Live Review: The Meanies, Protools, Profiteers

After a few dormant years, seminal Melbourne indie-punk ratbags The Meanies came to Jive for their Silver Jubilee Tour and messed the place up... in the good way.

They brought some friends: locals Profiteers greeting the early crowd with some metallic scream-punk. The bass’s thicker strings got a thorough slapping and there was some impressive high neck fret work from the lead guitar. Three-piece ProTools smashed out some ‘70s hard rock-encrusted punk tunes to get the people primed for the main event. Both supports seemed pretty stoked to play with the headliners and that carried down into the audience.

The swelling crowd came to look like the Masters Games of moshing; the age of the attendees reflective of The Meanies’ enduring appeal. It was something pretty special to see so many leather jackets and wallet chains dusted off and riding again.

Their performance was punchy and unapologetic. Drawing from their extensive back-catalogue, The Meanies ripped out a gutsy set of dirty garage punk, one two-minute flurry at a time. While the backbone of everything they played was undisputedly punk, the set was kept eclectic and varied with distinctive accents of Seattle prog, whirring psych-wave and southern blues licks. It came to feel like a retrospective ride through the band’s history and various influences across their durable career.

Punk as catchy as Sorry ‘Bout The Violence and Gangrenous isn’t all that common and holds up strongly on stage, even more than 20 years after release. Those tracks and 10% Weird punctuated a triumphant end to The Meanies’ set, which started a little slowly.

You come to expect a lot from a frontman without an instrument and The Meanies’ Link pretty comprehensively beats those expectations senseless. Thrashing about on stage and in the crowd, with no regard for his personal safety (bare feet on the floor in a club? You are a brave man, sir), Link’s thrashing brought the chaos up close and personal, adding to an utterly engaging set. The Meanies came and showed us once again that while rock can erode and metal can rust, punk simply cannot die.