Before the Melbourne punk band Dole Manchild played an iconic sold out album release show at the Leadbeater in September, the centrelink-funded six-piece did something no one else has done before.
This Melbourne punk band went on the world’s first airport pub crawl and it was absolute airport anarchy.
“People got fucking wasted, they were drinking and falling on their asses around the airport. One of us later tried to board a plane at gate six,” says the Dole Manchild frontman, who goes by the nickname ‘Dole’.
The band filmed the entire pub crawl which will be the first part of a music video for the album’s closer, What’s the Price, to be released late November.
“We have it all filmed… you have to see it to fucking believe it.”
In a Willy Wonka, golden ticket style raffle, 10 lucky fans who’d purchased a ticket for the band’s album launch were selected to join along for the pub crawl.
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All sorts of crazy shenanigans took place, such as attempting to board a flight, discovering a hidden “illuminati bar” and making out with AFL cardboard cutouts.
“Everybody made it out of the crawl alive, but not intact per se. It was a real journey and I think that we all grew after it,” says Dole.
“Well, some of us did – I think some of us did devolve,” he adds.
Dole and his posse had only just begun slinging pints when it became evident one particular fan, Aiden (a pseudonym), had pregamed a tad too hard.
Carrying a huge beer stein in one hand and his shoes in the other, Aiden stumbled up to a cardboard cutout of Sydney Swans player Isaac Heeney and started making out with it.
“We started at the AFL pub… where he kissed a lot of the AFL cardboard cutouts,” Dole says.
But this airport pub crawl was more than a unique bender; it embodies themes from the band’s concept album of travelling to discover oneself, and the lack of human connection in an increasingly disconnected world.
Titled Return of the Manchild, the album’s protagonist takes a trip to Coober Peedy, then somehow ‘fast travels’ to Europe, before being welcomed home by a drinking party in a domestic terminal airport bay.
“I guess the airport crawl was something that manifests all the themes that are in the album in a physical way,” says Dole.
The beer guzzlers were on their way to another bar when a garbled voice came through the airport’s intercom, announcing the last call for a flight at gate six.
Dole explains how Aiden suddenly attempted to board the flight.
“He ran to the gate, no shoes, and he goes: ‘Guys, I’m so sorry, I don’t have my boarding pass. I nearly missed my flight, but I promise I’m on it, just please let me on the plane,’” Dole says.
Afterwards, “some people wanted to know when Aiden and my cameraman were, quite intimately,” he says, which resulted in the pub crawl crew leaving the area.
This is when they found the illuminati bar’; a supposedly secret bar within the airport.
“So we went on to the quote-unquote Illuminati bar, which is probably the only name I have for it.
“It’s like a tiki lounge. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what it is,” Dole says, suspiciously.
But the genius part about this pub crawl and the album is the artistic philosophy which underpins it.
Dole says the album was based on his own trip to Europe, and the pub crawl was an exaggeration of when he arrived back in Melbourne.
“The album is about welcoming this person back home after experiencing what he really wanted in life, and now he has to return to Melbourne.
“So these people have actually helped me feel, or helped Mr Dole feel, at home in real life,” Dole says.
No stranger to hectic stunts, Dole Manchild facilitates an engaging fan experience in hopes of creating an authentic connection between the band and its fans.
“That’s why there’s so much interplay between the record and the community. There’s a reason that people have responded more to this record than anything else we’ve ever done before. They’re a part of it.”
“There’s a lot of factors that make it difficult for humans to interact with humans, and it actually comes up in pretty much most of the tracks. And this is us breaking that barrier down.”
It was stunts galore at their album release show at the Leadbeater in Melbourne, which ended with more people being on the stage then out on the dance floor, literally blurring the barrier between fan and performer.
Dole reflected on how his main goal was to simply “connect authentically”.
“But there is actually something bigger than that at play here; it’s human connection. That’s what we’re trying to do with these events, with these stunts, with these shows.”
In an increasingly online world where meaningful face-to-face interactions are being replaced by low committal taps and swipes, nothing has brimmed with so much humanity than getting absolutely shitfaced at the Melbourne airport.
“We need each other, our humanity, in 2025, going on to 2026.
“It’s all we’ve got left.”
Find out more about Dole Manchild, here.
