Let There Be Rock

Over 12 hours later and my ears continue to ring like a TV test pattern after Booker T and Drive-By Truckers blew the roof off the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda last night. A rare night when the players on stage seemed every bit as nervous and raring with anticipation as the crowd. A night of one first -- DBT's performance in Oz -- and a second -- Booker T and DBT on stage together. All told, a night I'll long remember and from which my ears may never recover.

Started to write a review last night but didn't get far:

Faint taste of Jack Daniels remains as I ponder the just completed Booker T & DBTs show. Ears numb, shirt damp, hands warm and tingling from clapping, pumping and holding beer bottles aloft in salute to a brilliant fusion of Memphis Soul and Southern Rock. I don't drink Jack Daniels but am easily swayed by the sight of rock heroes passing bottles and swigging and seeming to levitate on stage. Couldn't help it. Sure I could. Didn't want to. Shouting 'a shot of Jack Daniels' to the bartender was my rebel yell. Also put a bit of 'Bama into my blood. Maybe more than a 'bit'. But that's not what this night was about.

Obviously, I was in no mind for heavy thinking. Really, the only thing I was in a mind to do was sit in a circle of fellow concert-goers, pass a bottle of JD and reminisce on our shared experience. Alas, I went to the show alone, and so am left to share thoughts with y'all:

• Booker T and DBT are touring together after collaborating on an album called Potato Hole (available 21 April). They no doubt chose to open their tour in Oz to work out onstage kinks outside the glare of US media, and those of us at the small, low-ceilinged Prince Bandroom -- one of Melbourne's best musical venues -- were the better for it. Booker T, a musical legend who bled Memphis soul while in Stax Records' house band Booker T and the MGs, is clearly not comfortable in role of frontman. A true Southern gentleman, he introduced songs from Potato Hole during his opening set with DBT like a kindly grocery clerk telling an elderly shopper where to find the canned peas.
• Booker T's reticence with a microphone meant nothing once his fingers brought his signature B3 organ sound to life. DBT's Patterson Hood coaxed the band through the new songs and several times shot reverent glances at a man he called one of his boyhood heroes.
• Booker T economically wove his organ riffs into DBT's 3-guitar attack. It was exciting to watch brilliant musicians learning how to play together on stage. Some songs came to abrupt ends, something that will no doubt change by the time this tour resumes in the US after Potato Hole's release.
• Standout tunes included 'Native New Yorker', played with a sweet-as-pecan-pie smile on Booker T's face; the album's title track, a raucous frisson enjoyed by everyone onstage and off; 'Warped Sister', the only song released from the album thus far; and a ripping cover of Outkast's 'Hey Ya!'.
• 'Green Onions' needed no introduction. The Booker T and the MGs classic was greeted with a roar and played with abandon. I felt privileged to witness a staple of American rock & roll performed live. By all appearances, the DBTs felt likewise.
• The Booker T set ended with an anti-climatic cover of Tom Waits' 'Get Behind the Mule'.
• The DBTs returned to the stage 30 minutes later. Mike Cooley, one of the band's two main songwriters and a true rock & roll bad ass, looked like he'd spent that time imbibing healthy portions of charcoal-mellowed bourbon. Hood counted off into 'Lookout Mountain' and one of America's finest rock & roll bands began raining thunderbolts on a rapturous Melburnian audience.
• Here's the full DBT setlist: Lookout Mountain/3 Dimes Down/Heathens/Love Like This/Sink Hole/Righteous Path/I'm Sorry Huston/Where the Devil Don't Stay/Feb 14/Puttin' People on the Moon/Hell No I Ain't Happy/Home Field Advantage/Zip City/Let There Be Rock
• Too many highlights to detail. So much more goes into a transcendent rock show than skilled musicians and great songs: luck, effort, incentive, uniqueness. Every intangible you can name was in the Prince Bandroom last night. It was that kind of night.
• Before singing a breathtaking 'Love Like This', Cooley responded to a man shouting requests thusly: "I didn't come this far to play what you wanted to hear." A Clint Eastwood-meets-Lou Reed moment.
• Booker T watched the DBT's set from the side of the small stage, sipping Jack Daniels from a liqueur glass. He joined the band for the final 3 songs after being introduced by a jubilant Patterson Hood. During 'Home Field Advantage' -- drawled magnificently by bassist Shonna Tucker in-between pulls of JD -- Hood flashed many a goofy grin to Booker T behind his B3.
• Maybe it was successfully finishing their first-ever show in Australia. Maybe it was a passing of the pressure of sharing a stage with a living musical legend. Maybe it was the Jack Daniels. Whatever it was, it turned the night's final song into a celebration. Hood thanked the crowd like a child actor accepting an Academy Award and began describing the night in 1977 that changed his life. A night he saw 3 bands for $3. Saying it was an "honor to be in their land" Hood launched into 'Let There Be Rock', a song whose title comes from a long-ago tour by Australia's own AC/DC. The crowd, unsurprisingly, went fucking bananas.

For those unfamiliar with the Southern rock stylings of Drive-By Truckers, here's a live clip of them playing 'Let There Be Rock' in 2007: