Venue:
Palais, St Kilda Melbourne
Date: 02/12/2023
The Cruel Sea’s swampy grooved third album The Honeymoon Is Over was their most successful. After touring with his other 90’s band the Beast Of Bourbon earlier this year, Tex and the Cruel Sea are doing a 30 year anniversary tour, sans James Cruikshank who died of bowel cancer in 2015.
Tex has lost a lot of weight and is much more mobile than in his other shows over the last few years.
Opening was all girl band The Wraylettes were fun but would have been nice if the lead gtr had better chops if you’re gonna do Link Wray stuff. You can usually see them for free at inner citty pubs so this was a step up. TCS band were great with things lifting with Delivery Man and the audience rising with Black Stick. A mate reckoned Cruikshank was missed ( Matt Walker did his parts) but I didn’t notice.
We were 3 rows from the front and while great for getting the stage energy you lose the whole band feel and the sound is too separate. 10-15 rows back is my sweet spot.
Annoyingly Dan Rumour’s guitar amp wasn’t working from the get go. Multiple gtr switches, fiddling with this and that it never really came good. Not loud and crackley at times. It was distracting for us and he was infuriated and then sullen for the whole show. So that was a bummer.
Their last encore was a Beefheart cover, Sure Nuff and we walked out to Gregory Isaac’s Night Nurse over the Pa. They’re that sort of band.
The audience:
50s
It made me think..
How can bands do soundchecks then things not work on the night.?Also, why not plug the guitars in and do a quick strum before the main act comes on. Fucking annoying.
Some pics
I saw The Cruel Sea live at Kuranda near Cairns supporting the release of 3 Legged Dog in the mid 90s. It was one of the top 2-3 gigs I’ve seen in my life. Saw them the next year in Cairns and it was awful (although admittedly it was raining heavily). I would have gone to this tour but had a conflicting engagement the night they are in Bris.
I am, however, seeing War on Drugs and Spoon this Sat night at the Riverstage.