The Saints’ Chris Bailey Credit: Photo By Felicia Graham

Australian Music Collective Presents/’Pop Culture Press’ Day Party

Brush Square Park/Dog and Duck, Friday, March 16

If you really want to rock, the best strategy is (a) be old or (b) have four or fewer members in your band. If there were a (c) it would be “be Australian,” but Boston’s Buffalo Tom was the exception proving the rule. The trio shredded through their five-song set starting with a vicious version of “Velvet Roof.” Otherwise, Exhibit B was Melbourne’s Airbourne. The quartet’s high voltage AC/DC gives it up not for those about to rock but for those who were actually doing it. The cool Devo interlude props go to the overtly sexual duo Spod. And demonstrating the power of all three tenets were the Hoodoo Gurus, which leaned heavily on essential and seminal Stoneage Romeos: “I Want You Back,” “Dig It Up,” “I Was a Kamikaze Pilot.” By the time Chris Bailey and the Saints stepped onstage and ripped into “(I’m) Stranded” it was a forgone conclusion that it’s better to be old. Let there be rock. Or some reasonably punkish facsimile thereof.

This article appears in March 16 • 2007.

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