THE WHITLAMS
Coffs Harbour Yacht Club, NSW
27 December 1999
by Chay [the webmaster]

Cost: Free (if you watch from the other side of the fence he he he), otherwise $27.

Seeming as there were very limited underage tickets to one of the few decent gigs we ever have in Coffs Harbour, and the fact that you needed a thirty year old with you to get in, and the fact that tickets were $27 each, it made it awfully hard to get in legally... So we decided to just cruise down there and see what the view was like from outside. It was fantastic! We could half see through the fence, but we could see over it anyway. Plus we could hear it perfectly - we were only a metre away from a lot of the paying people. There was a small crowd of probably a couple of dozen non-paying people outside where we were.

The Whitlams opened their set with 'Melbourne' of course. They played favourites off all their four albums, including 'Gough' from 'Introducting The Whitlams', and "possibly The Whitlams silliest song" - 'I Make Hamburgers' from 'Undeniably The Whitlams', which was a real crowd pleaser. Other songs I can remember they played are 'Make the World Safe', 'Thankyou', 'Chunky Chunky Air Guitar', 'Pretty As You', 'You Gotta Love This City', 'Blow Up The Pokies', and a couple of other songs off the new album. Off 'Eternal Nightcap' I think they played all three of the 'Charlie' songs, as well as 'Melbourne', 'You Sound Like Louis Burdette', and 'Band In Every Corner', as well as one or two others. They buggered up Louis Burdette and had to start again with the first chorus.

Their set went for about an hour and a quarter, but then they came back on and Tim said "We'd love to play a couple more". So they did. By this time of the night security was a bit slacker so we slipped around the fence and went into the Big Top tent, where they were playing, for a couple of songs.

The Whitlams are always fantastic live. If you haven't seen them yet you HAVE TO! I've only seen them once before - at Homebake. It's hard to say which gig was better - they didn't have the stuff off their new album when I first saw them, and this time it was a smaller gig too, with probably only a couple of thousand people.

When the Whitlams finished their encore we went around the back and saw the guys out in their tent. We went around the side and tried yelling out to Tim as he was walking past, but then we realised that their was a huge glaring light shining in his face from our direction so he couldn't see a thing, so we went around the other side and waited for him to come back. We then yelled out again and he was kind enough to come over and sign my 'Love This City' CD, as well as some other people's ticket stubs and stuff. Seems like a great guy. It's not every day I get to meat a celebrity like that. :-)

All over it was a great night. Would have been better if I was a year older and could actually get in there properly, but I didn't think there was any real need as we could see and hear perfectly from outside - plus we had seats outside, unlike everybody else inside hehe.