Live Review: Ed Kuepper

After 45 years in the business, Australian music legend Ed Kuepper is still going strong. Tonight, he was performing solo and 'by request', which meant there was no set list — he simply performed (almost) anything that the audience wanted to hear.

While tonight's crowd only filled about half the venue's capacity, those present were vocal, engaged and keen to banter with the singer. Kuepper himself was seated and jovial throughout, inviting anyone to shout out a request (although he did remind us that this wouldn't extend to a night of Creedence Clearwater Revival hits). Bonus points were given for naming what album each came from (he's released about 50).

Opening with Sleepy Head, his catchiest song, was a masterstroke. Well done to whoever shouted that one out. The show featured a good mix of solo material as well as songs from his early bands The Saints and Laughing Clowns. A cover of Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire featured early.

Audience participation was a key part of the event, none more so than on Real Wild Life, which required us to provide the flute solo at key moments (we failed badly). A later call for Skinny Jean was met with denial — "That's too hard, it requires a piano loop, and we saw what happened with your flute part."

Thankfully, he gave us a chance to redeem ourselves, later allowing the crowd to provide the horn section for The Saints classic Know Your Product. Another crowd pleaser was (I'm) Stranded, one of that band's great songs — "Hard to do solo but I'll give it a go."

Kuepper proudly informed us that he had performed the night before with Jimmy Webb at the request of that legendary songwriter — "a surprise, but incredibly fantastic" — where he had been given the freedom to play his own arrangement of The Hive, from A Yard Went On Forever, a MacArthur Park-era album by Richard Harris. For the occasion, he was backed by a 50-piece orchestra. "Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to replicate that," he joked.

While the 'by request' format was a bit ramshackle at times, it was a refreshing change to a typical gig of pre-selected songs. Kuepper even abandoned the two-set format promised on the door and instead played uninterrupted for two and a half hours. Finishing with a sultry singalong, The Way I Made You Feel, from the classic Honey Steel's Gold album, he came back for an encore of The Kinks' Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains.

He was clearly enjoying himself. As were we.