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PANDEMONIUM 24
@ Cathy Freeman Park, Sydney,
24th April 2024
(Live Review)

Review by Alec Smart

Photos by Glen Morgan (@glenmorganphotography)

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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The inaugural Pandemonium Rocks touring festival took place in Cathy Freeman Park, a grassed reserve named after the gold medal-winning Aboriginal sprinter (the eighth-fastest woman of all time) in Olympic Park, Sydney.

Originally scheduled for The Domain, adjacent to the Botanic Gardens in the CBD, the venue was changed after NSW Premier Chris Minns declared, “There’s not going to be a rock concert in the middle of the city on ANZAC Day!” Opponents voiced concerns it might interfere with the annual ANZAC memorial march.

In response to criticism of the Sydney date, Andrew McManus, CEO of Apex Entertainment, the festival organisers, said “This is not an ANZAC Day concert; it is an event that is taking place on the public holiday of April 25th, as are many other events.”

$10 from each ticket for the Sydney concert was donated to Wounded Heroes military veterans charity.

A number of bands advertised on the original bill, including Placebo, Deep Purple, Dead Kennedys, Gang of Four and Palaye Royale, also withdrew for a variety of reasons. The concert, advertised as ‘across two massive stages’, was scaled down to one large stage featuring six bands, Fyrebirds, Wolfmother, Wheatus, Psychedelic Furs, Blondie and Alice Cooper.

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FYREBIRDS / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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These cancellations provided a great opportunity for NSW North Coast quartet Fyrebirds, who launched the day’s entertainment, although they were billed anonymously as ‘local openers’.

Each city that Pandemonium appeared, including Melbourne, Gold Coast, Bribie Island (relocated to Brisbane) and the additional (unadvertised) Newcastle, hosted different local opening bands for the touring festival.

Fyrebirds, centred around musical duo Benny Black and scarlet-haired Kailey Pallas aka Jet Fyrebird (plus bass and drums), play rousing pub-rock, which they do very well. Singer Kailey, who also tours an Adele tribute act, is a confident performer and got the early-birds into festival spirit. They finished their set with a rocking version of Divinyls’ classic Boys In Town.

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COSMIC PSYCHOS / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Cosmic Psychos, founded 1982, whose influence on grunge has been cited by some of its main players (Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain), are arguably the Godfathers of Australian-oriented bogan punk, aka ‘yobbo rock’. Latterly, that has spawned The Chats, Amyl & The Sniffers and The Vee Bees, who tend to write songs about urban living and crass culture rather than world events.

The trio took to the stage with a grind of fuzz guitar – I noticed John McKeering’s Gretsch was missing the mid and treble pick-ups, so those two gaps in the guitar body must add significant resonance to create their distinctive sound.

Drummer Dean Muller needs to practice his drumstick bounce-and-catch technique if he’s to match Blondie’s veteran percussionist Clem Burke. Whilst Clem can ricochet them off the drumskins then snatch the spinning stick from the air with ease, Dean left a few scattered around the stage as they rebounded at odd angles.

During the finale, David Lee Roth, John did his party trick of removing his T-shirt to reveal a pendulous beer-belly, then raised his guitar above his head to trill a lead-break, before mimicking Angus Young of AC/DC’s infamous duck-walk across the stage (first popularized by the legendary Chuck Berry).

These amusing antics he compounded by unbuckling his trousers and flashing his bare bum cheeks in the final minutes before the band exited the stage.

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WOLFMOTHER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Wolfmother, the veteran Sydney band centred on original long-term guitarist-vocalist Andrew Stockdale, rolled on stage to the sound of noisy lead guitar before the trio settled into their familiar groove-based hard-rock.

The heavy metallers in the crowd converged down the front and the familiar devil’s horn raised-hand salutes appeared. (Some folks do this for their whole performance, and again later for the entirety of Alice Cooper’s amazing show… Thanks very much for blocking the view of the stage for folks stuck behind you, meatheads!)

A gender-neutral person in front of me dancing enthusiastically out of synch with the music exposes a tattoo on their lower back that reads “You’re a terrible sight, but you’ll be just fine.” Er, thanks!

Wolfmother’s comparisons to Led Zeppelin and (to a lesser degree) Black Sabbath are accurate, especially with Andrew’s high-pitched vocals and the complicated structures of the songs, involving constantly changing tempos and rhythms.

The surreal lyrics mention being set free by mysterious women, talking to trees and the one about a white unicorn Andrew dedicates to a woman in the audience who is (no word of a lie!) wearing an inflatable unicorn head costume!

Wolfmother’s final number, Joker and the Thief (nominated for several ARIA and MTV awards on its release in 2007), saw many mobile phones raised as fans filmed the performance. Mid-song, while the rhythm section kept playing, Andrew himself raised his own mobile phone and filmed the crowd filming him.

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WHEATUS / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Wheatus, a six-piece including two female backing vocalists and a female drummer, played an animated show that saw the heavy metal crew retreat to the bar, to be replaced by their somewhat geeky-looking fans. Despite this desertion, Wheatus covered the AC/DC track Rock ‘n’ Roll Damnation.

Wheatus are among several bands worldwide, including Chumbawamba, The Buggles and even Australia’s own Divinyls, that have the rare distinction of appearing on most international lists of one-hit wonders. This  inclusion is for their infamous June 2000 hit Teenage Dirtbag.

Not sure if that’s a positive or a negative, but if it gets you onto a touring bill with Blondie and Alice Cooper, it’s not to be sneezed at.

Written by guitarist and vocalist Brendan B. Brown, and featuring the chorus, “I’m just a teenage dirtbag, baby, listen to Iron Maiden, baby, with me..”, it is reportedly about a childhood experience when he was mocked for being an AC/DC fan.

Not long before that a teenager was murdered in an occult-inspired, PCP and LSD-driven murder of a teenager by deranged, heavy metal-loving 17-year-old Ricky Kasso in the woods behind Brendan Brown’s house.

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THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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The Psychedelic Furs, featuring brothers and founder-members Richard and Tim Butler (vocals and bass, respectively) are currently touring with two guitarists after the sad passing of saxophonist Mars Williams.

Mars, whose talent bursts forth on The Psychedelic Furs’ post-1986 albums and was a commanding presence in their live performances, succumbed to periampullary cancer just five months ago on 20 November 20, 2023, at the age of 68.

With the additional guitar covering the solo scales previously played by the saxophone, it changes the live sound of the band, but it doesn’t detract from their music.

The band worked their way through a repertoire of hit songs from their eponymous 1980 debut album to their 1991 hiatus, plus two tracks from Made of Rain, their 2020 album: No-One and Wrong Train.

Despite the band’s reformation (with a changed line-up) in 2000, it was 20 years before they released the aforementioned album, which came 30 years after its predecessor, World Outside – a long wait for a track about trains!

During President Gas, someone in the crowd set the torch app on their mobile phone and held it aloft – like a Statue of Liberty. At first I thought they were moved by the song, but it turned out they were providing a beacon to an incoming friend.

Guitarist Rich Good played an upright electric bass with a violin bow on several songs. Meanwhile, Tim Butler, who these days resembles the late pop-artist Andy Warhol with his mop of silver-grey hair and dark sunglasses, stalked the stage restlessly.

Richard Butler’s resonant, smokey-voiced vocals are still expressive while delivering his clever lyrics full of mischievous word-play, irony and wry observations, spiced with occasional sarcasm and ennui.

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BLONDIE / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Blondie were in fine form with the iconic Debbie Harry resplendent and commanding as she directed the performance. She struggled a little with the high notes – excusable and to be expected for a 78-year-old – to which the enthusiastic audience eagerly sang along.

In addition to a set featuring most of their international hits from their 1974-82 heyday, Blondie performed Long Time from their most recent album, Pollinator (2017), and Nothing is Real but the Girl and Maria from their 1999 comeback album, No Exit.

Behind the band, the screen rippled with an ever-changing display of dynamic visuals from archival film footage to cartoons to special effects.

Initially Debbie wore a white smock with the words WAR NO written descending vertically on the front, which seemed ironic considering it was ANZAC Day, the annual public holiday memorial for armed forces personnel.

However, she explained that although she was opposed to military conflicts, she respected servicemen and women and honoured those who made the ultimate sacrifice. 

Guitarist Chris Stein, the principle songwriter for most of their international hits, was absent having given up touring in April 2022 after he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeats). Andee Blacksugar now performs as lead guitarist on tour.

Former Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock also performed with Blondie at Pandemonium, having also been drafted in 2022 after touring bass player Leigh Foxx was sidelined with a back injury. Glen was the primary songwriter in Sex Pistols, whose members only wrote two more songs after his February 1977 departure, when he was replaced by the late Sid Vicious.

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Alice Cooper’s headlining performance at Pandemonium was a relentless, fabulous Gothic rock opera, consisting of multiple props, pyrotechnics, digital visuals, several walk-on characters in costumes and masks, and Alice himself undertaking several costume changes.

A talented backing band featuring three lead guitarists played a dynamic set of his best-loved songs from a 60-year career.

Many of his dedicated fans dressed up for the occasion, most sporting his distinctive eye makeup. The show began with black-clad masked characters unfurling a black curtain to reveal a screen of three arched windows, behind which appeared a constantly changing landscape or film footage of the band onstage.

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Some of Alice’s costumes included a pirate’s uniform with a fencing sword; a straitjacket; a black top hat and tailed suit. At one stage, during his song Snakebite, he pranced around with a 2 metre-long python draped across his shoulders.

One of the more amusing interactive dramas occurred during Hey Stoopid, which involved an intrusive press photographer persistently snapping him with a camera and flash. Eventually, Alice ran him through with a sword that saw the pesky paparazzi retreat with the blade protruding from his back.

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Another, somewhat horrific stunt, saw a Marie Antoinette lookalike guide a straitjacket-wearing Alice towards a life-sized guillotine where two masked executioners forced Alice to push his head through the hole. The blade drops and Alice’s severed head rolls forward into a cane basket, whereupon the bewigged Marie Antoinette scoops it out then kisses the lips of her decapitated victim.

During Be My Frankenstein a 3 metre-tall zombie-like prisoner in chains roamed around the stage.

For the finale of School’s Out, a load of giant inflated balls were released into the crowd filled with confetti. As they were swatted around by the audience, they burst, one by one, unleashing their multicoloured contents on the unexpected patrons below.

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Set Lists

Alice Cooper
set list

Lock Me Up (snippet)
Welcome to the Show
No More Mr. Nice Guy
I’m Eighteen
Under My Wheels
Billion Dollar Babies
Hey Stoopid
Department of Youth
Snakebite
Feed My Frankenstein
Poison
Black Widow Jam (band only)
Ballad of Dwight Fry
Killer (band only)
I Love the Dead
Elected

Encore:

School’s Out + “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” snippet

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BLONDIE / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Blondie
set list

X Offender
Hanging on the Telephone (The Nerves cover)
One Way or Another
Nothing Is Real but the Girl
Call Me
Will Anything Happen?
Atomic
In the Flesh
Rapture
The Tide Is High (The Paragons cover)
Long Time
Maria
Heart of Glass
Dreaming

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THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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The Psychedelic Furs
set list

Mr. Jones
Love My Way
Wrong Train
The Ghost in You
Only You and I
No‐One
Pretty in Pink
President Gas
Heartbreak Beat

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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FOLLOW
Alice Cooper – Blondie
The Psychedelic Furs – Wheatus
Wolfmother – Fyrebirds

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Check out Glen Morgan’s (@glenmorganphotography) full gallery of this event HERE

or maybe the other Pandemonium full galleries HERE (Melbourne 20th April 2024), HERE (Newcastle 23rd April 2024), and HERE (Gold Coast 27th April 2024)

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Follow PANDEMONIUM
Website – Instagram – Facebook – YouTube

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ALICE COOPER / Photo – @glenmorganphotography

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Press Release 19th April 2024 (below) HERE

PANDEMONIUM
set times and
local openers announced

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AMNPLIFY – DB