for a botanical correspondent at Gigwise? The Dolls close with a cracking rendition of 'Personality Crisis', the first track on their first album, and though their set was none too taxing it was well worth the early start.
Phoenix were originally scheduled to open tonight’s show, but have been bumped up the order. Given what we’ve just seen that seems rather harsh on the Dolls, but the post-gig rumour has it that the New Yorkers wanted to catch Tony Joe White, who’s also in Adelaide tonight. No matter: Phoenix are very different to but on a par with the New York Dolls, catching many of us by surprise. Time to abandon the bar. Though they offend French sensibilities by singing in English, Phoenix have a Gallic flavour to go with what is essentially some straightforward, large-scale rock and roll. And just like the New York Dolls, they know exactly how to work a crowd. With Cyann & Ben recently starting to win some recognition as well, perhaps we’ve been doing French rock a disservice all these years. Maybe it isn’t an oxymoron after all. Bravo, mes amis.
Jarvis Cocker is another outstanding entertainer, and he also knows a thing or two about Adelaide that he’s happy to share. He tells us that we’re in the driest city in the driest state in the driest continent, before predicting that we’ll soon be a little moist. If we are, it won’t be as a result of his musical endeavours. Part of the problem is that he doesn’t really fit the bill: under normal circumstances the promoter who suggested New York Dolls or Phoenix as suitable warm ups – or that Jarvis might support the Pixies – would surely be looking for alternative employment. Such are the vagaries of festival line-ups.
Without further exposure it’s not easy to say that his new songs are fundamentally flawed, but with just one exception the arrangements we hear tonight are certainly lacklustre. 'Black Magic' has a wonderful, bass-driven intro and maintains interest from start to finish, making it a clear highlight. ''Disney Time' and 'Running The World' come close, but these three alone can’t lift the set. Ultimately it’s not enough to be all knees and elbows and have a charming manner, but we’ll have to blame the band, the material or the programming: with his performance up front tonight, Jarvis has put himself beyond criticism.
The Pixies have a lot to live up to, and not only because New York Dolls and Phoenix turned in such fine performances. In the many years since my last night out in their musical company, there haven’t been too many bands that measured up to their innovation, their subtlety, their intensity, their musical intelligence and their importance, or even to any one of these. But there have been plenty that looked like they wanted to kill each other, just as the Pixies once did. All of which makes the second surprise – that the band, and especially Kim Deal, seem genuinely happy to be up on stage with each other – even more agreeable.
The band's first Australian gig was only a week before this, so aside from a handful of us who saw them elsewhere, the audience is made up of enthusiastic first timers. While most of these have clearly had a long and fulfilling affair with the band, there are plenty of younger faces too, and as it turns out they love Pixies nearly as much as the rest of us do.
The first surprise, of course, was the extent to which the Pixies – at least as a live band – still have it. Their set opened with immaculate versions of 'Bone Machine', 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' and 'Wave Of Mutilation', and the very fact that they can start with three such astonishing songs, confident that they have enough dry powder left to carry on in the same explosive vein, tells you just how good the Pixies once were. The next two songs, 'U-Mass' and 'Head On' (a Jesus And Mary Chain cover) are from Trompe Le Monde and amount to something of a lull. But almost everything else is from the first half of their career: soon afterwards we get an eight-song run from the still-brilliant Doolittle, peaking successively with 'Tame', 'Gouge Away', 'Mr Grieves' and 'Here Comes Your Man'. (There’s nothing at all from Bossanova, which means we miss highlights such as Velouria as well as the lowlights.) At this point we’re still only about halfway through, and there’s really just one way for a band to follow what we’ve heard so far: by wheeling out some more great songs. Being the Pixies, they can and they do. Along the way Kim grins some more – at one point she and Frank can even be seen sharing a joke – but the Pixies’ interaction with their audience is almost entirely through their music.
Though some of the arrangements have been refreshed, tonight isn’t really about taking risks. It’s about love and euphoria, and not the sort of crazy, fucked up, dangerous love Pixies sometimes sang about. When the encore break comes the band stay on stage, all the better to soak up the emotion and feel just how much they and their songs mean to the congregation.
Engaging with your past like that carries a heavy responsibility, of course. The idea of the Pixies recording again still arouses some selfish concerns (no one likes to see a favourite band fade away or worse, mess everything up) but the ferocity of tonight’s performance, and their song selection, can perhaps be seen as good omens: the Pixies seem to properly understand what made them great, all those years ago. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to repeat the trick with the material they’ve reportedly started work on, but it’s a good start.
When they take up their instruments again, they return some of our worship with 'La La Love You' – they also seem to understand that the evening is also about the crowd as much as the band. Finally, led by Kim, still smiler-in-chief, they say their goodnights towards the end of 'Gigantic'. The audience has been briefed well – all of the bars and entrances had notices announcing the 11pm curfew – and the house lights are on before there’s even a decent foot stomp going. Nonetheless, security have some work on their hands to clear the venue. We’ve all got homes to go to, but few of them will ever be as warm and welcoming as the Thebbie tonight.
Nostalgia, eh? It’s the last thing that rock and roll is meant to be about, and no one here gives a damn. Feels like teen spirit, would you believe?'
.jpg)
