And oh boy, did the audience respond in kind. I'm aware of the critical pratfalls to be found in "reviewing the audience," and so I'll keep my grumpy old man tirade brief; but at some point in the show much of the front center of the crowd decided the band onstage was not Mudhoney but instead some shitty local punk band, and promptly began to push and shove their fellow concertgoers, making it almost impossible for me to concentrate on the music. Look, people, I'm not some kind of concert fascist - I realize that slam dancing has its place, and after being in the eye of the hurricane for Guitar Wolf last spring, I suppose I should have just been glad that no bottles were being thrown. But seriously, Mudhoney? Maybe if this was Seattle in 1988 - but Steve Turner was wearing a paisley shirt, for Christ's sake! Who moshes to a guy in a paisley shirt?
No matter. Ideological differences between myself and the rest of the crowd aside, Mudhoney certainly delivered the goods, and they did it with a lot more casual charm than a bunch of alleged "grunge godfathers" had any right to possess. Even when the concert (and music) was at its wildest, frontman Mark Arm in particular floated above it all with indifference, a wiseass smirk never far from his lips. And thanks in part to this delicious tension between the seemingly reserved band and the increasingly frenzied crowd, by the time they tore into a climactic version of "In 'n' Out of Grace," even I was beginning to understand the slam-dancing mentality. It was just vicious.
But it took a band who had been together for longer than many of the attendees had been alive in order to take the show once again to the next level. Radio Birdman, arguably the first punk rock group to form in Australia, took the stage last, and if anyone in the audience had their doubts about the band's continuing relevance, those doubts had evaporated long before the final chords of opener "Burn My Eye." Over the past few years, I've seen a lot of reunited old rockers come through these parts: Iggy & The Stooges, Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies, the New York Dolls, Gang of Four. And the common denominator among all of those bands is that they put on excellent shows, shows that stood up both to the performances of many prime current acts and to their own monolithic past reputations. Even amongst these hallowed names, however, Radio Birdman just might have been the best reunion act I've ever witnessed.
Article comments
1 - Jasper Borgman
I was at that show. Excellent and Accurate review..