Heat by Rob O’Neill

Major at the Excelsior, Surry Hills, 31 January

Major are very tight musically, energetic, write good songs, but somehow still don’t quite cut it. There’s something missing.

Very much in the mould of You Am I, they deliver driving, energetic pop with a strong guitar attack and a bit of three-part harmony.

With the Excelsior about a third full, the crowd like this reviewer, was appreciative but hardly blown away.

So what went wrong? Let’s talk about stage presence first. There was a lot of energy up there, but also a bit of shallow posing – not too much, just a bit. Great bands can get away with this because of their confidence and, maybe, the awe they are held in. These moves can also be delivered a bit ironically, as the Datsuns do.

But when Major struck a pose it looked like a pose. Some of the repartee fell flat as well. Every time something on stage fails to ring true a band loses a little bit of momentum and that happened too often for Major last Friday.

While the power pop was definitely there, I also wonder if Major has a core of really strong songs. Any pop group needs great songs, but there were few standouts and certainly nothing ringing in my head on the way home – the way a host of You Am I numbers would.

Major have just released their second EP, read about it here.

My teenager has arrived and lost no time in getting grumpy and laying on a few lectures about my lifestyle. Sure, she seems to be trying, but we both settled fast into our usual prickly relationship.

Without wanting to bore you with domestic trivia, it started night one, Tuesday, when I asked her to rinse her bowl after dinner before serving dessert.

“What, don’t tell me that you haven’t got a clean bowl, Dad!”

“No, there’s plenty of clean bowls. I just want you to rinse yours out.”

Then she gets in a huff. She’s so put upon.

Last night I cracked open the chateau cardboard – drinking, like many things, is less pretentious in Sydney than in Auckland – and got a lecture about that. I responded by sharing the latest research which demonstrates, irrefutably I think, that drinking just about anything in just about any quantity reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke (it increases the risk of liver cancer but that’s another issue and my Doc tells me the liver has an amazing ability to heal).

When that didn’t work, and she came out with the old “brain cells” line, I told her to shut her trap. Modern parenting.

There are a lot of upsides, of course, in having her here. In general I think we enjoy having each other around. We just don’t admit it.

One big upside is watching really bad TV. We watched a new reality number last night, Chains of Love, that was humorously awful. This is the Aussie version of a UK concept in which a guy is chained to four women and periodically, when “The Locksmith” arrives, has to let one go. The Locksmith, incidentally, is Vulcan out of Gladiators.

In this episode, nobody particularly liked anyone else. Fair enough. But they didn’t particularly dislike each other either. That makes for riveting television, let me tell you.

At times the participants didn’t seem to know what to do. Someone would be unchained and sent off the show and they’d stand around looking at each other.

This show is going nowhere, so no doubt TVNZ will buy it soon.

Anyway, a few days back I mentioned a four-year-old who asked what God had for breakfast. I’ve had one suggestion, from Andrea M: God doesn't experience time as you or I and thus He doesn't have breakfast. Just a continuous smorgasbord incorporating all the major food groups.

While conceding the importance of a balanced diet, that seems like a cop out to me, so I went on the net and found this picture called God’s Breakfast. And, yes, it looks like His Omnipotence starts His days with an egg.

I'm glad that's sorted.

Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses at the Hopetoun Hotel, Surry Hills, 25 Jan

How long has it been since my last afternoon pub gig? So long I can’t remember who it was, where it was or when it was, confirming I guess, Tex Perkins’ opening remark: “Welcome to everybody too old and uncool to be at the Big Day Out.”

If Tex was addressing that at himself as well as his audience he would only have been half right, old maybe but never uncool. In fact, Tex Perkins, Rock God, is the epitomy of cool. The “Perkettes” were hanging on his every move.

Tex may not rock out as in the past with bands such as The Beasts of Bourbon and The Cruel Sea, but the new model mellow Tex suited this Sydney afternoon to a tee. ( A check of his website reveals other lesser known ventures such as The Snot Collection, Toilet Duck and The Poofters.)

There were several priceless moments, as when his main guitarist and accompanist, whose name eluded me, hit a bum note early on. Trying to continue with his solo, a big hand appeared across the front of his guitar, cutting him dead.

“Quit while you’re ahead,” said Tex.

Later said guitarist did a couple of songs solo, western style, that almost stole the show. One in particular received a huge response, a plaintive number called “I miss your big white bum”. This has to go down as one of the country classics, right up there with “Drop kick me Jesus through the goalposts of life.”

Then there were the unlikely covers, numbers such as The First Cut is the Deepest. It takes a lot of confidence, and a good dollop of irony, to pull those ones off.

Really, there can be few better ways to spend a day than being indoors, curtains drawn, listening to great music in a packed hotel as the sun burns down outside. Fuck the beach!

It is expected to hit 41 degrees in Sydney’s west today, following 45 on Saturday.

The smoke is back. From my 16th floor office you can see maybe 5ks all around. You can smell it when you go outside. The ash settles in a film on your windows, on your clothes when you hang them out. The arc of the Olympic stadium is a faint shadow.

The forecast for this weekend is bad. More heat. More wind.

More fires.

My daughter has decided she wants to come back. She went home a week ago and phoned the same day saying she’d rather live here. I haven’t gotten to the whys or wherefores yet, but it means two more years in Sydney so she can complete her High School Certificate.

A teacher friend says it’s probably for the best considering the state of NZ education reform right now.

But it means two more years in Sydney. Just when I was starting to hear the call of the rain (cold, wet nights on High Street), those ridiculously low clouds, friends, family. You know the gig.

I’ve had visitors recently, one of which is a four-year old. Yesterday he asked what God had for breakfast. If any of you can answer that, drop me a line. I’ll pass it on.

Anyway, time for a correction. Walter R, my first correspondent, reckons Triple J is shit, too repetitive and not very left field. He wants his bFM and fair enough too. More importantly he pointed out that my comment about its ratings was wrong.

After doing the research I should have done earlier I can confirm that the leading stations in Sydney are the talkback stations, 2UE and 2GB. These get around 12% to 15% share depending on where cash for comments jocks Laws and Jones are operating and the state of the latest scandal.

The leading music stations hover around 8% while JJJ rates just over 4%. JJJ does worse in Melbourne and gets up to near 8% in Brisbane and 9% in Perth. Don’t know about Adelaide or Hobart. Nationally JJJ’s audience could be the largest for music radio, but I can’t confirm that and nobody thinks like that over here anyway.

Speaking of the talkback kings, if you are in Sydney sometime soon there is a fountain outside QVB building with a little dog on it. The dog talks: “Hello. My name is Ivan. I was once the companion and friend of the great Queen Victoria.” Etc etc.

This gross piece of faux Victoriana was put there in 1987 to complement the Victoria statue adjacent. Anyway at the end of his speech Ivan (or is it Islay?) asks you to put a coin in the fountain and, if you do, it promises to bark.

Oh the delicious irony! The voice of the dog is none other than that of John Laws. Check it here.

Walter also reckons commercial radio now supports NZ music and beats its quota. Last I heard they were doing this by playing old stuff like The Dudes ad infinitum. What do you think?

The Datsuns at the Gaelic Club, Surry Hills, 18 January

According to the booking agent this gig was outselling the Queens of the Stone Age, in town for the Big Day Out and like most of those bands doing a few shows on the side.

That Sydneysiders are rocking up to The Datsuns (nobody here goes anywhere, they “rock up”) is due largely to the huge airplay they are getting on the ABC's Triple J, which is playing at least three songs on rotation off the Datsun’s new album.

It is also a sign of the vibrancy of the Sydney live music scene. These weren’t crusty 80s veterans queueing, but teens and twenties hungry for great live music.

Ad-free Triple J slays the commercial stations in the ratings here and plays huge quantities of Aussie music. In fact it probably does more to support New Zealand music than any commercial NZ station. The D4 and others are getting good time too.

As to the show itself, suffice to say it was great. After a daytime high of 35 degrees the venue sweltered. The Datsuns are great old fashioned rock entertainers with a brace of good numbers and huge confidence. When they put their guitars aside to perform Harmonic Generator, drenched in sweat after only a couple of numbers, it was an audacious and entirely successful moment. The band has real presence and gets a well-earned bonus point for great use of the hair.

Unless Auckland has changed drastically since I left two years ago, The Datsuns may have got gigs at the King's Arms (bless it), under protest from the neighbours of course, and have probably had to survive without any significant airplay, except on student radio. It’s no surprise they had to go to the UK to get discovered at home and win whatever reluctant programming they are now receiving from witless commercial radio.

When we got home we turned on Rage, all night music TV, again courtesy of the ABC. Have a look at their programming list for the coming week.

I couldn’t help think of Max TV, of Neil Roberts, of the promise of Great New Zealand television, of MTVs well-deserved failure and the local music desert left behind. RIP Neil.