Opening the night was Melbourne’s Demon Parade, playing a set of rather Verve-esque tunes. Though only a relatively new band, hailing members from some already established local acts meant it wasn’t much of a surprise when they were announced for the support slot; the rock and roll songs they play suited the tour to a T. Unfortunately the crowd seemed preoccupied by the bar, spending most of the time going back and forth collecting beers rather than watching the band. The Demon Parade played well, the somewhat bigger venue not taking anything away from their act at all, if only more people turned to enjoy it.

Brian Jonestown Massacre’s eight members slowly dribbled onto the stage to the dirty, spaced out sounds of their opening number ‘Super-sonic’, with third song in being the highly adored ‘Servo’, to keep the constant requests at bay. With nothing played from the freshly released Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?, it was a set of the older tracks including ‘Vacuum Boots’, ‘Who’, ‘Anemone’, ‘ Satellite’ and of course ‘Not if you were the last Dandy on Earth’ sang by Matt Hollywood himself.  The gang up on stage played magnificently. The jangly rock and roll songs did sound incredible, but Anton spent most of the night standing side on to the audience with an eagle eye on his extra players, and only finally addressed his doting audience an hour into their hour-and-a-half set. I felt let down watching this band I have loved dearly for so long, just going through the motions. I would never expect a DiG-like tantrum, but a little enthusiasm wouldn’t have gone astray.

Back in 2008 when I first had the opportunity to witness this mythologically-worshiped band, I was excited by how enigmatic not only Newcombe but the other member were, in particular guitarists Frankie Emerson and Ricky Maymi . This time around the set list was better and the line up as original as it is ever going to get, but the whole eight involved seemed so flippant with the situation and at moments, even lifeless.