Informal review of Mark Seymour’s Thursday December 19, 2002 gig at Weller’s Restaurant, Kangaroo Ground, Victoria.

Author: Alison Belot.

Date: 23 December 2002

Article Text

Managed to get to the gig at Wellers last night, small restaurant in a semi rural area, warm night, great acoustics and a show to remember. It’s great being back from Holland!

Mark played solo last night which was a first for me. I took my brother and a few of his mates, which was a bit of an eye opener. Eric is 10 years older than we, and we try very hard to pretend that we have little in common and don’t like the same music. He was very impressed and for a guy who’s not big on compliments, his final comment was “I’d pay $25 just to hear him sing Holy Grail like that again”! High praise indeed.

Mark was probably the most relaxed I’d seen him in ages, he obviously liked the venue and just played! He kept chopping and changing the order of songs, but the crowd was really enthusiastic and he seemed to feed of this. The song list was a bit changed to the last round of Melbourne gigs, but more like the Rozelle list, “Ready to Go” and “See You Round” were back in, “Parting Glass” was out. New stuff also in were “Shoulder To Cry On”, “Man Made” and “Kitchen”.

As always, a few new comments:-

• He said that with everything going on and the chance of World War 3 he’d rediscovered “What’s A Few Men?” which he was thinking of re-recording “as we never really got it right last time”.
• “Last Ditch Cabaret” – he always talks about it being about a bad venue that he and Nick played at years ago, but never names it. He named it and went on at length about how bad a venue it is and how much a part of it is “f**ked” [we will not publish the name on the Internet]. The reasons included a low roof, bad acoustics, piped applause (not that he’d need it!) and piped “happy winning gambler” type sounds.
• Other pearler was about “Home Again” – always knew it was about Victoria, but Mark said that he wrote it in 1998 when for the first time he honestly didn’t know where the state was going.
• Had an interesting conversation with him afterwards about the new record. I asked when it would be out and I got the “get of my back” reaction! He then agreed that yes he’d recorded 9 songs and that it may be ready in 4 months. There was a bit of stirring of Mark to coax him into finishing the record.
• Last one on the acting front. He was shocked that a few of us had seen the play he was in, but said he really enjoyed it and that there was a good chance of it “getting up” and him being back in it in January.
• Pleasantly surprised by the number of CD/DVD sales after the show. It was good and bad, good that he sold at least 50 units by the looks, but a bit bad as none of these people already had them.
• There were certainly a number of older H&C fans there, Mark mentioned that he was going to sing an old song (Men) and someone called out “Little Chalkie”, he said old, but not that old. That guy went and bought both CDs and the DVD. So once they see him, the music sells itself, which gives you some idea what a little air play may do.

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