The Cherry Bar is an institution here in Melbourne, and for the past 4 years it has hosted Cherry Rock…an annual music festival held in the aptly named AC/DC Lane. I could easily fill this review with a list of bands that played on the day, which is my way of saying that it’s a pretty tough gig writing about a festival and any review seems to do such an event scant justice.
The crowds were down a bit on last year, perhaps because punters didn’t see any international names on the bill this time. Not even the promise of a ‘secret’ appearance by Slash could draw them in. I’m not openly patriotic, but it was a great thing to see that every band playing on the day was Australian, and to top that, all apart from one band were from Melbourne…To me this was even more of a draw card. The depth of talent that we have in this state is exciting. I guess most of us are used to mainstream media feeding us, (figuratively speaking of course) recycled rockers because they think that’s who we all want to hear, but it could be oh so interesting if the media would give more of these bands a go. We arrived just as ‘Mammoth Mammoth’ took the inside stage. They describe themselves as ‘…the loudest and the greatest band in the history of the world.’ I will attest to the loud part and they rocked out the Cherry with their blend of demonically driven sounds that, apparently, kill unicorns. Not many of us will be testing that theory so we can take it as a given until proven otherwise. They’re playing more gigs around Melbourne in the near future and I hope they ‘export’ their show to other states because they’re really worth a listen. Ash Grunwald was another highlight. Maybe he doesn’t need the publicity so much, but he’s a home-grown, surfer-boy-made-good muso. I wanted so much to hear ‘Skywriter’, which has a funky blues style and odd lyrics. Who else would think of writing a song about hijacking a skywriter? He’d better not take that one to the Middle East.
Back inside and my ears began to bleed, (almost literally) when Sean Ainsworth from The Fearless Vampire Killers plugged his Rickenbaker directly into the amp after a few technical difficulties. ‘Oh…so that’s what it sounds like’ I thought, just before deafness set in. Some would say that if the last sound you heard just before you became stone motherless deaf was the sound of one of those animals, then the memory of being part of the hearing world would be made so much better. Their stuff is to say the least, danceable, and we surely needed something to keep us on our feet by this stage of the day. The Bowers deserve a mention here too. They launched their album at The Cherry Bar way, way back…in March. A bit of a favourite with the crowd they have a definite 60’s influence and in a number of songs I could hear snippets of The Stones. Somewhere thrown into the mix was a nubile young lass with hula hoops. Not part of any band, just extra entertainment. She wore gold hot pants and a smile as she managed to hula all those hoops at once. She blew all my hula hooping scepticism away…Really she was good!
Probably I can’t get away without mentioning the headline act, Rose Tattoo. Some punters would barely remember them when they were really big. (No pun intended Angry.) They came on stage around nine and by this time we’d had our fill of bourbon, rum, beer and second hand spliff smoke. All this kinda fit the scene as these heroes of Australian rock appeared on stage looking like they’ve lived life really hard and partied harder. Angry sported his best ‘hard Yakka’ overalls and he was ready for work, serenading us with classics and ‘new stuff’ that’s only three years old…Well all things are relative. They left us on a rock high and brought home that longevity in this fickle industry is possible. Get out to Cherry Rock 2011 if you’re in this great and talent full town of mine this time next year.