corner hotel

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Sisters of Mercy cornered in Melbourne

They weren’t, of course. I spied just the one fan hovering by the stage exit, and he was fended off by the driver, and then waved off through the glass, clutching his LP as the English trio piled into their escape vehicle.

Inside Melbourne’s packed and venerable shed, The Corner, there were two, perhaps three people wearing white. One was Andrew Eldritch, lead singer and founder and main man of the Sisters of Mercy. Through the constant fog, the bald, sunglassed figure looked astronautical at times; sadly, the image was belied by the reality of the terry towling hoodie. This was rock ‘n’ roll in gym chic. This was NOT GOTH, okay?

The crowd was, largely, so corseted and coiffed, a delight to behold, the goths and the rockabillies and the rock hounds, the veteran fans and the newest generation flocking to see the UK legends roll out 90 minutes of classic not-goth rock. Hm, perhaps best not to write songs such as ‘Lucretia My Reflection’ — an absolute winner tonight, holding up one of the two encores — if you don’t want the children of the night to bulk out your fan base.

Kyla Ward reports from the front line!

Points to Eldritch, his wonderful guitarist and so-active bassist: they changed the set list from last week’s Auckland gig, even whacking the instrumental into the second encore. The hits were still there, of course: ‘More’, ‘Detonation Boulevard’, ‘Vision Thing’, ‘This Corrosion’, ‘Dominion/Mother Russia’, ‘Alice’, the closing ‘Temple of Love’, and others. Unknowns were there, too, moreso thank in NZ if feeble memory serves, allowing the chitter-chatter to rise. My advice, should you be so inclined as to attend this Thursday’s gig, is to get up close, where you can peer through the fog and catch some of the action, and perhaps lip read the lyrics you know so well. Because from the back, Eldritch was largely unintelligible save for those occasional lupine howls, those particularly enunciated choruses.

He was, however, compared to the Auckland outing, verily loquacious, even addressing a couple up the front, and exhorting attendance on Thursday for the band’s second and last sideshow outside the Soundwave festival.

Kudos to the Corner bar staff; have I ever been so quickly, efficiently and politely served at any live venue before?

All of which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy tonight’s gig. The Sisters are formative to me, comfort and mood music, and to hear them play, even in this thoroughly competent and enjoyable incarnation, is a delight. I like Eldritch’s onstage super-cool persona, I love the lights strobing out from the mist, I love the beats and the songs of decay and loss and displacement, the cynicism and world-weariness and the headbanging riffs. It’s rock ‘n’ roll to be lost in and taken away by and moved by. But yes, perhaps, live, best appreciated from up the front.


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Dr John in Australia

dr john, new orleans blues musician

Renowned New Orleans piano man Dr John brought some hoodoo to Melbourne last night.

Playing a packed house at the Corner Hotel, the 69-year-old, backed by the superb Lower 911 on bass (David Barard), drums (Herman “Roscoe” Earnest III) and guitar (Reynard Poche), cast a spell in this sideshow gig ahead of Byron Bay’s East Coast Blues and Roots Festival at the weekend.

John looked resplendent in purple suit and hat. There were skulls on his piano and organ, a little bit of bone-shaking during a voodoo tune, a necklace of what looked like alligator teeth. (Barard, who played a solo support slot, had a Mardi Gras throw hanging from his mic stand.) But the magic was in the music, a parade of swampy R&B/blues/funk/gospel that had many in the crowd moving in time in defiance of a couple of sound glitches.

John looked a little slow on his feet, but the voice was as strong and distinctive as ever, joined in places by the throaty growl of Barard. He has a particularly fetching way of saying “all right”, that Southern accent carrying the charm of New Orleans in two simple words. He didn’t have a lot to say, but when he did, he revealed a dry sense of humour that appealed to the audience, if the shouts, claps and chuckles were an indication.


He played for 90 minutes, with Right Place, Right Time in the mix, and a couple of covers I didn’t recognise but apparently one has been around since “eleventeen years after dog shit”.

The encore saw John return for a version of Let the Good Times Roll, taking up the guitar — he started his career as a guitarist before an injury to his hand saw him turn to the piano — to rock out his farewell.

I still haven’t worked out what the object hanging from his right ear is, or how he manages to keep his glasses attached to the top of his ears. But there’s no doubting the good doctor still has his mojo.

As an aside, I’m not sure the Corner was the ideal venue for this gig. The general admission sweat pen might suit the young’uns who don’t mind pushing up the front once the gig has started, but I felt sorry for the older people in the crowd — and there were plenty of them as you’d expect for a performer of this style and vintage — forced to stand for at least two hours in the hot crush. Being shouldered and having line-of-sight disrupted by latecomers and drink-bearers is, unfortunately, par for the course when you’re surrounded by rock pigs, but you have to wonder how the grandparents enjoyed their not-cheap concert from the floor as the humidity and body odour rose.