Underground Reviews
Review: Michale Graves (Former Misfits)
Artist: Michale Graves
Date: Saturday, December 8th 2018
Venue: Cherry Bar
Review: Ned Tepper
After a massive day out at the Flemington Race Course for the first ever “Good Things Festival” you would think we would have had our live music fix for a while. This indeed was not the case with former Misfits vocalist Michale Graves and his band set to perform for the very first time here in Australia. It was off to Melbourne’s Cherry Bar on the infamous AC/DC lane which was once again a first for us and just about the polar opposite to the Good Things Festival, a small intimate venue tucked away in the city. It was jam packed and you could barely move with the crowd on hand beyond hyped to catch Graves live and relive some of the Misfits classics!
Being a massive fan of Underground music, I’ve been to many small venues across Australia and in particular Melbourne. The sound quality you get from these shows is usually second to none and Graves set was no different! Kicking things off with his solo track “Bedlam” from the 2016 album “When World’s Collide” I instantly knew we were in for a memorable night, the energy in the Cherry Bar was peaking. Already!
Throwing back to the late 90’s I was a massive fan of the Misfits album “Famous Monsters”, which I know back to front and it of course features Graves on vocals. Once “Forbidden Zone” got underway I just HAD to get closer, these horror punk crowds are intense though and it was a few more songs in before I found myself in the pit. Smashing out more “Famous Monsters” tracks including Saturday Night, Scarecrow Man and Scream I found myself reminiscing on the WCW days where the Misfits were teaming up with Vampiro. Such a fun time in life!
Instead of partaking in your regular encore where the band leaves the stage and comes back on, Michale took this time to talk and thank his fans. Every word was extremely heart felt and the Cherry Bar was lapping it up, especially when Graves said it was the music that saved him and had brought us all together. We all shared that common interest! Closing out the set with more Misfits songs and eventually “Dig Up Her Bones”, my Graves experience was over seemingly as quick as it begun. Time certainly fly’s when you’re having a blast and this was the most fun I’d had at a gig in a very long time. The set list was perfect, the sound was A1 and the entire night was on point!
(Graves and I – if only I was looking at the camera, haha)
To top things off Michale would head to the merch booth and take photos and chat with any fan that wanted to. Which seemed to be everyone in attendance! Better yet he remembered our interview from earlier in the week and thanked me once again for doing it. If you missed it, we discuss the tour, his time with the Misfits, WCW, new music and much more.
You can listen in here:
It’s actually really, really hard to imagine a better Saturday night out, hats off to Graves, his band and Hardline media for making this happen. Here’s hoping they’ll be back again and soon!
