Sailor Jerry’s Halloween Freakshow at Mercury

Saturday 29 October 2011

Halloween weekend is always a busy one – every venue is having a big party and there are a million options, making choosing where to go pretty hard. I rate I chose wisely though: Mercury boasted a great line-up of The Great Apes, Dead Lucky, Machineri & Basson Laubscher & The Violent Free Peace, along with some awesome costumes and great lighting.

Mercury did a nice job of getting into the Halloween spirit – the lighting on stage was great and there was some fun decor which included pumpkins, candles and The Great Apes’ awesome light bulb ring. Then there were the sheep heads…I arrived pretty early and killed time by inspecting the two shadowy forms that were suspended from hooks on the stage…turned out they had in fact once belonged to living sheep, a grisly revelation that I witnessed many others experience with mixed reactions for the next hour. I’m not a vegetarian or anything but it wasn’t the most tasteful choice of decoration…

Unfortunately the first band up, Basson Laubscher & The Violent Free Peace, weren’t wearing any fun costumes but they made up for it with some riveting guitar playing. Last time I saw Basson Laubscher he was playing with Ann Jangle and stealing the show with his super impressive guitar skills; this time around was no different and even though I’m not a huge blues fan I really enjoyed watching them.

Up next were machineri, who I last saw in April and thought were great. I watched them set up and saw lead lady Sannie Fox’s disgust at the suspended sheep. After she voiced her complaints a rather apathetic-looking guy appeared, cautiously removed the heads and handed them to a zombie nun who carted them off stage…the night was full of wonderfully surreal moments like that…

Machineri were really cool once again and visually bridged the gap between not dressing up and going all out like the next bands…

Turns out the zombie nuns were in fact the guitar-playing contingent of Dead Lucky, who really should make those outfits (which included a reverend and skeleton) a permanent feature at their future gigs. Musically they were a bit too hardcore for my taste but they were great fun and really entertaining.

Musically, I feel a bit out of my depth listening to The Great Apes; they also fall into the ‘too-hardcore-to-handle’ category for me but they’re super energetic and loads of fun on stage. They also had some great costumes (not as good as Dead Lucky’s but still really cool) and that light bulb ring of theirs is one of the most inspired stage accessories I’ve seen in ages. They even had a stage-diver…granted he didn’t so much dive as slowly tumble into the crowd (and possibly impale a few of them with his hair) but that still counts…