Despite the bleak rain swept night a curious bunch of punters had gathered to find Dwarves, Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age and Mondo Generator bassist Nick Oliveri setting up his own gear on stage with a casualness that set the tone for the evening. This wasn’t a celebrity rocker showboating; just a muso indulging in a little down time effort as a treat for fans.
Oliveri began the show with a brief set of solo acoustic tracks which combined his scratchy playing with his impassioned howls and screeches. Opening with I Want You To Die the set continued with The Day I Die and a pair of Queens tracks, which were unsurprisingly met with the biggest crowd reaction – Auto Pilot and a rapid take of Another Love Song, dedicated to his ex-wife. Beside the Queens cuts he threw in a cover – a ‘butchering’ in his Oliveri’s own words – of Johnny Thunder’s You Can’t Wrap Your Arms Around a Memory and a fiendishly barked take on Roky Erickson’s Bloody Hammer , serving as a fearsome reminder that we punters were in a small bar with a large, oddly bearded man. In a dark laneway this man look like the terror of children’s nightmares, but stick a guitar, or better yet a bass, in his hands and the punters come flocking.
Having warmed up with his solo turn Oliveri switched to his favoured territory on bass and brought out Ian Taylor to strap on a guitar as Mr Hoss set himself to attacking the drums. After several (deliberate?) expectation building drum false starts they launched into their set lifting the show from a Nick Oliveri solo curiosity into a full blown Mondo Generator gig. Featuring a strong dose of the Mondo Generator back catalogue, stretching back to their 2000 debut album Cocaine Rodeo, the set’s highlights included So High and Oliveri’s lurches into barking madness. The show closed in thrilling style with Mondo’s 13th Floor , which Oliveri also recorded with Queens as Tension Head, for the Rated R record.
After that close they could hardly leave and so, with Taylor joking that they were only supposed play three songs, they returned for an encore. With nothing prepared they dug out a few faves and closed with The Ramones’ My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down.
A low-key gig that delivered nicely; nothing to rival his former bandmates Mark Lanegan or Josh Homme as a solo performer – but a solid night’s entertainment, nonetheless.
