Never Land Bar - Sun Feb 7

Taking to the stage as an impatient crowd twiddles their thumbs, The Dead Beat Band launch headfirst into their set. With an unabashedly garage edge, the trio’s jams are very listenable, even if they are somewhat derivative. Like a dishevelled fisherman straight from a latter-day Hemmingway novel, Grinspoon front man Phil Jamieson stumbles onto the small Never Land stage. When Grinspoon guitarist Pat Davern joins him, Phil welcomes the small crowd to the first ever performance of “Wooden Spoon”. With just Phil’s acoustic guitar and Pat’s telecaster, the duo strip back and re-interpret Grinspoon tracks old and new, much to the delight of the Coolangatta crowd. Just Ace becomes a saccharine surf pop track, Sweet As Sugar is transformed into a downbeat confession, rich with an emotional depth unexplored on the album version. As Phil reveals the origins to some of the band’s most iconic songs (spoiler: they’re all written on drugs), the duo perform relatively faithful renditions of songs like Chemical Heart and Better Off Alone. The set highlight, however, is when Phil proclaims “this is from one of the greatest debut albums of all time”, and to uproarious cheers supporting his audacious claim, launches into Bad Funk Stripe.

TOM HERSEY

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