BEN LEE, GERLING, MINIMUM CHIPS
The Metro, Sydney, 1st May 1999
by Leigh Tran

much has been said about the potential of ben lee, which is supposed to equal his affinity for self promotion. you may call him a wanker, particularly for his statement that his current album, breathing tornados, is the greatest australian release yet, but there was no denying on this night, that ben lee has talent. a knack for a hook and lyrical quality that to me seems in the same vein as the master himself, mr tim rogers. but more about ben later.

the night started off pretty well, my friend and i arrived midway through Minimum Chip's set. musically they seemed a bit all over the place, a band consisting of bass, drums (both very rockin in their own right) and keys which i thought set them back, in its uses. at one stage they were well-getting into it, with an instrumental rock pop melody that seems to flourish in sydney. but just as we were getting into this song, they put some silly keyboard noises, attempts at electronic fusion, which just ruined it for me. and that basically characterised most of what i heard from this band (apologies for lack of track names, but i know nothing of them...perhaps that is why i'm a little critical)

on the other hand, came gerling who just blew my mind. the gig itself was already good value, being $18 at a venue like the metro, but gerling proved more than fabulous than i already thought they were and well worth the $18 alone. in fact, as i told my friend i could've left there and then, completely happy. i admit, i've been wanting to see gerling for ages, having had to cancel seeing them play with the avalanches at the globe previously, so i was well up for them. stage-presence should be their middle name. from the start with spielberg alone in the shadows and doing this 'praise the lord' action with his arms to spielberg and tyler (bourke) bopping away like there's no tomorrow during their songs, they're delightful to watch. it actually reminds me of seeing the avalanches live, very much the showmen and conscious their *act*.  and they are so cute! (okay before u boys start rolling yer eyes, i dont mean it in a sexual way...although...LOL. no i mean that with their school shirts and backpacks on, and being so young looking, and with their jerky little dances, they are just so very cute. :) sydney people might understand gerling's look in the context of somewhere like kookies, at 77)

these guys pulled off what i think minimum chips were trying to achieve with the fusion of guitars and electronica. not only in their tracks, but also in the set list, gerling's performance was varied, involving and stimulating. [memorable moment #1: a hole solo by spielberg! i forget the name but its the famous one off live through this..] they basically played one track of guitar power pop, and then they all ran out to their mixers and dat machines and got into more of the electic, experimental electronic forms, which i think a fair bit of the crowd got into which is always nice to see, and then switched back to guitars again. they even had a light drum n bass track which i loved. of course crowd favourites were death to the apple gerls (and the crowd supplied backing vocals) and their "french house" track (spielberg's words not mine!) enter space capsule, the last song and the one that i had been hanging out to hear since i bought the tix. (i'm also pretty sure they played the more ambient, spaced out album version of space capsule early on in the set as well as the josh abrahams remix)

by the time ben lee got to the stage at 11, the crowd were well and truly up for it. both Friday and saturday's shows were sold out, so it was obviously an appreciative audience, who basically rushed the stage when the lights went down. crikey at one stage, we at the front thought it was going to be like a mosh pit...but that didnt happen till nothing really matters. :)

to see ben lee for the first time is eye-opening! okay everyone knows he's small right? but shit, the guy was like...tiny. but small tho he may be, his persona basically precedes his physical being. whereas gerling work hard to create their stage personality with the clothes (to paraphrase juice magazine, the scientologists-meets-school boy look), the mask and the dancing, the presence of mr lee (he's not my brother!! hahah soz...silly joke..) is tangible. as soon as he set foot on the stage, he had the crowd mesmerised (well the part of crowd that could see or hear him...big gripe no.1). for me to say this about him is a big thing, because i still remain ambivalent about ben lee, the persona. whilst he plays beautifully crafted pop music, the tag of him being a wanker clouds my judgement slighty. (i mean, if quan from the gurg comes out and says something about him, you've got to take notice)

with the type of music that he plays, the ben lee show could've gone one of two ways, either intimate or big sounding. at this, he tried to combine both, alternating between rockin on and taking it easy. but i believe with a venue like the metro, which is huge, trying to get that intimate feel was extremely difficult. in addition to the fact that the metro of late has had very poor vocal quality (re: the living end, on the save the day tour. i wrote in to their message board the day after to complain that at times, i could barely hear chris cheneys' vocals despite being at the very front), ben lee himself sang at times in this incredibly soft, bordering on this incomprehensible, barely audible noise. and that was what it was like to us from the second row. imagine how it would've been for people way up in the back, up higher than stage level as well. singing one of his songs, solo with his acoustic guitar, in the spotlight was meant to be a special moment. but instead it turned into an awkward moment, with people "sshh"-ing each other and ben eventually pleading with the crowd to keep it down. (i guess it would've been a nice ego deflator! LOL)

however you couldnt really blame the back of the crowd for losing interest at some point, what with ben's barely audible singing (muttering and very soft) and stage antics. i dont know whether this was contrived or not, but at one stage he got so flurried and so caught up in the moment, that he became entangled in the mic cord and pulled down the mic stand, and basically needed the roadie guy to come on and free him. but all the guy did was take the mic out of the stand, which ben then cradled on his chin and basically doubled over on the floor, and continued to play his guitar and sing hunched over. okay this would've been hard to enough to see in the 4th row, let alone the back, so i can only presume that the back crowd must have been a bit perplexed.

he started off the set with a quick, slighty abrasive version of tornados (my fave track). perhaps he needed time to settle in. nothing really matters (soz if i have mistaken the title but y'all know what i mean) followed not long after, which the crowd got into well, and most of the set came off the current album and was well known by the crowd. [memorable moment #2: he surprised us in his first solo piece with a rendition of you am i's heavy heart, which the crowd immediately warmed to]. talking to the crowd, he seemed quite genuine, when he thanked us profusely for coming along (altho i suspect we may owe this in part to sarcasm gone wrong perhaps? it started off when a gerl behind me asked him if he missed *us* and he winced and said "oh yeh" like it was so obvious that he was above it all. but then he turned around and said something like "thankyou *so* much for coming along" which he kept repeating) he also had this habit of looking into the crowd as if he was seeing someone, as opposed to the often blank stares in other gigs, and this resulted it in being quite personal, much to the delight of the drunk chicks behind me.

most of the songs were performed fairly true to their recorded versions with his band also providing the sampled and the electronic elements as well. (unlike gerling who didnt adhere to their tracks in the original form) i considered it a bit of a gip that there was no encore tho. he left the stage and that was it. he really did leave. LOL incidently cigarettes will kill you was not the last track played, (tho somewhere at the end) but he ended the set with a solo piece, whose title i forget but which is the last on the album and goes something like "teach me to sleepwalk, there's nothing i want more..." (which i guess contributed to me waiting for something more before i went home!)

personally i would have liked to see ben lee play at a more intimate venue, like the basement, becoz for what he was trying to achieve with the acoustic solo pieces would have been fabulous there. but obvious numbers and time contraints meant that a degree of atmosphere was lost, but replaced with a feeling of being very close to a whole lot of strangers appreciating ben lee. (it was a bit hairy at one stage, when the drunk chicks behind me decided to start a mini-mosh. um yeh violence at a ben lee concert...er okay!)

anyway on the whole it was a good gig, becoz i got to see gerling, and ben lee live at value for money. (that was a big factor...i dont think i wouldnt have appreciated it as much if i had paid $40). as for the guy himself, i can see why his erm *healthy* ego would have developed. he has some really nice, easy listening tunes and his ability to craft a catchy, yet quite subtle hook is already evident. a review of his album by toby creswell from juice said something like it might not be the greatest album ever made but it showed the potential that ben lee had to achieve that later on, and i think the same could be said for his live act. it may not have been the best that i have seen, but it certainly has the promise.