Pat The Dog

A few weeks ago, when it was announced that George Michael’s Perth concert had been moved from M.E. Bank Stadium to The Burswood Dome, you could almost hear the collective groan from the 15,000 or so people who had already purchased their tickets, thinking they were in for one of those magical Perth outdoor gigs at a venue that has proved itself over and over again as a brilliant place to see and hear a performance. I’ve seen some amazing shows at M.E. Bank Stadium over the last couple of years. The Police were probably the best, closely followed by Pearl Jam’s show last November. The Who, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, Roger Waters, Billy Joel… All incredible shows, all outdoors. Pity they switched venues, ‘cos it was such a beautiful night outside last night.

As any Perth concert-goer will tell you, the Burswood Dome is the worst concert venue in Perth, and possibly the world. Especially in February. I guess that’s why no refunds were offered: The promoters must have quite rightly guessed that half of their punters would demand their money back the moment the change of venue was announced.

The whole thing was badly handled from the start. Everyone had to go to one of just three outlets in Perth to exchange their old ticket for a new one before the show, and those who didn’t get their tickets swapped in advance had to queue up for hours yesterday to get into the Dome. I’m told that’s why George Michael’s show started late, and of course due to the infamous Burswood Dome Curfew it still had to finish on time.

How very Perth. For Christ’s sake, It’s SATURDAY NIGHT! Surely a bit of music belting out of the Dome for an extra fifteen minutes or so wouldn’t have made the sky collapse. I’ve always been amazed by people who choose to live in an area near a stadium and then complain about the noise. It’s a big country, go and find somewhere else to live and let the rest of us enjoy the show! Furthermore, if there was a fine to be paid for George Michael doing a second encore, the promoter should have paid it. I think it’s the least they could have done to make up for the inconvenience of the ticketing fiasco.

There are a couple of other things about the George Michael concert experience which have left me flummoxed. Has anyone else ever seen a performer do an entire concert without thanking or introducing his band? I haven’t, well, until last night.

Another thing I have never seen before is a stadium performer taking a twenty-minute break in the middle of a show. I thought that stuff was only supposed to happen in theatrical productions and rugby league games. What little momentum had been built up had disappeared completely by the time George returned, and what exactly were they thinking the punters could do during that twenty minutes? Grab a beer and get back to your seat in time? At the Dome? Good luck!

It wasn’t all bad though, not by a long shot. George Michael’s voice was superb, and you could tell that he really was singing live all night. The band were tight, the graphics were amazing (especially during “Outside”) and George did his level best to rev up the lethargic Perth crowd, although his habit of holding the microphone out for the audience to sing the words became very annoying after a short space of time. (I’m one of those punters who always thinks to himself, “It’s your job to sing, mate, not ours!”)

The biggest problem with the show itself (forgetting the horrendous venue and the ticketing clusterfuck for just a moment) was the setlist. I don’t know if George is taking advice from anyone about what songs he should and shouldn’t be including in his set, and more importantly the order in which they should be played, but it’s about time he did take some advice on this matter, and I therefore offer the following, free of charge: Start with I Want Your Sex, drop the cover versions, and finish with Freedom ‘90. Replace one of the ballads with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (not my favourite Wham! tune, but it would have made the place erupt) and if the show starts late, please, George, if you would be so kind, be a little bit adaptable and cut your twenty-minute break in half to give yourself time for a two song encore. And most importantly, under no circumstances finish the concert with Careless Whisper. It’s just a bummer.

If you’re reading this and feeling distressed because you have tickets to George Michael’s Sydney or Melbourne shows, the good news is that most of what was wrong with last night’s show was specifically Perth related. So many times I have told myself that I will never again bother seeing a concert at the Dome, but this time I really mean it.

I will never forget my first day in Perth. It was 1992, only a few weeks after the West Coast Eagles had won their first flag, and the positivity in this city was palpable from the moment the plane’s wheels hit the ground. This was back in the days when Mainy seemed squeaky clean, when Carmen Lawrence was showing the rest of Australia that a chick could be Premier, and when Rick Ardon’s hair looked, um… come to think of it… exactly the same as it looks now.

That time, the first of my three tenures in WA, I lived in a funky unit in Yokine for about a year and I loved every second of it. I loved the friends I made, I loved how spacious and clean the city felt, I loved the layback nature of the locals, I loved the weather, and I loved the fact that everything from rent to beer seemed to be about half-price when compared to Australia’s other capital cities. Maybe it was the fact that I’m a country boy and Perth was like a big country town to me, but whatever it was, Perth just felt right.

Back then, Perth felt like Australia’s best kept secret. For me personally, speaking as one of those “eastern staters”, the only real drawback was its distance from the rest of Australia, but then again Perth’s isolation was also the very thing that made it a unique place to be. “I hope the rest of Australia never works out how good it is to live over here, or they’ll all want to move over here and that would spoil it”, I used to tell my parents on the phone.

Having said that, there were still a few things about living in Perth that first time around which I thought seemed completely retarded. Rostered petrol, for example. Every Sunday only a handful of petrol stations would be open in and around Perth. In order to find a rostered petrol station you needed to follow the (often hand made) signs that would be held down with house-bricks under traffic lights to guide motorists to the nearest place to fill up. Unfortunately for me, messing with these signs was obviously the sport of choice for several generations of adolescent West Australians, so for an out-of-towner like myself, a deliberately reversed sign would lead me on a wild goose chase all over town, until I either chanced upon a rostered petrol station or ran out of fuel.

Flash forward about five years. After stints in Brisbane and then Sydney I decided to return to Western Australia. Once again I loved living the Perth lifestyle. Sure, the Swan River seemed to sparkle a little less than it used to, and the traffic was starting to become a bit of a problem, but Perth was still more-or-less half price compared to other capital cities and the layback attitude of the locals was still very much in evidence wherever you went. That time I stayed in Perth for about two years, and then took off back to Sydney.

Flash forward again to 2002, the year I returned to Perth for my third - and I dare say final – stint. Put it this way: The party wasn’t over yet, and it actually still isn’t, but last drinks had been called. Perth was as expensive as Sydney, the Swan River had started looking more and more like the Yarra, and what I once characterized as “that fantastic layback Perth attitude” I started experiencing as an infuriating slackness.

Oh, and the whole bashing to death of random punters in Northbridge thing every second weekend didn’t exactly help me feel settled either. Neither did the WA Police’s difficulty in policing that situation, or the state governments inability to govern in general.

So now it’s 2010, and Perth seems stuck somewhere between being a big country town and being a proper city. It could be the fact that the population has grown at a much faster rate than the infrastructure needed to support that growth. It could be the fact that WA has had a succession of pissweak leaders who are far to busy wasting years (literally!) bickering about relative non-issues like Daylight Saving to tackle the more pressing matters like how to keep the electricity on in the hills when it gets over forty degrees. Then again, it could just be the fact that in Perth you experience Australia’s most appalling customer service almost every time you leave the house, and that’s if you can find something that’s actually open.

In terms of housing, fiscal insanity has become the norm. People are going into more debt than they can realistically handle to buy half-million dollar cookie cutter houses in soulless new suburbs that are over half an hour’s drive from the city. (Then again, the city is usually empty anyway).

The culture of debt is destined to bring a lot of people unstuck over the next decade or so. My feeling is that the much talked about “Second Boom” will do nothing to drive house prices up to a level where those people in the soulless suburbs start to see some real growth on their investment. Real estate in Perth is already overpriced, and let’s be honest, for that kind of investment you could go and live in a place where you can get your groceries on a Sunday.

So what is it with Perth? What happened? The most popular school of thought, among my friends at least, is that the Mining Boom is to blame. To paraphrase part of an excellent article written on this very subject in the West Australian by Daniel Hatch at the end of last year, the boom has created a culture of the haves and the have-nots, and it’s not healthy.

With all that money rolling in during the Noughties, Perth had the chance to become Australia’s most happening city, a bit like Dubai without the debt, but the money from the boom appears to have evaporated into nothing. No, wait, I stand corrected: We did get a ferris wheel. Whoopee.

When I think of things that symbolize Perth’s growing pains over the last eight years, it’s hard to go past the concept of the West Coast Eagles allegedly snorting their way to an AFL premiership in 2006. Cashed Up Bogans, indeed. (Of course I’m quite possibly only saying this because I’m a Dockers fan, and unless someone can show me evidence that at least half of that WCE team were not on the gear during that season, I think they should have to hand that premiership back).

The only thing that can save Perth now is strong leadership. We need a Premier with some nuts, even if that Premier turns out to be a woman. This state needs someone who ignores the outdated opinions of the Howard Sattlers of the world and pushes this state forward regardless of what the Old Guard think. If Perth is ever going to become the great city it is so frustratingly capable of becoming, then this country-town mentality Perth is still so stuck in needs to end.

Perth has been very good to me over the years, and despite all of my ranting I still think this city has a lot going for it, and I still love the locals as much as ever. (Except the morons who pull that whole “we don’t want to be like the Eastern States” crap. Those people shit me to tears.)

So much has changed in Perth since 1992, but not Rick Ardon’s hair. Take a bow, Rick.