Clean Patience

“Legendary masters of pop” Dunedin band The Clean played Portland’s Holocene in October on the final stop of their seven-date US tour. “For all the waiting we’ve done for the band, the patience finally paid off in spades. Though I never saw a sign indicating the show sold out, the performance room of Holocene was packed to the gills by the time The Clean hit the stage after eleven, with people shoving their way through to any vacant floor space,” the Portland Mercury’s reviewer Travis Ritter writes. Under a low blue-ish red light, the band pulled out all the stops, playing requisite crowd favourites from the Anthology compilation, including a slightly more subdued version of the often-covered ‘Anything Can Happen’, as well as ‘Fish’, ‘Oddity’, and ‘Billy Two’.” The Clean formed in 1978. The band’s auspicious 1981 debut single Tally Ho! was the second release on Roger Shepherd’s Flying Nun label.