Infectious Grooves, Inspector Cluzo @ Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide 4/4/2024

Summer nights, keg parties, makeshift stages and your best mates getting up and rocking the night away. It’s something some of us have been blessed to be part of however if you have not, we all saw it live on MTV in the early 90’s when they cared about music.

Tonight, in Adelaide we get the nearest experience we can get to those rock n roll cook outs in someone’s backyard as supergroup party band Infectious Grooves find their way onto the Adelaide stage.

A line up of ‘Is that the dude from (insert said band)…?’, they are entertaining, fun and considering the cast, unsurprisingly excellent.

However, before we get to the who’s who band, we had hailing from France Inspector Cluzo, a two-piece outfit that is equal parts eccentric and electrifying.

Dressed like waiters in a 1920’s restaurant, the dishes they serve up are scrumptious. How else can you not like a writer’s word count dream title like Running A Family Farm Is More Rock Than Playing Rock N Roll Music?

Musically they swing – literally – between rock, metal, groove, jazz and it’s music you can dance to anywhere as most of the early crowd are doing. They own the stage, they are loud and goddamnit, they are pretty funny too.

I suppose you have to be entertaining when supporting Infectious Grooves, their arrival is announced by a uniquely bizarre yet humourist video with introduces the bands history while mocking they are only here because the promoter misheard who to send on tour. But hey, we get see Cheezels and Tim Tams on Santa Monica beach.

Then it’s party time, clowns precede the band on stage and then the who’s who becomes apparent as recently departed Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg pounds the drums like they have offended his family name during These Freaks Are Here To Party.

Stop Funk’n With My Head is the start of the band members banter, despite their advancing years and rather glorious careers it’s pretty cool that mocking each other, like your mates would at a party, is commonplace.

There’s a real jive to the bands groove and party anthems as You Lie… And Yo Breath Stank and ‘Punk It Up’ are sung passionately by the crowd who are beginning to mix it up as Rob Trujillo’s – yes the one from Metallica – bass takes over the venue like an earthquake.

The banter continues mostly from Suicidal Tendencies vocalist Mike Muir to former Velvet Revolver guitarist Dave Kushner and his desire to open a Dangerous Dave’s Donuts store before a cover of Bowie’s Fame, all east coast punk’d up, floors the venue.

Lock It In The Pocket is funk, jive and metal in one before Muir – moving and jabbing away all night – gets everyone involved in the bass heavy groove that is Violent And Funky. The title really tells you what’s that about, doesn’t it?

Borracho and ‘Infectious Grooves’ finishes the main set before a quick substitution change on bass as Tye Trujillo, Rob’s son, steps up and the band launch into some Suicidal Tendencies covers before Rob comes back on stage to join in. The mass of bodies on stage resembling a Roman party of celebration and the mass of moving bodies the front lap it up as they finish with Pledge Your Allegiance.

It’s the first time Infectious Grooves have made it to these shores since 1993, and my how we have missed the party. Now where’s my beer and donut?

Live Review By Iain McCallum