I’ve seen Eddie Perfect perform a couple times before, including once before in his show with Max Gillies, called The Big Con. I’d also seen Eddie in Hayden Tee’s late night cabaret at the Stable Theatre. While he was good then, and better with Max Gillies, he was really tremendous in his show, “Drink Pepsi, Bitch”.
I think he was probably a little disappointed in the house, being only about half-full at the Petersham RSL @ Newtown. He’d had dinner downstairs at the table next to Colin and I, and luckily his dinner arrived long before ours did, but that’s another story. And so for the first couple of songs I felt he wasn’t entirely in control. But when he recognised the audience was there to support him, offering just the right amount of interaction, he really began to shine.
His song-writing is absolutely terrific, uncompromising in its lyrics, and well-rounded musically. His lyrics suggest an anarchist-style of politics during his university education (though he went to that middle-class of all institutions, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) with its left-wing political stance.
The combination of humour takes his work beyond mere polemic, as evidenced in his great song “September 10″…
You worry about plastic bags
Defend the rights of marrying fags
You read too many Cleo mags
And worry that your wife’s tits sag
Your sponsoring of third world children
Saves one child rejects one billion
Fucking weak humanitarians
Stop being so damn September 10
I have to say, though there was an occasion or two where I thought he may have laboured the point lyrically. An example of this was his song about “Cirque Du Soleil” which just went on and and on about how he hated them….
From China to Canada everyone think’s we’re terrific
The success of our empire is keeping it all unspecific
Audiences eat up our banquet of dazzling tricks
But it’s harder to swallow than eating a big mac and chips
Overall, one of the best shows I’ve seen in a good while, he signed my CD, and he’s a spunk.
