My old chums Sparkadia headlined a packed Gaelic Theatre on Saturday night. It was good to see them back home after touring Europe and playing festival dates at Glastonbury and T in the Park.

Like i did previously with Expatriate, i snapped a few pictures of Sparkadia backstage, nervously anticipating going on stage to a hometown crowd.

Sparkadia have several more weeks of touring across Australia ahead of them, leading up to Homebake and New Years Eve at Purple Sneakers.

UPDATE 30/10/08

Sparkadia visited the breakfast show on Triple J and performed a lovely acoustic version of The Presets ‘This Boy’s in Love’. Follow the link from here to download the mp3, skip to 12mins 25sec in for the song.

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On Saturday night Expatriate headlined a sold out show at The Gaelic Club.

Similarly to the other week when Dappled Cities Fly and Red Riders played the Metro, this was another case of a Sydney band playing a triumphant sold out show in their hometown.

It feels like Expatriate have broken through the trendy indie band scene into a more mainstream following. The crowd wasn’t the regular industry types and subdued cool kids, it was genuine fans who sung along to all the songs and bought the t-shirt at the end of the night. The band are played on Nova, get features in the Telegraph and tour with Simple Minds and Powderfinger. There seems to be a momentum pushing them beyond their Sydney inner city roots.

I spent a little time with the band before they went onstage. It was quite strange to discover them all warming up by singing in the ladies toilet backstage. It sounded great and was quite a privelege to get my own private performance.

I took a little video on my phone. Damian and Dave (the bassist) were singing by themselves when Ben came in to tell them Bit By Bats were almost finished their set.

See more photos in the Expatriate at The Gaelic gallery and plenty more Expatriate posts in the archives.

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Last night i attended the Jack Awards nominations at the Gaelic Club. I was taking photos as per usual.

The music industry crowd seemed to enjoy the free booze and networking but were rather bemused by Airbourne’s big pub rock show. I love their over the top show, fireworks and all, but most of the crowd stayed up the back chatting.

There doesn’t appear to be a ‘Best Live Music Photographer’ category this year as there has been in previous years. It’s a shame since i’m not aware of any other award in Australia that recognises that pursuit close to my heart. I guess it was just getting predictable with Tony Mott winning it every year.

The full list of nominees is after the jump.

You can vote for your choices on The Jack Awards website.

UPDATE

I’ve just uploaded a gallery of photos from the night. You can also see them on the Jack Awards website.

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I was back doing the social photo thing the other week at the Gaelic Club. It was a party thrown by AM Eyewear. So i got paid in cash and free sunglasses – noice.

There were lots of fashionable kids getting messy off free sangria.

A few bands played including The Temper Trap, Shaky Hands and The Death Set.

Death Set are mental in the best possible way. Two dudes on guitar with an iPod providing backing beats. They send the crowd into anarchic abandon. Stage diving, dancing, nudity, blood, sweat and cheers.

Lots more photos here.

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Les Savy Fav are one of the best live bands around. Their front man Tim Harrington is a hefty bald fella with a beard with absurd amounts of energy and creativity when it comes to performing.

For example, while the band and roadies were setting up he came out on stage, sat down and pretended to meditate, then started chatting with the audience. A long haired fan asked for a photo – so he posed for that and proceeded to bite a chunk of the fans hair off. He put it under his cap for safe keeping, a few minutes later recovering it to assemble a DIY voodoo doll made with the hair and some gaffer tape and set it off to be passed round the room. All this before the show even starts.

And when it did start there were plenty more antics – leaping into the crowd blindfolded by a scarf he’d pinched from an audience member, taking the mic into the crowd and going all the way to the back of the venue and out to the street, lifting up a foldback speaker and holding it over his head and still singing into the mic, getting about a dozen people from the audience to throw their hats to him so he can attempt to wear them all at once, heading into the crowd and taking the tshirts off a couple of guys backs and putting them on himself, pashing girls and guys in the front row… Not just your usual run of the mill kind of show.

They sound alright too – the tight band keeps it all together while the frontman goes on his forays. Take a listen to their song The Sweat Descends (mp3).

Support was provided by another couple of bands visiting from the US, Thunderbirds Are Now! and The Hold Steady.

I took some photos which you can see in the Les Savy Fav, The Hold Steady and Thunderbirds Are Now! album. Some might appear in a poster/magazine type thing called Moss.

You’ve got two more chances to catch Les Savy Fav in Sydney – on Saturday aboard PopFrenzy afloat also featuring Jens Lekman and Pretty Girls Make Graves and on Sunday at The Laneway Festival in Circular Quay.

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If i was to have sent you a text message from the Les Savy Fav show last night it might have read something like this:

OMG!! LSF r so fckn awesum!! Les singer is mental - he climbed all over tha balcony @ Gaelic Club + got nekkid. He is fat + bald but all sex. Best gig eva!!

They just announced a show with Pretty Girls Make Graves on a boat cruise on Sydney harbour this Sunday evening. I’m so going. Details on the PopFrenzy website.

Oh and just so you know, i don’t really write texts like that, i’m more of a proper spelling and punctuation kind of a guy.

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