Photo: Candice Marshall

(Please Note: In the interest of expanding the cultural and demographic diversity of this publication, Rave Magazine is experimenting using reviewers of different musical backgrounds, to give a more fully fleshed opinion of bands who are regularly reviewed in these pages. To this end, we were able to transport our emergency contributors, Lou Hatfield & Harold Loch, from their Kallangur residences for their first review since The Screaming Jets Motown Tribute Show.)

LOU: Ahhh, the good ol’ 610 building, you remember it, Harry? A couple of tallies, check out the talent and try pick fights with the long-haired geeks. Top stuff, that. The new place looks heaps fancy: lighting’s good, they’re cranking the air con and pissing in the corner is now frowned on. So who’s up first tonight? Skinny Jean? She sounds cute. Hang on, it’s a band? Oh well, I’ll give it a listen. Hmmm, the sound’s muddier than my boots after a weekend of pig shooting, but underneath that they look like a good bunch of kids. They bounce around the stage, switching and changing instruments and wailing into the microphone to overcome the mud for a solid 50-minute set. I still can’t figure out why the crowd is hanging back five metres from the stage in a semi-circle. Get amongst it, yer dags!

The John Steel Singers begin while I’m still outside chokin’ down a durrie, but they’ve got a top sound. Nothing too heavy, but none of that wimpy sensitive rubbish you get from guys trying bloody hard to look uninterested. I grab my last drink and face the stage, only to be shocked at the stringy little bastards that stand their right now. Just cuz you make good music doesn’t mean you can dress like long-haired ponces with beards. And what’s with that song that sounds like The Addams Family? Bugger this, I’m headin’ home, Shazza’s probably gonna go raw as soon as I get a foot in the door. Harold, Harry, young Hazza, you can handle the rest….

HAROLD: While my mate Lou goes and climbs back under the thumb, I’m left by myself in a sea of those bloody cool inner city indie kids who wouldn’t know a good RSL covers band if one jumped up and smacked them around the arse with an Angels record. Still, I’m pretty impressed with how this lot get into the John Steel Singers – there’s jumping around going on everywhere, at least half a dozen blokes drinking rum cans (bloody Kev), and what must be a hundred individual cases of people dancing like dickheads. It’s a ripsnorter! Last song Evolution (even I know that one from when the young blokes at work put the radio on Triple J) fucking goes right off and I don’t reckon these blokes can do much wrong.

After that I almost feel sorry for the last band Yves Klein Blue, although that’s mainly cos of their fancy schmancy French bullshit name. It starts out a bit weird, cos with the party in full swing they open with some song that sounds a bit metal of all things, and all the kids who were dancing do a bit of “What the fark?” But then it all amps back up into the same backyard party vibe, just with the rock turned up a bit. Even if there are any eyes gazing at their shoes out of habit, they’re turned bloody upwards by the time Polka flies off the handle, and when JSS joins them back on stage for a giant rockout with Elvis Costello and David Bowie songs from back in the day, it’s better than the Jets on a good day. True blue. They’re standing on speaker stacks, they’re belting the shit out of their instruments and even when there’s a power outage in the last song, I still can’t help bouncing like some sort of wasted hooligan, which of course, I am. Frick a brick, if this is the kind of show you Brissy lot can put on when you want to, me and Lou might be bringing the Charger down this way more often.

LOU HATFIELD & HAROLD LOCH

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