How to put on a rock concert. By Faith No More.

First things first: get the band back together. It seems having a highly successful musical career, a greatly talked about break up and super reformation is the way to do things today. Mike Patton isn’t on a “Mission from God”, sure, but it wasn’t exactly the most expected reunion either.

Next, get a tour t-shirt made. No, make that two. Three? Perhaps six will suffice. Everyone likes variety, and paying $40. And have a poster made up, get the band to scribble on it and sell that at an exorbitant price, too. You need lots of money for a good rock show… err.

How about a venue? Let’s get nostalgic and ignore all common decency and hold this gig at Festival Hall. It’s a known fact the walls themselves sweat inside of that venue. Done.

Here comes the good bit now: book one damn fine rock ‘n’ roll support. When you’re Faith No More, you practically have the pick of the litter, and when that litter includes the hound dog himself, Jesse Hughes, the choice is easy. Eagles of Death Metal couldn’t have been a better support to warm the stage; hell, they oozed their hot rock magic all over the place.

Strutting, shaking and tapping his ass all about the front of stage, Hughes was every bit the rock star’s rock star inside of Festival Hall. No one questions the fact he wears shades inside: he’s that cool. He was throwing out dedications all over the joint – notably to his favourite Melbourne haunt, Cherry Bar (seriously, love him more – now!) – as he and the band jangled through tracks like I Only Want You, Don’t Speak (I Came to Make a Bang!), Bad Mama Dream and Cherry Cola. A noticeable omission from the set was I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad News), but we can’t always have everything.

“I love my job, can ya dig it?” asked Hughes, before breaking into some go-go dancing, rockin’ out on Wanna Be In LA, and machine gunning the crowd with his guitar as the set rounded out. Yes, Jesse, we can dig it.

The next step in crafting the right evening is to, uh, piss off your audience. That’s where Neil Hamburger came in. Coughing and spluttering, Hamburger almost managed to start a riot as he made his way through a routine of horrifically awesome and awesomely horrific jokes (many aimed at Michael Jackson or Anthony Kiedis) that made the wait for the night’s main attraction unbearable. The punch line was to aggravate, and Hamburger well succeeded.

Where to start the set then? Perhaps something heavy to get the energy pumping? Or maybe one of the big hits to remind the crowd exactly who this band is? Nope, you let the masses know that you, the champions of heavy alt rock, have arrived with some calm melodica and the instrumental bitty, Midnight Cowboy. In the words of Mike Patton: “Here we are again: same band, same bullshit.”

Then they started to get the blood pumping. The Real Thing, Land of Sunshine, Caffeine – the crowd began to heave. With a noticeably heavier mosh pit than the previous night (that saw Faith No More perform to a semi-AFI fan base), Patton and co. were more than willing to respond in kind to the energy the crowd was giving them. The mental metal of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies was an early highlight, Patton consuming the microphone and barking like a dog – such is the nature of the beast he is.

Riling up the crowd seemed to come extremely easily, especially with the help of a megaphone, and even the cheesy Commodores cover, Easy, got a hefty sing along, despite being almost embarrassingly wedged between Ricochet and Midlife Crisis. The latter of those was arguably the set’s best moment, with the whole band throwing to the crowd to sing a chorus, as well as performing their own jazzy interlude to make it a standout.

Speaking of standouts, who could go past one of the oddest covers ever – The Bee Gees, I Started A Joke. And as laughable as that sounds, Faith No More pulled it off. Threats of a Jimmy Barnes rendition were too much though, but were thankfully revoked with the coming of another mosh friendly number, A Small Victory.

Hand swaying, bagging of the previous night’s crowd and querying who in the crowd tweets all appeared in the remainder of the set (Patton chanting, “Now tweet! Now Tweet!” during Ashes to Ashes), as did one superb flip of a stage dive by Patton as he continued to sing the set’s closer, Just A Man.

Finally, to end the evening’s rock proceedings, you need an encore. Actually, not one, but two. Faith No More happily accommodated the desires of the packed house, questioning: “What’s with all the hospitality for old yanks?” Clearly, the time it took for this show to sell out indicates how much these people love this band. The dark and delicious Stripsearch finalised everything, the crowd not given the chance to mosh wildly again until the next day’s Soundwave Festival.

So, what was the result of everything put together by Faith No More? One more remarkable performance to add to the list, that’s one thing. That Mike Patton is mad, but totally loveable, that’s another. And that, perhaps most importantly, these “old yanks” can still play as well as ever.