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.

Broadcast

Broadcast In Shindig Magazine Shock

On a rare pop in to a newsagent I checked out the music magazines like I used to when I was a teenager (I thought this would pass eventually but er...no). Pink Floyd were on the cover of Mojo again, some other old cats on the cover of Uncut and I think it was Led Zeppelin on the cover of Rolling Stone. I didn't bother flicking through any of those. Even Wolf Eyes on the cover of The Wire struck me as a bit retro. Then I glanced over and saw Broadcast on a magazine cover. I thought 'great there must someone finally giving The Wire a bit of competition.' But no they were fronting the cover of would you beleive Shindig. Shindig caught my eye about 5 or 6 years ago. I thought it was like a cross between Mojo and Ugly Things. I thought that perhaps they were now going down the path that I thought Mojo might have taken by now after they'd surely run out of stories (Mojo that is) on The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, The Who, Eric Clapton, Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Nirvana etc. etc. Sadly this was not to be. I thought by now Mojo would perhaps be havin Black Widow, Heldon, Simply Saucer, The Electric Eels, Cabaret Voltaire, The Homosexuals, The Minutemen, The Cocteau Twins, LFO or even Omni Trio on the cover. Hey that's not gonna sell large quantities is it?

'Cor blimeyI can't believe we us haven't been on the cover of Mojo!'
The Homosexuals

Anyway I once bought a copy of Shindig with articles on The Pink Fairies, Dennis Wilson, Mad River, Love and The West Coast Experimental Band adorning the cover. I dug it. Sure they didn't have the name writters of Uncut, Mojo etc. but they had enthusiasts/lovers of music, not paycheck journos.

So it was a surprise to see Broadcast there on the cover. Is this Shindig broadening its horizons and entering a new bold age? They always have current music reviews but usually of the most retro groups. Lee Gamble or Raime aren't gettin a review here. Of course Broadcast do have that Retro-Futurism thing going on but at the same time they always struck me as a very modern band. I must say it was slightly haunting (no pun intended) seeing Trish Keenan on the News stands, God rest her soul. Contained within this latest issue of Shindig are ye olde types such as Sweet, Donovan, Mike Herron and Gene Clark but there's even an article on the Ghost Box label. Sure it's ten years or so after their inception but that's nowhere near the 40+ years since Donovan did records. Hopefully this isn't just a one off flirtation with modern music. Maybe Ekoplekz will be on next months cover! Here's hoping.

Ugly Thing-The Creatures

I always thought it was cool that I knew a guy from Macclesfield who lived in the same street as Ian Curtis and inherited his turntable (the turntable bit may need a pinch of salt). All along I was living in a region of garage-rock royalty. The Creatures were from Mildura and they had brilliant Aussie garage-rock compilations named after them and as well as a popular American garage-rock magazine. My dad saw the Easybeats at The Murray Moon before they were famous but can't recall the support band. It was probably this lot right here.

Down Under Nuggets

Speaking of Ugly Things compilations put out by Raven Records in recent posts, I just realised this has been released by Festival Records. I e-mailed Raven several years ago to ask if they'll ever be re-releasing any of the Ugly Things volumes, as I had one missing,  and they said probably not ever. I thought oh well. Then later I thought its been so long since they were put out a whole generation or two have missed out. I also thought with the Internet this stuff would only be gaining in popularity. Then there was a resurgence of garage rock (mainstream crossover) in the early 21st century, so the market would be quite large for a reissue. So in the end I thought they were being stupid. In 2010 Ian D Marks and Iain McIntyre then published the fabulous book Wild About You: The 60s Beat Explosion in Australia & New Zealand. So not just the people in the know but a whole younger crowd were presented with all this (a lot of it quite enlightening) info on a bunch of the 60s bands. Some of which were quite obscure and some who were massive pop stars.

An incredible resource for lovers of Antipodean Raw Garage
Rock, Fuzz, R&B and Beat Soundz from the 60s. Contains
interviews with over 35 groops and features The Beat &
Garage top 100. One of the great books on rock.

 If you've read my blog before you will know of my admiration for such groops as Peter & The Silhouettes, The Sunsets, Black Diamonds, The Elois, The Tol-Puddle Martyrs, The Masters Apprentices, The Loved Ones, The D-Coys, Sunday, The Atlantics, The Wild Colonials, The Missing Links, The Throb, The Templars and so on. So those of you new to the game this will be a great intro to the cool, snarly, fuzzy, hormone fuelled and sometimes frightening sounds of the Australian R&B and Beat Soundz. Me well I really don't think I need to buy it. I'm pretty sure I could make this comp as a mixtape tonight. I guess Volume 1 of Ugly Things for me is the comp! Don't get me wrong this Downunder Nuggets is a bloody great compilation. I highly recommend to the kids and the uninitiated. By that I mean everyone on the planet not into this golden era of Australian pop culture yet.

Ugly Things the original compilation of this type of gear.
Released in 1980!

But there are other bewdies too. It's A Kave In: Kingsize Kollection-Wild Oz 60s Punk From The Caverns Of Time and Devil's Children: Hellacious Sixties Punk Rarities are two other classics. Let us not forget The Hot Generation and Of Hopes & Dreams & Tombstones released by Big Beat, which I think is a British label, and maybe still in print. It's all great music! Get into it. Get your shindig started. Push your coffee table back. Put on your dancing shoes on. Time to kut the rug.

Many Mary

Sunday

From It's A Kave In.

Come On Baby
The Templars
Melbourne band of youngsters from 1965.
Half sung in Greek & half in English.
This is great wild stuff!

 Krome Plated Yabby
The Wild Cherries
Lobby Loyde on guitar. This one's a bit more psych
than the others. It's like there's a pop song trying to
escape the weirdness but doesn't quite get out.
What a mental psych classic!

The Pretty Things

Don't Bring Me Down

The Pretty Things

A bit different to ELOs version.

We'll Be Together

The Pretty Things

I think this was the B-Side to the above track or

was that a double A-Side. Both the biz!

Get The Picture

The Pretty Things

Then of course there's this version which has great

drumming and over the top fuzz by Melbourne band

The Wild Colonials

Get The Picture

Which is even better than the original I reckon.

It was on the 1st volume of Ugly Things The

Raven Records compilation series which was

my introduction to the song. The Wild Colonials

only lasted 3 7"s and that was that.  Apparently all

their A-sides were crap but the B-Sides were

where it was at. I think a lot of Antipodean 60s

groups were just as influenced by The Pretty Things

as much as The Stones, Yardbirds etc..

Speaking of which here's a NZ version of Get The Picture by

The Selected Few from Wellington.

...Best Song Ever?.........

How fuckin good is this?

Black Diamonds

I Want, Need, Love You