SHAUN PRESCOTT laments the loss of Sydney’s Ghosts of Televison, who played their final show in a claustrophobic room at the Oxford Art Factory last week.

Despite five years playing the east coast, there are probably less people in the world who’ve seen or heard Ghosts of Television than you can jam into the Hordern Pavillion. Tonight, the group managed to tightly fill the gallery bar at the Oxford Art Factory, a claustrophobic adjunct to the main room of the venue where popular treadmill dancers OK Go played earlier this evening. I offer you this lazy statistic because people often believe their favourite bands deserve to be playing to thousands of people. People want to root for bands, to become evangelical to their cause. But Ghosts of Television are one of my favourite live bands, and I don’t think they deserve that at all.

It’s a cliche to say that sloppiness was part of their allure, and besides: they were never a determinedly lo-fi or eagerly “shit” band. But their songs - and especially their early material like ‘Explosions’ and ‘Hezbollah’ - required tightness and precision. On stage this requirement was rejected, and it became increasingly pronounced over time: corners would be cut and, as singer Nic de Jong once told me in an interview “if it doesn’t feel good to play, we just fuck it off”. Crucially, the band always managed to carry a flow, a beat, a groove, a tune, but the tipping point – like the end – was always fucking nigh.

“For a while I went to Ghosts of Television shows just to see the group fall apart, a messy but highly exhilarating sport which always left me invigorated and ever more alive.”

For a while I went to Ghosts of Television shows just to see the group fall apart, a messy but highly exhilarating sport which always left me invigorated and ever more alive. Like all good rock music should be it was equal parts cryptic, ridiculously overreaching and enough to make you want to tear your skin off. Or at the very least do star jumps. It wasn’t afraid to be extreme, and unlike bands who perform for an audience, with Ghosts it always felt like the benefits were mutual.

So tonight when the set begins, de Jong seems eager to install tension in the crowd. “Guess what happened to me this morning?” he taunts, before revealing that he’d had a seizure. “And I’m telling the truth!” he adds, before the Ballardian synthscape of ‘Explosions’ draws the attention of a crowd which, apparently, hasn’t heard a word he said. This is vintage (about five-years-old) Ghosts of Television, a world of proto-CGI and VCR noise, a strange melange of Testament and Gary Numan. ‘New Flesh’ is next, the flipside of this group – containing lyrics that threaten embarrassing precocity but manage instead to sound cathartic, sincere. Tonight de Jong either chooses to ad lib the lyrics, or he’s forgotten. This isn’t rare for a Ghosts show. ‘Cash’ is also given an airing, but this time instead of icy vocoder vocals and “secret meetings” we have de Jong rapid firing lines that I’d never heard before. Later on, ‘Coelacanth’ is played at double speed.

Ghosts of Television always – with only a few exceptions – finish their sets with ‘Buzzrd’. It’s the crowd favourite and always has been: a curiously snotty and fed-up blend of Varg Vikernes and malignant retard punk, completely, perfectly, utterly nonsensical but, you know, grim. This is the song that turns a group of friendly looking men into a rock militia. When de Jong screams, a vessel in his forehead looks set to burst all over the crowd like a Cronenberg scene, and when eventually he climbs his way onto the room speakers and indiscriminately howls into the mic – over and over again – you take this for what it actually is: about a hundred people intently watching a guy screaming to the grind of a blissfully derailed rock band.

And even when the music finishes, there he is still: screaming over and over. People at the back are no doubt awkwardly filing out of the venue – its 1.30am after all – but right up the front here, this is exactly what is needed and what only Ghosts of Television ever seem capable of giving. We’ve lost an opiate, fellow people, and I hate to think what could have happened if, in some inverted reality, Ghosts of Television did play stadiums. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all.