Reviewed on Tuesday September 6
It’s a quiet Tuesday evening when The Grand Magoozi (AKA Susie Scurry) sneaks onstage – or at least, attempts to sneak onstage. Tonight’s headliner takes the opportunity to give Scurry a grandiose introduction, complete with a blaring Tina Turner number. It sets an upbeat tone for Scurry’s set, who goes on to charm with quaint, warm country songs that make up her debut album.
She also throws in two well-chosen covers in the form of Nico’s ‘These Days’ (with a little audience assistance so not to forget the words) and Anita Carter’s version of ‘Ring of Fire’, which rounds out the set with campfire levels of intimacy that is a delight to watch.
It’s followed by a presentation from Eric Isaacson, a Portland native that runs Mississippi Records and is in Australia to share footage from films shot by ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax. The tunes in the footage range from gospel blues and tambourine ensembles to body syncopation and dancing, all an attempt to document movements in music that the late Lomax believed to be going extinct. What could have killed the vibe in the room only draws the audience in further, as all prove mesmerised by what Lomax captured. Only seeing 12 minutes’ worth of the footage barely feels like enough.
It might just be a couple of hundred punters huddled into the surrounds of the Club, but it’s still a world away from what Darren Hanlon and his touring counterparts have experienced in the last month or so touring through rural, remote and regional Australia. Inbetween renditions of beloved numbers in his arsenal – ‘Electric Skeleton’, ‘Happiness Is A Chemical’ and a fan-requested ‘Punk’s Not Dead’ – Hanlon is eager to regale us of stories from the greater reaches of the country.
This includes getting rejected by a pub that only did correspondence via letters, playing ‘Wipeout’ ad nauseum to a room full of kids and the rising price of Chomp bars at petrol stations. It all seems a little silly on paper – and that’s kind of the point. Hanlon, joined at various intervals by drummer Holly Thomas, vocalist Shelley Short and even a returning Scurry, is an affable and charming storyteller both in and out of music. It’s nigh-on impossible to leave one of his shows without a grin on your face and a song in your head. Cheers, Daz.
