Saturday’s incendiary mania and occasional naughtiness from Bluejuice showed exactly why this hip-hop act has audiences in the palms of their hands. People quite plainly wanted to go mental and blow off a bit of steam. The audience packed into Transit Bar like a school of gig hungry sardines – most punters would still have elbow imprints in their waist lines to prove it – and they were not dissappointed.
Jake Stone and Stav Yiannoukas are symbiotic and have a jester-and-the-straight-man stage act that is entertaining to watch. Stav stands his ground behind the mike, staring intently at the audience through mysteriously dark eyes. His brooding intense looks suggest he’s not all sweetness and light despite the pop joy and airy flippancy of Bluejuice’s music. Jake on the other hand plays Ernie to Stav’s Bert and tears up the stage – ruffling his hair, clawing at his chest, jumping up on top of the kick drum, dancing like Bill Cosby possessed and chatting to the audience between songs. Whilst standing on a speaker stack and pointing at the ceiling Jake shouts to a guy on the dancefloor:
Jake – “Just how solid is that pipe?”.
Man – “That my friend is an incredibly solid pipe”
Jake – “You hear that Australia?! That is an incredibly solid pipe!!!!”
Jake did not refer to anyone all evening as “Canberra” or “*Transit Bar*”, you get the impression that in his head he is playing to a stadium filled up to the rafters and he’s bloody excited about it. He later managed to reach the ceiling pipe he was so obsessed with. Somewhere midway through Unemployed, he took a leap into the audience who carried him above their heads and eventually stretched out their arms to deliver him unto the ceiling. Whilst Jake swung from the pipe with people clawing at his legs as though they were trying to retrieve a disobedient monkey, he still managed to deliver shotgun lyrics and never lost his grip on his mike. Impressive. Even more impressive was Stav – ever casual and brooding, still standing his ground centre stage seemingly oblivious to the antics of his sidekick.
Bluejuice’s music is simple. Ned Molesworth and Jamie Cibej hold rock steady in the rhythm section, nothing too complicated, just good solid four on the floor beats that a crowd can really get into. Jerry Craib has a bit more work to do on keys, switching smoothly from old soul Hammond sounds to a small synthesizer that fattens out Cibej’s bass tones.
Bluejuice are a brave act beyond Stone’s histrionics and penchant for swinging from the ceiling. Their radio hit Vitriol was not saved until last or encore but slotted in surprisingly midset. Their other well known single Unemployed crept in between other lesser known songs as well. The band aren’t relying on two singles to carry them through a gig. They play every track as though it’s a number one hit and they make the crowd believe it.
