“Alan Fletcher?” you ask. For those of you who aren’t saddoes or students, Alan Fletcher is Dr. Karl Kennedy on Neighbours, and, yes, I went to see him perform a gig. Why? Well, a work colleague who shares my love of live music said he’s brilliant live. And the idea of getting drunk and watching a 50+ Australian soap star sing cover versions of popular “indie” tunes sounded entertaining. So I agreed to go.

Oh, entertaining it was. For starters, the audience was full of people crowding to the front against the barrier. Proper fans and all. Second, we (well, I) made homemade t-shirts with his picture on them. It was meant to be funny. Several members of the fan club who have their own blog and website dedicated to him asked if I was from the forum. They were serious about how great he is.

Then there was the opening act: a 30-something Tiffany-alike who looked like a skeleton. Seriously. She should eat more. Hell, she should just eat. She was so bad the only way she got a reaction was by constantly mentioning Dr. Karl. Luckily she only did about 3 songs. Karaoke cover versions, I might add.

Then came the big man himself. Dr. Karl. The famous Dr. K. Luckily, he does not take himself that seriously. He did a set of mostly cover versions, including “Somebody Told Me” by the Killers which sounded better than their live rendition as he hit all the notes, “Wonderwall” by Oasis, “Do You Wanna” by Franz Ferdinand and the closer “We Are the Champions” by Queen, amongst others. He also did a couple of his own tunes. Cause he’s a musician you see. He has an album and everything. One of them was preceded by a lengthy monologue about Dr. Karl and was about his on-screen ex-wife, Susan. He also let each member of his band take the lead vocals on a song while he played guitar. He jumped about, he struck rock star poses, he enjoyed himself. It was fun.

So yeah. Dr. Karl Kennedy, not a bad perfomer. Only because he knew why people were there and he has a sense of humour about what he does. But I enjoyed it. Granted, I was very very very very drunk. But I did enjoy it cause he clearly was having fun and that always helps. Ho hum. And the next morning we drove off to All Tomorrow’s Parties. More on that soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 8:44 pm by JustHipper and is filed under Gig Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.