As a christmas present for Katie, Kelly and I bought her a ticket to see The Dandy Warhols at the Tivoli with us. Due to a huge argument on Christmas day between Katie and myself, which was the day after an argument between Katie and Mum, Katie went AWOL (what’s christmas without some family yelling I ask you?). Thus, it was for this reason that Kelly and I ended up going to the concert without her but for all we know she may have remembered it was on and went without us seeing her. Which wasn’t hard considering it was packed.

I decided that going to the concert would be a great excuse for staying at Bunk backpackers in Fortitude Valley near the Story Bridge. I’ve passed it numerous times wondering what was going on in there so figured it was my chance. For $70 I booked a twin room with an ensuite which also had airconditioning. No TV but a much nicer room than any of the Formula 1 motel chains I’ve ever visited (plus they have lifts at Bunk). Plus, the huge benefit to staying there is that it’s only a short walk to the valley mall and then a few blocks from the Tivoli. Check out the photos of the room at the end of the page.

For dinner Kelly and I checked out the Birdee NumNum bar at Bunk because it’s $5 meals sounded great but unfortunately they looked very unappealing. We resorted to our favourite cheap night dinner, a $6 slice of pizza and drink from New York Slice. Thursday nights in the valley are a bit quiet but there is still enough action to people watch. A very wasted guy picked up a pizza while we were waiting for our order but he wasn’t wasted enough to tell the lady to hurry up because he had a taxi waiting outside. After eating we started walking slowly over to the Tivoli but decided to stop in and have a drink at the Jubilee pub nearby as the Tivoli doors had only just opened.

The Jubilee was pretty busy so there wasn’t anywhere to sit but Kelly noticed the empy pool table so we setup shop there. The only pool cue free was missing the tip but we soldiered on regardless. It’s amazing which way balls go when you don’t have one, they almost defy the laws of angles. Kelly and I concentrated on not bumping in to the girls on the other table, trying to avoid hitting diners head with the cue and pointing out that the guy with the huge muttonchop sideburns hadn’t eaten barely any of his dinner. Two games later Kelly and I were even in the winning stakes and we decided to head to the concert.

Being good girls we lined up in the queue and of course it was only when we got to the front that we realised the line up was for people who didn’t have tickets or were picking them up. Thankfully we weren’t waiting in the line too long. Once inside we headed upstairs to check out the view and nabbed a couple of seats right in the centre. The Tivoli doesn’t actually have seating but they do have two rows of stadium seating upstairs which we took advantage of. We waited over half an hour for the support act to come on which really shit me as we got there at 8.30. Why don’t they frigging start right away, why do they have to wait so long? That is one of the things I hate about concerts, all the waiting for soundchecks and shit. They have 10 hours of the day beforehand to do that crap!

Finally The Morning After Girls come onstage and hello, it’s Mister Muttonchops from the pub playing the drums and the other people he was with were playing the instruments! I knew the moment I saw him that he must have been in a band but never for one second did I think the band would be the one I was seeing that night! Kelly had almost hit the girl in the head a few times with her cue stick, she doesn’t like asking for autographs and likes the old approach of concussing band members instead. The band were actually quite good in a Vines meets the Stone Roses meets the Strokes kind of way. The drums sounded huge and were my favourite sound, Kelly liked the bass lines the best so I told her to go and listen to all the Stone Roses albums to expand her horizons. The song that they dedicated to the Dandy’s was my favourite, I’m going to have to find out what it is. The one thing I suggest to them is to not wear black on stage as it makes them disappear.

More waiting, waiting, waiting and roadies and soundtracks and the Dandy’s finally come on. Crowd goes ape and the Dandy’s play all their best songs (bohemian, junkie, godless, holiday, horse pills and get off) and some of their new songs (my favourite being All the Money or the Simple Life). Courtney sounded like his voice was a bit sick and he changed some of the notes in the songs so that they went up instead of down. I wonder if he is losing his voice or something. The crowd absolutely went off for Bohemian – probably due to it’s use in a mobile phone company ad. I only really knew Courtney and the girl so it was good to see the other band members. Cheryl had informed me that when she saw them in Scotland the girl had taken her clothes off and although it was so hot that she should have she musn’t have been drunk enough to try it. Ah well. Speaking of hot the heat was tremendous. Remind me never to go to a concert in the summer again as even though there was airconditioning it’s not enough when 2000 or more people are dancing and singing. By the second last song Kelly and I couldn’t stand sweating anymore and decided to leave. Yeah, we left early cause we are really hard core rock chicks.

Outside was much cooler but the airconditioning at Bunk when we got back was just incredible. We both had showers and then passed out as the room was pretty quiet and we enjoyed our stay there. Not quite the noisy partying atmosphere of the backpackers in the movie Wolf Creek but thankfully that was ok with me as I still had to go to work on Friday.

I can’t say the Dandy Warhols was the best concert I’ve ever been to but it was pretty good. I’m surprised though that after almost 10 years of playing music Courtney still seems to be wearing the same style of clothing he did back when he started. I’m not sure I’m fond of their new long feedback type of songs they are getting in to but I guess they need to experiment in a Sonic Youth type way. For me Welcome to the Monkey House is their best album although it sounds like they are trying to push themselves. We’ll see if it works out. Honestly I think Kelly and I enjoyed the Morning After girls more but that may be down to their newness.

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