Rocktober #09 "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again" The Angels

   This is 'The Angels' flying at their best... in this clip from LaTrobe Uni... pre cultural expletive added to this song MUCH later...

   Just four days earlier on 8th September 1979 'The Angels' played to 10,000 in the epic free Newcastle Mattara Festival Rock Concert in Civic Park and you get the picture of that day from the middle of this Newcastle Herald article [the internet is an amazing thing]. Mick DeBono drove us to the concert in his impressive HR and we listened to 'No Exit' on cassette all the way there...
   It was genuinely mayhem as so many people turned up... I went to two and they blur in the memory but this day I recall...
1. A bloke drinking Bundy Rum who climbed a flag pole and whose mates threw bottles up to, until he was so drunk he fell the 10m to the grass below mid afternoon.
2. We stood near the cenotaph and at one point a dozen bikers in front of us stood in a circle urinating on the grass, we laughed until on 'go' they all turned outwards to the crowd gathered around them
3. There was a girl featured in the Herald a day later who was right up the front and stood up wearing a Bali styled singlet top and leopard skin patterned skimpy bikini... at the height of the concert she was dancing and swinging her arms above her head and of course someone behind her pulled down the bikini bottoms
4. Between 2 years of this concert 'Flowers' with Iva Davies, became 'Icehouse' and I recall the same arvo DJ sharing my view in year two after they played their stunning single, that he had been a little skeptical 12 months earlier as Iva took the stage for sone one and screamed into the mic for a full 30sec as the opening lyric. The keyboard players black leather pants were way too shiny as well.
5. I recall 'Heroes', Jeff St John in his wheel chair doing wheelies on stage singing and Doc Neeson climbing the speaker stack to the top [he didn't fall this time as we would at the ISC in 1989

   The Herald article talks of damage to the gardens... the main flower beds were rich with giant yellow sunflowers each flower 30cm across with solid stalks. I noticed that when the bikers pulled one up out of the ground it had a football sized clod of dirt attached to the roots and we watched as the first few were thrown metres into the air by the flower, righted themselves by the weight of the dirt and then plummeted to land on unsuspecting punters below... there was talk of $20,000 worth of plants destroyed that day [it was after all, Newcastle's School Holiday Spring Festival.

   We were there though, to see 'The Angels' and this introverted young methodist boy had his first experience of the rock n roll culture of the 1970s. I stood sipping my Coca Cola, laughing, shouting, enjoying the music and the derelict behaviour of Newcastle's finest 'goof' all around!! I understood rock music and stage presence that day... all wrapped up in these unique Aussie talents, one band after another...
   This was a few days before Police overreacted at the closing concert for the nearby 'Star Hotel' and shut down 'The Heroes' set with seconds remaining and caused a celebratory mob to sprawl onto the streets where a few idiots upturned and set on fire a Police vehicle to create the scenes of the folkloric 'Star Hotel' riot!! 2 months later I started work as an accountancy trainee at the Steelworks under the initial tutoring of the previous years intake, including my chaperone at the No1 Bloom Mill who was outside the Star when a mate next to him stole a Policeman's gun and handed it to him to hide... he spent the first few weeks 'showing me the ropes at work' but just waiting for a call from the Police who were publicising media footage of the riot in which he had clearly seen himself and his mate... the call never came...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Aix-DSsdA