Roos and Kirk - See ya later

Except for the first quarter the Bulldogs never looked like they were in the hunt. Like Labor, in our still undecided election, they were smashed. Poetic really because Julia Gillard PM is the number one ticket holder for the Bulldogs. More likely though the reason the doggies were belted was because this was Brett Kirk and Paul Roos' last game at the SCG. Both will be heading into retirement at the end of the season and the team gave them the send off they deserved.

Every time Captain Kirk went near the ball the crowd rose to their feet. It was a typical Kirky performance. Not so typically he ended up with two goals himself. The last one coming a few minutes before the end that brought a roar from the crowd that would have lifted the roof of the SCG if it had one.

Roosy was the coach that finally snagged a premiership for the Swans for the first time in 72 years and Kirky has been the spiritual leader of the Swans on the ground for the last 10 years. I, for one, will miss Roosy and Kirky but coaches and players come and go and they've both left a legacy for the club that will pay dividends over the coming years. We hope.

The season isn't over yet though and who knows whether Roos and Kirk will be holding up the Premiership cup come that last Saturday in September? At this stage the Swans are set up to at least give a couple of the other finalist a fright during the finals. Pity their record against Collingwood and Geelong is so abysmal. Then again we're due for a win.

SMH match report

I got a Brett Kirk souvenir face mask.

As we were about to leave after the game former Swan and living legend Micky O'Loughlin bounded down the stairs near us so I asked him for a picture.

Leigh Colbert the former North Melbourne and Geelong champ and current boundary rider for Fox Sport.

Before the match the latest bronze statue to honour former footy and cricketing greats was unveiled in front of the SCG. This one, being hugged by Wolverine, is form Swan's legend Paul Kelly.

The Strokes 3

I left home at 9.15 and was back home by 11pm. What does that tell you about the gig? Apart from being short not much at all. The worst thing you could say about The Strokes was they weren't on stage long enough. Including encore they may have performed for about 75 minutes. For a stand alone gig that was really short. Not short in a "that was so good it went too fast" short, although it was that too, it was short in a "that wasn't very good value for money short". I heard a few muttered "that was fucked" comments on the way out. I reckon it was possibly the quickest non festival gig I've been to in about 25 years.
Now that I have the whinge out of the way were The Strokes any good? I've been wanting to see these guys for 10 years and for what we got it was worth the wait. They were very tight. Awesome in fact. Time did indeed fly. I was a little confused for a bit when Julian Casablancas said that he thought Sydney was shit. He back pedaled, or seemed to, when he then said by shit he meant it was really cool but I'm not sure if he was really being an arsehole or putting on the cocky rockstar persona for coolness. Whatever, they belted out most of their hits well enough for to enjoy the show. A short but powerful set.
The setlist can be found here and another review here.

The Strokes 2 - the videos

The Strokes

I can't believe it was January the last time I went to a gig. Tonight I broke the drought with The Strokes from New York at the Hordern Pavilion.
Pictures and video to come.

Footy, rain, beer and chips

Ah the joys of the footy in the rain. Who cares about a torrential downpour if your team wins though. The Swans beat the Bombers by 8 points in the end after 19 changes of lead during the game and margins no greater than 7 points until right at the end. A good close hard fought game. After the footy it was time to dry off at the pub (The Bat And Ball Hotel) for a couple of beers and a bowl of chips. Thanks Davo.

Where would we be without plastic ponchos? Up until half time it had been a glorious sunny winter's day. After half time it pissed down.

The presentation of the Marngrook Trophy awarded to the winner of this annual indigenous honouring game between Essendon and Sydney.

Swannies indigenous and recently retired legend Micky O'Loughlin carries off the trophy he presented the winning Swans.

Beer O'clock at the Bat And Ball.

Peter Garrett wasn't the only VIP at the footy...

There's the usual footy commentators doing their pre-match spiel before the game. Below we have Jason "The Chief" Dunstall and Alastair Lynch.

And of course one of the German branch of the family (hey Ben) visiting for a couple of weeks and here to get a footy fix before going back to Deutschland for that funny round ball game.

Peter Garrett

Former Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett was at the footy (Swans v Dockers at the SCG) to toss the coin. So I had to get my photo taken with him. I asked if I could get a photo and he suggested that I should jump in too. I managed to stuff up the settings with the camera so the first picture taken was a total fail. This is the result for the retake which Peter was very obliging to re-pose for.

Tall isn't he. I'm 180cm (around 6 foot) and I felt like a tubby little Oompa-Loompa next to Pete. Peter is a friendly guy in a not too patronising way that some politicians are too. Hopefully being a government minister these days doesn't totally ruin the man.

I am a total Oils fan boy from way back. The first time I saw Midnight Oil live was in 1982 and sadly the last was WaveAid in 2005. Hopefully I managed not to make a complete arse of myself today.

Them Crooked Vultures 3

Good rock show. Talk about a supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures are Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones. The bloke flailing away on the drums was pretty awesome. Bulging biceps, sweat flying and hair everywhere - he was like Animal from the Muppets. It was like a flashback to Nirvana.


They have an official website here.
SMH review here.

Them Crooked Vultures 2

Them Crooked Vultures

Pearl Jam - All Done and Review

Update 24 Nov 2009:
Hot in more ways than one. It was around 40°C in Sydney (that's about 104°F for the Yanks) so we were sweltering out on the field. But really, once the show started I didn't notice. Pearl jam sizzled. Eddie croaked out the vocals with more or less his trademark growl. Apparently he had a bit of a flu so the fact they played for a full 2 hours was pretty damn fine and we barely noticed anything wrong with his voice.

For some reason I thought they'd be a bunch of old fat blokes reliving past glory but nothing could be further from the truth. They looked and played like it was 1995 all over again (shorts n'all). I was lucky enough to be fairly close to the front so had a great view. Sometimes I wonder why the people up the back in and in the stands even bother at these big stadium events. I know that after U2 back in '93 I swore I'd never go to another stadium event with a seat in the stand or the back section of the field. Give me the mosh any day. And speaking of the mosh. Not much going on mosh wise. It looked like most people were obeying the the big warnings flashing up every now again about not moshing or crowd surfing. Considering there were 40,000 people there it wasn't too crowded and no dickheads pushing for the sake of pushing. I suppose that is why they divided the field into two - back and front. Yellow wrist bands got you into the front section. If anything the crowd was too subdued.

Sound wise it wasn't that loud. I'd forgotten my earplugs (hey I'm old, I need my what's left of my hearing and I've been doing this for 25+ years as well) and I could have gotten by but I ended up ripping up a napkin and plugging my ears with that and that worked adequately. It knocks off the top couple of decibels and stops your ears from ringing the next day. Ringing means ear damage.

I thought the set was okay. A good mix of old and new stuff. Anyone hoping to get a greatest hits set though were probably disappointed. They didn't play a few of their monster hits from the early years unfortunately but it would be hard to keep everybody happy. I wonder if they actually sit down and decide, Even Flow or Alive? We got Even Flow.

Ben Harper came out and did his thing on the slide guitar with PJ, and Eddie and Liam Finn did a version of Hunters and Collectors classic "Throw Your Arms Around Me". I think Eddie called it the Blue Summer Sky song though. This is the point where I thought the crowd was a little bit too subdued. I was belting it out, as is tradition for this song, and I could hear myself. Not many people were joining in around me. It was kind of weird and un-Australian to not sing along considering it looked like your average Triple M type crowd. Now that I think of it though, there were quite a few foreigners around me. Europeans I think. I'm sure I heard Spanish and a Nordic language as well as the usual Irish and English accents so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the people around me for not joining in.

I went in with low expectations. I was annoyed by the heat and the bar situation didn't help. We weren't allowed to take booze in to the stadium itself so it was a bit of an effort to get a beer. Queuing for ages pissed me off but we passed the time chatting to other punters. Pearl Jam went off though and rocked the place. Totally worth it. I still can't believe it has taken me 20 odd years to get around to seeing them.

Pearl Jam have a link to comments about the gig here. For extra awesome I think they also make bootlegs of the shows available from their website at some point. Cool.