Church Tour Dates 81

More Church posters, flyers and ads. These intrigue me. The first one mentions the university I went to, Swinburne Institute, but I assume that would have been the Hawthorn campus not the one I went to which was in Prahran. Although The Prahran Institute gets mentioned in the next poster so I presume Swinburne amalgamated with them at some point...hey I was at primary school in a country town during this time. I'm not sure which Royal Hotel that is but I lived for many years about 3 doors down from the one in Punt Road, Richmond. It's now a titty bar but I think in the 80s it may have been a rock venue as Richmond was pretty hip back then but there was also a Royal Hotel in Essendon so it might have been that one. The Cricketers Arms which was a block away from the Royal is where Men At Work did their early gigs. Bombay Rock was a dodgy Oz Rock/disco in Sydney Road, Brunswick. I'm pretty sure all your favorite Melbourne criminals used to hang out there before they had books, movies and tv shows made about them. By the time I moved to Melbourne in 91 (funnily enough living in Brunswick by 92) it had closed down due to a fire but it was still there for years afterwards. There's a few scenes in the classic film Death In Brunswick shot at this legendary rock venue. Every famous Australian rock band from the 80s and late 70 did their time there ie. Sherbert, Skyhooks, INXS, Chisel, Aussie Crawl, Angels, The Models and even The Boys Next Door.

Eon FM and Big M present an under 18s show at Preston Town Hall....wow. Eon FM only started in 1980 and later became 3MMM in 1988. The Jump Club was maybe what became known as The Club which was situated in Smith St, Collingwood. The Club was still going strong into the 90s and I lost many a brain cell there. Oh and saw a heap of bands there like Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, Grant McLennan, Underground Lovers, Not Drowning Waving, The Cruel Sea, The Mavis's, Powder Monkeys and er...Frente. Then there was the late disco which used to be open till like 6 or 7 am. My head hurts just thinking about it.

This ad for the London Tavern made me laugh because in 1992 I did a Skillshare hospitality course just up the street from this pub. On one of the days we went and learnt about beer and beer kegs at this Caulfield Hotel, which was by then a very not cool or rockin old peoples bar. They were getting some big names there though Mike Rudd, Ayres Rock and of course The Church. The weekday acts however are all in the Who the fuck were they? Hall Of Fame.

Me and the Mrs used to often spend the day down at beautiful Sandringham Beach and call into the bottle shop of what I presume was this hotel. I used to say 'This place was legendary in the old days, I'm pretty sure this was where Australian Crawl got started.' Emma probably just ignored me. By the 2000s it was a sports bar and bistro but it still looked like it had a lot of potential. I always intended on having dinner there but never did. They had the big 1981 names Russell Morris, The Bushwhackers, Lil Jonny Farnham and Aussie Crawl. There is not much on the interweb about the history of the Commodore so I'm not 100% its the same place I think it is but.....