St James Theatre rocked like no other

Even with his back to the audience Miles Davis was cool. Photo / Supplied

I have seen them at the St James on the way up, on the way down and on the way out. And the St James seemed to bring out the best in all of them.

The theatre's time as a sometime-rock venue from the mid 90s to the mid noughties delivered some - it's probably most - of the best shows I've seen.

That goes back to 1988 when Miles Davis, jazz giant then with a major case of Prince-envy, played a show that from memory was mesmerising right up until the last 20 minutes of the damned drum solo. Davis played and conducted his supermuso backing group mostly with his back to the audience. Though he looked a picture of menacing cool whatever way he faced. Should they restore the place, there should be a plaque: "Miles Davis played here, leaving his legend fortified and his audience confused."

Others in the potential St James hall of fame? Jeff Buckley and band from early 1996, some 18 months before the young singer-guitarist's untimely death. Not many went to that show. It was terrific.

Let's flash forward to 2003 and the White Stripes in their breakthrough era, which had Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, who was in town to work with The Datsuns, in the audience nodding sagely at some curiously familiar blues-rock riffs.

Iceland art rock outfit Sigur Ros in 2006 gave the old palace's fittings a rattle with a few frequencies it hadn't experienced since they had operas in the place a generation or two earlier.

Seeing a solo David Byrne there in 2005 felt like a 3D flashblack to me seeing his old band Talking Heads in the classic concert movie Stop Making Sense in the same theatre 20 years earlier. James Brown played the St James in 2004 (and the Civic in 2006) before he died in late 2006 and that was something to see too and deserving of another plaque about the legends that have passed this way, before passing on.

The theatre was the perfect setting for the sound and fury - and occasional quiet piano ballad - of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a few months later.

The place has always seemed to bring out something extra in locals, too. Neil Finn put on the first five-night stand of his 7 Worlds Collide supergroup show there in 2001 and had it been in action probably would have returned there for last year's encore.

He's been there solo and with brother Tim, too, usually with proud father Dick looking on from the mezzanine, and with a son or two in the backing band.

When Shihad - renamed Pacifier for a while - played there in 2003, frontman Jon Toogood took a shortcut to the mezzanine via the speaker stack, an opera box and a run along the front row of the upstairs before clambering back down and crowd surfing back to his microphone.

There was another night when Chris Knox, in a solo showcase with Dave Dobbyn, Don McGlashan, Martin Phillipps, Anika Moa, and Liam Finn, also abandoned the stage.

He ended up on a table-top in the audience singing his Not Given Lightly, briefly stopping for a short lecture on rock song structure then ending with a chorus which borrowed lines from the hits of his fellow performers.

It was just one of the St James' you-had-to-be-there moments in its great rock'n'roll history. It has to be there for more of them.