Newly unearthed footage of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard offers a never-before-seen glimpse of one the band’s first performances. The video, recorded in 2010 at Kaleide Theatre on the RMIT University campus in Melbourne, Australia, was posted to YouTube by one of Stu Mackenzie‘s college professors and features a performance that served as the final assessment for the Performance Workshop Unit of his Bachelor of Contemporary Music Performance Exams.
This nascent version of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard looks slightly different than the one that toured the world in 2022. The five-piece lineup seen in the video is comprised of Mackenzie (guitar, vocals), Joey Walker (guitar, vocals), Lucas Harwood (bass, vocals), and drummers Eric Moore (standing) and Michael Cavanagh (seated) sharing a single kit. Soon after, the band added multi-instrumentalists Nicholas Roderick “Cook” Craig and Ambrose Kenny Smith to the touring roster, while Moore in 2020 stepped away from the live show and into the back office as the band’s manager and leader of its Flightless Records.
Related: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Announce 2023 U.S. Residency Tour [Video]
Still, many aspects of the band’s sound are already present in the early performance footage, including Stu’s signature “woos.” The setlist includes a pair of tunes (“Ants and Bats”, “Life Is Cool”) that would ultimately wind up on King Gizzard’s Teenage Gizzard album in 2020. “Ants and Bats” also appeared as the B-side to one of the band’s earliest self-released singles, 2010’s “Hey There” / “Ants & Bats”.
In the comment section of the video, the professor who posted the recording responded to a viewer’s question about whether or not Stu passed the Performance Workshop Unit assessment: “Stu did very well from memory!! I remember thinking these guys are really good… my current students worship the gizz and i get much cred from saying they were in my class!!”
Watch King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard play one of their first-ever performances and view the full setlist below.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Live at RMIT University (2010)
[Video: cyberbassman]
Setlist: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard | Kaleide Theatre, RMIT University | Melbourne, Australia | 2010
Set: Ants and Bats (0:00), Life Is Cool (3:18), Love For Me (6:45), Oh God (10:39), Other Side (13:18)
As a bonus, if this unearthed clip serves to encapsulate “how it started,” allow the parody clip below from Will Danger (@mostdangerousmanalive) to illustrate “how it’s going” some 12 years and 23 studio albums later…
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