Back in December we became aware that the old Australian band Icehouse were doing a tour and Perth was lucky enough to get the one show where they were the single headline act. After a brief debate, I procured tickets for the evening on the green show being held at King’s Park in the city. About this time, I decided to listen again the the Man of Colours album that was popular during my last years of college back home. Surprisingly, I found it had really stood the test of time for me and I still like everything on that album.

This rediscovery sent me down memory lane and I soon was searching through boxes, looking for old photos and personal items. I think it was back in 1986 that I was particularly privileged to see Icehouse for the first time. It was a free concert held on our college campus grounds and the old Canadian band, Men without Hats, was first on the bill. Men without Hats were fairly forgettable with my only memory of their one hit, “Safety Dance” which was popular a few years earlier around the time I started at the university. Icehouse, on the other hand, were a very engaging band and I remember enjoying the entire show. I was there with some others from our dorm and managed to get fairly close to the stage. I even managed a handful of photos but didn’t think I’d got anything good. Another girl offered to share hers when she got them developed. Funny thing is that mine all came out better than hers in the end. They weren’t great but they were decent. And that’s exactly what I was searching through my old boxes to find. Sadly, I wasn’t successful in locating the photos but I’m sure they are here somewhere. I ran across them a year or two ago while looking for something else and there were many other photos from that period in the box.

While I didn’t go to that first concert with the Scientist, he did happen to go with another friend of ours and also enjoyed the show. So it happens that this is the only band we’ve seen in two different eras of our lives. Since I’ve lived in Australia, I’ve come to know many more Icehouse songs, and so was far more prepared for the wonderful evening of music we experienced.

When we first arrived at the show, the Scientist and I sat down amongst several other general admission ticket holders. We soon headed to the venue’s stalls to find some filling food for the evening. We somehow had the mistaken impression that the “Mexican” food would would be of some value. Sadly, our burritos were nothing like any other I’ve eaten. I think even those nasty frozen burritos heated and purchased from convenience stores in my youth were probably more authentic. The lack of value became more obvious as we watched a neighboring group munching on a rather fantastic variety of foods brought for a picnic. Note to selves: next time, bring your own food! Later on I ventured back up in search of further sustenance with the spud place in mind. Once there, I found nothing on the menu that appealed and soon found myself perusing the wood-fired pizza menu. The Scientist had suggested this initially but I wasn’t in the mood. Now it looked rather nice so I ordered one and waited and waited for it. This is the price paid for ordering so late. The pizza turned out to be far superior to anything else we’d eaten or even seen for sale at the venue.

Before we saw Icehouse, three support acts entertained the crowds. The first act was Clare Bowditch and we saw her once before as support for Leonard Cohen. I quite liked her as a performer although I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of her music. Second act was Josh Pyke, a singer-songwriter much acclaimed in Australia. His music was okay but he hardly spoke and just played one song after another with almost no audience interaction. I can only hope he does a better show when he has more time. Final support was Washington, led by Megan Washington, and brilliant as always.

It was during Washington’s set that we left our comfortable spot sitting in the crowd and moved to the dance area just to the right of the stage. Up there, we managed to get quite close to the stage and could see everything much better. A couple of girls who were obviously huge Washington fans, took up much of the dance area dancing and showing off. As it wasn’t crowded, it was kind of amusing, except for those times when the one girl kept whistling so loudly it hurt my ears.

Once Washington finished, they both disappeared and the area slowly started filling up with what I would call an older crowd of Icehouse fans. The crowd was rather excited and exuberant, so much that there was singing en mass to some of the popular old songs being blasted over the speakers. I’d never experienced this before, not even at the Crowded House concerts where sing–alongs have been the norm. The band finally came on stage to the familiar sounds of the song, “Icehouse”. Funnily enough I’d never heard this song until late last year while watching a video of an earlier show. Anyway, there was plenty of music and fun to be had during the show with mostly songs that I knew and only a couple that were unfamiliar to me. One of the highlights of the evening was hearing Iva Davies play his oboe during “Man of Colours”, which was sung by Michael Paynter on this occasion. There was plenty of banter and then there were the saxophone solos. Probably my favorite song was “Great Southern Land” which is their iconic Australian song. It was really something to hear it live.

There was to be one low point during the show, which involved some of the surrounding crowd. During some of the band banter, I noted there was some sort of argument taking shape just behind me. I’m not totally sure but it seemed to have started by some beer being spilled and another party being unhappy with this event. The voices became louder and louder and next thing I knew, punches were being exchanged and I found I was flung forward a couple times as the guy behind me was flung into me. The Scientist managed to pull me out of that mess and security soon came around and presumably removed those involved. I was a bit shaken for a few minutes but then was able to get back into the fun. And somehow we had moved even closer to the stage which afforded a better view of proceedings.

The music and entertainment ended soon enough and we soon found ourselves making the long trek back to our car. We had parked outside the park to avoid the heavy traffic going in when we arrived. I think this paid off as we had no troubles getting out once we got to our car. I think it was a far different story for those parked inside.