Saturday, July 16, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
THE FUCKIN GODOYS SHOW REVIEW - FALKIRK SCOTLAND - 2016 EURO TOUR
Radio Birdman: Warehouse, Falkirk- live review
Radio Birdman
Warehouse, Falkirk
June 25th 2016
Supported by The Fuckin’ Godoys
No, you haven’t stumbled onto The Daily Mash satire site. You read
that headline correctly- legendary Sydney proto-punk group Radio Birdman
just played a concert in rarely-celebrated Falkirk, the Scottish town
located in the no-man’s land between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
To be honest, even those of us who were there are still pinching
ourselves, and wondering if the gig really did happen, or perhaps was
some kind of fever-dream hallucination brought on by the calamitous
referendum result announced the preceding day.
Radio Birdman have always had terrible/brilliant timing. They formed
in Sydney around 1974, exactly the wrong time to be essaying a new brand
of Detroit-influenced high energy rock & roll, yet precisely the
right time to kick-start Australia’s punk scene, along with Brisbane’s
finest, The Saints.
The aptly-named Warehouse is a utilitarian building that normally
hosts club nights laden with cheap drinks promotions, perhaps explaining
the strict 10.00pm curfew for this gig. As I arrived in the venue’s
car park with two members of Glasgow’s veteran garage rock outfit The
Primevals, we couldn’t help observing that it looked like the kind of
place where Bobby Fuller met his untimely demise.
And yet…who was that skinny figure deep in earnest conversation by
the back door of the venue? None other than Rob Younger, frontman not
only of Radio Birdman, but also his own rigorously-drilled garage-rock
warriors, The New Christs.
The show kicked off just after 7.30pm with the unforgettable support
act, The Fuckin’ Godoys. Jack White may have indulged in playful
myth-making with the brother-sister conceit of early White Stripes, but
there was no mistaking the shared DNA of the Godoy twins, Art and Steve.
Very few audience members would have known about the Godoys’ long
history of collaboration with Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek. When the
twins opened their set with the Ramones-like ‘Let’s Go’ from the Glass
Eye World album that they recorded with Tek under the band name The
Golden Breed, most of the audience took an involuntary strep backwards,
perhaps wondering if these ebullient maniacs with matching tops,
trainers and sleeve tattoos were about to launch an inverse stage
invasion.
With a history as pro-skaters and
tattoo artists, the Godoys could never be described as shy and retiring,
and their bellowed vocals were of the football terrace variety so
beloved of Sham 69 and The Skids.
The Dunfermline group were name-checked by the Godoys, along with The
Rezillos, the Edinburgh band who were scheduled to share a bill with
Radio Birdman on their first, ill-fated trip to these isles, back in the
70s.
The Godoys’ idiosyncratic instrumentation- Steve’s energetic
surf-punk drums driving Art’s chorused 12 string Di Pinto electric- is a
departure from the blues-rock template of the current glut of guitar
& drums duos, and there was no doubting that classic 70s Brit-Punk
is their main inspiration.
‘Glass Eye World’ closed the twins’ high-energy set, which would
surely go down a storm at the UK’s main punk festival, Rebellion.
Due to the strict 10.00pm curfew, Radio Birdman were on-stage at 8.30pm, opening with the atmospheric ‘Crying Sun’, the song’s Stonesy swagger driven by a hard-grooving rhythm section that characterises the band’s current line-up.
With The New Christs’ Dave Kettley taking up Chris Masuak’s former
role as the foil to Deniz’s Ann Arbor-schooled guitar flurries, there
was more of an emphasis on the tightly-locked backline. It occurred to
me that if the Stooges could have been the American Stones, then perhaps
Radio Birdman had the potential to fulfil a similar role in ‘Detroit
South’.
‘Smith & Wesson Blues’ followed, Rob Younger moving with the
lithe grace of Jagger while making the connection with Jim Morrison
vocally. The frontman was in good humour, cheerily chastising the
Falkirk crowd for not dancing (“I know there’s a ‘flu going around, but
all the same…”) before the six-piece tipped into the molten chaos of
‘Descent Into the Maelstrom’, and the crowd erupted.
Kettley’s playing was confident and disciplined throughout, and the
guitarist essayed a fine solo on the apposite ‘We’ve Come So Far’, a
‘Zeno Beach’ selection that grew wings in the live context.
Keyboardist Pip Hoyle displayed his sublime piano skills on ‘Man with
the Golden Helmet’, despite a less-than-perfect sound mix that provoked
Tek to shoot metaphorical daggers at the road crew.
Bassist Jim Dickson is a veteran of the Australian underground, and
tonight he pummelled his worn-in ’67 Fender Precision like his life
depended on it, a towering presence on the right of the stage, locking
in tight with Nik Rieth’s propulsive drumming.
As for Deniz Tek, the wiry Michigan-raised guitarist of Turkish
descent was an intense presence throughout, serving up his trademark
blend of Detroit rock, surf twang and Stones strut while looking
impossibly youthful for a man with six decades on the clock.
We got all the classics- ‘What Gives’, ‘i-94’, ‘Do the Pop’, ‘Hand of
Law’, ‘Aloha, Steve and Danno’, ‘More Fun’ and ‘New Race’, plus a
surprise cover of Magazine’s ‘Shot by Both Sides’ that went down a storm
with the enthusiastic audience. ‘Anglo Girl Desire’ and ‘Alone in the
Endzone’ were also highlights, while ‘Hand of Law’ included a snippet of
The Chantays’ ‘Pipeline’.
With typical perversity, Radio Birdman had arrived in Scotland in the
most challenging of circumstances, playing an unglamorous venue in an
unusual location, on a night when thunderstorms were forecast and public
transport was non-existent due to a rail dispute.
And then there was the small matter of the country having been
plunged into abject despair following a catastrophic referendum result
which will almost certainly result in the break-up of the UK. It’s
probably fair to say that the portents were not good.
Yet somehow, it all made sense. The Warehouse has put itself on the
map by hosting such an influential act, and the plucky souls who made
the effort to attend were rewarded with a barn-storming show that none
of us will ever forget. The descent into the maelstrom may have just
begun, but we emerged from the Warehouse with spirits raised,
mercifully out of our minds on a Saturday night.
~
Main image by Gus Ironside. Hoyle/Kettley/Younger image and Deniz Tek image by Lindsay Hutton, used with kind permission.
All words by Gus Ironside, whose Louder Than War archive can be found here.
YEH HUP!
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