Kevin McLaughlin and the Murrumbidgee Orchestra - Whole Wide World 7" River Records SMX-46873/4, 1978

Whenever we feel that the occasion requires an '80s movie namedrop, This Is Spinal Tap usually covers the essentials. Today, however, we're reminded of a more unlikely reference - Ivan Reitman's sheissewerk about the lighter side of eugenics, Twins. You plead ignorance? Allow us to give a synopsis. Arnold Schwartzenegger and Danny Devito play - you guessed it - twins; separated at birth, they go on to lead very different lives. A grey-haired plot device informs us that this is because first-born Arnie is a genetically engineered übermensch, whereas Devito was an unexpected side-effect, a by-product of the leftover turd genes. The film ends with Arnie being sent back from the future to infiltrate the Kennedy gene pool; meanwhile his short, fat scumbag twin makes a living as a taxi dispatcher before going on to co-host American Pickers. Uh, or something like that.

In June 1978, employees at the Festival Records plant pressed the Victims' TV Freak 7" (SMX-46871/2) before changing the plates and using the leftover vinyl to press a little-known single by Kevin McLaughlin and the Murrumbidgee Orchestra. As the afterbirth to the monstrous Victims EP, this punk-era curiosity has remained virtually unheard beyond Canberra music aficionados and hardcore Wreckless Eric freaks. Its B-side is a relatively faithful, contemporaneous cover of Eric's Whole Wide World, some additional keyboard being the main point of difference. Hard to go wrong with a song this good, but it's still just a cover, and perhaps less than essential listening for anyone with the original filed away. The A-side needs to be heard by no one, ever.

For us, the single's main interest lies in its backstory, told in full over at the Canberra Musicians website. There you'll find a band enamoured with the Oz Rock tradition accidentally stumbling across the "new music". We've seen before how non-punk "punk" records emerged prior to many genuine Australian punk bands releasing records of their own. Though not as early in the game, the Murrumbidgee Orchestra is yet another example:

"When George [Bennett, vocals] came back from Britain he brought with him some new music called 'punk'. One song stood out, Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World. George and Willie [Ian Winter, guitar] had another original called Thunder on the Mountain. We recorded them out at Airsound in Fyshwick and had it pressed in about a week. We sat back and waited for our first single to go roaring up the charts, bringing us fame, fortune and home delivered pizza. We are still waiting, but early days".

Whole Wide World [Download]

The Vacant Lot - Living Underground 7" Doublethink 13055, 1981

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.

Tattslotto Night [Download]

Multinationals [Download]



                     Many band photos in this video.

DJK Band - Venus Flytrap 7" Glo Audio GLO-1, 1978

DJK stands for Dave Scotland (guitar, vocals), Joe Lee (bass), and Ken Wylie (drums), three-fifths of Canberra's Baby Grande. The Baby Grande story makes for an interesting read - we encourage you to do so at the relentlessly centre-aligned Canberra Musicians website. The gist is that the band formed in 1974, first in a pre-Scotland incarnation as the infinitely preferable Far-Q-2, then as Baby Grande in 1975 when the line-up was finalised. Oh, the other members? Their names may be familiar: Steve Kilbey (vocals, bass, synth), and Peter Koppes (guitar).

Initially an intellectual take on glam rock, Baby Grande evolved as the summer of hate dawned in the UK; Koppes quit, and at Kilbey's behest, the band amped up the guitars and pursued a direction more aligned with the Pistols and the Dolls (note that Kilbey's take on "daggy" local guitarists in the Canberra Musos piece is consistent with our own). Through connections and coincidence - notably, EMI Australia being wrongfooted by the UK parent company's directive to sign the Saints - Baby Grande found themselves under contract with EMI, and in January 1977, five songs were recorded with (I'm) Stranded producer Rod Coe. Unfortunately, the session was rejected by EMI for lacking commercial appeal, and the recordings remain unissued to this day. Dejected, Scotland, Lee and Wylie jumped ship.

Kilbey's post-Baby Grande trajectory is a matter of public record - after a dalliance with Tactics, a realignment with Koppes led to The Church and worldwide acclaim. The remaining Baby Grandes quickly regrouped as DJK Band, and issued this self-financed single in an edition of "about 500" copies (note the sly nod to former glories on the label). It's a worthwhile record, and one that gets better with each listen, but absent Kilbey's stewardship it lacks any trace of punk; instead, Venus Flytrap evinces a regression to inventive grillfat with glammy overtones. It's a description that applies equally to the lyrics - we'll leave you to listen for yourself, but let's just say that "a venus flytrap in a bed of daisies" is Canberran for "dude looks like a lady".

Venus Flytrap [Download]

Tactics - Long Weekend 7" Folding Chair PRS-2653, 1979

The key to Tactics is singer Dave Studdert. To get an insight on what inspired their first and best record we're gonna quote liberally from Bob Blunt's great interview with him in Blunt: A Biased History Of Australian Rock.

As a kid growing up in the 1960s I moved around a lot to wherever the family landed, meat work towns. I only had two records, Hendrix's Smash Hits and the Stones' 'Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!'. I wasn't musically trained or anything and, to tell you the truth, from my late teens into my early twenties I was more into cricket than being a songwriter or musician. It wasn't until I was about 21 that I started feeling lost in all that suburban marriage bullshit. I started reading NME and hunted down records by Love, Bob Marley, Syd Barrett and Dylan. I was drawn to that because I had always constructed myself as an outsider, so I hunted down dub albums and some Burning Spear. I was on my own a lot in those days. I developed an antenna for what was deemed good or bad.

In the mid '70s in Canberra, Studdert dropped out of uni and formed a band. Punk had arrived in Australia but he didn't like the Australian copyist take on it.

Everyone was copying stuff straight out of the NME. All that punk stuff was kind of funny in retrospect but I had heard the Stooges and didn't want to sound like that. The music in punk never did anything for me. I preferred Jamaican stuff and Arthur Lee, Television and Talking Heads, which was more rhythmical with lyrics that weren't so straightforward and narrative, but more symbolist and double edged. Punk to me was an attitude and a kind of spirit. It was like the old is dead and the new is antibodies. I used this attitude because I was angry, very angry. I was doing shitty jobs, like cleaning out incinerators, and being hassled by my parents because I was 22 and didn't have a real job. With all this psychological tension in me, I wanted to release it all. I was wired, all the time. I was reading Rimbaud and Nietzsche and going out at midnight and driving around Canberra until the sun came up. I really related to Travis Bickle because I went a year or so without speaking to anyone.

Tactics began as Studdert and Angus Douglas and another soon to be famous Canberran.

Steve Kilbey was this computer programmer who couldn't play bass very well. We played a few shows with him in Canberra. Our first show we played two of his songs that I could never get quite right.

Oh well. After losing Kilbey and adding Geoff Marsh and Bob Whittle on bass and drums the band supported The Thought Criminals at ANU. Tactics followed them back to Sydney for shows, the first at Garibaldi's in Darlinghurst with The Thought Criminals and Crime and the City Solution.

I remember the joint was really packed. We played first and we weren't very good in comparison, but because I was this maniac it had something. When we returned to Canberra people slowly started to like us, mainly because Sydney bands liked us. The crowds still didn't get it. Copy bands were still the flavour of the month, especially the ones who belted out I Wanna Be Your Dog. Everything and everyone was a shadow of another. To this day that annoys me about this country because poor old neo-colonial Australia has always been good at copying. It's part of not wanting to be the excluded other.

Taking the tenets of originality and otherness with us, we leave the interview here and focus on the band's first recording, the Long Weekend EP. From the "postcard from another dimension" sleeve on in it delivers on the fronts Studdert wanted it to. The quest for originality doesn't lead the band up their own backsides; rather the visceral energy of the playing and the uniqueness of the structures deliver in spades. For us, Standing By The Window is the highlight with the double tracked spoken parts and the great guitar refrain. One of the best art punk tracks from this country, and while Studdert's voice can be an acquired taste, it's a pleasure to hear a Canberran guitarist play with conviction.

It was a surprise to rediscover Watch My Hands while researching this post - a sublime drum led track with, again, some great, gnarled guitar playing; landing somewhere between the first and third Urinals eps, without sounding like the second. We'll leave the third track, Buried Country, for you to track down. Tactics' story is long, and we're not going to cover any more of it here today. Maybe another time...

Standing By The Window [Download]


Watch My Hands [Download]

Standing By The Window was reissued as the b-side to the Gold Watch single.

Quintrex Bop - Effigies 7" EMI Custom 13005, 1980

Another "graphic design clusterfuck"

Ever wanted to reach into your gramophone, grab the guitar player by the scruff, and dare them to play a downstroke? We mentioned before what seems to be a Canberran tendency to not want to put in on the six string. There are exceptions, but unfortunately today's featured record ain't one of them.

Quintrex Bop were part of the small punk scene in the nation's capital in 1980. The band members were Eddie Evils (vocals), Glen Grattan (guitar), Rod Nonstop (bass) and Mark Fraser (drums). They recorded a four track 7" at Grool Sound in 1980, and that was it.

So, half-hearted guitar slinging aside, what does the Quintrex Bop EP offer? We feature the best two tracks today and you'll see what makes it vaguely attractive is a bit of mean-spiritied nastiness in the lyrics. On Judith the target of the singer's ire is the eponymous lady friend. "Judith is a fatty and a liar and a cheat", it starts, and the impression given of the poor lass doesn't improve. "Judith, I'll whip you with barbed wire, c'mon Judith, and set yourself on fire" and "Judith, you're the girl I hate, woah-oh Judith, you're overweight". O...K..., shots on target, but when paired with decidedly nancy drumming and non-committal guitar wavering I'm unsure of whose side I'm on. Think I'll go with Judith, she sounds like a whole lotta Rosie.

So, onto Royalty Sucks where again the lyrics are fairly forthright, if a little confused: casual anti-semitism ("she never wears the same clothes twice, she ain't no filthy jew") in the verse followed by a nice use of Yiddish in the chorus - "The king and queen are full of shmuck". Yeah, it didn't make sense to me at first either. I thought it was a minced oath for "full of shit", but then they rhyme it with "but I don't give two fucks", so that theory dies. We all know shmuck is slang for dickhead, but the lyric still doesn't make sense. It turns out in Yiddish, a shmuck is the foreskin removed in circumcision, now making the line a decent insult.

All in all it reads like it was whipped up on the back of a school pad in a few minutes. Nothing wrong with that, but it helps if your band is providing an absolutely raging backing track to distract from any obvious shortcomings. The vocal delivery is fine, but, like the guitarist's stayed hand, we can't commit to the whole thing with much enthusiasm. As an anti-monarchy song it's more Corgi Crap than I Hate The Bloody Queen.

The other two tracks, Effigy In Plastic and Household Garbage, despite the promising names, aren't going to excite anyone. As always though, track 'em down and make up your own mind.

Judith [Download]


Royalty Sucks [Download]

Eddie Evils also sang in Glass, from Ripchord fanzine, 1980.

The Word - I Think I'm Falling In Love 7" Infinity K7781, 1980

You're probably familiar with the Inner City Sound discography, and how after studying it for two decades you think you have a handle on it. Then you realise there's an obscure Infinity label record right at the end - no other mention in the book, or elsewhere really. Damn!

Well here it is. The Word were a punk band from Canberra who started in 1978. In 1980 they somehow got to record this single in Sydney. It was released on Festival subsidiary Infinity, continuing that label's flirtation with powerpop while they sat on money made from Sherbet. Festival house producer Martin Erdman sat behind the desk.

Members over the band's existence included Michael Moriarty (vocals/guitar), Peter Palij (guitar), Terry Sounder (vocals/guitar), Archie Van Der Glass (bass), Frankie Villegas (bass, on the record) and Darcy Deegan (drums).

The record is somewhat over-produced, and, at the best of times, if there's one word to describe the Canberran approach to playing guitar it's tentative. Nevertheless, the band's enthusiasm shines through, and the Only Ones style vocal inflections are effective. As poppy Oz Rock it fit the sounds of the time and we're kinda surprised it wasn't some kind of hit. The flipside, Angel, is less distinguished - ramping up the Oz Rock at the expense of the powerpop. Only Moriarty troubled the compilers of the Who's Who Of Australian Rock again, ending up in the Gadflys.

I Think I’m Falling In Love [Download]

The Word, from Canberra Punk & Beyond on Facebook.