World Series-New Zealand Music Showcase.
Fur Patrol, Carly Binding, Stellar, Che Fu and King Kapisi at The St. James Auckland November 24th 2002
I first up was subjected to Carly Binding .. shes a good singer… but well… not really my thing. She had one song which I found very reminiscent of Mariah Carey. It was however nice to see her enjoying herself on stage, unphased by the big time music exectives upstairs watching over the performance. However, her set, was mostly un-memorable.
The Furs came on afterwards. By this time the St.James had filled out a bit more.
They opened the set with Fade Away, which soon had people rushing down the front to dance along. This song is awesome as a set opener.
There was a guy standing next to me who turned around and asked the girls on the other side of him who the band was. The girls replied, “You don’t deserve to be here if you don’t know. They are fur patrol and they rock.”
Next up was Little Heart. When Julia opens up her mouth to belt out the chorus, the audience stopped and looked up at her with wide eyes … “Just keep breaking you’re little heart…”
This was followed by two more new songs, both of which were nice and loud and very rockish, a style which the furs music has been tending towards since the release of the heavily pop saturated song Lydia.
Counting Upside Down was the most memorable song of the set, Not just cause its a great song, and is sublime to listen to live, but because just before the chorus, julias top, which was a white thing with a tie around the neck, came untied, she was wearing a black boob tube underneath. Of course in true style, she carried on singing while doing it back up. Then while she was standing close to her guitar amp during that cool feedback bit, she cracked up laughing.
At the end of the song, Julia yelled out asking something like “wheres my mother at times like this” then went on to reference her top which had come off and how her mother would say “you’re not going out of the house dressed like that.”
The last song, of their short but sweet set was Get Along. There was an excellent moment during this song, when Steve, Julia and Andrew all pulling off the same stereotypical rock stance. Proving yet again that Fur Patrol are so very rock and roll
after the Furs I watched King Kapisi who put on an average performance compared to other times I’d seen him play.Mainly due to having some technical problems, but Dj Logical managed to hold it together. His MC’s were a little silly at times though, giving the feeling that they were somewhat un-needed.
Then Stellar, who had the crowd jumping and singing along. I always have found them to be quite average, but last night they proved to me that they can really pull it off on stage. The highlight of their set was Bastard (what you do), in fact that song was stuck in my head all the rest of the night and this morning.
At the end of their set I decided it was time for me to go, as I had to catch the last boat home and if i missed it I would have had to spend the night wandering round the city-not fun.
so I didn’t see Che Fu, or Dave Dobbyn, both of which I would have loved to see due to my boat related time constraits.