Three moments defined Sunday night’s Monster Magnet gig. The first came with the band’s appearance onstage: five hirsute rock’n’rollers, lathered in stoner rock credibility. Dave Wyndorf in a leather jacket over a Hawkwind t-shirt – the pummelling marriage of ‘70s American rock and acid-drenched English progressive psychedelia. He’s been to the edge, looked over the precipice and retreated back into the land of the living – and you can see it all in his weathered face. The crowd cheers, and the band salutes in kind. An air of expectation gives way to a rush of psychedelic stoner rock noise and there is much rejoicing.
The second came with the incongruous segue into Don McLean’s American Pie. Later on someone remarked that it was wrong – why in Lemmy’s name was this paragon of stoner rock deviating into the barren pastures of AM radio? Wyndorf delighted in the ridiculousness of it all: hands clapping, he dragged enough of the crowd down his cheesy back road to make the journey worthwhile. It was so wrong it just had to be right – and it illustrated that Monster Magnet has a sense of humour, and a perversity of ironic pleasure that sets the band apart from its earnest contemporaries.
The third defining event was always going to be the finale: Space Lord Motherfucker. What does that mean anyway? It’s a catch-cry, one of those specious but delicious rhetorical phrases that only rock’n’roll can do. The crowd is in unison, singing along, poking the proverbial finger in the chest of the squares, the jive and any other cheap pejorative metaphor for the inanity of mainstream existence.
Wyndorf is the Pied Piper, gleefully aware of the power that rock’n’roll has bestowed upon him. The song seems to go for an eternity – estimates began at 10 minutes and stretched to 15 – and time is simultaneously standing still and expanding like some weird-arse science fiction story. When the end comes, it’s almost a relief – but you’re still hoping the sensation stays forever.
And then it’s over, the lights are on, and we’re on our way out into the unfamiliar scenes of Melbourne CBD on a Sunday night. A short post-mortem and we go our separate ways into the night. They don’t make bands like Monster Magnet too often, and that’s probably a good thing – rock’n’roll brutality is a wonderful thing, but it’s best imbibed in concentrated doses.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Loved: Space Lord Motherfucker – what else?
Hated: The beer prices.
Drank: Heineken, for the first time in 100 years.
