By the end of Australia Day I head learnt two things: never take the advice of a person with a tattoo on their forehead, and use phrases such as, “Believe me, I’m hard when I have to be,” sparingly, if at all. So after a relatively harrowing Friday afternoon, the only upshot being the life lessons that were firmly learnt, I turned up at the Mandarin Club’s squalid basement full of the sort of hope normally only seen in advertisements for stain-removing laundry detergent, and was greeted by the big beat sounds of Bionic, mixing away on the oversized, extended stage to a young, frisky audience.

The DJ moved aside and it was time for the traditional Romany DJ-singer-DJ reggae trio that is Foreign Dub, who didn’t disgrace their rich heritage. With their sound falling somewhere between Lamb and Damian Marley, this trio suddenly started sucking in members of the audience: perhaps they were part of the band, or maybe they just felt it. The music was fresh, loud and bass heavy and though there’s always something a little bit spry about a bunch of white people on stage with fake ragga accents (but mercifully in this case none of the sartorial stylings), Foreign Dub seemed to pull it off well enough. And then they burst into drum n’ bass which is always a pleasant surprise from a reggae group.

Next up we had The Vangarde (bought to you by Power Music). I’m aware that almost everyone there on the night seemed to be friends with one of the members of this band but in any case…

The Vangarde’s Nick (the music behind the sound) describes their sound as ‘prodigy soul’ which might be true, who could say!? One man on the laptop and other electrical wizardry, one man on the guitar grinding out the vibes and then, on stage with the mikes, a man and woman who I couldn’t charitably call dancers, singers, rappers or even MCs. Mainly he made bland comments like, “Oh yeah,” and “Howd’you like that?” She by contrast seemed content with simply screeching. Loudly. And it can only be because of the heavy friend demographic that so many people were jumping up and down at the front, sucking up the amateurish-well-styled-neo-punk-hip-hop-hooray-don’t-look-at-me-I-don’t-care-ness that was being thrown around.

The irony wasn’t lost on me that a gentleman with ‘scam’ tattooed above his eyebrows had advised me to stay at home that night. But then the music was pumping, big breaks and drops, crazy drum sounds and cuts, the guitarist doing well to riff and grind in time. In fact, I was almost able to enjoy the music in spite of the ugly barrage of screams coming at me. Almost. In actuality I came to despise the girl, hate the boy, feel sorry for the guitarist and grow a cagey respect for the music maker that even despite what he’d surrounded himself with, he was still recognisably decent within.

Kobra Kai had cancelled for the night (a shame as they have a couple of decent MCs in their ranks), so this was pretty much the standard story of Sydney drum n’ bass: good music ruined by bad MCs. Anyhow it was a nice enough night, and after all; I’m a big fan of comfy leather couches and cheap beer.