Rowland S Howard Lane

How fucking cool is This?

Yep that's right legendary guitarist of the Birthday Party and later fabulous solo singer/songwriter and guitarist is getting a Laneway named in his honour in St Kilda, Melbourne. St Kilda is of course where The Birthday Party played and lived before moving to the UK. It's the only suburb where I ever saw him. He was in the supermarket in Acland St with potato salad in hand looking gaunt and ill as he always did but cool at the same time. My old town of 25 years Melbourne also had an AC/DC Lane which I always thought was pretty cool. Moving to the Desert City on the Murray I had plans myself to try and get a street or maybe just my back lane named after the fabulous Mildinga band The Creatures. The Creatures are famous for the song Ugly Thing which the US garage rock magazine Ugly Things was named after. A fabulous chapter on the groop can be found in Wild About You: The 60s Beat Explosion In Australia & New Zealand written by Ian & Iain. Raven Records also released 4 volumes in a series of compilations called Ugly Things in the 80s. The first and best volume contains the tune in question. My plans are back on the drawing board after this inspiring precedent for Rowland's lane. Funnily enough RSH probably used to shoot up heroin in that lane or at least one nearby.

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part 2

ROWLAND S HOWARD - POP CRIMES

Rowland’s final album, issued in 2009 just two months prior to his untimely death. He was only 50. His career was experiencing a resurgence and Pop Crimes was a brilliant album that was critically acclaimed. He continued his great reinterpretations of other people’s songs here which include a phenomenal brooding version of Talk Talk’s Life What You Make It and Townes Van Zandt’s Nothin. The opening tune I Know A Girl Called Jonny is a remarkable duet with Jonnine Standish (HTRK) that contains possibly the best line in pop ever - ‘Pashing with the devil at the bus stop’. Pop Crimes is gloomy pop trash at its finest, quite possibly Howard’s finest hour.

ROWLAND S HOWARD - TEENAGE SNUFF FILM
The best Australian rock album of the 90s hands down. Rowland makes an incredible comeback. He gets Mick Harvey to play drums (so economical) and Brian Hooper to play bass (some of the coolest bass playing ever). Trashy pop tunes, hatefully cathartic dirges, doomed love songs and a Billy Idol cover version all add up to one hell of resurgence. Chuck in some great string arrangements, Rowland's best ever vocal performances as well as his blistering guitar work and hey you got a masterpiece on your hands.

*The original Teenage Snuff Film Glaring Omissions article and another bit.

**These two blurb reviews on Howard will be appearing at the HC website soon.

Rowland S Howard - A Reprise

I watched that Documentary autoluminescent again last night and geez it's hard going towards the end. This is a doco about the life and times of Rowland S directed by Lynn-Maree Milburn & Richard Lowenstien. It contains some fantastic footage of the great man from the early days onwards. It's when it gets near the end and there are scenes of him in hospital and sad stories from his last days that really hit you with the sadness of his tragedy. He was starting to gain momentum with his career again. His Pop Crimes LP was critically acclaimed and a whole new younger audience was becoming aware of his magnificence. He had so much more to give and his regret was heartbreaking ie. not looking after himself at certain stages of his life.

He ended on a high note though and I hope he was proud. What a top record to go out on! Ha... just noticed 10 minutes ago that the FACT Webmagazine has his Teenage Snuff Film record in their best albums of the 90s, coming in at #20. So it takes an international website to recognise his excellence and the Aussie list maker wankers to overlook it. Typical. 

Teenage Snuff Film- Rowland S Howard

Glaring Omissions V

How could this LP be overlooked by both that 100 Australian Albums book and that Age list? It's unbelievable. Was there a better rock record from the '90's in Australia? I don't think so.

Rowland S came into my life somewhere around 1983/'84 when my older brother brought home Prayers On Fire by The Birthday Party from one of the commercial record shops in Mildura. Suffice to say this was no commercial record. My ears were definitely not attuned to such a cacophony. This was no INXS, Midnight Oil, The Models or even Hoodoo Gurus. That was where my head was at. I thought this LP was some kind of satanic music and it remained on the shelf for a year or two. Then someone borrowed it and in its absence I became fixated with it. Rage (an all night music show) probably got me into The Bad Seeds then The Birthday Party. I never got that record back despite many attempts. I had some z grade tape containing it and the self-titled Birthday Party LP though. Those Birthday Party records became legendary to me, well, up to and including Junkyard, anyway. I pretty much love all The Crime & City Solution records and the ones Rowland played on were fabulous, Just South Of Heaven & Room Of Lights (haven't dug those out for a while I must admit). Then there was the brilliant Marry Me film clip by These Immortal Souls on Rage followed by the underated minor classic Get Lost (Don't Lie) album. We used to think he was a bit funny because he never looked very well in any video he was in. He was fragile and looked like he would not be long for this world. Nobody ever looked so cool yet so ill at the same time. I love the way he stood when he played guitar. He was a unique and fascinating human specimen. Possibly the best white rock guitarist ever.

By the time I was living in Melbourne in 1991 I saw These Immortal Souls support Died Pretty. That was a bit arse about, I thought, but I guess Died Pretty had big major label support at the time. These Immortal Souls were good but not mind blowing, perhaps having a bad night. I don't really know what happened to him after that. There was an LP in '92 from These Immortal Souls which hardly got any airplay on Melbourne community radio. The times were a changin and he seemed to get left behind. I heard the only way he got to come back to Australia sometime in the mid '90's was because an Aussie metal band had a hit with a cover of Shivers an old Boys Next Door song he wrote and the royalties saved his life. It must have been around this time that I would often spot him, with much excitement, in the Acland St supermarket with potato salad in hand. I think it must have been around '96-'97 I saw him play a solo weeknight gig at The Public Bar in North Melbourne to about 7 people, 6 of whom didn't know who he was. It was looking like this legend was fading away and nobody cared.

Then there was this performance on ABCTV's Studio 22 which I managed to tape in 1999. He was back big time. Mick Harvey on drums and Brian Hooper on bass. Rowland was resplendent in pink shirt and the band was totally cookin. I would come home from work after being at the pub and watch this over and over again. I loved it, must have watched it at least 75 times, I reckon. Dead Radio, Exit Everything, She Cried (the old Shangri-La's tune He Cried with a switcheroo), White Wedding (yep the Billy Idol Tune) and if memory serves a version of Shivers. I never bought the record, Teenage Snuff Film, until someone, namely my cat, taped over it with golf. Anyway that made me get the album and, fuck me, there were even better tracks on there. Breakdown, I Burnt Your Clothes, Silver Chain, Sleep Alone, Undone, Autoluminescent etc. This was his most focused and consistent record ever and it was fucking brilliant. No duds here. This was a Lazarus like comeback and The record of his career. Well he said he was "bigger than Jesus Christ" and he was to me and he should have been to mainstream Australia and throughout the world. As he also said in Autoluminescent:

 "I'm White Heat! I'm White Hot Again!"

And he was vocally, lyrically and on the axe. There were pop songs, dirges, doomed loved songs and songs that were hatefully cathartic. Trash/Pop culture references like guns, Coca Cola, Cigarettes, dog nods, stolen cars, Black Holes and blood were scattered throughout. Not forgetting Hell, Jesus Christ, valium, murder, romance, self loathing, being wasted, crime, poor health, sadness, devices, hate/lust, suicide and misanthropy. On the lighter side there was hope, bragging, space travel, sarcasm and love/hate relationships. Discerning what was fiction and what wasn't was half the fun of listening to this record. A fairly sparse approach musically, some fabulous string arrangements, his best ever vocal performances and blistering guitar work all added up to the best Australian rock LP of the '90's. So for me that means he was present on the best Australian rock LP of the '80's (Prayers On Fire) and the '90's. Legend.

Then it was another 10 years we had to wait for his follow up LP Pop Crimes, which would be his last LP before his death and which time will show to be almost as great as this miraculous effort!

RIP

or should that be rest in guitar racket from hell?