The Daily Telegraph | Feb 2009

36
going out
your sydney
monday, february 23, 2009
dailytelegraph.com.au
Comic won’t bomb
pop
Bloodhound Gang
Metro Theatre, 624 George St, City;
today 7pm, 9550 3666, $45.10
ALTERNATIVE pop outfit Bloodhound Gang
have returned to Australia. The band was
formed in 1992 by Jimmy Pop and Daddy Long
Legs. Their first album, Use Your Fingers was
quite well-received, but their breakthrough was
the hit single, The Bad Touch, from their 2000
album Hooray For Boobies. That album also
featured the catchy tune The Ballad Of Chasey
Lain. The next album was called Hefty Fine and
contained the single Foxtrot Uniform Charlie
Kilo. Their songs, which are always packed with
innuendo, aren’t for the easily offended.
Pushing envelopes: Irish comedian Owen O’Neill will perform at the Comedy Store
This visiting comedian tested if the IRA had
a sense of humour, writes Chris Hook
comedy
film
Owen O’Neill
The Adventures Of
Barry McKenzie
The Comedy Store, 122 Lang Rd,
Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park;
tomorrow 8.30pm, until Saturday,
$10-$30, 9357 1419, comedystore.com
Randwick Ritz, 45 St Pauls St,
Randwick; today 7pm, $7,
9399 5722, ritzcinema.com.au
COOGEE Arts Festival’s first-ever Australian
Film Week celebrates our classic films, the first
of which is 1972 movie, The Adventures Of Barry
McKenzie, starring Barry Crocker and Barry
Humphries. The plot centres on Barry’s trip to
London to broaden his cultural education. The
beer-fuelled Barry is ripped off by the English.
Films featured later in the week include Stone,
Walkabout and a new film called The Acolytes.
TAKING the mickey out of the IRA in Belfast
at the height of The Troubles is as close as
anyone can get to real-life gallows humour.
London-based Irish comedian Owen
O’Neill lived to tell the tale. The flame-haired
funnyman (currently learning to embrace the
Aussie moniker ‘‘Ranga’’) is in town for
performances at The Comedy Store alongside
English comic Eddie Brimson.
‘‘There was a lot of fear in the city,’’
O’Neill recalls of the years in Belfast leading
up the late 1990s peace process.
‘‘So this guy opened a comedy club in the
middle of it all and I played the first night.’’
With the venue packed (largely because of
the 50p pints on offer) O’Neill decided to vent
his spleen over the IRA attacking public toilets
in London with bombs.
‘‘It was a long routine, really taking the piss
out of the IRA,’’ O’Neill recalls.
‘‘After the gig I was standing at the bar and
these two guys came up and said, ‘Can we
have a word?’.’’
Comfortably propped at the bar, O’Neill
was unwilling to step outside into a chilly
night, and invited them to have their say
where they were. Then the penny dropped.
‘‘[One of the men] went over to the door
and said something to the doorman and the
doorman just said, ‘Right, everybody out’.
‘‘There was half an hour to go but the bar
just cleared and it was just me and these two
blokes,’’ O’Neill says.
They explained to O’Neill he was
undermining the IRA’s ‘‘war’’ and warned
him to watch himself.
A few nights later O’Neill was performing
in Derry, up the road.
‘‘So I got up and said, ‘Well I was in Belfast
Picture: John Fotiadis
last week and there were these two IRA
w . . . . . .’.’’ Luckily there was no blowback and
O’Neill was glad to see the end of The
Troubles — with one small caveat: ‘‘When the
peace was signed, I thought, ‘Well there’s 25
minutes of material gone’.’’
Not that he has any shortage. One of 16
children, the 49-year-old O’Neill was raised in
Belfast when times were tough. As he
observes: ‘‘We were poor, but unhappy.’’
These days his act canvases a range of issues
and situations born of his childhood, his social
naivete during his first years in London,
alcoholism, and his lifelong and somewhat
unhealthy obsession with Mick Jagger and
The Rolling Stones.
And then there’s his riotously funny
account of the perils of being a pale,
redheaded Irishman in the Australian
summer. Yes, he’s one of the few visitors who
manages to pull off our accent.
‘‘I find the Aussies like to laugh at
themselves. I don’t think they mind me taking
the piss out of them,’’ he says.
‘‘Americans don’t really like that, they
don’t get it. The English don’t like it either,
although they say they don’t mind. Maybe
because it’s coming from an Irishman? I think
the Irish are more like the Aussies.’’
Eric’s nudes not much larger than life
exhibition
Eric Lobbecke: Depouiller —
To Strip Off
punk
NG Art Gallery, Upper Level, 3 Little Queen
St, Chippendale; today 11am-10pm, until
March 7, free, 9318 2992
Alkaline Trio
Manning Bar, Sydney University,
City Rd, Chippendale; today 7pm,
$51.50, ticketek.com.au
MISSED seeing this band at the Soundwave
festival? Or perhaps you saw them and you’re
hungry for more. Either way, this is a good
chance to catch the Illinois band in an intimate
setting. The trio first came to prominence
through their 1998 album Goddamnit, which was
followed by 2000’s Maybe I’ll Catch Fire. Their
latest disc, released in 2008, was called Agony &
Irony. Also playing at this gig are Rival Schools,
Saves The Day and UK band The Subways. Get
there early to see them all.
Naked: Eric Lobbecke’s art show is on today
AMONG Eric Lobbecke’s paintings in this
exhibition is one that depicts six males
shouldering a coffin-shaped concrete block
down the stairs of what looks like a public
building. All the men are very fat and nude.
The painting could well be titled Pallbearers
Of The Economy, their load symbolising a
pillar of the crumbling financial system. In
fact, Lobbecke has titled the painting Le Poid
Lourd. In French, this means the heavy
weight, although there is the added inference
of a psychological burden.
For Lobbecke, the painting concerns the
afflictions of life and our common destiny to
battle away against a barrage of dire events.
Almost all of Lobbecke’s paintings feature
corpulent nudes. They squash together on the
seat of a motorbike, lug surfboards across the
sand, pant up steps, or slump on park benches
amid their own ballooning flesh.
Why is everyone so fat? Consider the
artist’s day job. Lobbecke is an award-winning
artist on The Daily Telegraph, where he is
compelled to clothe his figures.
In his studio, no such constraints apply. Like
Rubens, Lucian Freud, William Kentridge,
Daumier and Botero — whom he admires —
Lobbecke has a passion for painting flesh.
‘‘I’ve been drawing businessmen and
politicians with suits on for 20 years,’’
Lobbecke says. ‘‘I thought it was time to
unravel them and make us see what they look
like underneath. It equalises them, so their
power is taken away.’’
A recurring theme for Lobbecke, whose
mother was French, is the unwillingness of the
typical Australian male to express emotion.
‘‘Men have a more respectful attitude to
women in Europe,’’ he says. ‘‘In Australia it
can be a bit misogynistic.’’
Elizabeth Fortescue