The Hellbenders Live At East Village (2005)

On the weekend I uncovered some long lost footage of a gig The Hellbenders played at East Village in East Sydney back in October 2005. Great timing really as the current incarnation of The Hellbenders have decided to head back to the rehearsal room after a long hiatus. I’ve chopped up a couple of tracks from the gig – the sound n the original footage was pretty ordinary so we recorded the tracks a week later and patched the audio into the footage – that explains why the syncing isn’t exactly perfect! Then there was the dodgy lighting, a backdrop that fell down half way through and the noisiest power supply of all time… but hey, who’s complaining!

Phil Barker, Aaron Cliff and I are still around from the original line-up, but Ben Willson has replaced the drummer in the gig – Jenny Vaa – and we’re fired up to play our Me First And The Gimme Gimmes style of punk covers again!

It’s interesting to see how much we’ve evolved since the early days – and a maybe a bit embarrassing on some fronts (although to quote Mr Cliff: “That doesn’t actually sound as bad as I feared that it might!”). Still, this was a great gig and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Good times indeed…

Here’s some of the other tracks from the gig, a few of which still exist in the current repertoire.