Sand Pebbles
Black Cab
Northcote Social Club

Modern corporate jargon is dominated by a focus on results, outputs and actionable first steps.  The paradox is that the output is justified with procedural inanities that fry one’s brain like over-cooked brown acid.  In reality it’s the journey to the result that provides the lasting memories.

The output of Friday night’s gig at the Northcote Social Club was two hours of modern psychedelic infused rock.  Yet to articulate the result in such bald terms is to ignore the depth and breadth of the musical journey that led to it.  That journey began with Black Cab re-visiting the mythology of its superb Altamont Diaries album, augmented with a selection of material off the band’s soon to be released follow up album.  The Altamont Diaries material will never age, and the music is the perfect illustration of the contrast between misty-eyed optimism and drug addled violent dysfunction that played out at the Altamont speedway.  The newer material eschewed the dark tones of Altamonth Diaries, yet continued Black Cab’s Primal Scream meets Their Satanic Majesties Request sonic aesthetic.  The only thing lacking on the night was the opportunity to purchase the new album – but good things come to those who wait.

The second leg came from the Sand Pebbles.  We returned to the band room just as Chris Hollow (clad tonight in a very impressive pink plastic cowboy hat) strummed the opening chords to Black Sun Ensemble, a good omen if ever there was.  1000 Flowers follows next from the meta-excellent Atlantis Regrets Nothing.  The backdrop is flooded with various moving images (including the prize footage of Don Lane singing in his late night television heyday).  The inclusion of Tor Larsen from the Sun Blindness as a substitute for Murray Ono allows the Sand Pebbles to re-invent itself again (and leaves open the possibility of including Ono again one day without displacing Larsen), visually and sonically. 

How do you describe the Sand Pebbles sound?  It’s an eclectic kaleidoscope of sounds of forty years of rock, psych, surf and punk.  Songs take on a life of their own, ebbing and flowing in out of technicolour focus like a game of footy played out between teams coached by Kevin Sheedy and Arthur Lee.  By the end of the night Ben Michael is kneeling over the keyboard thrashing it like a man possessed.  Having bent our minds inside out and back again, the band saunters off enigmatically, only to return to blast out Julian Cope’s Out of Mind on Dope and Speed.  The journey comes to a screeching, screaming brain imploding end.  This was the best Sand Pebbles gig I’d seen since a bizarre night at the Espy a couple of years ago.  Journeys don’t get much better than this.

Patrick Emery