This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

DZ @ The Birmingham Hotel, Melbourne 17-09-09

Went and caught a couple of shows when I was working down in Melbourne in September, including DZ‘s Thursday night gig at the Birmingham Hotel on Johnston Street.  It’s always interesting to see how well Brisbane bands do when they go out of town.  For a while it looked like it might be a really tiny audience in attendence but by the time they started there was a reasonable crowd.

A couple of Melbourne bands supported; Mother & Father and Sharpie Crows.  My initial reaction to Sharpie Crows was that they sounded really awful but as their set went on I started to really like them; like a cross between Nick Cave and PIL, both of which are acquired tastes so they did pretty well to achieve that over the course of maybe 30 minutes.

The main support was the really terribly named Mother & Father.  The singer dressed like Kurt Cobain, had the same haircut as Kurt Cobain, had the same onstage mannerisms as Kurt Cobain, played a Fender Jaguar (like Kurt Cobain), sang like Kurt Cobain and the band sounded like Nirvana, with songs being a mix of loud distorted sections and quieter chourus-ed guitars.  I guess some people are really hanging their hopes on the grunge revival really taking off.

Unfortunately DZ didn’t bring the strobe light with them in their luggage, something that really adds to the enjoyment of watching their performance.  They play the standard set that they’ve been playing in Brisbane and go down well with the assembled crowd.  They also help their cause by buying a few jugs of beer to entice the audience to move forward to nearer the stage; a stroke of genius and something I can’t remember seeing before, despite the ongoing reluctance of audiences everywhere to stand anywhere near the front.

The show is the launch for their debut EP, DZ Ruined My Life and there’s a little merch display on the table by the door.  So it’s annoying to find at the end of the gig that whoever was manning the door/merch had already given up and packed up.  Surely the optimal time to get punters to part with their cash is straight after the show?  Writing this blog five months later in mid-February I still haven’t managed to get a copy of the EP; I keep checking in Brisbane’s record shops but to no avail.  So if anyone can point me in the right direction I’d greatfully appreciate it.

A few more photos on Flickr.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 7:13 pm. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with Birmingham Hotel, DZ, Justin Edwards, Melbourne, Sony a700. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.