Three Strikes Tour

You know that feeling where you’ve tried something quite tasty once and you think that you may like it enough to stray away from your favourite food, but once you do, you realise that it isn’t quite as tasty when you have a whole meal of it? Well, that’s kind of how I felt when I went to the Three Strikes Tour, featuring Hermitude, Urthboy and the Tongue at the Gaelic Club in Surry Hills.

I feel like I usually do when mangoes are on the table: it’s everyone’s favourite, and I guess I like it OK, but then when I have even a bit too much (which is not a lot) I start get nauseous.

Where these crazy food analogies are going, obviously nowhere fast, but I digress to the actual events now that I’ve put out my disclaimer!

The night begins (continues and ends) with screaming b-boys and girls demanding some action, and then finally, the first act of the night, Hermitude emerges (because all three artists are considered the headlines, the guys rotate their order of play). Joined by the ultra cool Ozi Batla (you may remember him from such exciting hip hop acts as The Herd) and encouraged by the masses of screaming fans, I thought: this guy really has it all set up for him, how can I not rock out?

And yet I don’t. A friend whispers (actually yells) to me at one point: “I think we need to be on drugs to enjoy this …” Granted, this could have helped, but honestly, shouldn’t the music in itself be wondrous enough to give me that heightened sense of euphoria?

Feeling lost and uncool, I turn to my fellow peeps to see what, if anything, I was missing out on. “Man, it was live button pushin’ at it’s finest…” a fellow homie informs me. Right.

So, then Urthboy comes onstage (joined by Ozi Batla and the very funky Jane Tyrell) and this is when the home-girl in me emerges. I’m up in the air, waving my hands like I just don’t care…
This guy knows all the moves: it’s that heavy stench of BO with all the arms in the air, kind of atmosphere that tells you everyone is seriously going off!
He even manages to save the best til last: his funny and oh so catchy little ditty about 'No Rider' (although I’ll bet he demands a pretty hefty rider now) is appreciated by all.

The Tongue is a fairly new b boy to emerge from the ghetto and already he’s hangin with the big boys. Like Hermitude, he is down with the “live button pushing”, no rapping notion, messing “executing” the theme song to Pulp Fiction, even Amy Winehouse’s, 'Rehab.

The nausea is hitting me again, I have eaten too much of the proverbial mango.

So all in all, I can say I tried something new, didn’t really like it as much as maybe I should have (maybe someone a bit more hard to the core could have totally revelled in this gigs so I still haven’t earned myself those fly girl stripes.

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