Peter Combe and the Bellyflopin a Pizza band@ Fly By Night,Fremantle (12/11/11)

Tue 15th Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

What is your earliest memory from your childhood? Do you remember being five years old, singing/yelling Tadpole Blues with your pre-primary class in a mid-year show for your parents? It seems likely that many people at the Fly By Night on Saturday had early childhoods filled with music; much of it written by Peter Combe.

The Fly by Night in Fremantle was the setting for Saturday night’s entertainment and was filled with one of the most mixed bags of punters ever seen at a gig. There were indie kids, hot girls in minis and stilletos, a couple of punk-looking guys and some parents out with their 20-something-year old offspring. About a quarter of the crowd were looking very snazzy in newspaper hats and one crafty mama had made herself a whole newspaper outfit.

Supporting Peter Combe was local folk-rock band, Ryan Webb and the Method. It would be interesting to see how they’d handle a crowd that clearly, was only there to see the main act. While opening with his usual swagger, front man Ryan Webb seemed to accept that the crowd was just killing time before Combe started; he seemed content to be the “light entertainment” before the main act.

Encouraging the punters to dance with offers of “A free CD to the first person that gets up!”, Webb worked his way through his repertoire of bluesy pop songs including Nothing Gets Me Down, Please, Pretty Please and his latest single Sing Me To Sleep. Webb’s vocals are pretty good live, although it always seems like overkill to have a backing band- his acoustic skills are such that he doesn’t really need it.

While musically the set was good, it seemed a very strange choice for support act… then again, there isn’t a huge selection of nostalgia-driven pop/children’s/educational acts in Perth to choose from. Webb finished the set with new single Coming Home from their forthcoming album.

Finally, the sound guy left the stage and the Belly Flop in a Pizza Band came on, warming the crowd up until Combe launched himself on stage- literally, launched. Combe, who must surely be in his late 50’s by now, had the energy of a 5-year-old hopped up on pixie sticks, with the enthusiasm to match.

Getting straight into it with Big Yellow Ball, Combe had the crowd was singing along from the very first note. After, “How excited I am to be back in Perth and to see all your faces again”, they launched into their second song for the night, the aptly titled Saturday Night. It would be great to know whether his stage persona differs when he’s paying to an older crowd, because it certainly doesn’t seem like it! The silly voices and faces, the melodramatic over-acting, the terrible ‘dad jokes’- the crowd was loving every single second of it.

In between songs the members of the crowd would call out, requesting their favourites; “Yes, I’m getting to that one” Combe would say, as if reprimanding an impatient 4 year old and at a guess, everyone’s favorites were eventually played. Powering through a staggering 21 songs in their set (not including the obligatory encore), Peter Combe and his Belly Flop in a Pizza band had the crowd singing and dancing to every single song. That’s the great thing about kids songs – even if you don’t know them, you can pick up the words pretty quickly!

A couple of the crowd favourites included the theatrical Jack and the Beanstalk and Down in the Bathroom, the catchy Chopsticks and the sweet-tooth’s favourite, Toffee Apple. Combe introduced his last song as “my American Pie, because I’m always asked to play this, by you, by kids, even by your parents!”. It was, of course the nostalgia-ridden Mr Clickety-Cane and there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t singing along and doing the associated hand actions.

Isn’t it funny how you can’t remember how to do quadratic fractions from Year 11 but you can remember silly dances to songs from when you were 5?

After leaving the stage, the chorus of “Peter… Peter… Peter” was coming from the crowd, calling for the encore we all knew was coming, and Combe didn’t disappoint. He finished with three of his best known songs Newspaper Mama, Spaghetti Bolognaise and Juicy, Juicy Green Grass and a flurry of high-fives and hand shakes, before departing the stage telling the crowd to “Never grow up!”.

And from what we saw on Saturday night, I don’t think any of us are in a huge hurry to.