You Am I @ The Oxford ArtFactory, Sydney (14/12/08)

Mon 15th Dec, 2008 in Gig Reviews

Price of admission: $25
Cost of two non-alcoholic beverages: $5
You Am I on stage: Priceless

There was something not quite right about this Sunday afternoon Christmas party at the Oxford Art Factory. It could have been the unusually early start or the lack of booze on a sunny weekend. A more likely reason for the growing sense of confusion were the waiver forms all guests were asked to sign before entering the venue, coupled with no apparent plan for actually getting the paying punters in the door and off Oxford Street. As it turns out, Visa was filming a commercial, and this initially caused my heart to sink. Could it be that the commercialisation of rock was complete?

On paper, You Am I left little doubt that this would be a ripper of a set. Opening with Judge Roy off 2001’s Dress Me Slowly, Australia’s hardest working band tore their way through a set of new and old, hits and album tracks. Heavy-hitters like Get Up mixed freely with a healthy dose of selections from the new album, Dilettantes. Indeed, a trio of newbies got played fairly early in the 18-track set, including The Big Wheel, Wankers and Frightfully Moderne. These really demonstrated just how You Am I have managed to keep their sound fresh after all these years on the road.

It wasn’t all new of course. A fair bit of Christmastime involves looking backwards, and we got that in the form of 1995’s She Digs Her, before proceeding further back in time with covers of La’s There She Goes and Pink Floyd’s Astronomy Domine. It was fair to say that there was very little of the ‘sublime ballad’ You Am I, and a fair dosage of the ballsy rock band we’ve come to know and love over the years. Indeed, with the exception of the penultimate The Piano Up the Tree, it would be fair to say the highly-talkative and sweaty Tim Rogers barely paused for breath throughout the set.

This all would have been terrific, of course, were it not for the inherent weirdness about the whole thing. It was evident from a fairly early stage that there were paid extras in the crowd, holding aloft their mobile phones for the cameras at some unseen cue. Apart from being an incredible distraction and supremely odd, it left everything feeling a little bit off. This begs the question: just because it is commercial, does it stop being fun? It may just have been my perception, but the crowd vibe definitely felt a little flat. Then again, that could also have been attributed to the lack of alcohol.

It didn’t really matter by the time guitarist Davey Lane swapped places with drummer Rusty Hopkinson, as the latter applied his punk vocal-stylings to the fan-favourite cover of The Mummies’ (You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes. With that, You Am I left the stage for 2008.

One could lament the dual commercialisation of rock and Christmas, but at the end of the day we were treated to another reason why You Am I continue to be one of the best live bands in this or any other country. Merry Christmas, lads – and we look forward to all those crazy projects you hinted at for 2009.