If you’ve been to any Australian music festivals then there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve seen The Living End. Since their debut in ’98 with the enormously successful number one hit song Prisoner of Society, society, SOCIETY!!.. 

The three piece, having just released their 7th album, are back on the road to support the new record titled Shift, and I was lucky enough to be there. The show was held at the Tivoli, which thankfully hasn’t been turned into a block of apartments. Shame on you fat cats for even trying! 

The first support act was the 131’s, who I actually missed (shame on me) but my friend tells me they were a kick ass punk rock band. I did however catch Bad//Dreems who seem to be blowing up a fair bit at the moment. They have that energetic garage rock sound and the crowd seemed to be enjoying them a lot, especially one punter who decided it would be a great idea to get up on stage and try and join in on the singing duties, which went so well for him that he also decided it would be a great idea to leap off the stage just like he’s seen all his favourite rock stars do. What could go wrong he says to himself? I highly doubt the crowd will move out of the way and let me plunge to the hard floor, this is a rock show! 

The whereabouts of our fallen friend are unknown, what is known is that the crowd was now officially pumped and ready.

With a back drop of three monkeys, The Living End came out on stage and looked to be back to being just a three piece (they dabbled with a fourth member on the last tour) and kicked things off with Shift’s opening tracks ‘One Step’ and ‘Monkey’. From there it was a pretty mixed set list of the old big hits such as ‘Save the Day’, ‘Roll On’ and throwing in the occasional song from the new album, but for a long time fan such as myself the real treats were hearing rare older songs like ‘Killing the Right’ and ‘Hold Up’ which never get played. They did a great rendition of ‘Moment In the Sun’ that opened as an acoustic number till about halfway when the band kicked in. 

Whilst understandable, it’s still a shame that the new songs don’t get half the response that the older tracks get, but when Scott Owen climbs up one side of his double bass and Chris Cheney in the middle of shredding ‘West End Riot’ climbs up the other side you realise that some things never get old and damn well deserve all the applause that they get.

- Tom Harrison