Live Gigs: Dirty Three @ Astor in 2012 & @ PIAF’s Music Box in 2010

Flashback gigs!

It’s going to be Dirty Three week on my blog, well most likely will taken more that a week! After falling in love with live music all over again over the last two/three weeks and the band itself have announced Sydney Opera House reunion show! It’s been 25 years since their debut album and they’re playing it live in full there, one-off special show! Helping celebrating one of the greatest Aussie live act getting back together I’m going to look back on all the western coast Australia shows, well mainly the city because I’ve been to all shows the Dirty Three ever played in Perth! I will note the country, down south gigs because as far as I know there was only a couple which was while they were playing city shows and thinking about it now I wish I when to them now too!

I’m starting in this decade and going back over this week/s of all Dirty Three shows. Embedding all the albums they were tour on and maybe I should be digging up all the TV show appearances in Australia because amazingly I think they’re all on youtube now but it only happen a few times anyway and their few promo video clips might as well get thrown in my little history lesson too!

9th March 2012 at The Astor Theatre in the northern inner city’s Mt. Lawley venue was the very last Dirty Three gig in this town! The opening date of Aussie tour for the eighth and very final album Toward The Low Sun which came seven year after the one before it, released in late February. The album is an under-rated gem of the early 2010’s, the nine tracks is a fitting final piece for the band and way more focus than the one that came before it.

I remember the show a few ways, the setlist was pretty much the new songs at the start and then some older ones, Woz or Warren Ellis shouting out “want do you wanna hear?” like he does, I wish I wrote them down somewhere but didn’t! Typing about Ellis and thinking about it now because he’s in another band called Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, he’s kind-of giving away what that band would do next here on this album, just the two album titles is so very close: Toward The Low Sun and Push The Sky Away. Anyway I was for a long time pissed at Cave for nicking Ellis from them, I guess I would have like more than 8 Dirty Three albums but now it’s a very solid set of albums, to me at least it’s only a few bits and pierces could have been better or something? As a whole they’re pretty bloody great albums.

The other reasons it is the second last gig with my old ex-wife, after something like over ten year together she putted the pin! The very last gig was at the same venue with another Aussie band Hoodoo Gurus playing their debut album in full Stoneage Romeos, you know the one with the song My Girl on it? The whole theater of people was singing-along “my girl don’t love me no more” that’s fuckin’ funny now! Both gigs we sat up the back, every single girl I’ve ever gone out with always wanna sit up the back, not one have wanted to go down front, I’m trying to be gentleman and ask them if we can pick where we sit/stand? It can’t be every girl, can it? But I’ve not found one yet that don’t go up the back?

11th February 2010 on The Esplanade in PIAF/Beck’s Music Box, that’s the Perth International Arts Festival and Beck’s beer which is where Elizabeth Quay is now, millions of dollars the then state gov spent brink-paying over all the green opened space. This show was part of the “Don’t Look Back” series where bands play one of their seminal albums live in it’s entirety. As far as I know this was the seventh and the final time Dirty Three perform their complete Ocean Songs album in full. Plus I really remember The Zither Player song as closing the night show!

Yeah, my ex and I were together for a very long time but only two Dirty Three gigs in that time and we where at little closer that night but still up the back. It’s not even like we do anything naughty too, thinking about it now most of the time some or a lot of them seem pissed off!

So that’s the two early 2010’s shows Dirty Three played in my hometown then, the two albums related to the gigs plus one track and a promo video also the 2012 Aussie tour poster/flyer!