Whoa it’s that time of year already! PBS 106.7FM Radio Festival 2016 is back! From now until the 29th May, they’re calling on all listeners to Take the Plunge and sign up to the station so PBS can keep riding the radio waves for another year.
Always at the forefront of the most exciting of Melbourne music scenes we asked a few PBS fm presenters to educate us on their most exciting live music experiences in Melbourne live music history.
If you like what you hear, be sure to consider supporting the station, because with your support PBS will be able to continue to do what it does best- program incredible and diverse music for years to come. As a non-profit community radio station, PBS is proudly independent and relies on the support of our listeners to stay afloat so they can continue championing local, specialist and underrepresented music.
Without your support, they would be unable to sustain our vital contribution to Melbourne’s bustling music and arts fabric. For more info visit www.pbsfm.org.au.
Maddy Mac | Homebrew
Mondays 3-5pm
Loose Tooth’s recent EP launch at the Gaso was smokin! It was like a house party – a packed sea of dancing, familiar faces, an incredible line-up, and the most impressive decorations utilising the balcony to divide Heaven and Hell, with a solo Alex Lashlie playing from the clouds and the bands playing below amongst the flames. No wonder it sold out before doors opened!
Loose Tooth were damn fine, and I just loved seeing Wet Lips again, the opening support. They’re so inspiring and important. Their lyrics and loud, honest, fun punk style speak to me. Three women standing strong in their own self-acceptance, and being so inclusive towards their audience – they’re actually a rare example. MUCH of the night was spent sharing in raving about them.
Nick Brown | The Breakfast Spread
Mon – Fri 6-9am
Deaf Wish at Pony August 2012. 2am shows at Pony were an incredible thing. There was a ritual about it. You went to a gig on a Friday or Saturday night, hung out with your mates and drank enough beer so that when the gig finished and someone suggested “Pony?” you thought it was a good idea. Your sensible or sober mates would make a snide remark and head home, destined for a productive Sunday and a dearth of interesting stories.
Deaf Wish rarely played gigs around this time – I think they were in different parts of the world, doing different stuff. This was their first gig in Melbourne in ages. It was super packed at Pony; people had been waiting a long time for this. The place was heavy with expectation but Deaf Wish just did what they always do – plug in and cane it.
Guitar feedback poured out of the amps as they fired up. The rhythm section just keeps pummelling on as the whole thing starts splitting open at the seams. They’ve got a real Mad Max quality to them – unhinged and feral. The P.A at Pony was always way too big for the room and it was blisteringly loud.
The room was heaving and beer seemed to be raining down from the ceiling at one point. The existential pain they channel through their mutant punk is like nothing else – screams of self loathing competing with the white noise. Sarah Hardiman flung her guitar against her amp at one point and jumped onto the sweaty mass of bodies in the audience.
When it was all over we spewed out onto the street; ears utterly fucked from the onslaught. I’ve given up decent amounts of my hearing to all sorts of bands but none of them earned it as much as Deaf Wish that night.
Lyndelle Wilkinson | The Afterglow
Wednesdays 5-7pm
That’s rough. One. ONE? Seriously? OK – here’s my top three with a special focus on my most memorable. 3rd: There was local act #1Dads back on Wednesday 8th July 2015 at The Corner. Outstanding. It was perfection. 2nd: Radiohead at Festival Hall on Sunday 1st November 1998. They were touring OK Computer that tour and it was out of this world. A sweltering hot night and they set the place ablaze.
But my all-time most memorable gig… my Number 1? Well, that was on Tuesday 27th February 1996. I scored the ticket by chance. A mates friend was too sick to go which for me – became my lucky day. Row B in the stalls at the Palais Theatre for Jeff Buckley. Yep I was second row. So close, which is why I think it is so memorable.
“I have never witnessed a show so raw and pure and beautiful and powerful all at the same time”I remember that I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t own the album, but I knew he was a big deal as the band had already been through Australia and went off to Asia then came back for a second round of shows on their way home. The reviews had been wild and tickets were impossible. That night, I got to fully understand what all that fuss was about and I think for the hours to follow I was numb. Thinking back I think I actually went into a bit of a trance. It lasted for quite a few years. I bought the album and it rarely left the stereo.
I have never witnessed a show so raw and pure and beautiful and powerful all at the same time. The band were one hum. At times, I forgot to clap. I think between songs, I just had to recover to get ready to watch the next song. There was no formality and there was nothing pretentious.
The performance was just this honest insight into this exceptional talent who wanted nothing else but to simply share it with the audience. I had never really seen anything quite like that up close. So intense and so exceptional. I remember his flannel shirt and the simplicity of the stage and his scowling face when the girls screamed his name. Two nights later, I saw them again. Forth row from the back. That’s another story.
Matt Frederick | The Juke Joint
Sundays, 1-3pm
T-Model Ford at The Punter’s Club in 2000. The guy was somewhere between 75 and 85, he walked with a cane, he repeated the same patter between songs and I think he only changed chord twice in the whole set.
He turned that joint into a full blown, straight up juke joint for one night only and the only way I could try to repay him was by trying to buy a CD.
Erica Dunn | Mixing Up The Medicine
Tuesdays 5 – 7pm
Before writing this paragraph, I need to premise it with my belief that there is no ONE best gig and that it is the plurality of all the varied live music that we get to see and enjoy that makes each adventure into the knife-edge, weird world of live performance so intoxicating and addictive.
However, after some considerable brainstorming, delightful trips down memory lane and a few coffees chugged, I have realised a towering, marshall-stack sized memory that is shadowing others in all categories: wildest music played, best crew on board, most fun had, most envelopes pushed, most beers drank.
All Good In The Wood is a slice of ideological heaven, the gig that shouldn’t have worked but did. Unofficial Mayor of Collingwood Thomy Sloane invited bands to play in a bunch of lounge rooms and backyards around the neighbourhood, two bands in each location, a noisy breadcrumb trail for punters to giddy up on. No money changed hands, no bouncers were needed, no paperwork signed, no red tape, totally D.I.Y and B.Y.O.
“No bouncers were needed, no paperwork signed, no red tape, totally D.I.Y and B.Y.O”Best on ground reads like some kind of twisted all-star round-table of aussie rock bands you’d most like to take with you into the apocalypse: Deafwish, Cosmic Psychos, Batpiss, the Peep Tempel, Tyrannamen, Wicked City, the Jackals, A.D Skinner, Spinning Rooms, King Parrot, the Drones. The list continues but we can stay for a quick moment and nostalgiasize on the last name on that roll call.
Dusk was settling over Collingwood, it was the golden hour, the clouds broke and an eerie hush fell over the corner of Sackville and Gold St. All shapes and sizes in their hundreds clamoured over corrugated iron roofs, backyard brick walls and hoods of neighbourhood cars to catch a glimpse of the acerbic, take-no-prisoners set that the Drones delivered. The message was clear- be excellent to each other, party on Wayne.
Cosi | Fresh Produce
Saturdays 8-10pm
February 27th Due DILLAgence – The Music Of J-DIlla LIVE, with upport from UMUT, Billy Hoyle & Nfa Jones.
After packing out Section8 with their Due DILLAgence show last year, the gentlemen decided to step it up a notch at the Evelyn in Fitzroy this past February. Unfortunately I missed the support act UMUT perform, after rushing back from the PBS studios, but managed to find a spot behind the mixing desk at the Evelyn once I arrived. Watching Melbourne hip hop veteran and all round nice guy N’fa get on up with long time collaborator Billy Hoyle (Man Made Mountain) is always something to behold, he knows exactly how to engage the audience after countless festival performances with 1200 Techniques.
The musicians that performed the Dilla compositions (Adam Katz (Keys). Amin Payne (MPC), Stevie Cat Jr (Drums), Henry Hicks (Bass), SilentJay (Sax/Vocals), Cazeaux O.S.L.O (Vocals), Nathaniel Sametz (Trombone), PataPhysics (Trumpet), are some of the most talented and prolific artists here in Melbourne, and you’ll probably find them performing 3-4 nights a week here in this city.
The thing that made this show so special however is that you could feel the love the musicians had for Dilla’s music, and it was expressed through their talents and instruments as the band played for well over an hour. Cazeaux O.S.L.O., of So.Crates and Man Made Mountain – Melbourne based but originally from the city of LA, perfectly captured the rhymes in the many Dilla tunes, and had the crowd reciting many well known hooks and lyrics. If you are a fan of any of J-Dillas beats or his legacy, I highly recommend that you make it to the next Due DILLAgence.
Press Gang | Zen Arcade
Mondays 5-7pm
My memories of Melbourne are a patchwork of awesome performances over my life time. From the first big concert I saw (at the delicate age of 13), I wanted to run away and join a band. I could spin tales of outdoor festivals in Easey St (before it was PBS’ homeland), teenage blasting out of suburban backyards, hard won front-of-stage spaces at now defunct and gastro-pubbed venues, but I am going to go with something a little more recent (just because it’s so damn hard to pick).
[include_post id=”444751″]In January of this year, a storm broke out, brought down some power cable and It Records celebrated their 2nd birthday. The night was a smorgasbord of bands from the label, future signings and friends. Even though the rain was torrential, the Tote was teeming with people and the love for a musical community was through the roof. It was the first time I saw Taipan Tiger Girls play live, experienced Complete strut his sensual industrial leather clad stuff with Cassandra Kiely from Pearls in the tiniest of rooms and watched Miles Brown tame his theremin once again- which never gets old.
I didn’t even manage to catch the whole line up with progressed from the front bar to main band room and then peaked in the Cobra bar with the likes of Little Desert, Vacuum, Mollusc, Armour Group, GAUD, SOW DISCORD, System Body and many more. Sometimes less is more, but not in this case. More was more and more was great. The gig lost power and the crowd just kept the gig going with good vibes until the juice came back on. You just can’t make up that kinda stuff. In Melbourne that totally happens. For real.
Chris Pearson | Po-jama People
Wednesdays 10pm-12am
My most memorable gig comes from a very long list of cracking nights out.
A couple of months before Po-jama People hit the airwaves, I went to a gig that spawned the long jammie nature of the show.
9th of January 2011 at the Arthouse, a few months before its doors closed for good, I saw the last gig of the Australian Earthless tour. In the tiny bandroom with barely enough room for the band, let alone an audience, sweaty and hot doesn’t come close to describing the vibe.
“Long live the Melbourne music scene”How the guys could sustain the energy and power of ‘Sonic Prayer Jam’ for close to an hour is beyond me—I was wrung out, and I was only watching. The band’s heavy psychedelic rambling jam was free and loose, in a controlled way that can only come from having jammed out the track to perfection. Then a 10-minute rendition of Groundhog’s ‘Cherry Red’ iced the cake.
Seeing such an awesome band in such an intimate space was electrifying. Isaiah Mitchell has been my favourite guitarist ever since. Long live the Melbourne music scene.
Cat McGauran | The Breakfast Spread
Mon-Fri 6-9am
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Melbourne’s music community is so rich that it’s hard to choose one gig to write about. But I would the Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings concerts at the Palais and Festival Hall in February were something truly extraordinary. I have never come across a series of shows that united people from such different areas of the music community.
I went to the Dream A Highway concert at Festival Hall – it was the epitome of music as an intimate and unique form of communication. People were crying, singing along and making way for people who couldn’t see or who had left the room temporarily. Everyone felt like a friend at that gig, and my friends and I were buzzing for days after.
Adam Rudegeair | Black Wax
Mondays 9-11am
It would have to be Prince at the Tennis Centre (as it was then called) in 1992. It was the Diamonds and Pearls tour and his first ever visit to Melbourne and there was a definite wave of Prince-mania!
[include_post id=”477811″] It was my second big concert, I had seen Billy Joel a few years before, but this show was different…laden with sex and funk. The concert itself was a highly choreographed and technical extravaganza. A giant symbol-shaped mothership, pyrotechnics, acrobatics, and Diamond and Pearl floating on a bed that sailed over the audience…not to mention Prince’s incendiary guitar and vocals chops!
That particular band lineup of the NPG was just incredible, with Michael Bland on drums, and Sonny T on bass (who I recently got to record with), and Rosie Gaines was just an incredible gospel singer. There’s footage floating around of Prince and Rosie covering Aretha Franklin’s Dr Feelgood from one of the Sydney dates…that song was definitely a highlight! Oh and did I mention Prince’s future wife Mayte was on the tour as a dancer? She got a roller-skate dance segment all to herself! My 13-year old mind was blown!
