Sydney,
April 9, 1996
Royal Easter Show
silverchair made their last live performance
for some time at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, N.S.W.
 According
to correspondent Melissa Duca, national television newscasts
in Australia showed footage of fans being trampled, crushed,
run over, hauled and pushed and shoved and security being
done over in much the same way prior to the concert which
was headlined by silverchair. Nearly 100 fans were treated
on the scene by medical personnel.
Slave and Freak were among the new songs played
at the show. Contrary to his assertions in a radio interview
a week before the show, Daniel Johns did not sport pink hair
for the concert.
Australia's modern rock radio station Triple
J did not broadcast the performance, but Triple J's Michael
Tunn talked with Daniel in an interview from the showgrounds.
Triple J presenter Rose let the nation listen to silverchair's
opening song Leave Me Out via her mobile phone while she was
in the mosh pit.
After the show, silverchair were shown on
television making a hasty retreat into a car, with hundreds
of screaming fans in full pursuit.
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Under the Milky Way: silverchair, RAS Showgrounds,
Sydney, April 9, 1996
By SIMON WOOLDRIDGE, Juice magazine
 silverchair
were the personification of the energy, effort and physical
expression every young fan there would have spent if they
weren't crushed together like a tight-knit herd of religious
pilgrims enveloped by awe. Fans with a reputation for moshing
through the breaks between songs stood for the most part transfixed
by the opening two epics, Leave Me Out and Slave. Such was
silverchair's presence that beyond singing along word for
word, many of the fans' interest in physical participation
was reduced to restrained head-nodding, and desperate neck
craning.
[Guitarist/singer Daniel] Johns was busy revealing
just how much about showmanship he's learned on all those
big American stages. Between him and bassist Chris Joannou
it was skank central as they tore from one side of the stage
to the other, crouching as if crushed by the weight of their
own guitar attack. Johns sang the lines without dropping a
stitch, but at every available opportunity he was headbanging
like the proverbial Madman (that tune later introduced as
a love song). The neck-wrecking thrashing may be an anachronism
at which his cooler contemporaries would balk, but the crowd
responded in kind.
Looking for all the world like a portrait
of some Nordic prince as his blond hair flew in the wind,
Johns dressed formally with his neat three-piece suit and
pressed white dress shirt. Musically he was coming from less
formal aesthetics, the three new songs premiered here showing
generally heavier leanings. Slave has already gained itself
a following, the slow offbeat crunch perfect for moshpit circle-work,
allowing Johns and Joannou to throw themselves into the simple
chunkiness of the riffarama. Freak used a gambit so similar
that the two songs were at times indistinguishable. But fears
of a second album filled with one riff were dispelled by Pop
Song for Us Rejects, a three-chord wonder that retained the
rhythm but changed the atmosphere completely.
 The
showmanship element didn't extend to stage banter. Johns may
have been willing to act out lines, as he gestured to himself
mockingly during Slave, singing "Lost my soul / Lost
my confidence in me," but between songs he did little
more than offer water and moral support. But then most of
the set ran like a greatest hits, culminating in their amended
version of Pure Massacre with an art-wank finish which, while
harrowing at previous gigs, this time failed to take off.
silverchair have never known quite when to
stop, and when Ben Gillies dragged himself through his own
[drum] kit, heaving it from the riser and then ineffectually
kicked it about in a strange attempt to take the ritual a
step further than the obvious, it's reminiscent of Johns'
uncomfortable ultimate screams at earlier gigs. From silverchair
these extremes look like a band aping its peers rather than
finishing with their genuine presence. But, making a mental
note to check the body count as I left (network television
painted a picture of carnage -- basically bruises and sprains
-- that night), I was left wondering what else would top such
a strong show. That, I suppose, is for silverchair to discover.
[Thanks to Melanie for providing this article.]
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