Live Review: Dig It Up! Sydney

In its second year of operation, Dig It Up! has developed a distinctive mood, attitude and audience. It's part street party, part pub (rock) crawl, soundtracked by the Hoodoo Gurus' broad knowledge and love of vinyl of the 20th century. The bands they cherrypick are a mix of those they looked up to, the best of their contemporaries and some ready to carry the torch. This variety, spread across four venues, has you running laps of Enmore Road, but knowing you're going to miss something. So, Tumbleweed's familiar sludgy avalanche gave way to Peter Case. The grey-bearded Mr Case led two revered new wave bands – the wired and punky Nerves and power-pop notables, The Plimsouls. He opened with the latter's How Long Will It Take? – apt, after a bunch of buzzes and farts from the bass amp held things up before he veered off into covers like The Easybeats' Women, as if to point out he's knows he's in Australia.

But before he's done, you're squeezing down along the bar of The Sly Fox for The Frowning Clouds. “Can't go wrong with boys in stripy shirts with guitars,” a friend speaks the truth. Said guitars are still mostly held around the nipple line, '60s influences maybe now more classicist poppy than the fuzzy edges of their still recent teenagedom. They've changed; The Lime Spiders not so much. Mick Blood is still frontman as grumpy cunt. “Turning the foldback on would help,” he groused, before knocking his mic stand over repeatedly seemingly just to shit the poor stage guy who dutifully uprighted it. And not sure if the kimono and headband look is coming back, no matter how much the guitar player might want. The chugging rock noise of them just got a bit samey after a while.

The loss of Notes as a venue – and just what is going on there? – meant the attraction of Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek playing solo had the queue around the corner trying to crowd into the Midnight Special. The sound seeping out the door was intricate and clenched as expected. But that wrinkle meant being there for the start of The Stems set back at the Enmore itself. With a handy pick-up guitarist in Even's Ash Naylor, Dom Mariani's perfect pop songs soared. The set-closing At First Sight remains the sort of song that should have been a hit in the '60s, 80s or next Thursday. Magnificent.

Altogether less crafted – but just as compelling – Kim Salmon and sometimes Scientists' drummer Leanne Cowie made a vicious two-piece racket. The Scientists classic Swampland was serrated, flailing. Salmon growled and yelled. The glimpses of Cowie's head over the sardined Sly Fox were just of a bobbing blur of hair and sticks. At The Green Room, comedy was mostly the day's variable currency. Performing there though, Super Wild Horses' take on the guitar and drums combo was quite different. Amy Franz and Hayley McKee were worried they might be playing only to “the couple of scary clowns who were on before us”. But their odd, uneasy charm and the music's stuttering insistence has the place well-filled with the curious and knowledgeable.

In between, Buzzcocks were the first big hitters of the day. A band you wouldn't have picked as likely to survive punk's first spit, everything still came in machine-gun two-minute spurts. Guitarists and vocalists Pete Shelley yelped, Steve Diggle mugged and struck hopefully ironic guitar poses. Not sure if a man pushing 60 can still yell 'Fuck the government!', but the audience loved it.

See, time can be an odd mirror. Flamin' Groovies were a touchstone I'd waited to see since I was about 14. I wanted to love them. What we got was a competent leagues club covers band with a guy in a truly bad wig – please, someone tell guitarist Cyril Jordan – and vocalist/guitarist Chris Wilson's showbiz scarf. We were left wishing and hoping for something to take them out of 'cruise'. The anthem, Shake Some Action, appeared last, offered some redemption, but maybe not quite enough. And into Blue Öyster Cult. It looked right: blackclad, sunglasses at night, Marshall stacks. But more smooth adult American rock than the jaggedness expected. Godzilla was clunking silly, down to Eric Bloom's voice of doom intro and Don't Fear The Reaper – the title almost a punchline now – showed guitarist Buck Dharma and the newer recruits can lock into a polite guitar wigout. And not a cowbell was seen or heard.

Which left the curators. Maybe you sometimes forget just how good the Hoodoo Gurus are. This year's project was to run through their second album, Mars Needs Guitars. Let's just list Side One – yes, it's from the era when things had 'sides': Bittersweet, Poison Pen, In The Wild, Death Defying, Like Wow – Wipeout. Frontman Dave Faulkner is a national treasure. Dapper in suit, he was chatty, the perfect host. Meantime, Brad Shepherd was the life of the party. The guitarist's shirt apparently in automatic unbutton mode as he dervished about the stage in a manner no bloke his age has a right to.

Of course the album recital's not enough, so there were a few 'extras'. Among other ones you'd know: What's My Scene, the magnificent 1000 Miles Away, the colour-drenched Warner cartoon singalong of I Was A Kamikaze Pilot. My Girl came solo – and let's put Faulkner down as a much underrated singer as well. There's a last shot in the locker, as Jordan and Wilson are wheeled out for a raucous joint bash at the Groovies' 'other' song, Teenage Head. If you didn't find something – whether old favourite or new discovery – through the day, you're a hard marker, or at the wrong day out.