Don’t Look Back concert series - Ed Kuepper and Died Pretty

“Oh it is such an honour. You’ve got to go into this with a certain amount of professionalism. You can’t just get out of your minds and go on. It has to be an extra, extra special night.” Ron Peno


The Look Back Concert series hit Brisbane last night,
after opening in Sydney the night before and it was fantastic.
After having a Chinese New Year banquet at nearby
Chinatown in the Valley and being subjected to stereo
Chinese dragons at one stage, we headed to the Tivoli.
Just before Ed Kuepper took to the stage,
With a fine 4 piece band, including
legendary Jeffrey Wegener on drums,
they launched into the Fine Kuepper Lp,"Honey Steels Gold."
This is a great choice of Lp for something like this,
not a bad song on the album, quite a few favorites from the
Kuepper canon and some songs that rarely get
an outing, like "Not Too Soon",
which Ed commented on being the first time He'd played it in Brisbane.
"Everything I've Got Belongs To You"
was introduced as the reason the album was made,
some German record company wanted it as a single, send the money
over Ed recorded it and they went broke closing shop,
leaving Ed with a song, so they recorded some more songs
and the song that started it all never became a single.
"The Way I Made You Feel" did however and its a ripper,
which they really pumped out.
Ending the wonderful "Summer Field" , the band came back to do an
incredible encore with "Electrical Storm",
then having blowen us away they left
the stage for Died Pretty.
This was mostly the same band I saw play a few weeks ago
at the release of Ed's new album and they are all incredible musicians.

I got the impression that the lions share of punters had come
especially to see Died Pretty. I've been to the Tivoli on many occasions
but this was one of the biggest and most excited crowds
I've ever seen there.
From the start Ron Peno and the original band that recorded
"Doughboy Hollow" had the crowd eating out of their hand.
It was an electric atmosphere and a very excited crowd,
maybe us old Gen X'ers don't get out enough,
but there was the gigantic roars between each song
and as the new ones started. With Dc second song in
I thought the collective ecstasy would be too much
and there was so far to go.
Peno was in fine voice, Brett Myers guitar incredible
and the band playing as if they'd never stopped.
There was no stopping them tonight, as they worked through the songs,
not a dud amongst them. "Sweetheart", "Godbless", "The Love Song"
among my favorites, ending with the beautiful "Turn Your Head"
they left, returning to the very loud audience to do 6 songs in 2 encores,
with songs like "Stoneage Cinderella","Everybody Moves", "Desperate Hours",
"Stops 'n' Starts" and "Blue Sky Day"
At the end Ron thanked us and left a satisfied and truly buzzing audience.