Powderfinger
Sunshine Coast & Brisbane, 16 July 1999
by Brendan Hemmings (Fatman)

Howdy folks,

Well, I guess now's as good as any time to start filling the list with thoughts and impressions of the current P2K festivities (thanks for the subtle hint Jono!). I managed to get myself to (last night's) Friday night gig at the Sunshine Coast and I type to you now, having just returned from the Saturday night gig here in PF's home town of Brisvegas. Both gigs have been absolute crackers :-)

Musically, you'll be hearing 17 songs from the boys (assuming there's no change to the set for preceding gigs). The majority of the songs have been from Internationalist (in fact 9 of the 13 on the album) and 4 from Double Allergic, that leaves you with 4 others. There's a B sider from the Already

Gone single: "Control Freak", one from Parables: "Sink Low", the Two Hands cracker: "These Days" and of course a PF gig wouldn't be complete without a cover - this time it's David Bowie's "Sorrow". The complete listing is as follows:

Don't Wanna Be Left Out (Int.)
Take Me In (DA)
Living Type (DA)
Day You Come (Int.)
Already Gone (Int.)
Control Freak (B from Already Gone Single)
Give (DA)
D.A.F. (DA)
Private Man (Int.)
These Days (Two Hands Soundtrack.)
Sink Low (Parables)
Celebrity Head (Int.)
Good-Day Ray (Int.)
Passenger (Int.)
--Encore break--
Over My Head (Int.)
Cover: Sorrow (Originally David Bowie)
Pick You Up (Int.)

Those of you who have heard of the Live version of "Good Day Ray" will be familiar with it's presentation at P2K. The song is exposed to a large instrumental extending the song an additional three minutes with some of Bernie's quieter vocals and finishes with an additional chorus (just when you thought the song has finished, it comes back at ya).

The traditional request for audience participation was requested for "Private Man" with Bernie encouraging the usual "warm-up" as the song commences. Equated Econodog clappers out there will of course understand that the "warm-up" is (by definition) a warm up and not an open invitation to clap yourself senseless during the first verse of "Private Man". Bernie's "OK, stop now" is a guaranteed line and is certainly required to prompt those keen clappers to, well, yeah, stop now.

You will also be encouraged to go an "Oy - Oy - Oy - Oy" just before the chorus of "Celebrity Head". Those of you keen to go all out for "Pogo Style" will be sadly disappointed, so make the most of Celebrity - it seems to have substituted Pogo.

Dz has a crack at his solo "Over My Head". You'll get that first up in the encore. He does the complete song (inclusive of a couple of crack-ups) without any support from the other guys until right at the end of the song. I guess on a critical note, it would have been nice to hear "Hindly Street" and a couple of older tracks, but overall I'm not complaining.

Attendance has been in form. The Sunshine Coast gig was held at the Discovery Beach Hotel, Marcoola (near the airport). 1200 tickets were pre-sold and there were 200 sold at the door. The line up outside was chaos and inside the venue was tightly filled. Acoustically, the venue sounded shithouse. Consider PF playing in your schools undercroft - that's basically like where they played. Mosh goers were satisfied with the iron rafters that were located above the mosh pit. Quite a few punters spent a good percentage of their time hanging from the rafters, looking around upside down, kicking people in the head and crawling along the beams from one corner of the mosh to the other.

The Brisbane gig was held on the forecourt of the Cultural Center, adjacent to South Bank Park Lands on the Brisbane River. They played as part of the Stage X festival, Five to Midnight, where five bands played to Midnight. Of course PF were headlining. The gig was filled with weird light displays and strange arty type stuff. It was an all ages gig with a licensed area for those on the turps.

To date, both gigs have accommodated the free-loaders. Quite a few jumped the fence at Marcoola and people could see reasonably well from River Bank at Brisbane. Not that I'm suggesting that you do free-load, but at least you can't use money as an excuse to not going!

On the merchandise front, there's something like two t-shirts priced at $25 each and a basket ball shirt available for $30. You can also buy a beanie (AKA beaneenie) for $20.

Anyway, that's about it from this little 'dog. I've taken about 75 photos so far and they'll be posted on the WWW for your viewing pleasure around Thursday 22/07. I'll also be including some that I will be taking at Byron on Tuesday night - can't wait for that one! So I guess that gives you a bit of an idea what your in for and before you go to P2K, don't forget to have a look at the pic's at www.ozemail.com.au/~econodog.

Picture taken by Brendan Hemmings at the gig.