Sea legends of the Cruel Kind

The Cruel Sea

Vasco Era

Band: The Cruel Sea with support from Vasco Era
Venue: Prince Of Wales
Date: 21st March 2008
Reviewed By: Lyn Harder
Pictures by Mark Geisel

Last week reviewing a gig it was icky hot and now this week I get a cold night, welcome to Melbourne and welcome to changing weather. A sold out crew packed out the POW to see a band that have been around for donkey’s years, The Cruel Sea. Last time I saw TCS would have been about 6 years ago at The Corner Hotel where Tex wore white thongs with his outfit and played his trademark mouth accordion (actual name escapes me).
Unfortunately I missed the first support band called The Fumes who I am told, are excellent. However I did see ‘Vasco Era’. First song starts with singer and guitar, Sid O’Neil. A good strong voice carried through the crowd, then enters the drummer, Michael Fitzgerald, and bassist, Ted O’Neil, and they were just insane! I couldn’t take my eyes of the later two, drummer pounding the drums like he’d been told to destroy them and the bassist grinding away like he was on heat with the bass. The band hail from Apollo Bay in Victoria, two brothers and the third considered a brother. Explosive rock and bluesy rock moves from a very mesmerising band.

Following this show was about a 45 minute wait then the band we had all come to see came to stage. I couldn’t help but notice drummer Jim Elliot's hair is now white and guitarist Danny Rumour looks very withdrawn since I’d seen them last, but appearances aside, these guys put on a tip top show. There was no white thongs or mouth acordian this time!
TCS played for nearly 2 hours and in that time we had 19 songs. Songs included, ‘Anybody but you’ ‘better get a lawyer’ (can’t get enough of those lazy bass riffs from Ken Gormly) ‘hard times’ and ‘delivery man’. ‘sell your soul’ we’re told was a hit in Spain for 2 weeks...hmmm....we got a reggae version of 'cocaine' with luscious keyboards from James Cruikshank and bouncing crowds. The ever popular ‘black stick’ with zesty, raw sounds, and a favourite for me ‘I don’t worry anymore’. Tex asks the crowd, "do we want to receive what we want?" and shoves the mic into a girls face who says ‘honeymoon is over’ and then we receive this song that Tex knows a lot of punters want and a lot of punters would be disappointed if they didn’t hear. The song goes off like a raw prawn and I get the feeling that Tex would skip this song if it wasn’t such a hit.
Encore comes around way too quick and the crowd burst into noise and whoop loudly and naturally TCS come back to play a few more, ‘naked flame’ groovy situation’ ‘and I don’t think they could not include ‘this is not the way home’ which was our last song of the night and definite a crowd pleaser.
What a fantastic night and welcome back to the fantastic Aussie band that is The Cruel Sea