Supporting their first full-length album, Australia’s very own Jinja Safari commenced a tour that saw near sold-out shows across the country. But how was it inside? Dave Roberts investigates.

You know, I love Little Big Planet. Yes, the game on the Playstation 3, and specifically the ‘safari’ level – if only for the music and the replayability of the game, and of course the audience it attracts. Mainly, attractive, 16-19 year old girls who love nothing more than to play games and drink. At least in my opinion that’s the demographic.

The first time I ever played this game I was at a friend’s place and she pulled it out and insisted in only the way that she could that we play the damn thing. Of course, I was a little tipsy at the time and agreed full-heartedly to the playing of this side-scrolling mammoth game. And we played the safari level. I loved the music, so much I went looking for it. And I didn’t find it but I did find something relatively close, in the vein of Jinja Safari and their first EP, which I own and love. Now I’m not saying that their music being similar to the fun style in LBP is the reason for their success, but I think they tapped into a great market, probably unwittingly, and now have a bunch of screaming teenage fans.

When the second album came out, I bought that too, enjoying every second of it – and with it came the tour that I simply had to go to. So there we are, standing in line surrounded by the former mentioned girls from the Little Big Planet gaming area who I swear only came because the music is fun and they managed to discover Jinja the same way I did – looking for it after playing the game – and it suddenly dawned on me. This gig is either going to be very, very good, or resoundingly bad. This realisation came about partly due to the 402 times the girls in front of us said ‘like’ collectively in the space of ten minutes, but also partly due to their ages and dress code, which included an polaroid camera, glasses reminiscent of Garth from Wayne’s World, and anything else from the mid-to-late sixties and seventies, except the iPhone. Because they’d hate to be without access to tumblr for five minutes.

Timefreeze. Now, before I start with this you must know, I’ve decided I’m going to give two review scores for this gig. One for the pretentious phallic objects in the crowd, and one for the bands on the night. I really want to stress this point so there’s no confusion – the bands including Jinja were amazing. They were all as good as they could be. I had a problem with the crowd, not with the bands.

Good. Let’s move on.

So we filed inside, and there we are, the four of us, second from the front watching the setup for the first support act Elizabeth Rose. And around us stood possibly the most idiotic crowd of all time – who talked about where they were from and drank (even if they were underage), pushed and shoved and the bands hadn’t even started yet. And when Miss Rose finally did, the talking continued. Somewhere over to my right a tall guy, with a cap on (indoors albeit) was facing away from the stage talking to his mate. Maybe I’m getting old, but I thought that they could do that elsewhere than a gig where someone is putting their music on the line for you to listen to and enjoy, not for you to stand facing away from the stage and talk.

That aside, Elizabeth Rose played very well - her music was different and from what I managed to hear of it over the cacophony of noise and yabbering I enjoyed, and so far as performance goes well it’s a little hard when you’re a one-man..err… woman-band standing behind a keyboard so I’ll give her full points. The next act was Pluto Jonze, who was equally as awesome – if only for one instrument on stage. A Theremin. And they played well as well – not just sorta-played ok, but played really, really well. The music was fun, but not too fun. It hit that sweet spot of not yet mainstream, but not quite underground either – so hopefully you’d get the more sensible fans from both sides. But again, the crowd didn’t listen to the music. No, it was far more important to attempt to chat up the two girls in front of us who were drunk and making out.

So by this point as you can imagine, the gig wasn’t going too well, and even I admit, the next band were nothing to write home about – Megastick Fanfare. I mean yes, they were good in every sense of the word, they performed well, and I may have enjoyed them a little more if I wasn’t battling to keep my balance in a general standing area of an under 18’s gig, but they just didn’t have something… oh. Sound.

You see, there is a big problem with the Metro, and that is if you’re not standing beside the desk, the mix is horrible. I’ve heard big concrete rooms sound better, frankly. The sound was muffled, and it didn’t help that I had a six-foot-something douchebag standing beside me, yelling out obscenities to the stage all night. I didn’t even wear my ear protection, because it wasn’t doing anything at that point.

So, the curtain closed behind Megastick and the crowd pushed forward. And there was a flutter of movement behind the curtain and the crow pushed forward again. By now, I’m up against some poor young girl in the front of the mosh pit all because people feel they have to get closer to the stage, closer to the barrier in some vein attempt to touch their favourite band. And Jinja came on, and that’s exactly what happened. It got that bad that I did something I’d never, ever done in my life before, especially in the first song of the night. I got out. I climbed over the front of the railing, and got out of the floor standing area, and went and surveyed the land from up near the sound desk.

Now, before I go into a ‘but’ section that all of my reviews seem to have, I want to stress again, that the band, Jinja Safari, was fantastic. They played their entire album, albeit with a pretty useless encore, complete with crowd surfing, climbing up to the light-rigging and hand-over-handing all the way to the other side, and getting the crowd dancing and jumping. They were almost note-for-note, with the things that they weren’t I’ll let slide because of the art of double tracking. The lighting was perfect, and the sound was great up near the sound-desk, everywhere else it was pretty shotty as I mentioned.

All in all, the gig was half – half. The bands were fantastic, each playing their own styles and loving every second of it. The production was great, with the lighting and stage changes quick and efficient – or at least as much as they can be. It was the crowd that really spoiled the night.

You know there is something intrinsically wrong with a crowd when someone who went to Children of Bodom, at the age of 15, has to get out of the mosh pit. A self-declared metal-head with a long history of death pits, walls, and even the infamous chilli bowl chalked up to his name had to get out of the general standing area at a pop rock gig. I’m sorry, but even a person with a straightjacket on is going to look at that and go ‘you guys are god-damn nuts’. I’ve been to some bat-shit crazy gigs in my life, but there was always an element of respect in those gigs. An element of ‘keep people on their feet so they can enjoy this’. They’d turn around and apologise for knocking you to the ground by helping you up. They’d not hit your girlfriend and not apologise. NOT an element of ‘how much of a wanker can I be before someone decides to kick me out?’

I can deal with the metal-heads who get all high and mighty about “Listening to Metallica before you were even born, man”. I can ignore the people who think that all music is crap except Jazz and select Classical and refer to everything else as noise. I can cope with the people who like only mainstream music, and choose to ‘bop’ along to disco and house music, and even stuff by some of the shockers that are on the radio. Hell, I can even enjoy some of the shufflers from time to time with their hard-style techno. But one crowd I cannot stand, is the 14-18 year old teenage girl demographic who like music because it’s popular and it’s the the in thing and cannot string two words together without putting the word ‘like’ in there more than should be legally possible.

And then not to mention the douche-bag boyfriends or male followers at that age. I’m sure these are the same guys who get on CoD or anything else like that and scream and yell at you because you’re a better player than them, and they must make up for it by being downright penises at gigs like this. And, to my knowledge, I wasn’t like that when I was that age. I don’t remember getting into the middle of a mosh-pit and start pushing and being a general jerk-off – or talking at the top of my lungs about whatever I see fit, whilst looking away from the stage.

I mean can you imaging going to a movie, and then turning around and talking to the person behind you, whilst the director and actors of the movie are sitting right in front of you? How insulted would they be? This is exactly what they did, and frankly I find it sickening and insulting. These people, unfortunately, make up a lot of Jinja’s fan base. It’d be great to see these guys at an over 18’s gig – hopefully where people are less like the r-tards that were at this gig.

Overall, the gig got a big ‘eh’ from me. If it weren’t for the dumb-shit people in the crowd, it’d have gotten a big ‘one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a while’ but unfortunately, the crowd really soured the occasion. So think of it this way. If you’re under, say, 20, you’ll enjoy them no matter what. If you’re over, just go to an 18+ gig.