THE SICK GO WALKABOUT: Sick Note get sporty

Doghouse, in da house!

We made our way down to the ‘Diff tonight to catch the (soon to be) legendary Sick Note. We went down early so we could grab 5 minutes with the band for a pre-gig interview with the band for the Iguana Website (I really must crack on and get that on line again!).

The Oracle (bass) and the Grinder (drums) are well known to us here at the Iguana, being valley boys that we have known since well back into the last century. Ironically they were no-where to be seen so we sat down with Doghouse (vocals) and Flappsandwich (mouse) who are much less familiar to us. The fact that we hardly know each other though was no real barrier as we hit it off quite quickly. Interviews with bands that have been around for a while and have 15 albums to talk about are much easier than newer bands without much of a history, but this little crowd have already been making waves and stirring up a bit of controversy so there was no shortage of things to talk about. Even when we were struggling and asked pretty mundane questions the answers were pretty comprehensive, on times surreal, always interesting. When I get around to writing the interview up in the next few weeks I am sure I will have more than enough material.

Who needs reality when you can phone in sick

The gig itself was a bit strange, it was in a pub that forms part of a chain of Australian themed sports bars, the walls were covered in murals of rugby players and I could imagine it normally being full students bolting pints of testosterone and lighting their own farts. I had never been in there before and was surprised to find out how big it was, with a large downstairs centred around a stage. It was quite a good little set up with a balcony available to get a birds eye view of the bands, although the acoustics were not that clever.

There were two support bands. The first band were to be quite honest completely unremarkable and drove me back upstairs to the bar; the second band, Steadler and Waldorf, were an improvement and I can imagine their brand of drum ‘n bass going down quite well in a club… but this was not a club and they were not really suited to a gig scenario. The whole thing was not helped by the fact that we had landed early to do the interview and it seemed like an eternity before The Note finally hit the stage.

The hours of standing around drinking shandy soon became a distant memory as Sick Note grabbed the night by the balls and shook the pub like voodoo witch doctor raising the dead on some tropical island. Techno is hard to carry off live but the deep tribal funk they pump out is on its own enough to catch your attention; add the magic of their own brand of video visuals and throw in some art house dancers to clutter up the stage and you have a stage show to rival a Paris burlesque.

The audience thinned out by the end of the night.... cos everyone was on stage!

The band had the audience bumping and grinding in no time, much to the bemusement of a couple of rugby heads that had wandered in by mistake. The number of dancers on stage slowly started growing, first three, then four, then five… and in what seemed a perfectly natural way almost the entire crowd was up on stage. One minute Doghouse was telling everyone to get on the dance floor and dance, the next thing he was telling everyone to get off the dance floor and on the stage. Yep, they is truly an interactive bunch these Sick Note characters. Expect to read more about them soon.