The return of the Wreckery

When I was around eight years old, I took weekly piano lessons from a tall, thin, pale man named Robin.

Robin (L) and Hugo (R) back in ye olde eighties

Robin had long dark hair and longer fingers, perfect piano playing digits in fact. I thought he was very mysterious and groovy then, and time has only intensified this sentiment. Occasionally, as I banged out the chords to “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, he would mention that he was once in a band, back in the misty prehistoric time before I was born, a time known as… the eighties.

I thought very little about this at the time, but imagine my surprise and excitement, when I discovered that Robin’s band were noneother The Wreckery, the seminal local punk band who forged a reputation for debauchery and self-destruction by “tapping the seam of the old delta blues and the Flannery O’Connoresque imagery of a toxic, dilapidated world”.

As I entered puberty and developed an unhealthy (supposedly) fixation on Nick Cave, the knowledge that one of Robin’s bandmates was Hugo Race, founding member of the Bad Seeds, was almost too few degrees of separation for my poor young self to handle. And to be honest… it kind of still is.

After a twenty-year hiatus, The Wreckery realeased a retrospective double album, Past Imperfect, in July of last year. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it east coast tour followed, but now in the wake of 2009’s climate of postpunk revivalism, the band are back for two very special upcoming shows in Victoria. These shows are not to be missed, and may be the last opportunity to see these cult legends perform live.

“If a band entered tomorrow’s scene with this band’s spirit and repetoire, this town and beyond would have every reason to be nervous” – INPRESS magazine

The Wreckery

The Theatre Royal (with special guest 3RRR DJ Tony Biggs)
Castlemaine
Friday 28th August, 9pm
Tickets $25 from www.theatreroyal.info / 03 5472 1196

Espy Front Bar (with guests The Dead South, Attack of the Mannequins, and Phil Para)
The Esplanade, St Kilda
Saturday 29th August, 10pm
FREE entry

Lineup:
Hugo Race – Vocals / Guitar
Ed Clayton-Jones – Guitar
Nick Barker – Bass Guitar
Robin Casinader – Drums
Charles Todd – Saxaphone

Buy Past Imperfect on Amazon.com (at a vastly inflated price… Best to search it out at your local independent record store and instead)
The Wreckery myspace
Hugo Race official website and blog
Espy website