Presented by Feel Presents
@ Idolize Spiegeltent, Garden of Unearthly Delights
SATURDAY 3 March (one show only)
Sometime around 2002, when my poxy face refused to form a smile and my answers to any adult questioning were monosyllabic, my parents presented me with a copy of (I’m) Stranded by seminal Australian punk/post-punk band, The Saints. Maybe it’s because the album was released in 1977, maybe because it came with parental recommendation, but I gave it a cursory listen, grunted that I didn’t like it, and slouched back into my room.
But later, out of earshot, I played it again, and again, and again. I stared at the cover — four morose-looking dudes in high-waisted jeans, leaning against a graffitied wall — and read the sparse liner notes. It was then that I came across the name Ed Kuepper.
Over time the name disappeared into the recesses of my brain, covered by swathes of useless information, its light dulled by quickly deteriorating synapses. But perusing the Fringe guide, I stumbled on the name once more, discovering that Kuepper was to perform one show as part of the Fringe. Partly out of nostalgia, partly out of a desire to investigate his post-Saints back-catalogue, I arranged some tickets, and with my brain chemicals having levelled somewhat from my tumultuous teenage years, brought my father along.
We entered the Idolize Spiegeltent, shuffling amidst a throng of beaming baby-boomers, clearly excited by the prospect of a seated show. As we waited for the gig to start I craned my head over those in front of me to get a look at the stage set-up. As primary songwriter and guitarist for The Saints, Kuepper helped define punk-rock guitar, thrashing distorted power-chords into cathartic, fist-pumping anthems. Without The Saints’ influence, modern-day ‘groundbreaking’ bands like Eddy Current Suppression Ring, would be staring at their instruments and scratching their heads. So I was somewhat surprised to see a pristine acoustic guitar as his axe-of-choice. Surely he hadn’t mellowed in his steady march towards old age? Surely he wasn’t going to come out and serenade us with a shiny-eyed ballad?
My fear of boring simplicity was allayed somewhat with his first few words to the crowd. As he stepped up on stage an addled punter, evidently still riding the psychedelic wave of his youth, called out from the back; “How stoned are ya?” Kuepper walked slowly to the mic. “In the biblical sense?”, he asked. Backed by Mark Dawson, (formerly the drummer of two other Kuepper projects, The Aints and The Apartments) Kuepper launched into a rolling, darkly evocative song, the open tuning on his guitar filling the domed tent with a rumbling drone. I needn’t have worried. Though nothing like The Saints, these were not the songs of a former-trailblazer settling for the beaten track, the easy way out. Each piece fit perfectly with the others, creating a spooky ambience, somewhat reminiscent of Nick Cave’s oeuvre, but more restrained, without the Old Testament bombast.
The crowd convulsed in their padded seats, heads shaking furiously to the beat. When the tempo slowed, eyes closed, faces cast up in rapture. At some point I stopped watching them, concentrating on the two men on stage.
Musically, the duo wrung all manner of sounds from their minimalist setup, cleverly embellishing the pieces with off-the-cuff improvisation and dynamic interplay between the two instruments. Drummer Dawson demonstrated his versatility on the kit, scratching a fork across the ride cymbal to produce an ambient creak, deftly handling mallet and stick swaps, reacting instantly to Kuepper’s flourishes, even pounding his hands against the skins, mimicking the percussive sound of bongos. Despite my earlier worries, Kuepper’s guitar work remained cleverly innovative, treading the fine line between a cohesive sound, and a varied delivery throughout the show.
As my father and I shuffled out an hour later, everyone around us nattering excitedly, he turned to me. “What did you reckon?”, he asked. “Fantastic”, I answered, trisyllabically.
