I've been revisiting this for a week now and I'm still not sure that Kill City To New Values Through An Australian Lens was a suitable thesis topic for these guys, or anyone, to have tackled. Mine the motherlode, I say. Still, I'm hard pressed to think of any other band who engaged in such mimickry of the Ig's post Stooges work so more power to them.
Trans 262 started as ME 262, named after a song on the Blue Öyster Cult's Secret Treaties LP. You can hear a 1980 demo, Gonna Die, on Do The Pop! Redux Part One. There you'll also find a complete summary of their existence which we'll summarise here: in the thrall of Radio Birdman (the elephant in the room we won't mention) they were born and played around. For reasons not obvious they were seen in competition to MEO245 so changed their name to Trans 262, also using The Ruse for a while. In 1981 they recorded this EP with Sherbet guitarist Clive Shakespeare. Seems they were disappointed with the result and didn't last much longer. Members went on to The Chosen Few (not that one), Decline Of The Reptiles, Howling Commandos, Rattlesnake Shake, Naked Lunch, The Screaming Tribesmen and The Fishermen. They reunited in 1987, as ME 262 again, to record I Got Nothing (natch) for Hard To Beat, AuGoGo's Stooges tribute double LP.
Band members were Tony Gibson - guitar and harmonies, Ally "Pink" Marr - drums and perversion, Andy Newman - bass and keyboards, Mark Roxburgh - vocals and wanking.
Being the first punk band in Perth is like being the guy who invented planking - sure, you might've been first, but who gives a shit? Still, that hasn't stopped the mantle of Perth's First Punks being bitterly (and publicly) contested. Dave Warner has no time for such trivialities, announcing that his first band, Pus, was not only Perth's but Australia's first punk band, treading the boards at future Perth punk haunt the Governor Broome Hotel as early as 1974. Putting aside the tiresome argument of "first", the fact that Pus took primary influence from The Fugs and felt gazumped by Skyhooks' shtick suggests that Pus was one of those pre-Punk bands that was punk in intent rather than sound. That's never been of much use to us, being people who listen to music with our ears and all. Given that no Pus recordings seem to have survived, in this case we can't even do that.
The closest we get is Dave Warner's first single (Suburban Boy/Donna, EMI Custom PRS-2499), recorded in the UK at Spaceward Studios and self-released in 1976 under the name From The Suburbs. Suburban Boy was a Pus song, and though this version is less polished than the recording we all know as Warner's first release for Mushroom in 1978, the differences are pretty superficial. It isn't punk, but it does establish the parameters for Warner's subsequent work - tales of football and suburban ennui, delivered with a broad (Western) Australian accent. Those themes were also carried through in the label artwork of his next pre-Mushroom single (Summer '78/Australian Heat, Bicton BR-001, 1978), which also hints at the Perth cultural references that would come to characterise his songs, Bicton being the East Fremantle suburb where Warner grew up. The self-applied genre tag "suburban rock" encapsulates those elements, but if you want to know what Dave really thought of punk, go no further than his song of the same name.
The Mushroom releases by Dave Warner's From The Suburbs litter dollar bins from coast-to-coast, so exploring those records is easy and cheap (go and do it!). What brings us here today is a timely re-examination of the post-Mushroom, self-released Half Time At The Football 12" - timely in that Warner, like me, would be grinning from ear-to-ear after the Fremantle Dockers' preliminary final win over Sydney on Saturday night, sending Freo to the AFL grand final for the first time. If I was to really twist the blade, I'd add that half time was about the point when Sydney Swans supporters could have switched off their TVs (sorry, Professor). A live favourite and something of a career constant, Half Time At The Football is quintessential Warner, bringing to the table all of his usual thematic concerns but with a relentless, sloppy two-chord attack that would sit much more comfortably among Spaceward's credits than the '76 recordings.
We can't leave before tying up the last of Warner's punk-era self-released records, especially given today's theme. To your right, you will see the East Fremantle Sharks' team song, released in 1979 with a blue-and-white label to echo that club's colours - that year saw East Freo defeat the South Fremantle Bulldogs to take out the WAFL premiership. Warner gets a songwriting credit and his voice is allegedly on the recording somewhere, but who can tell with the boofheads from the '79 Sharks caterwauling over the top? No sound files on this one - hell will freeze over before the East Freo team song appears on this blog. Carn the Bulldogs in 2014, and go the Dockers!
The Gap is a suburb in Western Brisbane named after the hole in its inhabitants' aesthetic sensibilities. It takes just one person to break the cycle and that person was Gap High student and guitarist, Brett Myers.
I used to play bass in high school bands. The End started in late 1979, I had just bought my first electric guitar. I had a friend called Andrew Massey who was a bass player and he lived in my street. He came over and asked me if I wanted to join a band. I said as long as it wasn't with the guy down the road. I used to hear him playing Led Zeppelin songs!
The guy was drummer Colin Barwick, who with Massey on bass and Murray Davis on keyboards formed the first line-up of The End. Barwick was re-educated. Myers :
I wasn't into jamming, so to play anything I had to teach them all these Velvets songs. We played lots of parties, but we'd finish an average of about one song out of ten. It was a real thrash but it was coming from a different direction to everyone else. In those days no one was playing the sort of music I liked. If there had been another band playing it, I probably wouldn't have started.
In the end though, there was.
We used to do a lot of Stooges stuff as well, and New York Dolls. Then I saw the Fun Things and they were doing that stuff really well, so we stopped.
The new, "wimpy" End, started exploring space and dynamics rather than power. In most cases such a development would have us running fast in the other direction, but if there was one guitar player whose non-obvious choices we enjoyed the challenge of watching through the eighties, it was Mr Myers. The End took on Malcolm Cole on violin and keyboards, and swapped Massey for Johnathon Liekliter on bass. Their only single is a sometimes tentative, sometimes assured venture. We like its indirectness, though will champion their more powerful tracks like Birthday Boy, which saw release on a posthumous cassette that Citadel were due to issue on CD last decade before the arse wore out of the pants of the reissue market.
The End moved to Sydney and Myers got together with Ron Peno in Died Pretty. With Peno he could marry more direct rock and roll (and shred with the best of them, 2:42 on), with his more delicate sensibilities. My Confession [Download]
Thanks to X-change #4 (1981), and DNA #49 (1986) for the quotes.
October 2013 Update The long promised CD on Citadel is now out. It's not exactly the Hot cassette but it looks great, and Birthday Boy is disc 1 track 1. Buy it here.
Unlike Thorburn's crazy mug, Rick Huxley presents a more world weary portrait to those trying to figure him out 30 years (and counting) later. Even when Google was a useful tool, and not a shillbucket, it was impossible to find anything about Rick due to his recently deceased namesake. World weary or not, we're reasonably sure he's not the Dick Huxley from Hot Cottage (who did feature KimHumphreys, though), or the one from Mecca. The liner notes, as such, say the A-side was written in 1978 by The Reputable Band, but that's another complete and utter dead end.
Like Thorburn though, we're in mildly demented DIY territory here, with an odd country/busker/blues vibe. With the rectal insertion theme popping up in Drive Drivin', Merv Megastar is another apt reference point. The flipside sounds like classic M-Squared, but was recorded just a bit further south at Axent Studios in Kogarah.
So what are we doing here? Well, we like the record, especially that solo in Drive Drivin'; but we're also intrigued by the involvement of drummer and guitarist Ed Fisher and Geoff Holmes, who readers of Blood, Sweat And Beers will recall were in Evil Rumours, the proto-X band from 1977, with Holmes reappearing in X proper briefly in 1979.
Special note must be made of the packaging - a plastic outer bag signed in texta, oversized 4-page sleeve featuring the lyrics and naive artwork below, and then there's the sports powder. Huxley thought it would be a good point-of-sale differentiator to add a sachet of effervescent pick-me-up into copies. If you think hard plastic outer sleeves wreck records after twenty years you should see what a leaky pouch of electrolytes does to seven inches of polyvinyl chloride.
The late, great Imants Krumins once disparaged my über-fandom of Grand Funk Railroad on the basis that as a young 'un, Grand Funk fans would beat him up for listening to Lou, Bowie and T Rex. So Grand Funk were cavemen and so were their fans - no doubt about that, but when I hear Inside Looking Out I find it hard to care (and I hasten to add, I'm not the only one). In much the same way, I can't expect my prejudices about The Frames to matter to those who didn't live in Perth in the mid-'80s, for whom Never Coming Home will probably sound like a pretty snappy piece of new wave power pop. If you were there, then you will remember the suffocating ubiquity of The Frames, The Jets, V-Capri, Flying Fonzarellis and countless others which essentially amounted to cover bands expecting to be taken seriously when snapping off the occasional original. As they say on the internet, fuck that shit.
Brace yourself for more Oz Rock idiocy from Newcastle, as Jukebox convince us that they're the only band in grilldom with body image issues. On the A-side (Summertime Fun - no relation), the singer tells us that when he goes to the beach, 98 pound weaklings kick sand in his face. Flip the record over, and he'd have us believe that he's so puny, a case of full-body gangrene and an elocution lesson from Bobcat Goldthwait could only improve his sex life. Those may sound like the words of someone who has taken a few too many rads of gamma radiation to the brain, but a quick gander at these fine specimens reveals that he might be on to something. The production - courtesy of Rabbit's Mark Tinson - is equally emaciated.
Unlike Dr Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk's alter-ego, Jukebox were no rocket scientists. That's cool though, rock and roll ain't rocket science, and to prove it the lads present their second single (Cordial Factory 13129, 1981) which: a) titles the B-side Rock 'n' Roll Lady, thereby plumbing the depths of grillfat's dumbest; and b) lifts one of the most iconic riffs in rock as if no one is going to notice. Conceptually, that's two thumbs up, so it's unfortunate that the result is so pedestrian. This time, Tinson produces it to sound like the Oz Rock record it is, which of course is to its detriment. That cavernous sound of The Hulk turns out to be the sound of rock and roll reverberating inside empty heads - perfectamundo.
At the risk of being wrong (again), we'll stick our necks out and say that Doug Ironside (guitar, vocals), Jon O'Rourke (drums, vocals), and Warren Slater (bass, vocals) were on a Gang of Four trip circa December 1981. But if that leads you to expect Cowboys and Indians to be some kind of Marxist allegory about dispossession, a narrative crucial to understanding Sydney punk (um, apparently), then think again. Lyrics are more F-Troop than Althusser - hey, there is an O'Rourke in the band, after all - with some added belching for good measure. Classy.
So the influence is purely musical rather than ideological. Fair enough - it'd take another decade for the schtick of printing layout instructions on a record cover to seem fresh again, anyway. With that in mind, we might expect Every Dog Has His Day to be a tribute to the band's touch-football-meets-Lord-of-the-Fliesnamesake. Nah, it's your conventional "I saw you with another guy" song, but at least it's spat out with some conviction and at an acceptable BPM. Making Albert Studios sound like Basilisk is a real accomplishment, though.
What little we know about the Puritans - and their (presumably) only release - comes from the handwritten note from brothers Matt (drums) and Jon Dickson (sax, bass, guitar, vocals, and songwriting), included with our copy. It reads thusly:
What can I say about the record? Start to Finish is basically the A-side, recorded about 2 years ago. Love/Bitter was the first thing we played when we got our instruments.
Jon is now playing bass and sax with Kill the King, who should be appearing shortly at the Trade Union Club with Sardine.
We regard the record as jazz rather than rock, as is most of our inspiration. You could say the music for us illustrates what we believe. It's an end in itself. It must have the power of conviction and be derived from your own experience and intelligence. Just as you believe in certain principles, the music must come from those principles.
Righty-o then. Love/Bitter sounds exactly as described - an attempt at free jazz by two dudes who just picked up their instruments. It is tedious. Start to Finish is much better, and fits neatly into the continuum of Laughing Clowns-inspired Sydney jazz-punk. Here, the basic musicianship and four-track recording work in its favour, lending it a feel closer to skronky no wave than Mr Uddich-Schmuddich...
Jon Dickson's tenure in Kill the King must have been relatively brief - the definitive No Night Sweats site doesn't include him as a member, for example. By 1982, he had joined Jeff Cannon (guitars, tenor sax, synth) and Bill Muysken (drums, percussion, alto sax, synth) in Little Pieces, who issued their Patrick Gibson/M-Squared-recorded LP The Bright World (Park Avenue Records PA 001, 1982) without having played a single gig. The album has some interesting moments, being a more refined, wholly instrumental take on the Puritans approach with the inclusion of some repetitive, droney tendencies. Brief album opener Lord Tony would not have been out of place on Quarterstick Records in the 1990s (think June of 44, Rodan, and their post-Slint ilk), whereas the driving, droney overtones are used to best effect on Party, our other pick from the LP.
We saw last week the perils of choosing a popular band name. Unlike the great, the good, and the ska Leftovers, the Innocents from Adelaide didn't even have the decency to tackle a different genre to their namesakes, both falling under the loose umbrella of power pop. So, after one single in 1980 (Identikit Girl / Let's Get Pissed, Distressing Records PRS-2784), a move east necessitated a sensible change of moniker.
Relocating to Sydney as The Noise, the band - Arturo "Arch" Larizza (bass), Richard Daniel (drums), Chris Purcell (guitar), and John Cavuoto (vocals) - would release just this one record in 1981. Think About Tomorrow, Tomorrow is great, moody, expansive pop; a retort - we presume - to hometown heroes the Master's Apprentices. It also belies our lazy comparison to the other Innocents, showcasing a band intent on stretching itself and squeezing the most out of each song - meaning that the arrangement has everything but the kitchen sink. Those who like things more straightforward and upbeat may get more out of Cold Hard Cash, though it will require a tolerance for brass (provided by the excellently named Mourning Horns). Rat Race follows suit, though it's back to the compositional tricks with an extended switch to 3/4 time.
In the following years, The Noise would revert to their former moniker, releasing two further singles as the Innocents ([I Am Not] A Magic Man / Staying At Home 7", Payer Douze FTW666, 1984; and Strange Cults and Customs / After A Fashion 7", Chase SP5, 1985). Larizza went on to join The Saints, but teamed up again with Purcell to release the You Want Everything 12" as the Tall Poppies in 1987. Think About Tomorrow, Tomorrow [Download]
Wrong, wrong, wrong. We try to make a habit of not being wrong, but sometimes the mistake was made long ago. This one hurts because I owned this record in the early '80s and purged it almost immediately, deeming the band too suburban, too MMM, too rocky. Ugh, how wrong could I have been.
Fast forward thirty years and a copy of this showed up in an online auction out of all places, Midwest America. Oh no, I thought, another pissweak record being pimped as KBD. But the listing had sound clips and over the next ten or so minutes, well, that's when my walls really started to crumble. Behind rocky vocals is a band coming across like a Brisbane powerpop band, the aesthetic choices being highlighted by short, tight guitar solos, and lyrics about the ups and downs of drinking and enjoying your youth.
Apart from the good time feel what I really like about this record is the stripped back production. Although these guys were aiming to be Oz Rock stars, in the studio their sound was like any other mid-fi inner city sound recording, relying on feel and not modern studio trickery. Given the antiseptic sounds of so many similar bands from the era who "made it", we're left with a what-could-have-been reaction to the whole genre. Bent Elbows, maybe with the aid of the credited "alcoholic adviser", got it right.
So to the songs: St Lucia Road is about the band's home, the road leading from Toowong out to the University Of Queensland at St Lucia, and now renamed Sir Fred Schonell Drive. References are also made to another local landmark, Hawken Drive, Rec week (the first week of the University year), and not dropping out before 4ZZZ's third Joint Effort; Free-way Connection is about joining your friends for a piss-up down the South coast; the plaintive Scoring Sugar is an ambivalent drug song; and the probable highlight - Chip On The Shoulder Boy, the great Queenslander affliction writ small. Here the protagonist is picking fights at the R.E. (Royal Exchange Hotel at Toowong), talking big while on the sauce - one great line "Woodstock is over, throw your beads away".
Here's another good Canberra punk record, helped along by, surprise surprise, some great guitar! The Vacant Lot played around the national capital in the early '80s - photos can be found at the Canberra Punk and Beyond facebook page (or check the video below). Band members were Alex Anderson, Fergus Armstrong, Bruce Hart, George Howson and David Philip. In yet another one of those threads that seem to run through the things we write about, their one record was produced at M Squared by the the Scattered Order team (see the Sheiks, Seems Twice, Nervous System).
For a long time it was something of a mystery as to just how this record fit into the whole Doublethink label scheme. Common knowledge would have their discography ending on a high note in 1980 with the Seems Twice EP (DTDT12). Less known, for good reasons, Doublethink then attempted to kill the label with the odious Undertakers 7" (DTDT13, 1980). Then there was this in 1981. In the ensuing decades this record was pretty much unknown outside Canberra and, sporting just an EMI Custom catalogue number, rather than a DTDT one, its place was unclear. The connection was that drummer David Philip was Thought Criminals' guitarist Stephen Philip's brother, and his label was always happy to give a young punk band a hand up.
We hear there's a prospect of the EP and some live tapes being reissued at some stage so we're just giving you two of the four tracks. Tattslotto Night is the highlight. Tattslotto was the lottery that ran weekly in Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital and Northern Territories back then. It's a tale of suburban desperation and the idiot box. After last week's reflection on the punk era's talking points recurring, the Melbourne Demons, who are name checked thrice in the lyrics, were rubbish in 1981 (finishing last with one win), and currently sit winless at the bottom of the table in 2012. Some copies of the EP contain a Tattslotto entry form.
Multinationals, as the lyric insert asserts, speaks for itself...
The other tracks see the band veering off in a more experimental direction, perhaps recalling the dark punk sound of bands like Crisis and UK Decay.
Accidents will happen. The powerpop/Oz rock crossovers we've featured before, Inserts and The Word, were almost certainly aware of classic punk-pop. That is, they've come from the punk/powerpop side of the equation and added Oz rock: the Inserts via an appreciation for hard rock (particularly Judas Priest); The Word probably via semi-major label production.
Today we head to Newcastle for another entry in this stylistic cross over genre. The Globes lasted for an eventful two years from 1980 to 1982 and recorded just this one 7". While a pretty damn good powerpop song, this record feels like it's more firmly rooted in Oz rock. A cursory look at the band's history sees them simply thrilled to have been associated with Oz rock royalty, and nary a mention of anything punk, punk-pop or powerpop. Hence the neat melodicism of the A side of their single, very distantly reminiscent of Noise Annoys by the Buzzcocks, has to be deemed an accident.
Having said that there's a bunch of tricks from the powerpop songwriters' handbook on show: a nice riff, soaring backing vocals, propulsive rhythm section, a textbook truck driver's gear change at the end and the aforementioned melody. So, we're prepared to be told we're wrong but if forced to take the stand we'll present the video below as first piece of evidence - more classic Oz rock signifiers than you can poke a stick at, football jerseys and chicken head neck movements foremost among them.
The "short, stocky, slow-witted bald man" from American Pickers may very well be the most objectionable personality on TV right now, and I say that fully aware that we're on the cusp of an American/Australian Celebrity Apprentice season crossover. Perhaps it's a case of Freudian projection, akin to seeing the scumbag collector impulse staring back at us in the form of a Kim Wilde picture sleeve collector, or closer still, self-loathing at the demon of Ruts completism turned outwards. Whatever the psychological drive, every time beardo Picker opens his pie hole about the desirability of a vintage oil can, I roll my eyes, groan audibly, and pray for the fat fuck to be seen off the property at shotgun-point. Tellingly, it is the exact reaction I observe from my wife when I bring records like this into our home.
Exhibit A in my defence: that sleeve. A wasted Danny Graham, looking like he's just woken up after spending the night in a dumpster, trying to pass off a Polaroid self-portrait as the cover of Space Oddity. And then, in case his eyes and the name of his label didn't say it all, Danny emphasises the point by spelling out his name in dope leaves. Clearly, music is not the only kind of DIY at play here; another record in our secret stash. Your honour, the phrase "buy on sight" was invented for records like this. The defence rests.
"That sounds like Play School music", I hear disapprovingly from the next room as the gavel comes down on Put The Blame On Me. It's not an unreasonable verdict. Like an asthmatic David Virgin, Danny Graham's breathy vocals do have a certain child-like quality, the tentative delivery evoking an image of Danny with microphone in hand, bed sheet over his head, trying his best not to wake the neighbours. Given that this LP was recorded at "Bedroom Studios", that may well have been the case. That tone pervades the LP - laidback, predominantly acoustic, bedroom singer-songwriter stuff. The liner notes for the recently-released Left Of The Middle compilation describe it more optimistically as "uniquely mid-'70s acid-folk art rock", adding that "there is no other Australian artist remotely similar to his singular sound". An asthmatic David Virgin notwithstanding, we largely agree. Ordinarily the kind of record that would make us run a mile, Danny Graham's personality shines through on every song, and the LP's low-budget, home-recorded loner charm has turned it into an enduring favourite. Though not without missteps, its many great songs far outweigh the occasional lapses into turgid MOR.
Danny's second LP (Sinsemilla SINS0002/YPRX 1852, 1981) will similarly prove to be a "love it or loathe it" proposition, though it's an entirely different kettle of fish. We're not just talking about the aquatic-themed cover, either. Titled Promotional Copy Only in the grand tradition of our old friends the Guest Stars, the album sees Danny in rock band mode with what could best be termed a new wave approach. Again, that description undersells it somewhat, as the songwriting is unique and decidedly, er, left of the middle. Not only that, Danny emerges from under the covers to deliver some truly staggering vocal performances, the likes of which haven't been heard here since our favourite vocodered Brisbanite, Ross Lovell. Check out Dragon Fire for the best example of his new-found "let it all hang out" yelp. Someone hand the man some Ventolin! Elsewhere, there is much to like in stoned lyrics such as "Does time spiral or repeat on a curve?" and "When our eyes meet it's like the mingling of molten metals", and as on the first LP, the musicianship reveals Danny to be an accomplished and creative guitarist.
This time around, recording took place at "Basement-Bedroom Studios" - literally a more underground offering than the first LP (and fittingly, a tougher one to track down). Interestingly, about half of the songs on Promotional Copy Only use pre-recorded drum tracks sourced from DrumDrops, a series of LPs designed to allow guys like Danny to avoid the obvious displeasures of dealing with a real life drummer. Fans of basement-recorded oddities may recall R Stevie Moore's C90 cassette from 1980 built around the same approach. Here, Danny's use of DrumDrops gives a telling insight into the motivations behind this LP - beats are taken exclusively from the "British side" (as opposed to the "American side") of DrumDrops 5, featuring drum tracks labelled Fast Punk Rock and Straight Ahead New Wave.
Danny's last release (Sinsemilla SINS0003/13155, 1981) is also the easiest to acquire. Whereas the earlier LPs surface rarely - and are even more scarce without seam splits, sticker scars, water damage, and writing on the labels - this final 45 can typically be found with some digging and a little patience. Featuring two songs from Promotional Copy Only in rerecorded versions, the single should appeal to fans of that earlier record, though for better or worse (one vote here for the latter) it is noticeably slicker in its production.
So what became of Danny Graham after this release? Good question. We'd like to think that this link may provide clues to his whereabouts, and at the very least, evidence of Freudian projection from Danny himself. But unfortunately your worship, the case is largely circumstantial.
February 2014 update: In July 1981 Roadrunner magazine took a few minutes off from sucking major label arse to pen the following review:
September 2014 update: The first Danny Graham LP has no drum breaks or funky horn lines, so when our friend Mark found a copy he onsold it forthwith. Luckily, he saved scans of the press release tucked away inside:
Think you know a lot about Australian records in the punk era? We promise to astonish you with stuff off everybody's radar. We apply quality control so our powerpop has power, our glam has prominent balls, our punk is spiky and our DIY is far, far out there. We'll also do it-never-ends exposés of sleeve variations and inserts you didn't know existed. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.
