A belated review of the Darkness gig I saw in Brisbane last Wednesday.
The week was a busy one for me – I was organising and facilitating week-long training that included a bunch of interstate/international fly-ins, and I groaned when I realised that the concert tickets I had purchased six months before landed square in the middle of that week. I saw the Darkness back when Permission to Land was first released and they were just gaining traction, playing the midday slot at a festival to an entering crowd who they quickly won over. The Datsuns followed them and seemed like a high-school band having their second rehearsal in dad’s garage.
PTL is a genuinely fantastic album that is everything its fans and detractors say it is: AC/DC hooks, Queen vocals, bombastic production, lyrics that are both puerile and hilarious, and melodic hooks. It was released at a very stressful juncture in my life and the sheer fun of it gave me much comfort through that period. It and the Scissor Sisters debut that came out at a similar time were billed as greatest-hits first albums and I agreed heartily with those assessments.
So it was that last Wednesday myself and Lady Podicle found ourselves in the Valley Music Hall (owned by former school mate and Powderfinger bassist John Collins and literally 50m from her office) standing amongst an enthusiastic crowd of surprisingly varied age, watching support act You Am I play the songs of Spinal Tap. As much as I adore Spinal Tap, this was definitely a joke taken several steps too far. The snippets of songs you hear in the movie are hilarious in context, but given full, lumpy live airings the humour is attenuated, to say the least. Watching Tim Rogers try to do the full-on rock frontman shtick was embarrassing knowing what was to come.
And what came was the perfect rock gig. To say The Darkness are tight doesn’t do them justice. After their initial wave of success they have slogged away for 20 years releasing the occasional album but building a reputation as a peerless live rock band. Being an anniversary tour for PTL their set was trimmed back to the album plus some contemporary B-sides and covers. There is no fluff and the audience sings along to every note.
And, of course, I am skirting around the key reason for their success, J-Hawk himself. I’ve never seen a more confident live performer, and whether he is prancing the stage, doing handstands or blowing guitar picks into the air and catching them without missing a beat, every eye in the house is on him for the duration. The man is having the time of his life and wants to bring you along for the ride. I know his vocals are divisive, but he hits every note effortlessly; there is a reason Dave Grohl brought him in as the Swiss-army vocalist for the Taylor Hawkins tribute gigs.
Looking over the crowd at the end of the gig all I can see are exhausted smiles. This crowd has been thoroughly entertained and Brisbane is a happier place for it.
Nice review. I too saw them mid afternoon at a festival – Big Day Out I assume. Much less of the front man performance back then.
Speaking of front men – no love for Tim Rogers? I have seen him a few times fronting You Am I and a lot of times doing those Stones shows. Limited voice notwithstanding I have always rated him as possibly the best front man in Australia.
I saw You Am I a bunch of times back in the era of the first few albums and they put on a good show. I think Hi Fi Way is one of the great Australian albums. I think, however, that Tim Rogers is a bit of a dick with an exceedingly inflated opinion of himself, a sentiment shared by some acquaintances who actually know him. I’ve also heard a lot of feedback about him ruining gigs by being completely shitfaced.
He was upstaged and outclassed by several orders of magnitude last week.
Yeah there was that embarrassing shit facedFalls Gig at Lorne but seems to be controlling the booze more these days. Extoverted front man – a bit of a dick! Who’d have thought.
There was a sort of cabaret show he hosted maybe on late night ABC. Could do a remarkable range of musical styles albeit with that limited voice. His Stones stuff was great. I guess, also, I have a soft spot as he is a North Melbourne kangaroos football club follower.
To be honest, if he’d done a 45 minute set of You Am I songs I would have been happy. I never caught those Stones gigs but wish I had.
We used to see You Am I a lot when they were coming up, I was a student at Sydney Uni, and friends with his sister, and we traced them from lunching time gigs at Manning Bar to playing 7 nights at the Metro, and onto the Hordern etc.
They were always a mixed live bag. As a rule, the greater the amount of support acts, the worse Rogers was. Sometimes they didn’t hit the stage til 1, and their opening cover – a tradition of sorts; early Who, Astronomy Domine – was probably going to be the highlight of the gig. Liked his drink and drugs, ok fine, but he never struck me as physically resilient enough to still do the gig.
A few years later his sister, Gabrielle and her husband Pete and I put a band together. I was more than happy to publicise the connection with Tim just to get a name for ourselves at least within the industry, but Gab was very cautious about any kind of perception of coat tail riding. This turned out to be a small part of what looked like a very complex brother-sister relationship. Any time I attended family functions (Gab and I remain good friends), the family – no shrinking violets themselves – seemed rather in awe of Tim, who carried an unpredictable air about him. Anyway, on the few occasions he and I spoke socially, I was trying to balance being a very real fan while also feeling like a deserving presence at the odd Rogers family function. Odd vibe to stay natural.
We supported one of his solo shows once at The Basement in Sydney. Not a huge place but we had a great turnout and played well. Embarrassingly, my post gig euphoria and chats with You Am I drummer Rusty aroused Tim’s ire from the stage and security came and asked us to shut up at was admittedly a low key solo gig. I still cringe at the memory.
Anyway, the band ran out of puff, though we had a great time making an album produced by Jak Housden, axeman with the Whitlams. Did a couple of more shows and let it lie. Still, fun while it lasted.
Interesting. Thanks Dan.
Ah, the Whitlams, there was a band…
…that should be erased from history. Smug student lite-rock.
Never seen them and know nothing about them, other than I bought Eternal Nightcap when I went to Sydney to visit my Best Man in 1998. I haven’t thought about them for 25 years.
Definitely not my cup of tea – awful but glad you enjoyed them.
Not sure the words “future” and “rock” belong in the same sentence
Great review, enjoyed reading it 👍🏼
PTL is indeed a belter of an album. Not a duff track on it, and Hawkins Snr is one of the best frontmen I’ve ever seen, although possibly exhausting to be around. I caught part of their set in a club sometime around 2001 and have regretted not seeing the whole thing ever since – they were dynamite. Their studio work has suffered from not being able to match PTL and the inevitable snobbery of the music press who tried to write them off as a comedy act.
JH has a good YouTube channel too.
I started watching that. He was genuinely enthusiastic about and very supportive of The Last Dinner Party (twice) and I enjoyed it as much for his endearing friendliness as for the band/ video he was watching for the first time and commenting on. A good guy and a positive contribution to UK culture, I thought.
He’s very likeable and his persona is slightly nerdish on his YouTube channel, so I was glad to see that his rock god stage persona has remained unchanged.
One thing you realise from his YouTube channel is that he is a far more thoughtful and knowledgable musical craftsman than you may initially think. He readily analyses and understands what’s going on in songs, even if he is slightly unschooled. I’m pretty sure he has perfect pitch as well, based on his on-the-fly analysis of other artists. That would explain a lot.
There’s an excellent long interview with Justin by Rick Beato which is Def worth a look too.
I saw The Darkness at Cornbury a couple of years ago, hugely entertaining. I agree with fortuneight that Justin Hawkins is a great frontman and absolutely hilarious.
He also makes a point of telling people to put their mobile phones away (thumbs in the air!) and just enjoy the moment and I’m all for that.
Re Justin and mobile phones.
A few years ago (possibly 10th anniversary PTL tour) a friend went to see them at Scunthorpe Baths Hall (yes,the venue from the Jasper Carrott routine)
Halfway through the show, Justin stopped everyone and berated someone standing at the lip of the stage. This person was obviously filming the gig.
“Look I don’t mind the odd photo but why are you filming the show?”
With this, he whipped the camera from the persons hand, put it down his jumpsuit and ran the phone backwards and forwards through his anal cleft then gave it to a roadie.
“You can have it back at the end of the show. Now let’s rock!”
I saw the Darkness in a room above a pub on the Norfolk Broads one summer. Even to an audience of about 20 curious locals and boaters moored up for the night, they looked and played like they were at Wembley.
Not my kind of thing at all, musically, but it was no surprise when they became huge a year or two later. They certainly put the graft in.
Gillingham?
I have no idea. We set off on a long-weekend boating holiday from Wroxham, after a trip to stock up in Roys of Wroxham. We moored outside a pub somewhere, had some tucker in the bar, and heard a noise coming from upstairs. Horning, maybe?
Ah, the mighty Roy’s of Wroxham. It’s actually in Hoveton you know!
I did not. That’s today’s Factoid.
Their music has never really grabbed me (although I’ll give PTL another chance based on the comments above), but I have a lot of time for Justin Hawkins.
I recall a colleague laughing about watching The Darkness’ first turn at Glasto. The band comes on, and JH’s opening banter with the crowd goes as follows:
JH: Give me a “D”!
Crowd: D!
JH: Give me an “arkness”!
Crowd: ARKNESS!
And boom! they were off and running.
I also saw him popping up on one of those Gareth Malone-type shows where a group of experts take ordinary folk and prepare them to perform for a big crowd. JH did a quick bit on being a frontman, and he was terrific. I didn’t appreciate just how much effort and craft is involved in holding an audience’s attention, and JH explained lots of little tricks he used to win them over. He came across as really generous and supportive, and far more thoughtful than his rock’n’roll persona. More power to him.
I like his YouTube stuff – very musically minded, plays along to a song with an acoustic to get the chords right etc. Big Depeche Mode fan, particularly the recent stuff.
Personality wise, he is a show off but disarmingly witty and self-effacing. I’m not sure he’s at National Treasure status just yet but I’m sure he will be.
The pomp-rock James Blunt?
Front man is a show-off. Incredible!