_{Fuck The Neighbours leader Simon Chainsaw.}

Fuck The Neighbours
+ The Molly Fet Circuit
MoshPit Bar, St Peters, NSW

WORDS: Geoffrey Datson
IMAGES: The Barman

There was some confusion, so I’m arriving at the bright Saturday afternoon gig late.

Into the long dark venue.

It seemed there’d been some mishap?

A first responder with a head torch on  is stumbling through debris, where the stage used to be.

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes
The Gov, Adelaide
Friday, November 21, 2025

Words: ROBERT BROKENMOUTH
Pictures: MANDY TZARAS

It was one of those “where to begin “kind of gigs. Long story short, I've been in a rather horrible tunnel for the last three or so years. Looks like I'm slowly re-emerging, though; but I'm not the only one - and they've been in the shit far deeper and uglier.

Saw The Animals and Friends at The Gov on Wednesday night. Top show, vivid, crisp and filled with bittersweet pills, grim memories and the kind of songs which cry out for audience engagement. Which we got in spades. Norm Helm's jazz-flecked bass is a joy to watch, as is Barney Williams' piano and synth work. Danny Handley's vocals and sweet blues guitar drag me in every time. And, propping the lot up at the back, 84-year old John Steel, one of the original Animals. Just about everyone in the crowd had a smile on their face.

Belle Phoenix with Jeffery Wegener and Ken Gormly
+ Fabels
Thursday, 4 September 2025
Lazy Thinking, Dulwich Hill, NSW

WORDS: Ed Garland
PICTURES: Keith Claringbold

With her elfin appearance and cat’s eyes, Belle Phoenix, is part musical performer and part Factory girl, and surely would fitted into Andy Warhol’s Bohemian scene of 1966. Her sweet vocal has held her in good stead as a backing singer on other people’s albums, but she’s steadily built an impressive body of work with her own material.

Belle Phoenix’s music would work as a soundtracks to European movies (indeed, she did live in Europe for a time with Finland a home base.) It has hints of the spoken word spirit that pervaded the San Francisco of 1958 when alcohol-fuelled beat poetry nights were all the rage, long before anyone had an inkling of the Summer of Love that was lay ahead.  Yet, Belle can also sing like the angels and produce pure soprano bliss amidst her swamp darkness.

_{Happy Hour at The Gin Palace.}

The Gin Palace
+ Swaggerland
Factory Floor, Marrickville
Saturday 9 August 2025 

On a wet and miserable Sydney winter night, a cosy Factory Floor welcomed around 50 punters to  share an intimate musical experience. It was the long awaited gig to launch The Gin Palace’s online single “Petrichor” and album material from Bronwyn Eather’s latest project  Swaggerland 24.

First up The Gin Palace: A super group of players, with a pedigree drawn from, among others, Crow, Glide, and Copperline, they are a six-piece band and welcomed us with a short set of songs from upcoming album, “The Year of the Dog”. As it turns out, it was a set that was almost too big for this little stage, as The Gin Palace powered through an effortless and positive set of numbers with their unique, euphoric sound.

The Hives
+ Clamm
Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Wednesday, 23 July 2025

In these austere times, a full Enmore Theatre midweek sounds as unlikely as an affordable round of drinks in a Justin Hemmes-owned pub, but there you go: If the joint is full to the gills by 8pm on a Wednesday, it must be a Hives show.

Dunno about you but I’ve been following The Hives since they formed in Sweden in that eruption of Scandi Rock at the start of the ‘90s. The six albums are all top-shelf fun but the live experience had somehow evaded me. So, it’s off to the Enmore on a school night that I must go.

The urgings from people like The Celebrity Roadie not to miss this were still echoing in my tinnitus-scarred ears as I sipped my first beer. The Barmaid had even feigned interest by asking if the band would sing in English (not that she was going) but, really? It’s a self-evident truth that The Hives speak fluent Rock and Roll. Their dialect is universal.

John Cale
Xani
The Recital Hall, Sydney
July 10 2025

Do you remember that annoying kid in Year Nine at school? The one who used to badger you with his arrogance and who raved about obscure songs and artists to prove he was superior? He would rattle off their names like a machine gun, firing off the titles of B sides of obnoxious Rush singles and dropping the name of some obscure European prog band that had elves on the cover of their debut album. 

You, on the other hand, had discovered “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” by Lou Reed and had proudly made the connection that it had Dick Wagner on guitar who was now playing with Alice Cooper. And the ever-annoying wanker classmate would declare that the Reed record that I had just bought at Ashwood's was "shit" because it was “commercial” before name-dropping someone called John Cale.