Yo Yo Record shop on instagram introduced me to this slice of choice R&B from 1985 that I had not heard previously. Which is staggering considering the amount of discos I went to in the 80s plus all the compilations of 80s soul-disco-boogie/R&B I have but this maybe didn't even get in the dance chart. Correct me if I'm wrong! No Research Day! Anyway it's ace! The good vibes and grooves all year round 24/7. It's Dj Space Debris with golden hits and non memories to make new ones too....
Weird alignment of the planets or what? Here's something I wrote a couple of weeks ago and here's a post from several hours ago at Hardly Baked one of Simon Reynolds other blogs. See my comment at the bottom of his post.
Buster Brown were often the support band at Coloured Balls shows. To fit that slot you had to be a fucking tough band! Lobby Loyde actually produced Buster Brown's one and only LP Something To Say in 1974. It was Loyde's first production job actually. Their LP is surprisingly pretty good. It's basically rock about chicks and rock and roll. At stages it is meta-rock of which they were probably blissfully unaware. At one point it even gets a bit poignant when Angry sings about his estranged dad. Mainly though it's about rockin good times just like old school jump blues. Non Aussies take note: A Spunk is a term used for someone you fancy or think is really good looking ie. my wife would say "Fuck Matthew McConaughey is such a spunk!". So it can apply to both genders. Something To Say got the fabulous deluxe reissue treatment in the 00s from Aztec Music as did real Australian 70s classics from The Coloured Balls, Lobby Loyde, Billy Thorpe, Buffalo, Band Of Light and X. Right there are a lot of connections between those 7 acts. Many of which I mentioned in that previous post. I'll try and enlighten you on some of the other connections.
Apart from Loyde producing the Buster Brown LP there is another Coloured Balls connection there apart from Sharpie followings. That is ex-Coloured Balls drummer Trevor Young joined Buster Brown for a little while as original Buster Brown Drummer Phil Rudd went on to join an aspiring little rock group by the name of AC/DC. After Buster Brown split singer Angry Anderson had plans for a group including Loyde on guitar but nothing came of it.
Ian Rilen of future legends X was the bass player with Band Of Light and their one and only LP Total Union was recorded and released in 1973. It was on the boogie/12 bar blues tip. Total Union was overflowing with wah wah and slide guitar. At times it's ultra funky but there's plenty of classic chugging boogie too. Fuck Ian Rilen is an awesome bass player man. The rest of the band are smokin as well. Total Union is an underrated minor classic. Their single Destiny Song (above) was a chart hit. Wicked slide guitarist Norm Roue left to join Buffalo but by that stage Buffalo had already reached their peak. Buffalo's first 3 releases were classic psych-metal LPs not too far removed from their Vertigo label mates Black Sabbath but way more greasy, exhaust fuelled, grubby, less doomed, and at times even inspirational. Those LPs had a great Australian flavour and are well respected to this day. Rilen also left Band Of Light and went on to conceive the concept for the quintessential Aussie hard rock band Rose Tattoo with ex-Buffalo bass player Pete Wells who'd moved onto slide guitar and of course they were joined by ex-Buster Brown vocalist Angry Anderson. By the time Rose Tattoo released one of the great debut singles of all time, Bad Boy For Love in 1977, Ian Rilen had already quit but he did write that tune despite not playing on it. It only reached #13 on the chart! Can you believe that?
Lobby Loyde even joined The Tatts for a year (79/80) just playing bass live but there may be lost tapes sitting in some LA record company's vaults containing an entire LP with Lobby featured on the recordings. Is this mythical though? Because surely it would have shown up by now, in at least some kind of bootleg form. Really though would you just get him to play bass? Fuck he must have been a humble guy. Not taking anything away from Pete Wells, who is darn fine, but you had the best guitarist in the land in your band and he was playing bass? It was like the Master and Apprentice role reversed.
I know I've posted this before but what a classic eh? Freedom is exemplary tripped out hard psych blues from Buffalo's 2nd and best LP Volcanic Rock 1973. Volcanic Rock would have to be in my top 5 Australian rock LPs of the 70s. I should write more about them one day but I think that's enough for now...
*Track this down though.... Boogie! Australian Blues, R&B And Heavy Rock From The 70s. This is a double cd that was released a couple of years back and contains everyone mentioned here and in Simon's post. Plenty of good Bogan Boogie and some really dodgy shit too.
Hang on! One more. This was the sound of mid 70s Australia when I was a whipper snapper. These were the kind of people (all the above bands and their fans as well) my dad would refer to as creeps. The kind of people who had panel vans, wore thongs (Non Aussies take note again: Thongs = flip flops. Footwear not underwear) with ultra tight testicle or camel toe showing jeans (before that fashion became de rigueur in the late 90s/early 00s). I guess my dad's creeps were what we later knew as bogans. I guess that term is probably redundant now. I think it was very time and place specific, connected to demographics of suburbs at a particular time. The Western and Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne are now completely different to what they were in the mid 70s. Particularly in regard to socio-economic groups, lifestyles, ethnicities and property prices. The term bogan was coined sometime in the late 70s/early80s. The word Bogan originated from Melbourne which is the capital of the state Victoria. Bogan was a reference to people in the outer Northern, Western and Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. When I moved to Northern NSW (taht's like 1000 kms away from Melbourne) in 1989 and was still in high school the kids didn't understand what I was taking about when I used this term. When I described bogan characteristics they said 'Oh you mean a 'Westie.' A Westie refers to to people from the outer Western Suburbs of Sydney. Sydney is of course the capital of NSW. Westie, I think probably, predates bogan by a few years. These terms were very regional and kinda parochial, I guess, until they were fully integrated into the wider Australian culture many years later. People now in Northern NSW would know the term bogan. There have been books written on the subject and the term has been used in tv shows and even a few tv show titles. One wonders if the term Westie ever gets used these days? I nearly wrote it in that post about The Lime Spiders a while back ie. they were a cool garage band from Sydney's West but by the time of Volatile in the late 80s they were probably over with being cool as that's a fairly adolescent obsession. So their Westie roots were showing through probably because they were growing older and realised there was nothing wrong with their Westie upbringing. Instead of being ashamed they were probably realising a lot of Western Suburbs culture was good. Particularly the music ie. all the slimy boogie, Alberts Productions (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo maybe even The Angels), the hair, the cars, footy etc. I mean I'm sure they probably still loved their 13th FloorElevators, Ugly Things, Nuggets and whatever else too.
Anyway that was a tangent! Let's get back to Jump In My Car which was like a number 1 hit forever in the summer of 75/76. This was the commercial face of Aussie Boogie and yet it's been accused of being a rape song ever since. Fun fact: The Hoff did a cover of this a few years back that was so bad it was good but not good enough for me to post here right now. His abject persona would have fitted into the creep category for sure.
This (above) is coming soon, looking froward to that. Future's just put out another mixtape. I haven't had time to check out the last one properly yet or his LP of last year. In a minute he's putting out anotherbloody one with Young Scooter. The Rap Mixtape Inertia continues. Boogie have finally been been given a listen and their Thirst 48 sounds pretty good so it's missed mixtape purgatory as has Goldlink's The God Complex. I came across RJ & Choice's Rich Off Mackin which has Mustard on the beat throughout so that could be good? Or maybe not. Chief Keef's at it again but I've barely been able been able to give the last two mixtapes a go let alone his LP. Then we've got a Rome Fortune collaboration with OC MacoYep and yep I'll listen to it one day this year possibly. Now I feel like I need to reassess OC Maco because one of my favourite rappers, Mr Fortune, thinks he's worthwhile collaborating with! Lil Wayne makes a return with Sorry for the Wait 2 which I just read on twitter has been downloaded a quarter of million times already on Datpiff after less than a day. Cheddar Da Connect's Catchin Playz 2 is currently getting a hearing here.???. Piling up are Young Scooter, Rae Sremmurd, Lil Herb, Juicy J, Mike 'Will Made It', Young L, Drake and all the blah blah mentioned in that previous post. The Zuse mixtape Illegal Immigrant is becoming a 2015 favourite. There has been like over 30 mixtapes alone released at LiveMixtapes this week so far. Then there's a whole bunch of artists who I've never heard of and perhaps it should stay that way. Someone needs to stop the clock and let the future shock dwindle a little. Imagine being a Gucci Mane fanatic? How exhausting would that be? All I want is Club God 4! Where is it?
To Download Or Not To Download?
******* STOP THE PRESS *******
The ClubGodzilla himself informs me on twitter that Club God 4 will be issued on February the 3rd. I'm guessing as a free mixtape, probably on i-tunes as well. I dunno? Wouldn't a physical LP be cool? We'll see, I mean I saw Kool John did a cd of his classic free mixtape $hmopcity.
