The Datsuns at the Gaelic Club, Surry Hills, 18 January
According to the booking agent this gig was outselling the Queens of the Stone Age, in town for the Big Day Out and like most of those bands doing a few shows on the side.
That Sydneysiders are rocking up to The Datsuns (nobody here goes anywhere, they “rock up”) is due largely to the huge airplay they are getting on the ABC's Triple J, which is playing at least three songs on rotation off the Datsun’s new album.
It is also a sign of the vibrancy of the Sydney live music scene. These weren’t crusty 80s veterans queueing, but teens and twenties hungry for great live music.
Ad-free Triple J slays the commercial stations in the ratings here and plays huge quantities of Aussie music. In fact it probably does more to support New Zealand music than any commercial NZ station. The D4 and others are getting good time too.
As to the show itself, suffice to say it was great. After a daytime high of 35 degrees the venue sweltered. The Datsuns are great old fashioned rock entertainers with a brace of good numbers and huge confidence. When they put their guitars aside to perform Harmonic Generator, drenched in sweat after only a couple of numbers, it was an audacious and entirely successful moment. The band has real presence and gets a well-earned bonus point for great use of the hair.
Unless Auckland has changed drastically since I left two years ago, The Datsuns may have got gigs at the King's Arms (bless it), under protest from the neighbours of course, and have probably had to survive without any significant airplay, except on student radio. It’s no surprise they had to go to the UK to get discovered at home and win whatever reluctant programming they are now receiving from witless commercial radio.
When we got home we turned on Rage, all night music TV, again courtesy of the ABC. Have a look at their programming list for the coming week.
I couldn’t help think of Max TV, of Neil Roberts, of the promise of Great New Zealand television, of MTVs well-deserved failure and the local music desert left behind. RIP Neil.