| �THE CAT EMPIRE�, METRO THEATRE, SUNDAY 21st OF MARCH �Come to The Cat Empire!� David said. �No!� I said. Okay, look, I have an open mind about music, and will listen to anything once (except music which falls into several very broad genres that I don�t like). But I listened to The Cat Empire once, and they sounded to me like some guy talking about himself while some other people played music behind him, probably oblivious. �The Cat Empire sounds to me like some guy talking about himself while some other people play music behind him, probably oblivious.� I said. �But Pat�, persisted David, �you said once that if they could train a monkey to screech on cue, it would be better than 90% of contemporary music.� I don�t remember ever saying that, but it sounded like something I might have said. Perhaps when I was drunk, a time otherwise known as �any given weekend and most weeknights.� �How much?� �$27� Twenty-seven dollars? That�s a hard price to walk past. You non-frequent gig-goers might not think so, but anybody who�s bought tickets to a concert in the last five years will know that most concerts are considerably more expensive. Me: One ticket to (any given band or music festival) please! (places $100 note on countertop) Ticket selling staff (between hysterical laughter, tears of mirth running down their faces): Sorry! We don�t sell entry to the concert in five minutes increments. Do you still have both kidneys? The Metro is a great venue. And they DID sound like they�d be a pretty great live band. I don�t know why I thought that, but I turned out to be right in the end. So whatever. �They DO sound like they�d be a pretty great live band� I conceded, mostly to myself, as David had already walked away. Plus, I thought, I could invite my girlfriend, of whom I had been seeing suspiciously little recently. I got David to get two tickets. A few weeks and a breakup later, David, myself, and recent addition to the concert-going group, Ajax, arrived at the Metro Theatre expecting God-knows-what, and saw an absolutely brilliant performance by one of Australia�s finest live acts. Really, these guys had more energy than Speedy Gonzalez on cocaine. On the radio, Hello may sound like somebody with a chronic smoker�s cough playing a Buena Vista Social Club CD too loudly, but on stage�holy crap! It went off. They even broke into My Sharona in the middle of it, THAT�S how off it went. And their other songs ruled too. They had some jazz numbers, some soul numbers, some funk numbers, some hip-hop numbers, salsa, reggae, and some great damn songs that can�t be classified in the confines of this already too-long sentence. Everybody was jumping about like crazy, dancing, screaming, singing, and making hand actions appropriate to certain lyrics (particularly in One Four Five, a song about�chords. Everybody put up one finger, then four, then a whole hand�s worth! Ah, I guess you had to be there.) So maybe I was a little quick to judge The Cat Empire, based on my single listening of perhaps two of their songs. But then, I�m like that. Due to popular demand, they�re playing another gig at the Metro on the 22nd of April, so if you want to support quality Australian live music, if you just want a great night out, or if you have even a single active brain-cell in your head, then TOO BAD, because it�s sold out. www.thecatempire.com www.metrotheatre.com.au This article was later published, slightly edited, in Blitz Magazine. |