Lobby Loyde Part 3 or 4 or 5

My Lobby Loyde posts have been a bit all over the shop. They've featured his stints in 60s bands The Purple Hearts and The Wild Cherries and his short stints with The Aztecs at the end of the 60s and Rose Tattoo at the end of 79 into 80. I've covered The Coloured Balls Ball Power a couple of times and his great production jobs for X and The Sunnyboys. The above tune, Devil's Disciple, I saw on Rage once and thought what the fuck is that? It later turned up on the Ball Power deluxe reissue from Aztec Music. It turns out that it was a B-side to their inferior version of Mess Of The Blues the 7" A-side that originally came out in 1973. Devil's Disciple is a Lobby original and, let's face it, a blueprint for his successors AC/DC. Lobby was on the (coloured) ball and saw them coming and left them a gift. Funnily enough AC/DC had supported the Coloured Balls a few times. Before joining AC/DC Bon Scott would sometimes get up and jam with Coloured Balls when they played in Adelaide as he was a friend of Lobby's from the old days. Bon Scott had been in Perth mod/bubblegum unit The Valentines in the late 60s and Adelaide's Fraternity in the early 70s before joining AC/DC in 1974. Devil's Disciple, along with a handful of other 7"s, was a bridge between the first and second Coloured Balls LPs.

Heavy Metal Kid their 2nd album was released in October of 1974 and just isn't held in the same esteem as Ball Power. It isn't a bad LP by any means. Heavy Metal Kid just isn't as singular as its predecessor. Still it has classic tunes like the opening title track and the existential Just Because that's like a counterpart to Ball Power's Human Being. Other tunes look back to Rock'n'Roll roots like Do It and Leiber & Stoller's Baby I Don't Care. Private Eye is the band at its most pop with a glammed up Peter Gunn riff and lyrics about being a spy. If it was released as a 7" it would surely have been a hit. EMI didn't see the potential for Private Eye to be hit worthy, huh!? The record company didn't release any singles off Heavy Metal Kid and subsequently failed to promote it much as they saw it as commercially unviable.

See What I Mean is a Trevor Young (drums, vocals & keys) composition which takes them into 70s power ballad territory complete with synths sounding like strings before just deciding to sound like synths along with absurd drum fills but it stays on the good side of such zones. Dance To The Music is a strange one where you think its gonna be all good time Rock'n'Roll but turns out to be a muted melancholy tune, like they couldn't actually be bothered getting off the couch to do what they're singing about. Yes and No 's 50 seconds of psych noodling is followed by Back To You, a classic guitar driven Coloured Balls tune with reverbed to the max vocals and keyboards that give it a strange edge. The best bits though are when Lobby gets going and does a little shredding before ending up in space/stadium/lighters in the air rock territory. Need Your Love is almost comic like a Ringo Starr throwback. Sitting Bull is a bit wrong with its faux Native American chants and a little bit awesome because it sounds soo good with its 70s west coast vibe. This tune is reminiscent of similar themed tunes by Silver Apples and JD Loudermilk. The vocals are then over with and the last four tunes are a panoply of instrumentals starting with the boogie Custer's Last Stand then Metal Feathers which is a mellow acoustic and keyboard jam ending with ticking and gonging clock, nice. Space rock enters the fray again on Tin Tango with what could be an early computer game soundtrack which gets all plinky plonky early electronics stylee at the end. The LP closes with 27 seconds of musique concrete. These last four tracks give an indication of where Loyde was to go a couple of years later with his concept cosmic rock sci-fi concept record Beyond Morgia.

I've never really analysed Heavy Metal Kid before as I just took at face value, it is what it is. Now thinking about it it's quite a bizarre LP. Maybe they were trying to shed some of their fans here. Who knows? How a spelling era got through on the cover is totally mystifying too. Anyway this eccentric little journey is pretty good though. The Coloured Balls were ahead of their time with their atemporality.

Oh we're missing a u.

*Next Time: The final Part Of My Lobby Loyde Obsession including Beyond Morgia, Obsecration, Hall Of Fame, Retromania Concerts and whatever else.

**Special thanks to Ian McFarlane (Legendary Oz Rock Historian) whose Heavy Metal Kid liner notes I only just read after writing this (new spex), so I added on those AC/DC connections. 

Lobby Loyde, Buffalo, Ian Rilen, Rose Tattoo....

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 Floor Elevators, 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.

I could go on and on and.....maybe later......

LOBBY LOYDE

Does a photo exist of LL sans ciggy?

Lobby Loyde is a legend! His guitar style is yet to be topped in Australia or probably the world despite the best efforts from the likes of Angus Young, Billy Thorpe, Deniz Tek, Ed Kuepper etc. You've also gotta love a guitarist who has a name for his guitar. Loyde's was called 'George' which is pretty funny, I reckon. He wasn't just an Australian legend though American hardcore bands such as Black Flag cited him as an influence, grunge act Nirvana acknowledged him as did Steve Malkmus of 90s indie darlings Pavement. UK's Stiff Records even wanted a Coloured Balls album in the Ball Power style but by the late 70s Loyde had moved on and wasn't interested.

After writing that article on the Sunnyboys release of the original tapes of their second LP Individuals, I realised I'd never posted any tunes off the best Australian rock record ever. That is Ball Power by Coloured Balls which was Lobby Loyde's early 70s rockin band's debut LP. As noted Lobby Loyde produced the first two Sunnyboys albums. Lobby Loyde at that stage was an older statesman of Australian Rock. He was a singer, songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire for many years before becoming a noteworthy producer. In the 60s he had been in hit groups The Purple Hearts who had a top 40 smash with Early in the Morning in 1966. The above clip Of Hopes & Dreams & Tombstones is from 66 as well and is soo good, I couldn't resist. Fun fact it was written by Joy Byers who mainly wrote tunes for Elvis. Anyway Lobby then joined Wild Cherries writing two of their classics Krome Plated Yabby (previously posted here) and their 1968 top 40 hit That's Life which became a hit after he'd left the groop. He briefly joined Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs and had quite an impact on the band's future development as one hell of a heavy blues inflected boogie band. Loyde played on The Aztecs1970 LP The Hoax Is Over. He soon left. I think even before that record came out. Lobby revived the Wild Cherries moniker briefly. They performed at the 1972 Sunbury Festival and subsequently broke up.

That brings us to Coloured Balls. The line up on Ball Power was LL on lead guitar & vocals, Bobsy Millar on guitar & vocals, John Miglans on bass and vocals and Trevor Young on drums & vocals. Ball Power was released in December 1973 on EMI. I haven't even mentioned Sharpies, violence, Box Hill or police harassment. You could write a book on that stuff. I'm tryin to stick to the music here not necessarily the bollocks that goes along with it.

Surely one of the greatest pop/rock songs of all time. This was released as a single but didn't even crack the top 40. Go figure that one.

OMG how good is this? Nothing was this good in 1973 rock I'm fairly certain of that. Challenge me on that and you lose.

Ten minute epic to end Ball power. I can't recall if i ever ended up doing that best last tunes on LPs list but hey this would have been in like the top one.

Now this is fucking astounding. 16 minutes of all manner of guitar goodness. The band would sometimes turn this into 30+ minutes of transcendental rock at their live shows. Actually I haven't come across a studio version of G.O.D.(Guitar Overdose). I guess they never captured the magic that you can hear and feel here. Sonic Youth wish they were this innovative. They couldn't have been though because all their future noisy guitar fuckery was right here at least 10 years before they had the ability to try to challenge Loyde's greatness but you could only ever come out second best.

Alright this was meant to be a short little trip but now it's turning into a Lobby fan site. Along with his Sunnyboys production triumphs are his other two production triumphs, the first two LPs by perennial outsiders X. X were originally a Sydney band and just didn't fit anywhere. Were they hard rock, garage, metal, punk, post punk, hardcore or none of these? When you don't care for fashion and just wanna rock as hard and raw as you can, categories are fucking meaningless. X didn't give a fuck just as long as they were awesome and they certainly were here on Delinquent Cars and the rest of their 1979 debut LP X-Aspirations.

Hey I could post the entire album really, it's that fucking good. Here's another bewdy from X-Aspirations. Funny song too.

One last one here from X. This time it's from their 2nd classic Loyde produced album At Home With You from 1985. This was when they had become a Melbourne Band with ace new drummer Kathy Green. Original crack drummer Steve Cafiero refused to go to Melbourne. He died a few years later in a bizarre medical accident. This wasn't the first time tragedy had struck the band. Ian Krahe their original guitarist when they were a Sydney four piece in the late 70s died of a heroin overdose before they made a record. From then on they would always be a 3 piece except when they were occasionally joined by a horn section like on this here classic TV Glue. 

*This youtube picture has nothing to with X. I couldn't imagine a more incongruous image. Youtube eh?

**RIP Ian Rilen 1947-2006. The best bass player I ever saw live.

Individuals - Sunnyboys

The original 1982 cover. Hilarious.

After last year's reissue of The Sunnyboys debut self-titled LP which was expanded with an entire disc of demos comes their 1982 follow up Individuals. This is not a reissue of the record that Mushroom released in 1982 though. These are actually the original mixes from NZ that the band were very happy with and thought, with a bit of slight adjustment, would be issued as their second LP. That didn't happen. Like the first record this was produced by Australian rock legend Lobby Loyde of Purple Hearts & Coloured Balls fame and strangely recorded in New Zealand, then mixed in LA? So my understanding is that these versions, presented here for the first time, are pre Lobby running off to LA with the tapes, probably at the request of Mushroom head honcho Michael Gudinski. I guess that reasoning would have been to keep the band far from the product Mushroom were trying to mould to make the most money for Mushroom ie. not respecting the artists one iota. When I saw the 2013 documentary The Sunny Boy on Jeremy Oxley's life he kept saying his music was taken away from him. I assumed he was talking about the 3rd rather shite (unlistenable as I recall) Sunnyboys LP Get Some Fun but no this 'LA debacle' must have been what he was talking about.

While many rate their first album as their best, I think Individuals is my favorite. I spent a lot of time in the early to mid to late 80s with this record. This LP is perhaps a bit darker than the first but it has always stuck with me. Throughout the 90s I had one side of a C-90 with Individuals on it which was taped on my dad's 80s Marantz Hi-Fi from the original vinyl. My older brother Patrick brought this classic into my life. As I've mentioned before on this blog Sydney was the place to be for rock in the mid/late 70s through the entire 80s pretty much. Music was everywhere and there were legions of great bands giving it their best shot. If you didn't like a band it didn't matter there was another one playing in the pub on the next corner that you'd probably like. Feel Presents Pty Ltd have changed the original Mushroom Records track listing slightly, probably to reflect the original vision of what Individuals should have been. This Is Real has been moved from the opening track to the last which makes perfect sense. Pain originally the b-side to the This Is Real 7" has been added as the second last track. a new cover has been created too, which I guess is fair enough as this is kind of a new product. I'd say Peter Oxley designed it. He used to do all their ace posters and stuff. I'm really quite fond of it, surprisingly, as I usually hate it when they change covers, see reissues by the The Go-Betweens and Dave Graney's Coral Snakes. That 1982 Individuals record cover was an iconic gatefold affair which was integral, I thought though, to the entire package. This gatefold captivated me like no other during my adolescence.

It was funny, amazing, bizarre and perhaps a little cheesy. An iconic album cover all the same.

Then there were the tunes in a post-punk power-pop vein but they were much more than that label could ever do them justice. Man what tunes they were. One wonders whether The Sunnyboys music could have ever translated outside of Australia, it should have as it was a great lively breath of fresh air and paradoxically timeless and of its time. The Sunnyboys were blessed with incredible pop smarts that were performed by one hell of an exciting unit. There was something quintessentially Australian about this band though. This music could only have come out of Sydney. If music as specific as Dunedin's (NZ) 80s guitar pop can be so revered worldwide, I can't see why this can't. I guess it was kind of mod pop into psych informed by the likes of 70s Aussie legends like Radio Birdman. As previously noted, elsewhere, singer, songwriter and guitarist Jeremy Oxley despite being quite sporty and even a champion surfer as a teen was quite a troubled guy. He was only 19, I think, when Individuals was recorded. His lyrics were mature way beyond his years and delved into his confused world. Like Ian Curtis, Jeremy Oxley placed serious lyrical content amongst exhilarating songs creating a weird but defiant juxtaposition. Like on I'm Not Satisfied, one of the most boisterous and upbeat songs here, the lyrics are about self hate and frustration but you want to sing that tune with joyous abandon. That's the Sunnyboys spirit and the secret to their magic. They're never sooky, I wouldn't be writing about them if they were.

On re-listening to Individuals (well sort of) it's a lot more subdued and experimental, compared to the 1981 debut, than I remember but its still full of rockin youthful exuberance. What is striking though is the spectacular tunefulness and idiosyncratic lyric delivery...er.... that's singing from Jeremy. Jeremy is so charismatic its breathtaking. Sometimes I just can't believe the inventive melodies he came up with. Then we've got the backing vocals which are fucking great and crucial to this LP's classic status, they're beautifully arranged. The superlative guitar playing was the best thing to come out of Australia since Deniz Tek and, funnily enough their producer, Lobby Loyde (who obviously had a great ear for these things and must have seen Jeremy Oxley as some kind of successor).

The title tune which now opens the record remains a classic universal tale of urban alienation of not fitting in where you're not from and other lonely individuals who might be the same. It's also a sledge against those so eager to fit in. Sunny Day is so good, so Sydney, such cool backing vocals, one of the best tunes on the record and should have been a number 1 smash! Interestingly I've heard the band refer to this as a hippie song but I'm pretty sure its about drinking and violence amongst other things. Leaf On a Tree is an anomaly in the band's oeuvre. I guess it always reminded me of a Ringo Starr tune from say the White Album. This is the only explicit reference to an influence that I can ever recall on any Sunnyboys tune. Back then bands weren't so reverential or record collection rock. Groups had the capacity to come up with their own sound and it was inherent that things got pushed forward. You Need A friend is a garage-psych-pop number about not being able to conform thus making it hard to make friends. Jeremy Oxley was many years later diagnosed with schizophrenia so this confused, frustrating tale is palpable. I have a minor quibble here, one of my favorite musical passages of the Mushroom version of this song was the spooky fade back in where Jeremy sounds like an alien who needs a friend but doesn't have the capability to get one, this sadly is not part of the version included here. That used to scare the shit out of me as a child. I think I was 11 when I first heard this LP. No Love Around is so melodic and rockin, I'm left mesmerised and dazzled! Oh yeah they had excellent explosive guitar bits that were awesome. I never knew who was playing which part, whether it was Peter Burgman or Jeremy Oxley doing the cool sections, but who cares? In Colour of Love there's another amazingly unhinged guitar break that just pops outside of your speakers (way, way fucking better than the Mushroom version). This is one of their coolest songs that's got kind of a funky bass (Jeremy's older bro Peter Oxley on bass), with this weird reverbed guitar twang that's tantalisingly serpentine plus really delightful cavernous tom tom fills and then Jeremy Oxley inundates you with his glorious melodies that go unexpected places.

It's easy to read into Oxley's lyrics in hindsight and they feel way more heartbreaking now because he didn't know what the fuck was going on. Back then though you just thought of it as melancholy universal trials of youth that we all had to undergo before we found our place in the world. As youths we didn't realise some of us would never get to that place where we were led to believe we would one day belong. Time honoured themes of being lost, problems communicating, not having friends, lost love, social ineptitude and loneliness now take on extra poignancy here. Despite not knowing he was schizophrenic in 1982 he articulated his frustration, confusion and mental anguish unbelievably well. Let's face it, a songwriter extraordinaire he is, and his candid vulnerability makes him just that little bit more endearing.

Other noticeable differences from this alternative version include more prominent 12 string guitars, a warmer sound generally (not as thin), some weird percussive moments and rougher/better vocals from Jeremy. Individuals peaked at 23 on the national chart. The first single taken from the album You Need A Friend just scrapped into the top 40 reaching 38. This Is Real the following 7" remains a classic live Sunnyboys tune and here by the sounds it remains in its original Mushroom form (can't read the liner notes though to see if that's mentioned or not because the print is ridiculously miniature and my spex were eaten by a certain dog I own). I don't even think This Is Real made the national chart at all, that's fucking absurd! It should be an Australian anthem on a par with Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn.

The Sunnyboys Individuals: Once a near classic, now absolute classic. Totally recommended.

Loving the new album sleeve for the 2015 reissue.

Australia Day Part 3

I wanted the original version of Rock n Roll Is Where I Hide from the Dave Graney & The Coral Snakes LP The Soft'n'Sexy Sound but it's not on the youtubes but this is a pretty bloody good version though. It's the title track of a 2011 cd Graney released of reworkings of classic Coral Snakes tunes but with a different band, I mean apart from his Mrs and himself that is. I also wanted to put up Morrison Floorshow from the same LP but that's not available either. Anyway enjoy this one. Dave's an Australian showbiz maverick. My mother in law once described him as a bit like George Melly. Compliment or put down? I've never heard Melly's music but I have his book Revolt Into Style and that's a brilliant pioneering work of music writing.



This is from Sunnyboys self-titled debut LP from 1981 that was in my best reissues of 2014. Sunnyboys was produced by the legendary Lobby Loyde of Coloured Balls fame. This tune, along with most of the others on the record, takes on a whole new significance when you've seen the documentary 'The Sunnyboy' about singer/songwriter and guitarist Jeremy Oxley and his mental health issues. He's a sweet guy though, when you get down to it.



I could post the whole album but this one is particularly fine. Sydney was such an exciting place in the late 70s and through the 80s for all sorts of music. Apparently there was music on every corner and in every pub and a lot of it was free or like a dollar, so I've been told. The Sunnyboys LP peaked 13 on the national charts and was the 67th biggest selling album in Australia in 1981. It came in just below The Beach Boys Greatest Hits which is rather fitting as Oxley and Wilson both had siblings in their bands, had troubles with life, were both recluses at certain stages and both were possibly geniuses.

ANZAC Day.

The Chills

The Great Escape

The Sunnyboys

I Need A Friend

I think this was recorded in NZ.
This song used to scare me when I was little.

Lobby Lyoyde production.

Fuck Yeah!

Coloured Balls - Ball Power

Glaring Omissions II

Ball Power

Coloured Balls

(1973)



This is the most glaring omission of them all from that book and The Age Top 50 Australian Rock Albums! Why? Well because it should have been NO. 1! How can this record remain so overlooked? It totally baffles me. This is the rockinist rock ever from the Antipodes.  It's likely to have influenced the most rockin' Aussie bands such as ACDC, Rose Tattoo, X, Radio Birdman, The Saints etc. Not many bands have been this on in the recording studio. They were at some kind of intuitive peak during the sessions for Ball Power. Proto-punk or proto-hard rock? Who really gives a fuck! It's got all you need from a rock record-mad grooves, slashing guitar, good times, speed, existential blues, experimental bits, a fuck you attitude and great songs. I can't believe every household doesn't have a copy. This record hasn't just transcended genre but time as well ie. It still sounds grouse as opposed to some of the other music made during this era. The All Time Ausralian Rock Stone Cold Classic.

R.I.P  GOD (Lobby Loyde)

* The LP only made it to number 13 on the charts.

** Out of The Age top 50 Australian Albums Coloured Balls directly influenced at least 10 of those albums without getting their own placing (rock experts, please!).



proto what? err.... bogan!