Who knew Mud started in the 60s? I thought they must have formed in about 1972 as a bunch of charlatans jumping on the glam bandwagon to make a fast buck. They obviously had deep talent and a love for for music though. This was released in 1967 and didn't bother the charts but it stands the test of time, reminiscent of contemporaneous influences The Bee Gees. I don't know what they did between 67 and 73 but that's a big wait for success innit? I know they released several singles on different labels but with no chart action. For some reason they kept on truckin. Mickie Most saw something in them in 1973 and signed them to his RAK label. Mud finally hit pay dirt with 3 singles from 1973 all Chinnichap productions and compositions. These are the following three videos of which two were top 20 hits and Dynamite reached no 4.
This is fucking fantastic. Mud could have been a serious proposition. I mean I guess they were were with huge record sales by the mid 70s. Lead singer Les Gray was so charismatic. But they kinda had a bit of the class clown about them which wore thin after less than a couple of years. Then again Glam was all about good times and having a laugh was it not? This one carries over a bit of freak beat into glam as well as almost inventing new wave at the same time. One of the coolest tunes ever surely. Talk about atemporal. Absolute classic!
Hypnosis puts me in mind of like a cross between Love and Abba. Who would have thought that would have been a good combo? I'm not even sure if Abba had records out by that stage, anyway who cares this a tuuune and and half.
Classic glam jam right here. Gee the Chinnichap team had a winning formula didn't they?
The Cat Crept In was released in April 1974 and reached number 2 on the UK charts. Les's Elvis-isms start creeping in at this point and would really come to the fore on their Christmas No 1. Lonely This Christmas later that year. Although there was quite a bit of The Big O on that one as well. I guess the use of Lonely in the title was a bit of a giveaway. I can't bring myself to post it though. All those years of waiting to make the big time and by their 7th hit, the aforementioned Christmas single, they'd lost it. They were still reaping in the rewards though weren't they?
This one actually reminds me a little of one my old band's tunes which I didn't write, Greg our drummer did, maybe he was referencing it. The only song of Mud's I vaguely knew back (Youtube not yet invented) then was Tiger Feet from when I was little which must have been on some kind of mid 70s hits compilation. I certainly wouldn't have known who it was by. Mud mustn't have been as big in Australia as Slade, Sweet, Suzi, Marc, Gary Glitter et al. Anyway Rocket's got more Elvis inflections in the verses here. This was issued in 1974 and hit the number 6 spot in the UK.
Undeniably infectious pop smarts are displayed on their early 1974 single Tiger Feet. which became their first UK No.1 smash. Tiger Feet stayed on top spot for 4 weeks running. This tune brings out the shoulder jive moves when heard amongst the company of my wife's side of the family who come from North Wales.
Anyway a good little run of tunes over an 18 month period, I reckon. Better than anything Blur or Oasis could come up with.
Beatking aka Club God aka Club Godzilla aka Club King Kong...
He's back thank God(zilla). The only rapper along with Kevin Gates who is currently keeping my eyeballs on the rap scene really. I was a bit confused as it started with Stopped but this is a better version than the one on Club God 4 from earlier this year. It's some kind of weird tradition to chuck an old song here and there onto your new mixtape in the rap game ie. Houston 3AM also includes a version of Keisha which originally appeared on Gangster Stripper Music 2. Something I'm yet to fully understand, whatever, I suppose. I was a bit worried on the last mixtape, as Beatking was second guessing himself. He was trying to appeal to his new white and Asian hipster audience as well as his usual hood/club fan base. He even said he recorded a whole new tape during this time and released that instead of his original recordings. He had no need to over think things though because he gained a wider audience by just doing what he does. The best way to go is to just keep on truckin at what you do best and that will keep you true to yourself and your fans. Otherwise you could lose your fans altogether and then you're fucked. Suffice to say this is way better than Club God 4 which was pretty good anyway.
This is the best release from rap zones since King Kev's Luca Brasi 2 and Beatking's very own absolute classic belter Gangster Stripper Music 2. The Club God's consistency is incredible and it continues here. Don't worry he's sticking to his classic themes here: strippers, headjobs, clubs, cars, thowin ass, his dick, paper, Houston etc. He pulls off his usual subject matter with such aplomb you don't get bored with it. Sonically he's got an array of styles as usual like ratchet, trap, 90s European tech flavas and softer soulful R&B. These styles are all intermingled now and just come out as Beatking music. Last year I asked the question, on this here blog, whether he was into rave, hardcore, gabba, doomcore etc.? He gave me an answer on Nervous, the outro, to Club God 4 by admitting his love for Neophyte the Dutch gabber crew from the 90s who had a slew of 12"s on the legendary Rotterdam Records during the golden age of gabber.
On Houston 3AM he even adds to his flavas with a hint of Calypso, Boogaloo, sweet soul and even a lil' bit of old school. I Got Hoez is state of the art Beatking with its low-key ominous yet sumptuous keyboards, brittle drum machines, subtle abstract background samples and great raps from Club King Kong himself and Short Dawg. Beatking's own productions are fine as per usual like Holup, Holup with its intergalactic siren stab, Donkey Kong soundtrack soundz, minimal keys and a wasted crawling vibe. This is shit hot! For a man who is known for being crass he can be incredibly understated at times. Not Right has got the best bass pressure on the tape while the rest of the tune has an opulence you want to get inside of. The Club Godzilla might on first impressions seem amoral or downright up in your grill immoral but he is slowly revealing a particular moral code. You might not agree with it but he does have one, not that I could give a fuck. It's just interesting in a Tony Soprano type of way. His contradictions and sophistication could be a reason for Beatking's continued artistic success though. Houston 3AM Freestyle is an unusually funky electro party jam that is soo superfly good. X-Files includes a sample of, well, the theme to the X-Files that sounds v cool you want it to go way longer than its interlude length of 1 minute. Actually the previous tune Isolated was possibly using the same notes or something very similar come to think of it. Squad keeps the spacey X-Files feel going as well but in a more 80s Casio cosmic tone setting.
One of the highlights here is Deposit which features fellow Houston rapper Sauce Walka who released the funny Sorry For The Sauce mixtape earlier in the year. There's a great bit of Twin Peaks style freaky/disturbing backwards Beatking rapping at the end of No Sleep, I like. That Ain't My Thot features a great boogaloo feel which is pretty much a wholesale appropriation of the 90s tune It Ain't My Fault by Silk The Shocker and Beatking ends it in skit style. Here he talks about strip club addicts who think they're gonna go home with the stripper because they've pumped so much money into her g-string throughout the night but they just end up getting turfed out of the club when the morning light starts appearing under the club doors. Swangas is the Beatking givin us a bit of sugar with a 90s sample I can't quite put my finger on and it's driving me mental. H is a fabulous slow jam informed by subtle gloomcore along with sweet soul vibes provided by Chalie Boy. His obviously a love song to the city in which he resides H-Town ie. Houston. On Japan Beatking samples an artist who might be Juicy J or Chad C Pimp Butler (of UGK fame), correct me if I'm wrong and he's (the sampled dude) talking about country rap and how that became a style and an inspiration for regional and southern rap, I think? Beatking saves the best till last with the self indulgent navel gazing of What I am that's not uninteresting because he doesn't get where he stands in this mp3 generation. In the past (pre mp3) he would have been able to measure success by record sales. How do you measure it now though? He's well off, where he wants to be, got people calling him a legend, MTV playing his videos etc. but he can't seem to grasp where he fits in the larger cultural picture. I guess he is still a cult concern but maybe that's not enough for him no matter how large the parish. He never says he wants a Grammy or a Number 1 single though, I mean that's how some old people measured popularity and success. Now it's all social media hits and Datpiff & HotNewHipHop download stats. After the Club God is finished with his mini self therapy session he throws in an unexpected and secretive classic cut featuring Gangsta Boo that didn't make it onto the great Underground Cassette Tape Music joint from last year. It makes you want Beatking to collaborate with Boo again and again. This tune contains brilliant horror movie motifs, a looped scraping violin and John Carpenter-esque minimal keyboards.
I feel like my world is back on its axis with this new Beatking mixtape and hey there's a new Kevin Gates one too (more on that soon). My faith in rap is has been restored thanks to Beatking. This might be the best recording of the year. He's still the Club God! Still the Club Godzilla! Still the Club King Kong! Still the fucking Beat King mane!!
I can just see the attraction to this one as it's a classic Bowie penned tune. Bowie apparently loved Mott The Hoople so he gave them this gift of a song so they didn't break up. Did he realise it was one his greatest tunes? He must have been a really nice bloke. The following Mott tunes though I just didn't get and a few years ago I really gave them a good go to try and see what all the fuss was about. Don't get me wrong I love me Glam in particular Bowie, T-Rex, Suzi Quatro, Sweet and Gary Glitter.
Perhaps doing this post is giving me a very late understanding of Mott The Hoople who I always saw as a 2nd rate tired Bowie, like his older brothers riding his coat tails or something like that. People love em though! This above tune is now growing on me.
Still dunno about this one? Then again if you listen back to those early 70s Bowie LPs there is a fair amount of a Rolling Stones influence on those. It's not that so much as the little bit of musical theatre in this one and hey I didn't like it when Bowie played this card either. I dunno Mott The Hoople just didn't have that instant Wham Bam! impact of an early Suzi, Gary Glitter or Sweet tune or the that insidiously glamorous androgyny of Marc Bolan.
How about that for an outfit! They don't wear em like that anymore. I guess this tune kick-started it all.
More classic outfits and tunes. A really excellent short and snappy history of UK Glam resides here. Where they called this one The Glam Theme Song. I'm not gonna disagree with that.
A late bewdy for The Sweet just before glam's demise but then came the beginning of pub and punk rock in the UK.
Honorary Australian citizen Suzi Quatro. A Chinnichap classic! I did a bit on her here a while back.
One of the few tunes by Skyhooks I actually liked. Kinda late 'got it wrong glam' but in a very good way. Sonic Youth's Dirty Boots always reminded me of this, probably just me. Of course not the only Aussie connection to Glam, Mike Chapman of Chinnichap fame was from Queensland and co-wrote and produced half of Glam's greatest hits along with his UK partner in crime Nicky Chinn. Chapman was also responsible for er... Smokie, Racey and Toni Basil. Don't hold that against him though he also used his powers for good ie. Suzi Quatro, Sweet and Mud. Actually come to think of it Mud were a band I never quite understood either until recently. Mud do have that instant Wham Bam! Glam Thrill.
No it's definitely there. Sort of half of the riff is very Horror Movie. Anyone agree?
Never had this one back in the day. I saw Pita live once that was odd and I had that General Magic album Frantz. So this 2015 reissue features both the original Fridge Trax (95) EP plus the Live & Final Fridge (96) cd. These sounds originate from microphones in fridges. It really compliments my recent Conrad Schnitzler and Ekoplekz listening. My own fridge sometimes sounds like it has got a groaning man inside and on other occasions it sounds like there's a party going on in there. Maybe I should record it as a tribute to these Mego guys. Anyway they fucked with the fridge source recordings and made two classics of 90s electronica (for want of a better term). 90s electronic abstract goodness. Delve deep into the ambient, rhythmic, almost funky and strange droning netherworld of fridges. This is pretty awesome stuff.
FRANTZ - GENERAL MAGIC
All this of course has led me back the aforementioned debut cd from General Magic, Frantz. I even found an old Farmers Manual cd I'd pretty much forgotten about, FSCK. On this mission I also came across more old cds made by Germans in the 90s like Oval, Lithops, Pluramon. Wabi Sabi, Hecker, Microstoria and Mouse On Mars, but i haven't listened to those yet except one. Anyway Frantz is surprisingly a great listen today. I can't stand the use of the word abstract in music writing. Sometime in the 90s its usage became overused and lost its meaning in the process. In the 90s Frantz and Fridge Trax would both have had this term applied to them ad nauseum by the critics of the day. Anyway General Magic are coming from abstract 70s Schnitzler zones whether they were aware of him or not. This is low key electronic ambient soft noise with added randomness. 90s technoid vibes mix with historical electronic music flavas here. General Magic play with these soundz to a microscopic degree giving it a peculiar scientific almost muzak vibe 90s stylee. This cd is hard not to like, in fact I think it has risen in my estimation since 1997. Frantz has gone from forgotten little gem to a classic of 90s electronic zones.
IT ISO 16191975 - HECKER
This is the other 90s German thing I did give a little listen to. Florian Hecker, who I also saw live once and I vaguely recall it being a pretty good show with lots of visual glitchy super 8 film sort of stuff. The visual element really added to the soundz. Listening to IT ISO 16191975 today without any visual accompaniment is a strange experience. I can't really recall what I made of this cd at the time but I guess that glitch aesthetic was all the rage back then before it got totally overdone a couple of years later. I was left a little flummoxed by it all yesterday, I must say. Hey that's probably a compliment if art is still doing that 17 or so years after its creation. It starts out with +1 which is 7 minutes of barely audible hums and drones. +2 is slightly louder with its minute drones, miniature oscillator feedback and subtle short wave sounds that are manipulated glitch stylee. +4 could be rain or static for the first two minutes then a dub glitch vibe ensues with sound sources untraceable. Maybe there's a note from a keyboard in amongst the rumbling silence. Pop music this sure ain't. This is difficult listening that could also be ignored unless you really pump up the volume high on your sound system. Get flummox reward points here.
ELEMENTS OF CHANCE - IAN BODDY
Jonny over at Die Or DIY? (see right hand side Other Stuff) alerted me to this classic tape from 1981 by Ian Boddy. Boddy was a UK analogue synth chap doing Kosmische electronics past their use by date, some classic early drum machine action plus a bit of minimalism too. Elements Of chance takes in new age type vibes and dark ambient noises as well. You could slap a Panabrite label on here and I would be none the wiser. I mean that in the best possible sense for everyone mentioned! This is very good stuff. There is another Boddy tape posted over there as well, looking forward to listening to that.
I don't know what has happened to my appetite for rap? I thought this one might get me back into the swing of things from the mean streets of the USA but I'm not fully diggin II but it certainly has many a fine moment. It opens on a particularly high note with Blue Face Hinnids where the sounds of Mustard, HBK Gang & Larry Jay are becoming so intertwined I don't even know who's on the beat here, it could be someone else entirely? It's probably not RJ's fault that my vibe has migrated away from these zones. II sounded like a fuckin masterpiece (well it's kinda 3/4 of one really anyway) next to King Louie's new one Drilluminati 3 and he's been one of my favourite rappers of the last few years. I was a fan of Drilluminati (1) so it's hard to believe I immediately deleted this but that's what happened. Free stuff eh? See maybe if Drilluminati 3 wasn't free I'd probably have bought it and then spent more time with it due to the financial investment. This may not have improved the actual contents but it may have given it time to grow on me. Having said that I've just had one quick listen to Starlito's new Introversion and it sounds alright. Two out of Three ain't bad so maybe I'm not done just yet with the rap game.
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/DCBon 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.
I've seen footage of Sharpies so many times in my life, it never occurred to me it might actually be of interest to anyone outside of Melbourne or the state of Victoria. The national broadcaster the ABC has trodden these images out ad nauseam throughout my life so now it's uniqueness is totally lost on me. The music part of it remains of interest but the sharpies kinda attached themselves to those bands. I'm sure those bands wanted an audience and I guess beggars can't be choosers but the bands probably didn't want the ugly controversy & media campaigns that came with it. The Coloured Balls, Australia's finest rock band of the time broke up because of the trouble surrounding the band, not any kind of musical differences or anything. This of course left a huge opening in the pre-punk era for someone to come in and fill that spot. AC/DC were that band and hey they didn't just fill that spot, they filled every nook and cranny throughout the world with their minimal driving guitar rock.
*Simon Reynolds points out similarities to sharpie dancing and the shoulder dance performed here by Mud here
At Coloured Balls shows towards the end of their existence there was just too much violence between Sharpie gangs and a new element that had entered the fray Skinhead Boot Boys. Previous to that the Sharpies had been a cool subculture to play to according to Loyde. The media got themselves an angle and the band were accused of inciting the violence, even participating in it themselves. A writ was even issued to one newspaper for their preposterous lies. I think we can all guess which gutter press paper that was er...there was only one. So Lobby got fed up, as the shows became a pleasureless experience for the band, and walked away.
I guess the natural progression from the Sharpie was the Bogan. This was more of a loose generic term for a subculture like indie or something like that and it wasn't a gang thing. The hairdo turned to your more traditional mullet ie. shortish on the top and sides (longer than a Sharpie) with much much more business at the back. AC/DC, Cold Chisel, The Tatts and The Angels were the bands that were followed by this lot.
I guess ex-Sharpies who had the gang mentality deeply ingrained in their souls would have later joined some of those skinhead gangs or biker gangs once they were old enough. Gang culture usually leads to some kind of life of crime. A fine example of this would be that Australia's most loved and successful criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read who claimed to have been a Sharpie and is perhaps glimpsed in the above short film. Other international subcultures would have attracted some of the other ex-Sharpies like punk, anarcho-punk, hardcore etc. Then I suppose the rest of the ex-Sharpies would have just grown up, got jobs and started families. But on occasion after a bit of booze on a Saturday Night some sharpie dancing would have ensued, like that scene in the film Mallboy (2001), which I can't seem to find on youtube. The ephemerality of it all (Sharpie culture) is a bit of a mystery though. As far as I know there haven't been any younger generations taking up the lifestyle as a revival. That could be ripe for the picking now! There have been comedy sketches on Sharpies on television's D-Generation, Fast Forward and the like.
Sharpie culture was very white, as white as you could get so it definitely fits parallels with Gabber, Skinheads etc. Although I have read that other ethnicities apart from those from the British Isles were also included in some Sharpie gangs. It was predominantly white though. This could be a reason why it hasn't been revived as Australia became way more multicultural from the 80s onward. Take a very popular underground band from the 80s like The Hard Ons. They were a punk/thrash/pop band that had no members with their roots in Anglo-Saxon culture. The original three piece had backgrounds from Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia and Korea, I think. This was the face of 80s youth culture.
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.
* RE: Classic 90s Rock Radio at Retromania. When I first heard this tune I was confused by the fact that it was obviously metal but it had incredibly melodic bits which reminded me of REM backing vocals. Anyway they ended up being one of the few Seattle bands I liked in the end. Over the years they grew in my estimation and are now seen by me as the premier 90s Seattle band as opposed to Mudhoney who funnily enough I can't stand anymore but were one of the few Seattle groups I liked at the time. Let's face it Ratcat were way better than those drab old geezers plus we already had The Cosmic Psychos, The Hard Ons, The New Christs, feedtime, Kim Salmon, King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat etc. in Australia. We also had a great bunch of Detroit influenced rock bands in the 70s and 80s. What good were a z-grade Stooges to anyone here. We didn't need it! Our scuzz was better than their scuzz. I suppose I would probably still quite like Screaming Trees but haven't listened to them in a very long time. Two Christmases back we (me, my wife & her mum) watched Nirvana Unplugged and Alice In Chains Unplugged back to back and it was no contest, Alice In Chains won hands down. Nirvana were alright but what struck me most, apart from Cobain's youthful good looks, was that they were one of the least unique rock bands in history. I guess this shouldn't have surprised me because when I first heard them pre-Nevermind I thought they were pointlessly generic. After the outlandish excitement of Husker Du, The Replacements, The Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, The Pixies et al. Nirvana seemed a bit clueless and a little dull like a second rate Buffalo Tom. I thought time may have been kinder to them but no they were way more record collection rock than say Primal Scream. Don't get me wrong either I don't hate Primal Scream at all, I love Screamadelica, gee I've just realised what a great LP title that is. Good record collection rock = Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted (may have to give it another listen just to make sure) and She Hangs Brightly by Mazzy Star. Bad record collection rock = Blur, Nirvana, Oasis, You Am I, and so so many I can't remember.
Can't believe how good this still sounds. Momentous early 90s dance/rock masterpiece.
"where the past, present, and future are all taking place simultaneously."
A quote from some joker over at Simon's Retromania site. Here's a fine example of a term I created 'THE REVIVAL ANALYSIS SPIRAL' after another article at Retromania. I'm trying to find an example of where I used that same sentence a few years ago and I'm sure I'm not the only one to put those sentiments into a sentence. I know my sentence was followed with a question about Australian Aboriginals and if this was how they're concept of time worked? Anyway I can't bloody find it! Oh.... also I might have failed to mention to CardrossManiac2 readers that I have a bit of secret life in the comments pages of Retromania. There's a lot of great ideas and discourse on retro obviously but all things connected too like nostalgia, revivals, Curationism, going backwards, old stuff, the lack of new ideas in current culture, archiving, reissues, ennui etc.
'The Revival Spiral' is a term Lauren Cochrane came up with recently to describe something Simon Reynolds, myself and others have been talking about for years and that's revivals of revivals, revivals of revivals of revivals and so on. So I was inspired by her term to come up with 'The Revival Analysis Spiral'. This was coined because now people are repeating the same ideas, thoughts and theories about revivals and revival spirals. Commentary on nostalgia is being repeated, plundered, imitated and now watered down just like the the ongoing revivals themselves. I always thought Simon Reynolds could write a trilogy of books on the subject but now perhaps we're reaching examination exhaustion. It's all becoming a bit second hand clothes. That last sentence may just have been an excuse to play this tune by Moonshake.
Actually some musicians could use the sentiments in this song as a manifesto to try and break through 2015's retromaniacal musical stalemate ie. "I won't be seen dead in 2nd hand clothes!" Then again you might just be seen alive in a new classic Armani suit that could have been designed in 1962. But surely you understand what I'm trying to say.
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 FilmGlaring Omissionsarticle and another bit.
**These two blurb reviews on Howard will be appearing at the HC website soon.
