polaroids of androids

The Grates + Yves Klein Blue + Sacred Stereos + Sui Zhen @ Annandale Hotel - 19/12/2007

Eleven minutes after I got home last night 94% of those that attended the show jumped onto their MySpace blogs and posted loving messages about the incredible show they had just witnessed:

I just went and saw this band called the greats. They were just that. LOL.

Grates rocked. Patience is sooo fucking hot I want to fuck her. That birthmark is hot too. I would fuck that too.

The Jager girls were hawwwwt.

Mannn I was soooo drunk. Annandale is the best place ever. If I could fuck a venue that would be it.

Our relationship with the Annandale Hotel has been more than a little bit rocky as of late. The general dickhead clientele that the place seems to be a magnet for, the over-the-top Jagermeister sponsorship, the continual poor sound and the fact that they seem to find it okay to oversell events to the point of it being painfully overcrowded have all been key factors of us slowly turning against the venue. For every enjoyable moment (such as Surf City performing on the small stage back in August) there is five or so painfully bad times where we have ended up hating the band that performed purely based on the ill-feeling that their Annandale show left with us.

Last night was almost as painful as it gets.

Firstly, we somehow ended up near the front for The Grates. Having not seen them for what seems like forever and still having fond memories of them performing inside an old dodgem car carousel at Luna Park around three years ago I was happy with the key spot, thinking I would be able to get a lovely view of 'the action'. Moments before the band was to appear on stage someone opened up The Sloppy Drunk Chick Gate and the whole area was flooded with slutty dressed girls spilling drinks and incoherently yelling out important phrases such as 'whooo' and 'yeaaahhh'.

The worst thing is I find it hard to seperate a band from a performance even when ultimately there are so many things that are out of their control. The Grates seemed in fine form last night, ripping through a series of well-known favourites along with a whole bunch of new songs. Unfortunately, the choice I was faced with was to either stand in a good spot where they sounded okay and deal with the continual dickhead factor or stand at the back where it was peaceful but the band sounded similar to a german shephard being repeatedly beaten with a sub woofer.

I can't say a lot about the other bands on show last night. Yves Klein Blue were entertaining and definately talented but seem to force out the emotion and rock moves a little bit too much. They also sounded very British, which made their pop-rock sound a lot harder to get into. That said, they did appear to battle continual technical problems throughout their set and when everything was going right they accessed a whole new dimension to their sound. This is probably enough to bookmark them as a band to check out again next time they are in town.

On the smaller stage we were (apparently) treated to the two best bands from the Wednesday night Jager Uprising series - The Sacred Stereos and Sui Zhen. The Sacred Stereos were able to recycle every successful rock cliche into their short 30 minute set while Sui Zhen, although fairly engaging at high points, were just too talkative between songs and didn't ever seem to completely grab their audience.

I probably shouldn't have expected anything else from the factors involved. A commercially successful group mixed with a continually unfriendly venue was always going to be a terrible mix. I went with optimism but came home pissed off, covered in beer and with very little faith in humanity.