Strung Out and No Use For a Name. Two undisputed legends of the punk rock scene, with both Fat Wreck kings notching up around 10 albums apiece. You really can’t get a much better line up than this, so the crowd went in with high expectations – and they certainly weren’t disappointed.
On Wednesday they played at Geelong’s Barwon Club. It was an epic night, buzzing from the excitement of such a big show coming to Geelong. Both bands commented on how crazy it got, with an ex-AFL player admitting post gig that in all his years of playing footy he has never been bruised as badly as FLs reviewer was as a result of being at the front of the pit. But no regrets – it was awesome.
So it’s fair to say that I knew what I was in for at the bands Melbourne show on Friday. I knew it would be good; so it was only a question of just how good. Things began well with The Gun Runners, their gruff-style singing and three vocalists made for a nice solid sound. Plus they had a lot of fans which is always great for a support band.
No Use for a Name songs like Dumb Reminder and Life Size Mirror had everyone singing along and there was a nice warm fuzzy feeling. The setlist had a lot of older songs like Invincible and Not Your Saviour and with only a few from their newie The Feelgood Record of the Year.
When Strung Out opened with Monster it was like a pressure valve had been released, the anticipation was finally met and the pit just opened up. Going straight into Black Hawks Over Los Angeles and No Voice of Mine the amount of energy was incredible and it was only going to increase from both the crowd and the band. The setlist was only slightly different from the Geelong show, where Geelong got Virginia Madison, Melbourne got Paper Walls, instead of Cemetery, Melbourne got Savant. But nobody got to have Razor Sex, but when you treat them mean you keep ‘em keen and that’s what we all definitely were. Matt from Nufan was guest bassist on the cover of INXS’ Don’t Change, could there be a more perfect song to cover for a band that are renowned for coming to Australia so often? I think not. Without surprise, the last song was Matchbook an obvious favourite of the band as 9 outta 10 times they end on it. The crowd were sweaty, sore and loving every second.
The crowd fed off Strung Out’s energy, of which there was no shortage. It doesn’t matter if a band sounds perfect on a recording; it’s about whether they can pull it off live. And every year they come here, that’s exactly what Strung Out does, and more. Bring on 2009.
