Surf influenced Drummage

Simon Reynolds is still bangin on about drums so here's a couple more. Well it's pretty hard to get heard behind the twin guitar attack of Masuak and Tek but here's some great drumming to go with those surf guitars. Ron Keeley with the sticks.

Then there is this which was all about the drums. Loved it the first time I heard it which was on the Countdown awards cica 84/85. This was power surf drummage! Mark Kingsmall on the skins.

Buying LPs In The Old Days

First of all you had news of a record coming out sometimes many months before. You'd usually pre-order it. You would probably go into the record shop to see if had arrived yet. Then once I had the vinyl I would take it home and play it full bore on dad's Marrantz Hi-Fi. The vinyl would then be put onto a tape so I could listen to it in my bedroom as I didn't have my own turntable, just a crappy mono tape recorder. Which is featured in this video at the 2.55 minute mark.

Anyway I had it for many years till I saved up for an upgrade. Which I believe was some kind of Panasonic ghetto blaster. None of this double tape deck shit so I couldn't even dub other tapes. But hey it had detachable speakers. Wow - the spaciality of stereo.

Then there was the records. You'd put so much time and thought into your purchase so the odds of it being the goods was in your favour. Through those teenage years LPs went, I think from around $10.99 to $17.99 so that was a lot of money and you didn't want to waste it. So if an album sounded rubbish on first listen, you would give it another go. Then you would give it another go, then another and another up till at least 20 times. Usually the biggest disappointments were bands with a previously great track records so you didn't give a second thought about laying out the dollars for their new record. An example of this was The Models follow up to Out of Mind, Out of Sight which was Models Media. I really really wanted it to be good and probably played it over 25 times before I had to concede it was rubbishola! $16.99 down the drain.

Hoodoo Gurus 3rd LP Blow your Cool did have some great tracks (that Models one had about none) on it but over half was shite. So the endurance of putting up with that other half got annoying in the end. Should have known as the previous record Mars Needs Guitars was only 50% classic. I guess now you would just uncheck the shite songs on i-tunes. This is what I did with that Salem album King Night a couple of years ago. I love about 50-60% of the tracks that I kept checked and couldn't give a fuck about the unchecked ones.

With some groups you knew when to get off the fan wagon instinctively or if the first single off the forthcoming LP was lame. Thus no more INXS post Kick or Midnight Oil post Blue Sky Mining. Hey I was young & impressionable. Probably could have got off earlier with those two groups.

Then there were times when the investment music policy paid off. Take The Triffids final LP The Black Swan which I thought was the worst piece of crap I'd ever laid my ears on. Especially after the over the top, over produced and over budget classic Calenture. These days I'd just delete the file after maybe one or two listens in but due to my investment I played it many times. It is now one of my favourite LPs of all time.

I don't hate Strangeways Here We come by The Smiths but that would have been in the recycle bin straight away. Giving it the investment time made me like it more. Still I find it inferior to the rest of the catalogue, the runt of the litter. Still a good record mind you.

Royal Trux Twin Infinitives is a later example (not really in the timeframe of ths article anyhow) which was on CD but I paid good money at import prices for it. At first maybe for a year and I'm no stranger to noise I found it perplexing and annoying. I would come back to it intermittently after months at a time. Then one day years later it made perfect sense. The perfect noise.

My investment listening music policy couldn't help records which were no good. Jesus & The Mary Chain's Automatic had 2 great singles Head On & the real beauty Blues From A Gun. The rest of the LP however...Gold Afternoon Fix The Church's follow up to the classic Starfish couldn't be helped by repeated listenings. That Petrol Emotion's Chemicrazy very bad indeed.

Maybe recent albums by Black Dice, Maria Minerva and Laurel Halo would perhaps have benefited from the investment policy. James Ferraro's Bodyguard project got a fair airing around here but me no likey so goodbye!

I have touched on this before in a previous post. These are different times and we may now miss out on some things but you know what it's inconsequential as there is so much other stuff out there. Why would I care? No use wasting your time! You don't have that much.

Retromania

Dad where's Barbara Anne?
Dad surf's not up on this one is it?

I didn't really envisage this blog being so retro when I began it. The first posts, which were about the previous years new releases with only a mention of 4 archival releases, were more along the lines of what I thought it would be. Anyway I'm not gonna get hung up on it. You could write a whole book on the subject, which Simon Reynolds did last year. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in un/popular culture and where it's going, or should I say where it's been? In fact I think he could turn it into a trilogy at least.

Anyway retro has been with us for a long time and hey it ain't goin anywhere. Apart from my Dad's records: Elvis, Little Richard, Everly Bros, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, The Animals, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, The Beatles & The Rolling Stones, I first remember it with '50's revival stuff in the '80's which I didn't care much for. Then I guess it was the increased presence of bands like Creedence, The Beach Boys and The Doors on '80's radio and TV promoted hits packages. I never heard a proper LP from those bands until much later.

Then there was the scene with new wave neo-psych bands like The Church and The Sunnyboys. Those groups had some modernism though. It was the next batch of Australian groups who really were fully retro: The Hoodoo Gurus, The Stems et al. They were bloody good though. Once the '80's had passed, the then current '60's revivalists like Even, The Badloves, You Am I etc. didn't seem so great. In fact they seemed shit..... er.....which is what they were.  I remember writing an email asking whether you could have a revival of an '80's '60's revival in the '00's? This was actually starting to happen in Australia at the time. This is where it started to get weird ie. a revival of a revival. Maybe it will go on forever ad nauseum ..................................aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!



THE STEMS
The best Australian 60s band of the 80s

The '60's was always with us on the TV. Get Smart, I Dream Of Jeanie, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island and Batman were on constant repeat forever. Then there was The Munsters and the Aadams Family; probably not as repeated as much. The Flinstones and The Jetsons were always on too. I don't even know when they were made, '60's I guess. The British TV of the '70's never seemed to go away either. Fawlty Towers, Are You Bing Served?, On the Buses, Benny Hill, Dad's Army, George & Mildred, The Good Life, The Goodies etc. So I guess Australians have always experienced this time warp. Is this what they mean by atemporality or do I need to read Retromania again?



My Favourite book of 2011

Cupcake anyone?

What about a frog in a pond?
You could wash it all down with a Blue Lagoon!