Here at the Kings Beach Tavern on a cold Friday night, I’ve paid my $10 and walked on through to catch the first band playing. The first vibe I got was that the place was dead - literally only a handful of people were there at this point, including one of the later-performing bands at a table watching on and enjoying a few cold bevvies.
Watching the first group and the first thing that came to mind was ‘The Vines’, but not as aggressive. I then asked the Sound Guy who the band on stage was, but he didn’t know, only that the boys were a fill-in group because original openers One Year Later had pulled out very late.
I move on, finding a guy that seemed to be really getting into their music and ask him if he knew who they were (he looked like he must have known them). Due to our proximity to the speakers, I couldn’t understand what he was saying. All I got was ‘Gay Vixen’. This seemed odd, so I smiled and nodded and used an expression on my face that said ‘oh that’s a cool name’, and walked away.
I found out later that their name is Gaelen Dickson. Works much better, don’t you think?
Firstly, these guys were a fill-in band with extremely late notice, so they notch up points there. It was very obvious that these guys were very new to the live scene, though. That said, they showed a very unique tone definition, where one of the guitars just sounded wrong at stages, but maybe that was just me. The vocalist, who was also one of the guitarists, was a bit on the quiet side, with an approach somewhat similar to that of Craig Nichols from The Vines. I was told that they all go to TAFE together, so they just started jamming one day and now here they are.
I do have to point out that the drummer was extremely talented and I could not put down any faults with his ability. He showed a nice, tight, clean style (which reminded me of Luke from Dead Letter Circus & Melodyssey’s technique).
They pulled out a few covers - House of the Rising Sun and Enter Sandman, with which they used a new vocalist to perform. Actually, this guy was freakishly very close to the vocal sound of the originals of both songs. They then went on to do some tracks with no bass and a different guitarist, which was interesting, but also good. Nicely done Gaelen Dickson, keep it up, you were entertaining.
Skywriter were up next. A few hiccups at the start with the lead singer’s guitar dropping out of tune, but this was soon sorted out. It didn’t take me long to start tapping my feet and nodding my head to the fast tempo riffs and the very Aussie sounds of this band. It actually took me back a few years, to the time of WA’s Jebediah and their tracks Harpoon, Animal, Leaving Home etc. Just as I was having these thoughts, some random came up, stood next to me for about a minute, and then asked what I thought. Just as I was telling him that they reminded me of Aussie pop/punk rockers, he butted in with ‘...Jebediah? They sound like Jebediah to me, hey?’. Glad to see I was on the right train of thought.
By this stage, Skywriter had done the hard, dirty work of pulling in some more heads - just when there about to finish. The crowd was roughly 60-strong by now, but I assumed that the masses of the Take Anthia army made up for at least 80% of the people in the room. And why not? I’m actually considering becoming one of them myself. Go to any Take Anthia show and you will see why.
I’m going to be as upfront with this as I can. Take Anthia ROCKED. THE. HOUSE. DOWN.
About three songs in and they pulled out a new track (which I managed to capture on video, but didn’t seem to get the name of it). I loved it - it was a fantastic new track (whatever it was called).
Then came the big ones - Ice, Two Hours Left, and my favourite Meet Me in the Mirror (all of which are rating pretty highly on the Triple J Unearthed Charts, by the way). Meet Me in the Mirror finished of the set, but oh no, the crowd wouldn’t take that for a finish. Sensing the crowd wanting more, frontman Pete came out and explained to the excited crowd, ‘ok, guys, we can only play one more’, and BAM, the fans went nuts. Take Anthia finished, but left the crowd still wanting more.
The crowd then got a bit unruly, so we called in the Police Crowd Control Unit so we could make a diversion to get Take Anthia off the stage (*didn’t really happen this way, but couldn’t hurt to through in a Rock’n’Roll fantasty, could it?)
After the set I managed to get an interview with the boys - Pete, James & Matt. It was a great interview, but, due to the amassed noise of the remaining pissheads interfering with the sound, the video didn’t turn out. Much apologies to the awesome Take Anthia boys, but we’ll try and get a better interview at a later day.
Wade
