Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side

The openeing lyrics – “There’s an ocean on the dancefloor, and it’s full of drowning men” from Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side’s,’The Song of Drowning Men’ – would most likely be true, if we were anywhere else.

As it was, there were no men on the ‘dancefloor’, and if they were indeed drowning anywhere, we couldn’t see them. They were all behind us.

‘Us’ being the girls.

There to see Gentle Ben Corbett croon, while they all swoon, in one of the band’s rare Sydney performances. It was a wanton, all-chick moshpit.

And it’s no wonder.

Ben Corbett is entrancing, whether as Gentle Ben, or performing with his brother, Geoff, as insanely carnal masters of white-hot cow-punk in Six Ft Hick – a band so good at their job they blow any act they have supported out of the water (I first saw them supporting The Beasts of Bourbon, I can attest to that). The two bands provide an antidote to each other. Gentle Ben’s quieter, sensitive side a foil to his pulsating, rafter-swinging, masochistic Hick persona.

The guy drips sex-appeal onto his audience and moistens them with it, seducing them with his slinking hips and smooth vocals. If I could bottle him up and take him home to serenade me at my will, believe me I would, but I’d have to fight an army of other girls to do it.

But it’s not only the girls. Even the blokes can see it, they tell me.

Ben Corbett could quite well be the perfect combination. Hard, raw, beastial sexuality and soft romantic – tugging the heart strings in songs like, ‘Plaza De Armas’ (a gentle ballad of lovers on a drug run) or ‘Summertime’, both from GBaHSS’s ‘The Sober Light of Day’.

*(all band photos by Sonny, except for the one above – my portrait of Patti)

Before this blog post completely drowns in a sweaty quagmire of adjectives, I’d better cut to the action (more of my raving can be found here, from their gig at The Annandale last May) …

Gentle Ben played at The Excelsior in December to mark the relaese of their new album ‘Magnetic Island’. You can check out some of their new songs here. I like ‘Nothing That I’m Needing’, but my favourite is, without a doubt, their romping cover of The Go-Betweens’ ‘Was There Anything I Could Do’ – love it!

Sonny came up with the idea that I could make a photo-movie with one of the songs from the gig. Great idea! Except making those photo-movies drives me crazy at best of times, and…

…you see, Sonny just gave me all the photos he took. Hundreds. There was absolutely no way of me working out which song was which, where they started, where they ended. I can’t even remember all the songs that were played! I tried. I went through them all, over and over, looking for a point of recognition but I couldn’t. A last resort, I started searching youtube and that’s when I saw ‘MrNaughts” uploads… I instantly recognised a series of photos in his poor quality video, and for that, ‘MrNaughts’, I am very grateful….

Photos by Sonny, dodgy, out-of-sync (c’mon, it’s not like I owned a live version of the song!) movie by me. Lo Siento. One of my favourite songs!

But, as well as being grateful to ‘MrNaughts’, I want to say sorry dude, we really didn’t know you were there behind us. Check out his version of the night…..