No Idea, The Black Market
Chardons Corner Hotel, 27/6/14
reviewed by Andy Paine
I saw a promo for this show describe No Idea as “Aussie punk legends”. Now they may be small in number, but there are definitely a group of punks out there who wholeheartedly agree with sentiment. I’m not quite amongst the converted, but even though I was tired and it was cold, I couldn’t quite resist the rare chance to see these guys play a show away from their home town of Melbourne. So I rode past the turn for home and headed on to the Chardons Corner.
I turned up to the sight of Deputy Dipshit leading an enthusiastic singalong of “I wanna kick you in the nuts”. Turns out it was their last song. You can find them reviewed elsewhere on this site, but to be honest, you can probably get a pretty good idea of what a Deputy Dipshit set is like from this short paragraph.
When I was 16, I bought a compilation series of Australian punk bands called “Punk’o’Clock”. On each volume was No Idea bashing out their simple punk ditties. I enjoyed them then but have rarely listened to the since. No Idea though have managed to stay frozen in that teenage punk moment, like the mosquito in Jurassic Park. Apparently they have been together 18 years, and amazingly, they are still playing those same 3 chord songs they did at the start, seemingly without ever having felt the need for any kind of stylistic variation. You can only admire it really. The singer’s Mohawk haircut also hasn’t changed in that time, he must have gone through a lot of hair product though.
The small enthusiastic throng at the front all seem to be known by name to the band, and they continually get up on stage to take the mic and sing, between dancing and even crowd surfing. The lyrics aren’t much more complicated than the chord structures, but still audience members belt out “Hey punk, get a haircut!” and “All I want is a punk girl like you” with gusto. I may have started cynical, but by the time they finish with the gloriously simple “Time To Bail”, I can almost agree that they really are punk legends.
There’s still a late, late set to go, and I was tired enough to go home if it wasn’t for the fact that The Black Market were setting up in front of me. But I stuck it out, and when they started the opening chords of “Everytown” I knew it was worth it. Having only been in Brisbane a couple of years, I wasn’t around for the time when The Black Market were ubiquitous stars of the local punk scene (I’ve only heard the stories), but I have still come to love them over the last couple of years and always enjoy seeing them play. The music isn’t quite as simple as No Idea’s, but they do have a simple worldview that has a bit of the eternal teenager about it. There’s a big Rancid influence on their mix of street punk and ska, but they have a knack for anthemic choruses to rival that band, and again there is a small but devoted group of the audience with their fists raised and their eyes closed singing along. Lyrics that might seem like clichés came to reality like a ton of bricks when Toby Market dedicated one song to a local punk who had recently committed suicide.
There’s a lot of accumulated pain in punk that no amount of drinking and dancing can ever really cover up, and I looked around with a new perspective after that. There’s no simple way to put an end to that kind of tragedy, and those singalongs about friends sticking together aren’t always enough. I left feeling kinda overwhelmed, which wasn’t what I was expecting when I turned up, and the chorus of a Black Market song was running through my head – “won’t you be a friend of mine, I ain’t promising good times. I think together we’ll be just fine, as one.”
Stairs To Nowhere 