Oils Gig Reviews

Revesby Worker's Club, Saturday 31 January, 1998

Set List:
Wheel - When the Generals Talk
Power & the Passion
Wheel -Stars of Warburton
Wheel - My Country
Wheel - You May not be Released
What Goes On
One Country
Back on the Borderline
Wheel - Sins of Omission
Wheel - Beds are Burning
Wheel - Read About It
Forgotten Years
Cold Cold Change

Surf's Up Tonight
Dead Heart
Blue Sky Mine

US Forces
Hercules

It all started off as a very complicated night, but proved to be worthwhile(not that the Oils could ever not be worthwhile). Should I go to my sister's financee's 30th birthday or Oils at Revesby? Why wasn't my friend who was supposed to be coming returning my calls? Was I going to be stuck in the upstairs section of the 'Workers?

The first dilemma was easy resolved and I declared a 'no show' was in order for the birthday party.(it wasn't a very hard decision) My mate turned out to be totally uncontactable, so my brother decided he too could do the big 'no show.' So we hoped on the train from Liverpool (yes, yes I live in the west.It is not my fault.......) It takes about 20 minutes to drive there, so naturally it took about 50 min and 3 trains. After finally getting there, I met up with Krusty,Sandy and Jim. After hanging in the club for too long(any longer than about 10min at the 'Workers is too long) the doors finally opened. Thanks to Krusty (and Sandy?) I was able to get in the downstairs section.

Revesby Workers is about as close as you can get to the quintessential RSL. The gig was in the auditorium, which hosts bingo and housie mid-week. It is possibly one of the largest venues the Oils have played at recently and comes complete with its own LED display.

(For those of you who haven't been to a gig recently, they have a LED display as part of the set which displays messages such as 'Ticket no 23 your veggie burger is ready' 'Steak and eggs $3:99', 'A friend is someone you can trust','Beautiful one day,gone the next' the word 'Hanson' followed by a Pacman gobbling it up, 'Woodchip your mind' '20000 Watt RSL' etc. They display these pre-show.)

Skunkhour came on a played an unreal set.For those of you who haven't seen them, do so. Aya Larkin is the man! They played "We're up to our necks in it', 'Treacherous Head' 'Sunstone', 'Breathing thru my eyes' and a few others.

The Oils eventually came on to as reasonable tame crowd (at least by Revesby standards) They spun the wheel heaps just like at Waves on Friday night, providing many good songs.A personal highlight was "You may not be released". Prior to this week I had never heard it live and they ended up playing it twice in a week! The wheel ins the best !!!!!!! Guaranteed to get some oldies. Pete got several people on the stage as usual to spin the wheel. just like at Waves he made sure they weren't Rugby League players, cause he reckons they have had enough fame or something like that.

The surprise of the night came when Pete got two people out of the crowd to have a sort of debate thing. One of them had to tell the crowd why Australia should (or was that shouldn't??) have a President that would take the same role as the present Governor General, with exactly the same powers. I can't remember what the other bloke had to talk about but is was something pro-republic (as you would expect)

The set proved to be as good (better???) than that of Waves, which puts it up there with THE ULTIMATE set. They played 2 encores. Rob didn't have his electronic dog thing at the bottom of the kit.

All in all a great night.If I remember any more (this usually occurs 2min after sending this) I'll post it. Only just realised how long this beast has become.If ya got to ere thanks for reading it.