Last Saturday night was a very pleasant dinner at The Annandale with Miss Kate, Brian, and Barbara before heading into the Band-Room to see Kate Miller-Heidke.
I'm getting ingo the deplorable habit of not seeing support bands unless I know them - and this is something I think I should get out of the habit of doing. Why? Well how else can you tell if you like 'new' music if you just go and see the bands you want to see. (After all, there's a reason that supports are there - unless it's Vaness Amarosi supporting Kiss - but I digress).
It was nice to be finishing a meal and having the headliner walk in through the restaurant. Seriously - the talk all but stopped and whispers of "There she is..." permeated the room. That there's an indication fo the level of 'fame' associated with her right now, she stops a room. Then again, this IS the woman who joined the estwhile Cyndi Lauper onstage a little while ago (which to me seems like it was the teeming of two equally talented bookends) to perform 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'. Still, the band-room was packed and kept filling. The Merchandise table was full of T-Shirts, girly-fitted-singlet-tops, programme-album books and CDs and DVDs! Hoorah! I spent time wondering what to get (and of course the CD/DVD combo won out) andf went inside to try to get a space. The nice things about having venues which don't llow smoking in them is that people have to go outside - this makes getting down the front a whole not easier, and down the front is where I wanted to be for this show.
From the moment the screen raised up and Kate's band took the stage the applause and sporadic cheers were a constant throughout the show. Kate's show was so familiar - and it's not from having seen her perform before. There's something familiar in the lilt and the delivery which begs the question: is the she love-child of a tri-fusion of Cyndi Lauper, Kate Bush and Debbie Harry? Whilst her band is a talented background presence, (Keir Nuttal [Guitars], Ben McCarthy [Bass, Vocals], Steve Pope - the Alpha Male [Drums], and the astonishly talented (and Golden Guitar nominated) Nicole Brophy [Backing Vocals, Acoustic Guitar]) Kate heself is a gleaming light onstage. Perhaps it was the white banged hairsyle, or the multilayered skirts, or perhaps just the honest radiant smile, offset by an innocently-sly-humour-filled expression, coupled with a pounding staccato delivery of her first number, but damn if she doesn't light up the room. What she lacks in ascerbic delivery a-la Debbie Harry, she makes up for in subtly and wonderfully subversive lyrics in the Lauper vein. A very neat 12-song set (mostly from her multi-Aria-nominated 'Little Eve' album) with a 2 song encore which had the Annadale not only packed to the back walls and out into the merch/pinball room, but begging for more.
This is her last tour promoting Little Eve, and thence she goes into 'next album' mode and we won't see her for a bit - yet seeing her tonight was a real pleasure. I like artists who can hold their own onstage (especially when they can hold the audience in the palm of their hand). They're a pleasure to watch, and Kate (along with her band) was an absolute pleasure to experience. Everyone talks about 'Australian Idol' as being her (current) tour-de-force, and it was an audience favourite on the night, I think her signature on this night was her version of 'You're The Voice' which blended almost seemlessly into a 'Bohemian Rhapsody'-inspired riff in the middle. It honestly made me laugh (in an embarrassingly delighted manner, like a 3 year-old discovering something wonderous) and the only thing that would have made it better would have been John Farnham in the audience singing along.
