Walking along Dudley Street the chugging sound of King Of The North shook every footstep. Having previously seen them tear the roof off Pony bar earlier this year, to see them rocking Festival Hall seemed to make more sense. Opening for one of the biggest and best loved bands in Australian history is a daunting task, but the duo takes it in their stride. “I can’t believe they get THAT sound from two blokes,” a surprised punter remarks. The further King Of The North gets into their set, the more heads of hardened Chisel fans begin to nod. When front man Andrew Higgs says, “For a pub rock band this is probably the biggest fucking pub we’ve ever played,” the crowd is won over even more. They keep it sweet and short and the audience laps it up. The combination of floor rumbling drums courtesy of Danny Leo and Higgs’ solid shredding on ‘Ride’ is the perfect end to their set.
As a leather pant clad Barnesy and co make their way on to the stage, cans of Jack are raised into their and a roar rolls from the very back seats to those wedged against the barrier. Opening with ‘Standing On The Outside’, Cold Chisel sound as loud as ever even if Jimmy sounds like he needs to dislodge a great wad of phlegm from the back of his throat. Ian Moss clearly delights in playing to the crowd as much as possible and as expected the middle-aged women go crazy for it. ‘Cheap Wine’ is up next and while it is apparent some members of the audience have taken on the lyrics as some kind of mantra, the vibe in the room is for the most part upbeat. “Good evening and how the fuck are you?” beams Barnesy, ever the delighted showman. This is about the longest interaction with the audience he has all night.
He introduces ‘No Plans’, the title track from their new album, almost nervously but it goes over well (so well Mossy blows up his amp) and is backed up with ‘Saturday Night’. The projection screens flash up images of Kings Cross and syringes, showgirls and nightclubs and the live rendition of ‘Saturday Night’ takes on a slightly harder and much darker edge which actually manages to endear the song further.
By now, you really do begin to think about the huge impact Cold Chisel have made on the Australian music scene. While some are happy to write them off as king of the bogan bands, their lyrics are clever, poignant, honest and unmistakeably Australian thanks in large part to songwriter and keys man Don Walker.
Once again switching into their new material, ‘Everybody’ gets a warm reception before Ian Moss takes over vocals on ‘My Baby’. Rockabilly riot starter ‘Rising Sun’ gets everyone dancing and one poor young couple nearly go head first into the ground in a dip gone wrong. New songs are given the appropriate respect but get no-where near the deafening response of ‘Choirgirl’, ‘Flame Trees’, ‘You Got Nothing’ and of course ‘Khe Sanh’.
Unfortunately at this point the immediate crowd is beyond messy; people are falling over, the dickhead switch has well and truly been flipped on and the jerk quota has been reached. The vast majority of punters were great, the belt of tool bags that positioned themselves in front of this reviewer found it a right larf to pick each other up, slip on their own spilled Bundy and crash into the poor souls around them. Finally, security makes their way over and… Gives the guys a hug. Really? Rewarding arseholes for being arseholes makes for less arseholes?
Thankfully, the familiar intro to ‘Bow River’ calls and is met with the loudest response of the night. To hear Mossy’s bluesy voice do battle with Barnesy’s screams is truly a thing of wonder.
They briefly leave the stage and encore with ‘Astrid’ and ‘When The War Is Over’ before leaving for good. Before walking offstage, Mossy pulls out a stuffed cat and tosses it into the grappling crowd with a laugh making light of the now infamous cat bite incident.
Thirty something years later Barnesy’s voice can still nail you to the wall and Chisel play tightly the way only a band with their career length can. While some their fans were forgettable on the night, Cold Chisel certainly were not.
– Madison Thomas
