Alex Guinman

The Beards

2012-10-06

2012-10-04 23.39.34.resized

Rachael and I went to see The Beards on Thursday night at The Spotted Cow. It was a very strange venue, basically a pub where they had blocked off the front room. Was very cramped but was a pretty good atmosphere.

The first support, Kim Churchill was excellent. Rachael likened him to a cross between Xavier Rudd and Ash Grunwald which I agree is a fairly accurate comparison. He had an incredibly full sound for a single person. The support of them, The Snowdroppers, weren't as good. They were okay but I didn't really get into them and Rachael found the singer creepy. He did have weird eyes, they were shiny like a cats.

I should mention that the turn out was very beard-centric. Most the guys had beards, and the girls had woollen beard or had drawn on beards with a texta. They did their own sound check, and instead testing the mics with the traditional "One Two" they tested them with "Beards". They were pretty hilarious just in general. They introduces the first song, saying that it was about beards. And likewise that the second song was in the key of B.... for Beards. and so on. Other stage presence included awarding trophies for best and worst beard.

The songs were all pretty good considering their limited subject material it is impressive the amount of quality songs they have written about beards. I was particularly impressed with their musical talent, the singer broke out into a couple of awesome saxophone solos when he wasn't rocking the kee-tar.

It was an excellent concert, it was way better than I expecting. At the moment I don't have a beard so much as haven't been bothered to shave for a week. So here is a photo from the beard-off challenge we did in uni in 2009.