Live review: The Screaming Jets, The Tea Party and ScaryMother at Waves, Wollongong, Sunday December 26 1993
By STEVE MASCORD
THE Tea Party won’t go down in history as the loudest band to visit Australia in the last 12 months, nor the most surprising or most hyped. But they will certainly be up there with the most intriguing and, without doubt, the most polite.
“This is a song of our new album. You haven’t heard of us. We have a lot to prove. We hope you like it,” singer/ guitarist Jeff Martin announces unassumingly at the beginning of the Canadians’ set, with the sun still blazing outside.
The “Jim Morrison sings for Led Zeppelin” comparisons may be onerous, but you can’t deny their validity after seeing the Tea Party live.
But the fact is, although their songs drag on and are more often than not intended to be epics, they still don’t seem self-indulgent.
Perhaps it’s Martin’s politeness, but tonight’s crowd – mostly made up of those who prefer three-and-a-half minute hard rock – embrace these Canucks warmly. And the likes of “The River” stand on their own as highly impressive pieces of rock music.
Remarkably, though, technical hitches resulted in the power trio managing to squeeze just three tracks into a 45 minute set which ended up being about as representative of them as a video clip would be.
It is true that Scarymother no longer sound like Pearl Jam or Faith No More – if they ever did. But that does not mean they are necessarily better.
Unfortunately, their new material appears very samey and to the disaffected ear their uncanny ability to fill a room with a wall of sound loses its novelty after 15 minutes. Songs like the excellent “Manliew” are tacked onto the end of the set when instead they should be slotted somewhere in the middle to break up the unceasing keyboard-soaked aural overkill.
Yes, musically and visually there is something very dramatic and compelling about Scarymother live.
But they must lighten up a bit and look up diversity in their Macquarie.
There is a perception that the Screaming Jets’ “golden era” was immediately before the release of their first album; certainly that’s when they were subjected to the greatest degree of hype.
But tonight, the Screaming Jets were as spellbinding as I can remember them. With axe-man extraordinaire Jimi the Human filling in for an ill Richard Lara, they covered the Waves stage like it was the Yankee Stadium. “Tunnel”, “Better” and “FRC” were highlights, with singer David Gleeson dropping the gay jokes without ever taking the risk of being tasteful.
The Jets also debuted a new song, the name of which I can’t recall (honesty’s best), and have certainly not been mellowed by the success of “Shiver”. If the Screaming Jets are yesterday’s heroes, no-one’s told them.
Оh, and l’m sure you’d be disappointed if we didn’t offer a few fresh gems from that great rock ‘n’ roll sage, Mr D. Gleeson.
First the i-shirt: “Only Users Lose Drugs”.
Then the safe sex advice: “A load in a tissue is a load off your mind”.
The nostalgia: “What ever happened to the word moot?”
This story appeared in On The Street on January 18, 1994
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