AXXON tour blog, part 3
25 February: The Bakery, Perth
We wake stupidly early and head to a little café. It’s the basics, two poached eggs and one avocado on toast for $16; wow, I had forgotten how expensive Perth was ‘til I had this. We check out of our Quality Budget accommodation and head to our next residence, the Mantra, a nice little 4* number with awesome air conditioning. It’s a total hike to get there, however, we can’t get a single taxi despite calling twice and attempting to hail as many more. Finally, we take the bus, it must be easily 30C plus outside and it’s only about 10am. We leave our bags at the Mantra and head off in search of legendary local record shop Dada. We find it and it’s awesome but we’re so tired and delirious we don’t know what to look at first. I talk for a while to an employee that I know there and then huddle into the corner to read an article in the latest Mojo magazine about Nirvana and the year Nevermind came out. Stu leaves in search of AC and I stay a little longer. I catch up with him to find him in a comic shop; they’re kind of cool as I think about many of the terrorising images as potential album art. We decide to head back to the hotel via a nice little veggo café; I eat one of the nicest meals of the whole tour, a nice little veggie stack with side salads. We get back to the hotel and can finally check in, Stu goes straight to sleep and I have a very small snooze before some friends contact me about going for a swim. I’m so close to cancelling it’s not funny, but I go anyway. It turns into one of the best swims I’ve had in years, a beautiful beach, beautiful company and refreshing, for a small moment in my whole time in Perth I feel physically comfortable.
We keep it brief and my friends drop me back at the hotel. I go to sleep for a few hours. Meanwhile Stu didn’t even know I had left to go to the beach. I get up just in time to head to the venue. I’d been there only once before for a Laneway after-party with PVT some years beforehand but I knew that it had a ripping PA, that’s usually the only thing I worry about. I’m supporting Perth band Injured Ninja, some of the nicest guys I’ve met in music, incredibly driven and an attitude of ‘join the ride or move over’. I think they’re fucking awesome. They’re into AXOXNN and seem pretty excited to have me joining them tonight. They also inform me they’ve got in EXTRA SUBS for tonight, it’s always candy to my ears. But I start getting concerned about temperature, it’s easily 30C plus outside and even more inside, and more and more people start piling into the space. I already feel pretty exhausted and it’s so hot that I can’t even bring myself to eat, meaning not much energy coming in.
It comes time for AXXONN to play. I’m setting up my gear and already there are streams of sweat running off my head: shit, this is going to be crazy. Half way through the intro of my set the poor old synth is already covered in sweat but it’s kinda crazy and fun, things get super loose and the crowd really responds; there’s about 140-something people and slowly but surely they seem to come across to my side. The extra subs are doing double time and the lighting guy is too with plenty of strobe syncing and other cool shit. It’s super hot and by the end I feel like my face might melt off. I wrap it up and feel pretty good about the set; the Ninjas say they dug it and a steady stream of randoms want to chat, always a good sign. All in all I have a good time but it takes me nearly an hour to recover. I stick around for Injured Ninja and head off just after their set; it’s something like 3:30EST that I head back to the hotel, with an earlyish flight out of Perth to Melbourne.
8.5/10 (a few off for the heat, not Perth’s fault really)
One Response to AXXON tour blog, part 3