So, Moomba was a lot of fun. I’m making an effort to collect my thoughts so that the three nights don’t all blur into one, but here goes.
The support band was The Go Set and they played a bunch of tunes with your typical rock/punk feel. The thing that was most notable about them was the efforts made by the band to still put on a good show and get people involved. The lead singer’s attempts to get the crowd dancing, to the point that he jumped off stage a few times to either dance or sing with the audience. Well done to you sir. I’d go see em again.
There was also the fact that they had bagpipes. That was good too. James Reyne even got onstage early with the guys to sing Long Way To The Top.
The main event started with Ross Wilson declaring that he’s going to sing three songs beginning with “C” before bursting into Come Back Again. The band are warm, hot in fact as Geoff Wells takes the first solo for the night and makes guitar playing look like light work. I look around at the audience. They’ve risked sunburn and possible rain to be there. Everyone is happy.
Ross changes gears and kicks it up a notch with Cool World. Haydn Meggitt seems to come into his own here, reminding me once again of what a fantastic drummer he is. Maybe it’s just that Cool World gives him more of a chance to fire up?
Come Said The Boy rounds off Ross’s mini set. The audience are clapping along and participating freely, rather than having to be prompted to and suddenly, Ross is introducing Joe Camilleri who comes out and plays an extended version of Hit And Run. What a great song. Joe’s style of writing and sax brings a whole new flavour to the set. He follows it with Harley and Rose, which seems to almost take things down a tempo, but it’s brought right back up again with Chained To The Wheel. People are dancing, it’s music to move to.
There’s another change. James Reyne comes put and plays Reckless. It’s just him and Brett Kingman and it feels very intimate and gentle. It seems like the best way to perform the song. Strangely, it just wouldn’t feel right live with a full band.
The next song is a complete contrast in tempo and mood – the very fast Fall Of Rome. James’s set finished up with a sing along during Errol, before he introduced Daryl Braithwaite.
Daryl started his set with As The Days Go By and by this time, the audience were more than willing for a sing along. He then followed it with One Summer – I think judging by the audience reaction, these might have been the “great classic hits” that the MC was referring to earlier. The set was neatly rounded off with a shorter live version of Horses. It was good to see how well behaved the crowd were as this song, believe it or not, can usually create mayhem on the dance floor. It’s a crowd favourite and suddenly you have a lot of people trying to get close. This time everyone was relaxed and well behaved.
How do you follow a song like Horses? Well, you get everyone back onstage, of course and that’s exactly what happened next.
Ross seemed to have tuning problems during Howzat, but thankfully there were already some very accomplished guitarists on stage. Joe played Shape I’m In and everyone sang along. James, who daryl dubbed “shameless” played Boys Light Up before Ross finished the night off with that other song written in 1971 – Eagle Rock.
In summary, the crowd were well behaved (the lack of alcohol may have had something todo with that), the all star band of Brett Kingman, David Campbell, Chris Bekker, Hadyn Meggitt, Mark Amato and Geoff Wells is a brilliant combination, James’s solo was interesting and it was nice to see some of the interaction between four very different artists on one stage. It was a great couple of nights all round and I don’t think it was any accident that figures for the Sunday night show were around 10,000.
Song of the day will be back tomorrow.
help me, calliope 