Gotye @ Melkweg (Amsterdam, Netherlands) October ’11

Last year while on tour in Europe with Tracer I was busy editing photos on the tour bus which was parked outside the Melkweg in Amsterdam.

We had a few hours before load in and they rest of the bus was still sleeping from the show the night before, but I could hear Aussie voices coming from outside. I stuck my head out the bus and looked towards the venue where two guys were chatting with definite Aussie accents. I went up and said G’day.

Turns out it was Gotye.

Stoked!

They were set to play the Melkweg that night also! There were two rooms in this venue, Gotye had sold out the larger one.

A month earlier I was bummed about missing Gotye’s show in Adelaide as I had just left for Europe with the Tracer tour, yet here we all were in the same venue! Super sweet!

I had shot Gotye at St Jerome’s Laneway Festival earlier in the year (check those shots here) and showed the guys my shots. They loved them and asked me to shoot their show that night. Cools!

The only catch was that they had the exact same stage time as Tracer, so it was going to be difficult to run from one room to the other and do both shows justice.

I decided to get in for Gotye and shoot one song, then leg it to the other room for Tracer’s set, hoping one of the two wouldn’t be starting right on 8pm.

It turned out Gotye came on 5 minutes late, so I literally shot for about 30 seconds and then had to bail to make Tracer’s set. Damn!

These were the shots I got, all the same angle and nothing special.

Earlier that day I had an Aussie music moment that stirred me to tears:

I was sitting on a toilet in the venue forcing out a poop when through a wall of closed doors I could faintly hear Gotye sound checking. He had a guest vocalist and while I can’t be sure if it was Kimbra or not, she was doing a fine job delivering the female parts to “Somebody That I Used To Know“.

The sound was super faint and I wanted to hear it better so I wedged open my cubicle door with my foot and sat there listening. There was no one else in the bathroom as the venue was not open for another 5 hours. Despite the various farts and associated plop noises that go with pooing, I felt a twang of homesickness creeping on. It was when Gotye himself hit the high notes of the chorus that the tears began to flow.

Being away from Australia for 2 months in foreign countries and having fellow Aussies performing right there in the same venue as Tracer gave me an overwhelming sense of pride. Tonight, Amsterdam (whether they knew it or not) was getting a double dose of down under musical greatness!

I was having a teary eyed moment, sitting with my pants around my ankles, foot outstretched wedged in that door, pooping viciously and it was then that I remembered just how rad Australia is and how well Australian music goes down with the rest of the world.