GreazeFest 2010 Review - Friday Night, Saturday Cruise & Saturday Night
The following is a combination of reviews from Lori Lee, Melissa ‘WildCat’ Hooper, Mimsy from Trailer Trash Tattoo, Kylie Lovejoy, plus trophy winners Glenn Miller (King Kroozer) and Luciana (Trophy Queen).
From Lori Lee: As the GreazeFest rumbles into its second decade, it has expanded into its sprawling new home at the Rocklea Showground, which is four times the size of the festival’s former footprint. This rocker’s and rodder’s shindig has grown into one massive weekend of full tilt kustom kulture.
After months of planning the move to the new site, the imminent GreazeFest weekend was hurtling towards us at a rapid pace. Seven days before the festival, a cold front moved over the east coast of Australia and down came the rain. Luckily two days before the opening night, the skies cleared and Brisbane turned up the heat, so for the tenth year running we enjoyed stunning sunshine and blue sky.
Friday Night
From Wildcat: We hit the first night of GreazeFest full of anticipation. The crowd was arriving, getting their drinks organised, checking out the new venue and getting to know the lay of the land, ie where the bar was, where the refreshments were and where the smoker’s area was. The men were looking fine in their psycho and rocker shirts, fresh shaves, coifs and side burns, chains and creepers. The gals were dolled up in gorgeous dresses, heels and amazing hair sets and rolls. Everyone had their tattoos on display. It was great to see the audience going to such effort on their outfits and makeup, yet they still danced up a storm and partied hard.
Doug Wilshire & The Tailspinners were opening the weekend with their great brand of rockabilly-western-swing. Pretty soon the dance floor was being tried out and the bar was getting busy. DJ Leapin’ Lawrie was spinning out some mighty fine tunes from local bands plus well-known favourites from the 1950’s to modern neo-rockabilly tracks. The Flattrakkers were next up. They have an original, solid neo-rockabilly sound that’s stays true to their 1950’s roots. They’re a catchy, upbeat combo and we loved them. Miss Bertie Page performed next and held everyone’s attention, with a routine involving a giant strawberry milkshake with overflowing straws. I had to jostle with the boys to get a good spot!
Headliners for the evening, The Detonators took to the stage and just tore the place apart with a no-nonsense attitude and killer tunes. The crowd danced, whistled and applauded like mad. They played all their hits from their CDs and put on a terrific show. Note from Lori Lee: Check the fantastic photo of the audience, all singing along to ‘Jason You’re A Lout’.
Towards the end of the night I meet India Rose, the beautiful singer from the final band, The Go Go Haunters. She has such amazing tattoos, I think I rambled a bit when I spoke to her! Her band hit the stage running, sounding like a shrill Ramones and looking like The Misfits. When they performed Cherry Bomb, they got the thumbs up, especially from the fellas! And within what seemed like the blink of an eye, the first night of the GreazeFest had come to a close.
Saturday Cruise
From Lori Lee: On Saturday we worked on site for most of the day, getting the venue ready again for another big night. I was keen to move a few of the tables away from the bar servery to allow more standing room. The tables were bolted to the ground and those 50 year old bolts weren’t shifting, so we sheered them off with an angle grinder to make the space. The night rolled around quickly, leaving no time for rest before getting back into it. There was also no time for me to attend the cruise, so our Trophy Queen recipient for this year, Luciana, has added her version:
From Luciana: Around 25 cars rolled in to Rocklea to cruise to Goodna, including a few drivers from NSW, they were a good bunch of people. I took the ‘59 Caddy that day and we were second in line to leave from Rocklea. But the old girl played up something fierce, so we had to split from the group. We ended up travelling there with a ‘48 Chev from NSW, as they stopped to see what I was doing under the bonnet. Anyway it was a quick fix and we flat-footed it and hoped for the best. At the Royal Mail there was another 15 or so cars there, so a good turn out overall. We were mixing it with the locals at the pub and spilling out into the street. The Vampers were playing a cool range of covers and originals. It looked like the band had their own young vixen dancing in front of them to encourage other dancers, which she did very well. We left there at about 4pm to get ready for the evening’s attractions. My friends who came with me had a great time hanging out with everyone and driving with the crew. The GreazeFest cruise was a great opportunity to meet new friends.
Saturday Night
From Wildcat: Saturday night was the big night with an earlier start time and the venue filled up quickly. The crowd was dressed to the nines; ties, suits, slacks, buckskins, vintage dresses, vintage-style shoes and heels, hair sets and rolls, combed-up greaser coifs, vintage shirts and casual jackets. It didn’t take long for the bar to get incredibly busy and stay that way, as the crowd was bigger (and thirstier) than last night.
Big Kitty & The Scaredy Cats warmed up both the stage and the audience with tracks from their CD release ‘Hola’. Big Kitty is glowing, very pregnant and possesses the voice of an angel. Bluesy-swing is their flavour and they’re popular with the dancers. It was a great way to kick off the evening. Next up were The ReChords and man, what a band! Even though they’re from my city of Melbourne, I hadn’t seen them up until this night and they turned out to be phenomenal live. They’re a three-piece outfit with no drums and they play mostly original tunes with lots of vocal harmonies and a tonne of energy. The ReChords have a fresh and unique take on the original 1950s rockabilly trio sound and style, something I’ve not heard in my many years of following the rockabilly scene in Australia. They were a real highlight of the night for me.
Benny and The Fly-By-Niters put on a stellar set of swing-blues-jump-bop. If you haven’t caught Benny and his band live, you’re missing out on some real style, class and heavenly music. Benny is just made for this style of roots music. Two-Dollar Woman is always the stand-out track, just try and sit still when you hear it!
DJ Swingabilly Ray had the dance floor busy between bands with a lively set of tunes. I missed La Viola Vixen’s performance, which is a shame, as I believe all burlesque performers are to be admired and appreciated. Note from Lori Lee: La Viola Vixen performed an elegant and captivating dance with two red parasols, commanding the attention of both the guys and gals in the audience. Deke Dickerson appeared on the stage next, in a big white cowboy hat and sharp suit and along with his Ecco-Fonics, proceeded to entertain, delight and make the gals swoon.
From Lori Lee: Deke performed a fantastic show of hits and favorites to an enthralled crowd. Songs such as ‘Mexicali Rose’, ‘Blistered’, ‘Red Headed Woman’, ‘Mis-shapen Hillbilly Gal’ and the instrumental ‘El Cumbanchero’. Ecco-Fonic’s Chris ‘Sugarballs’ Sprague on drums and Jon Flynn on bass had their time in the spotlight when they sung ‘Brand New Heartache’ (Everly Brothers) and ‘Aint Got No Home’ (Clarence Frogmouth Henry) respectively.
The Ecco-Fonics launched into ‘Dance Sugarballs Dance’ an adaption of ‘Dance Franny Dance’ (Floyd Dakil). Deke switched to drums and drummer Sugarballs danced over to centre stage, just a twistin’ and a boppin’ all over the place. He jumped down into the audience and danced up to the back of the room and back again, jumped back on stage, took over from Deke on drums and finished the song, without missing a beat. The crowd loved it.
Deke was joined on stage by Brisbane guitarist Dangerous Dan and they raised the guitar prowess to a new level as they traded licks on ‘One Wheel Draggin’ On My Red Wagon’, ‘Can’t See The Forest For The Trees’ and the Larry Collins & Joe Maphis instrumental ‘Early American’, which Deke proclaimed as ‘Early Australian’. It was wonderful to see Deke back at GreazeFest, his previous performance at the festival was in 2002, let’s hope he returns sooner rather than later.
Final act of the night was the Pat Capocci Combo, who is always a hit with GreazeFest audiences. A delighted Pat Capocci was joined onstage by Deke to trade licks on Pat’s composition ‘Mary Jane’ and ‘Break Up’ (Charlie Rich). The following day Deke also joined in The Knights of Sin for ‘Crazy Crazy Lovin’ (Johnny Carroll) clearly displaying his passion for performing and his high regard for our Aussie musicians.
Saturday night was huge, but it had to come to a close and I hit the hay around 2am, only to rise again at 4.30am to be back on site for Sunday. As I drove into Rocklea Showground at 6am, hot rods were commencing a queue at the gate, even though gates weren’t opening until 8am. It was destined to be a very big day.
Go to Page Two for the Sunday review...