The Basics- The Age Of Entitlement Tour Finale

The Basics have been busy travelling around the country over the past few weeks and last night was the finale of The Age Of Entitlement tour at The Gasometer Hotel. Considering the size of the venue Tash, Mary and I figured it would be a normal show, but they had the world's tiniest stage set up in the middle of the floor for an in-the-round performance like their Melbourne Festival shows. The opening act was William Crighton, who played a great solo set and was even joined by The Basics for a couple songs. Next up was Benny Walker, who played with his band this time (and nearly fell off the stage at one point).

The retractable roof was opened up and the smoke machine was pumping as The Basics kicked off the night with the one-two punch of "So Hard For You" and "The Lucky Country." The set list was similar to the earlier shows, with highlights including "Whatever Happened To The Working Class," "A Coward's Prayer," "To Think Of You" and the hand clapping fun of "Roundabout." In a real throwback they played "You're Already Gone" from the first album, as well as "Second Best" and "Have Love, Will Travel" with David Bramble on the Wurlitzer. We were also treated to covers of Neil Young's "Birds" and "Out On The Weekend" (with William Crighton joining in), and a brilliant version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." The most hilarious moment though was when their cover of The Everly Brothers' "Love Hurts" morphed into Roy Orbison's "You Got It" complete with Kris imitating Roy's voice.

There was a massive and sustained call for an encore with the sold out crowd continuously clapping for a few minutes. Wally came down first and played beautiful versions of Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird" and Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" solo on the Wurlitzer. Kris and Tim then joined him on stage to play the Split Enz track "One Step Ahead." It was around this time that things nearly went off the rails as Tim was encouraged to sing lead vocals for "Rattle My Chain" and clearly wanted the show to end. However, the boys restarted the song with Wally singing and then the encore took off as they just kept seamlessly pulling out song after song they wanted to play: Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love," Eric Clapton's "Cocaine," "Tunaomba Saidia," The Police's "Roxanne" and then finished with The Kinks' "All Day And All Of The Night." It was an epic 2+ hour classic Basics gig, and while there did seem to be a bit of finality to it as they put their arms around each other at the end, I still think they might do the odd show in a few years time when all the stars align. You can never say never with these guys.

Here's the video for "Roundabout"