Does It Offend You, Yeah? @ Oxxford Arts Factory, Sydney (01/10/08)
Wednesday night saw UK four-piece Does It Offend You, Yeah? take to the stage at the Oxford Art Factory. Just one of the many side shows gracing Sydney venues this week as part of the massive Parklife festival which is currently making its way around this wide brown land of ours, supporting the headliners on the bill were ex Gerling member Darren Cross doing his solo thing as The E.L.F, followed by locals Grafton Primary.
I arrived at the venue a couple of songs into Grafton Primary’s set and was not shocked to see the Art Factory already packed wall to wall with the electro set. One of the smallest venues in Sydney, I think I am yet to see a show here which has not sold out. Sometimes you’ll have your view of the show obscured even if you do make it inside the venue, thanks to the two large poles that stand proudly and very inconveniently in the middle of the dance floor. I watched a couple of songs from the top landing at the back of the venue, before taking my chances in the sea of fleuro and way too trendy haircuts below for a better perspective. The thing that struck me most about this set was how similar to their studio recordings Grafton Primary sound when they are doing it live, a good sign for any band. It was a solid set and the crowd seemed to love it.
After jostling for position, I finally ended up in a spot I thought would be suitable to catch most of the show. The two large sweaty guys next to me who insisted on jumping around wildly while pretending to play air synths to the different ringtones on their phones soon made it abundantly clear that I was wrong. After another battle to yet another corner of the venue I finally found my spot, right in time for the main event.
Does it offend you, yeah? appeared on stage to rapturous applause. Generally when a band first walks on stage they will hype up the crowd a bit, before the obligatory name drop of whatever city it is they happen to be in, everyone goes crazy and they get on with the show. I thought it was a reasonably interesting tactic to see a band walk on stage and the first thing out of their mouths be, “This is our area [pointing to the stage]. No bottles, No Girls, No Boys.” I’m glad we got that sorted out! I was just about to bum rush the stage before you started playing anything, but I’ll just stay back here then. When they did start the set, they kicked off with a bang launching straight into a pretty heavy track.
Does it offend you, yeah?, much to their dislike, are consistently pigeonholed as an electro band. In spite of any protests from the band, they are one whether they feel they are or not. You can however hear very strong elements of other music in their sound, especially the rock influence that was prevalent throughout the entire show, not only in the music but in the actual performance as well. At an early point in the show guitar and synth player Morgan Quaintance handed his plectrum to one of the party people at the front and got him to hold it up in the air while he banged his guitar against it. Front man James Rushent spent most of the show seated and looked reasonably subdued but Quaintance was entertainment enough, stage diving into the crowd on more than one occasion. He then delivered what was my favourite moment of the show, holding the mic up to one very embarrassed looking security guard who was side of stage and trying to get him to join in with the singing crowd. Judging by the silence from the security guard, I’m guessing he didn’t know the words, which was fair enough as I didn’t either.
Overall it was a pretty decent gig. The crowd seemed to really love it, however there were also a lot of people still dancing when there was no music playing in-between songs… Hmm…
mrbarb says...
you do realise that the reason James spent "most of the show seated and looked reasonably subdued" was cos he had broken his leg in LA and still did not have a cast on it - that's also why they told no-one to get on the stage...
breaks_tuff says...
Sorry to be negative but is there any chance of telling us the tracks played or how the band were musically? Surely you could tell us that instead of what "genre" people say they are and boring comments about where you were positioned?