While the crowd seemed a bit hesitant to start with, the Brew's hard work surely paid off - by ‘House of Fun' the Orient surely was becoming one. With half the crowd rushing to the dance floor for an old fashioned skank-fest of the ska kind I myself haven't seen in a bloody long time, it was clear the night surely weren't gonna get anything but better. After a couple of drinks to round off that fire-in-the-belly feeling, I thought Pat an the crew might just be able to pull off a Reverend Jones style gospel show, with the fella on crutches throwin' em down just to show the crowd how its really done.

Though this kinda spectacular just never came about, the crowd weren't all too interested in hearing Brew's calls to ‘Simmer Down' on behalf of The Specials. An who can blame em - when was the last time you cut it out, eh skinhead? All this, mind, happened in the first half of Special Brew's pretty lengthy 2 hour set, an after a short break it was right back into it. The longer it lasted, the more convinced the crowd became that Brew weren't just a mirage in Waussie's desert of a ska scene, but a bloody big watering hole everyone can enjoy.

Nice to see a pretty diverse crowd turn up at Freo for the One Night Only show I hope becomes a fairly regular event, though the fact the hippies outnumbered the skins 3:1 was something I thought worth a sly grin. While the show sure was a treat for empty ears, it weren't without its faults. ‘Time Bomb' was just too fast an untrue to the original for my liking, an hopefully the next show will get more exposure, and in turn pull the crowd that Brew have proven they deserve. Lookin' forward to the next installment in the Special Brew scrapbook - I just hope I don't have to wait nearly as long again. Cheers to all the fellas an gals who picked up a copy of the Aussieskins zine too - hopefully it just might become a new tradition at Brew gigs, eh?

- review by Rod -