One look around the crowd on this cold Thursday night at the Palace and two words sprung to mind – uni night. By the time the clock struck twelve it was pretty clear what band most of these students would be raving about the next day on campus.
While much of the crowd were waiting around the corner to get into the Palace, local alt-rockers The Getaway Plan were up on stage. Smothered in blue light, the local boys played to a somewhat placid audience, often only referring to tracks as “an old one you should know” or “the one off our new album”. Before kicking into Streetlight, lead singer Matthew Wright struggled to drink a foamy Tooheys Dry which was dropped and/or shaken up before opening the tab and while Where The City Meets The Sea was a great live performance, The Getaway Plan weren’t able to hook the majority of the crowd into their set.
The Donnas tried harder to get the crowd on side and while they got more punters on their side, they still suffered from crowd indifference. The crowd were blasted with air raid sirens as the three of the four members came on stage to play Bitchin’, with vocalist Brett Anderson finally appearing on stage to get straight into Don’t Wait Up For Me. Anderson was a walking quote machine, dedicating Who Invited You to birthday boy Damo, declaring that the band was in a man-sandwich on their current tour before playing Better Off Dancing, and announcing that “All good people love good pizza, good beer, and good rock ‘n’ roll!” launching into a fantastic performance of Wasted. At one stage Anderson got on her knees at the very front of the stage during Smoke You Out, almost kissing a bald bouncer on the top of his head; yet when the band closed with Take It Off she looked quite bored as she pranced around the stage. While the performance was first rate, the crowd’s indifference combined with the desperation of The Donnas to get the crowd interested ultimately hurt it.
When the house lights finally came down for Kisschasy you could tell the majority of the crowd were only interested in these Peninsula boys, you could hear the squeals of delight. With thumping heartbeats played over the speakers which gradually got faster and faster, the band finally appeared on stage much to the pleasure of the audience. They didn’t muck around, getting straight into My Bible Is A Scrapbook, and following up with Tiny Plastic Cup. While singles Do-Do’s and Woah-Oh’s, and Strings and Drums got the crowd bouncing up and down, the biggest cheers of the night came when Darren Cordeux’s bandmates left the stage, allowing him to play a few acoustic tracks on his own. The crowd sung along with The Shake, with Cordeux telling them that “you guys have amazing voices, seriously” mid-song, before playing “a song about denial” that came to him in a dream, Black Dress. On a whole Kisschasy’s performance was solid, featuring sweet guitar licks from guitarist Sean Thomas and the wild, shirtless antics of drummer Karl Ammitzboll.
After a short break and an encore performance of Spray On Pants, the masses headed towards the doors. While Kisschasy’s music is not for everyone, it was definitely what the crowd asked for and they got their moneys worth that night. Hopefully in future the promoters can find more appropriate warm-up acts that the same audience members can get into.
