The Blue Swimmers, MammothMammoth, Dirty Buzzard @ TheEvelyn, Melbourne (12/2/10)

Sun 14th Feb, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Dirty Buzzard walk onstage with no fanfare, no applause and fuck all crowd. They don’t go into speeches about the reason they’re there: as tribute to The Blue Swimmers deceased drummer, Juddy Roller, and to benefit both Juddy’s infant son and charity’s in support of men’s mental health issues.

They’re first in a lineup comprising Mammoth Mammoth, the aforementioned Blue Swimmers and Trust Us and are the first hint that maybe this gig should have come with a decibel warning.

Good rock’n’roll isn’t rocket science. It’s balls out, fearless and unrelenting, but it’s not rocket science. It is a commitment. One which Dirty Buzzard’s frontman – the aptly named Intolerance McLoud – was born to commit to.

It seems the musical components of the Buzzard’s spent their formative years ripping their hands open perfecting groove-based rock’n’roll, as they now expertly deliver the rapid bass, lightning guitar and drumsticks of fury that all stadium-worthy classic rock bands of the 70s served up.

During his formative years McLoud was likely being created from parts of leftover AC/DC singers; like a theatrical rock Frankenstein. When the band was ready – after he’d spent years eating Black Sabbath records and broken bottles for breakfast – he grabbed a mic, stuck his gut out, pointed his arm in the air and unleashed like a crazy rock monster.

McLoud goes from sing to scream to roar in milliseconds and comes across as dangerous. Like the way that affable barfly might seem innocent until he smashes a pool cue into your throat. McLoud entices the audience like a wrongly seductive serial killer – taunting punters menacingly, staring right in their eyes to see who’ll blink first. It’s never him. I don’t know whether to laugh or shit myself. He does not drop character for a second, screaming every spoken word: “This is a song about the demise of the ecstasy revolution, mother fuckerrrrrrrs!”

Probably quite good at his day job, this guy was born to be a performer: his Vincent Price horror-show laugh and audience engagement is enthralling and nearly overshadows the fact that the musicians who support his antics are pretty fucking good too. They know how to put on a show.

As do the explosive Mammoth Mammoth, who are more dark than theatrical – despite their liberal use of the smoke machine – but no less scary or committed. The vocalist employs a devil roar, the bassist emits a slack-jawed lethargy (in appearance, not proficiency), the guitarist hides his headbanging behind a lank fringe but lets his fingers shine: they are all three showmen in front of a drummer who appears to have been sunk into the floor.

The vocalist wanders to the floor in front of the stage, scaring people out of the dance space (which, weirdly, people were actually using as dance space). To a driving, apocalyptic soundtrack he whips around the foreground on his microphone leash like an evil doll riding the end of a hose that’s been turned on full blast.

Their energy is intense, a full force attack, at once repellant and celebratory. Not leaving a splinter of silence between their ferocious songs, the vocalist punctuates his parts physically: collapsing up the stage stairs like a metal-head James Brown, marching across the main floor like a maniacal dictator, knocking over a table with his angry stalking. The bassist ambles down the stairs to the main floor as well, leaving the guitarist as main entertainer onstage, while the lunatic frontman hides in the curtains like an intruder. These guys are high octane, completely uncontainable. The frontman seems not to care for spotlight, he needs space to unleash. As he drops to his knees, screaming, just watching them is exhausting. In the best possible way.

The Blue Swimmers can’t initially match the first two acts for intensity. I begin to fear that the very reason for the show has created a vibe that’s bigger than the sum of its parts: sometimes despair can fuel brilliance; this set seems drained by the loss.

Then there’s a phoenix: the bassist/vocalist sticks his headstock straight up in the air like a salute to the bereaved fans who seemed to be standing in respect, separated from the band by curiously placed tables. All of a sudden things get brutal and cohesive. The Blue Swimmers punk heart and musicianship borrows from pain and celebration. It all crystallises, rhythms and licks are tight.

Tiny bursts of Rage Against The Machine flicker through black sheets of Kyuss and The Sex Pistols. Probably what was missing at the start was the devil-may-care attitude. Maybe they remembered what they cared about and couldn’t focus. By the end I would like to think that the lost Swimmer was banging his head, thumping his foot, smashing his drums and blessing his mates for the tribute, somewhere not that far above us.

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