The Triffids In Concert – Shaw Theatre – 1989 – BBC 6 Music –
The Triffids in concert tonight – an extended excerpt of a concert given at the Shaw Theatre in 1989.
Sez Wikipedia:
The Triffids were an Australian alternative rock and pop band, formed in Perth in Western Australia in May 1978 with David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved some success in Australia, but greater success in the UK and Scandinavia in the 1980s before disbanding in 1989. Their best-known songs include “Wide Open Road” (February 1986) and “Bury Me Deep in Love” (October 1987). SBS television featured their 1986 album, Born Sandy Devotional, on the Great Australian Albums series in 2007, and in 2010 it ranked 5th in the book The 100 Best Australian Albums by Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O’Donnell.
According to music historian Ian McFarlane, “The Triffids remain one of Australia’s best-loved, post-punk groups … McComb … infused his melancholy songs with stark yet beautiful and uniquely Australian imagery. Few songwriters managed to capture the feeling of isolation and fatalistic sense of despair of the Australian countryside.”
In 1976 in Perth, high school students David McComb on acoustic and bass guitars and vocals and Alan “Alsy” MacDonald on drums and vocals, formed Dalsy as a multimedia project, making music, books and photographs. They wrote and performed songs with Phil Kakulas on guitars and vocals (all three later in the Blackeyed Susans), then soon became Blök Musik and Logic (for a day). In May 1978, they became the Triffids, taking their name from the post-apocalyptic novel by John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids. They were soon joined by Andrew McGowan on guitar and Julian Douglas-Smith on piano. When Byron Sinclair joined on bass guitar in September, McComb switched to rhythm guitar. The Triffids began partly in response to the punk rock movement.
The band’s last Australian shows were towards the end of 1989, with the final at the Australian National University in Canberra on 14 August 1989. 1990 saw the release of the live album, Stockholm, which completed their contractual obligations with Island.
One of the most critically acclaimed bands from Greece, Raining Pleasure, took their name from the song “Raining Pleasure” by The Triffids. Melbourne-based acoustic rock group The Paradise Motel are frequently likened to the work of The Triffids whose work they have covered.
In 2009, Australian scholars Chris Coughran and Niall Lucy’s rock biography on The Triffids, Vagabond Holes: David McComb and the Triffids, was published by Fremantle Press, and includes contributions by Mick Harvey, Nick Cave, John Kinsella, DBC Pierre and Judith Lucy. Bleddyn Butcher’s biography of David McComb, Save What You Can: The Day of The Triffids, was published by Treadwater Press, Sydney, in November 2011. In December 2020, The Triffids were listed at number 43 in Rolling Stone Australia’s “50 Greatest Australian Artists of All Time” issue.
In case you missed the first time around, here’s a chance to catch near the tail-end.
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