It was a long time coming, but at 10.15pm on Sunday 16th July, Pennywise came back to Melbourne. The venue was the Palace in St.Kilda with many people from afar making the trip down to see the punk stalwarts. The build up in the crowd was huge, so much so that no-one gave a shit about the support act, with the chant of penny-wise, penny-wise starting early in the Goons of Doom’s set.



The lights dimmed and the piano intro to Unknown Road to the cheers of the crowd and away we went, launching into a song that has just as much impact now as it did in 93. I was right up on the barrier for the start of the set, getting absolutely hammered by the crowd, but when your favourite band are up there you really don’t care. Moving into songs from some more recent albums, which have been as widely accepted by the long time fans, still had the crowd going. They could’ve sat around playing kumbayah and the crowd would still love it. After getting some of the newer songs out of the way, and being as tight on stage as ever, it was time to pull out some classics. Every Single Day & Time To Burn were played to the fans happiness, and I’m sure there were some kids out there who had no idea what the song was. One thing I did notice about the crowd was that it was predominately older with no faggy emo kids in sight. Maybe punk isn’t dead after all.

8 songs into the set lead singer Jim Lindberg mentioned how many Pennywise tattoo’s there were in the crowd and I knew this was my time to act. Calling out to bass player Randy Bradbury to look at my tat, he instantly recognised me as we had exchanged emails of photos of my tat that I got done by The Deuce out at Eternal Instinct late last year. I yelled out if I could come up onto stage which he said sure. Well you don’t have to tell me  twice and before you know it I’m up onstage in front of 1,000 people with my idols playing. Could this get any better??



After seeing the first half of their set from in front of the stage I now had the chance to see it from the stage and what a perspective that is. The whole crowd was singing along to the songs as was I from the back of the stage. As the set drew to a close they went off to start an encore, something I haven’t seen Pennywise do before. Coming out to a crowd favourite, Men At Work’s Down Under, then closing with the customary Bro Hymn which gets the whole crowd involved to the point were people just storm the stage and the bouncers can do nothing about it. This went on for a good 15-20 minutes as the support act ended up getting on the drums – probably his only chance at getting the crowd involved in his music.