Artist: Jimmy Barnes  & Pete Shoulder

Venue: Academy 2, Carling Academy, Newcastle

Date: 31 July 2006  

The last time I saw Jimmy Barnes was about 13 years ago at Newcastle’s Riverside, a night that had me totally blown away by Barnes's performance, and so I was really looking forward to tonight’s show.  First up tonight was local lad and Winterville front man Pete Shoulder, who opened up evening with a short solo acoustic set with just him and his guitar.

Pete opened up with ‘Satisfied Man’ which lay down the tone for the rest of his set.  This acoustic performance seemed to struggle to awaken any sort of enthusiasm in about 60% of the crowd, who were basically only interested in what time Jimmy Barnes was coming on and totally blanked the performance of Shoulder.

Such a shame because he did in fact give quite a sterling performance and it was good to see the crowds complacency didn’t deter him.  He continued on with ‘Last Legs’, which was the only Winterville song to be included in tonight's set and one that sounded great and lent itself well to an acoustic rendition.  I learned later that Pete was only down for this one date of the tour and was awaiting news on whether the band would be up with a chance of further dates on the tour with the full Winterville line-up.

The rest of the set continued in much a similar vein with ‘Man Overboard’, ‘Blood On Your Fruit’, ‘Mercy’, ‘I Don’t Blame You’ and finally ‘My Way’.  However, I do think that the set could have perhaps done with a little more bite mid way through, perhaps something which was a little bit more up-tempo midway through  the set would have lifted that bit more.  Having said that this was a solid performance by Shoulder and I hope that Winterville get the opportunity to play some dates on the remainder of this tour.  This would be the type of tour that could really win the band some new fans in new places they have yet to reach out to.

Now to the main event, joining Jimmy Barnes on stage tonight were his son Jackie on drums, his daughter Elle Mae on backing vocals, Pete Lawler on bass and Davy Lane on guitar.  The whole tour was listed as an acoustic tour, but from the off it was clear it wasn’t to be, this was going to be all out electric.

With the band opening up the set in true emphatic style with ‘Love And Hate’, the first of many ballads to come, Barnes joked with the crowd that tonight it was going to be full on, in your face rock n roll, all night, from the Thunder From Down Under ...  and that's exactly how it should be.

The band continued to rock hard with ‘Used To The Truth’ and it was plain for all to hear that Barnes’s vocals were as pure and forceful as they have always been, not bad at all for a man who's just celebrated his 50th birthday in April this year!

With a vast back catalogue to choose from Jimmy tried to include something for everybody in the set, with songs from not only from his hugely successful solo career, but also from his Cold Chisel days.

It was good to hear songs like ‘Still On Your Side’, the up-tempo rocker ‘Rising Sun’, and the excellent ‘Just A Man’ once again, as well as better known songs like ‘Sweat It Out’ from the Heat album.

However, it was songs like ‘No Second Prize’ and ‘You Got Nothing I Want' that really got the crowd bouncing.  Even the inclusion of a couple of covers went down well, especially ‘Resurrection Shuffle’ which had everyone in the audience singing along.  During this Jimmy introduced his son Jackie to the crowd and looked one extremely proud father as he did so.

He also introduced and dedicated ‘Sweet Little Rock n Roller’ to his youngest daughter Elle Mae, who was doing a great job as backing vocalist.

The only break from the rock n roll party was when Jimmy gave out a little speech and pleaded to the powers that be to bring a close to the fighting in the middle east that is going on at the minute.  The set was then carried on with the moving ‘Khe Sahn’, a song about the Vietnam war, but one which still seems very relevant in the world we live in today.

The crowd were at fever pitch by this time and two songs that would take them over the edge were ‘Working Class Man’ and the magnificent ‘Good Times’, something that was certainly had by all here tonight because the last hour and a half were just pure gold rock n roll.  Let's hope that it isn’t long before we see the Thunder From Down Under back on these shores once more.

 

 

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