Torquay, Mar. 30, 1997

By ANG

Well, the day had been excellent! The sun was out during the day to ward off the chill in the air, the surf was up and 4 metre waves were pounding the beach, Damien Hardman just scored a 9.2 ride on his very last wave with 6 seconds to go before time ran out, and now 2 of my favourite bands were going to play tonight - Tool and silverchair. Unfortunately, the weather turned and by mid afternoon it was raining, not a heavy downpour, but a constant light drizzle that stopped and started; just enough to get you soaked, then a break while you steamed off and semi-dried.

The night progressed and silverchair finally came on stage. This was going to be a challenging performance as this was the most hostile audience I had ever seen them face. (Basically, they were there to see Tool, and were not interested in silverchair. Also, they were older than the usual silverchair audience). To give the guys credit, they came on stage and performed really well, despite the very small group up the front dancing while the remaining crowd just stood there, watching with scowls on their faces, almost like "go ahead, just *try* and entertain me"

Their set included some of the new songs from Freakshow. For Cemetery, Daniel asked the audience not to light up cigarette lighters - they were not Bon Jovi "not that I'm saying anything bad about Bon Jovi, I've never met the guy but I'm sure he's a really nice man." Dan's voice was really strong, despite this being the third consecutive night playing live. Ben and Chris played excellently as usual. This was also the last time we were seeing Ben's long hair live - it was all gone by their next performance :-(

Overall, a solid performance by the band despite the audience. I don't know if they made any new fans amongst the Tool crowd, but they confirmed to me and the other fans that they had guts to go out there and perform as well as they did.