The Drones, Sixfthick, MexicoCity @ The Zoo Brisbane14/05/05

Sun 15th May, 2005 in Gig Reviews

A fairly sparse, but steadily building crowd greeted Mexico City at The Zoo. Ah, the joys of being a support band. These guys are the quiet achievers in Brisbane. They do what they do well and are slowly building up a fine catalogue of releases. Their repertoire of dirty blues tinged country was a good opener for tonight.

Mostly cruising through tracks from The Lost Gospel and Big Black Car, as well as some new tracks from their upcoming release, Mexico City’s sound makes you want to grab a beer, sit back and tap your fingers and toes. You might even get up and get a bit of swagger happening. When Billy Won the Big One, You Weren’t Kidding and Black Comedy went down well, with the appreciative crowd.

Next up saw Brisbane stalwarts Sixfthick dis-grace the stage, as only they can do. Or should that be Sicksfthick? All but bass player, Tony hick, had apparently succumbed to some dirty viral, bacterial thing. The joys of brotherly love, I guess. Being the professional troopers that they are, the show goes on as if nothing was amiss.

The crowd had now ballooned to about half Zoo capacity, with the majority front and centre to catch their favourite sons.

Opening with a new track from ”...the new record that will be out before New Years day, 2006…” according to Geoffro, The ‘hick power through classics Daddy’s Home, If’n and I Was Just Cleaning It and It Went Off before breaking into another newie.

Even though they may have felt like rubbish, they didn’t show it, with the Corbett’s bouncing off each other as always and Ben’s back slamming Cossack moves giving me grounds to wince in sympathy every time he hit the deck. Not bad for a guy who was on anti-nausea injections earlier in the week.

The combination of Dan and Tony was good to hear in a larger venue and together, they are providing as big a sound as ever, while the gentleman(?) of the group, Fred, continues to thump things and deliver the appropriate dry satire with aplomb, as required, although he was a little quiet tonight, due to illness.

Finishing with a final barrage that includes Smokin’ in Bed, The Swamp, Oysters and All in Flames, the Sixfthick give everyone what they want delivering the goods, as unwell as they may have been. True professionals!

The scene was now set for The Drones. Visiting on the back of their newly released long player, (which will surely take the longest titled release award of the year) Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By, I had only heard some tracks over the air but I new to expect one thing: loud! So with earplugs at the ready, I took my position.

Singer Gareth Liddiard swaggers up to indicate kick-off time had indeed approached and then leaps into Freedom in the Loop, finishing in a frenzy before telling us ”...that we take a while to warm up…”      

The Best You Can Believe In was a tribute to all those ”...ridiculous printed t-shirt wearing, mango seed hair-styled types…” that are everywhere nowadays. This caused me to yell accolades to the man as I have issues with these types as well. We connected…man.

He continued on with his crazy eyed, manic street preacher style delivery with Shark Fin Blues and I Really Don’t Care before giving everyone a break and donning the harmonica for an acoustic solo number. It was at this point, the punters hit the bar, the powder room, you know that sort of stuff, but only half of them returned!

As the Drones regrouped for the finish, a look around the room showed that there were only slightly more people left than started for Mexico City! They were boring Liddiard anyway. Bizarre.

In, hindsight, some of the songs were dragging out, starting to border on self- indulgent. Even though this dirty style of blues swamp rock avails itself to that, I guess there is only so much some people could take. Undeterred, Fiona Kitschin on bass, Michael Noga drums and Rui Pereira and Liddiard soldiered on, before finishing with This Time in a frenzy of mating guitar moaning and Rui imitating a beer fountain.

When told they had a little time left, they decided to return, with a borrowed guitar amongst other things, with a full-on rock out of A Country Of Love. The final bars of which see Rui in a hysterical drumming solo and almost sending the kit over Gareth, who is kneeling over mating guitars and twiddling knobs, making as much droning noise as possible. God help us that he didn’t have any lighter fluid.