Nitro - Blues In My Shoes 7" Warm & Genuine 2079 028, 1973

We're off to an inauspicious start with that title, inasmuch as blues in anything is seldom a good thing. The Warm & Genuine label, erstwhile home to Jon English, is another turn-off, not to mention the fact that the (Stephen) Housden credit you see on the label is the same fella from Little River Band. Yikes. That pedigree can be heard all over For Me Or For You, the weak flipside to Nitro's only single. Not so the A-side, a neat boogie/glam rocker with its titular 12-bar chug offset by a chorus that's no riff and all embellishment, and bonus nonsense lyrics about starchildren and stardust - the latter being a missed opportunity for the title, says us. Housden contributes some nice guitar work throughout, particularly as he starts to unclench from the last verse on, and the rhythm section of Mal Wakeford (drums) and Peter Deacon (bass) is suitably solid and understated. Housden and Wakeford's hard-rockin' side presumably sprang from their brief tenure in Rachette with a post-Easybeats/pre-solo Stevie Wright; sadly, there seem to be no recordings from that period. We wish the same could be said for later collaborations, investigation of which will require stronger stomachs than ours.

Blues In My Shoes [Download]

Maureen Elkner - Dynamite 7" Infinity K-5373, 1973

Appearing the same year as a similarly-themed Chinn/Chapman masterpiece, Maureen Elkner's debut solo single came slap-bang in the middle of her two most notable claims to fame: singing back up on Russell Morris' 1969 Australian psych landmark The Real Thing, and her 1975 ocker novelty hit, Rak Off, Normie. In an ideal world, this excellent glam pummeler would've enjoyed the same level of success, but sadly it's been reduced to a mere footnote in Maureen's extensive CV - that is, when it's even mentioned at all.

Dynamite is a high water mark of early Aussie glam, but it could easily have been a very different beast. A couple of years ago, Kim Humphreys' wild production on the Toxic single showed us that sometimes you can polish a turd; as it turns out, Humphreys was no stranger to the Brasso. Take it away, Kim:

Dynamite by Maureen Elkner featured my band Stumble, a three piece which had in its ranks Gordon Heazlewood (drums) and Vic Pisani (bass). The flip side (Barley Rye) was another band doing the backing. I was contacted when they couldn't capture the feel for Dynamite.

Those tracks were originally intended for the singer from the band who did the Barley Rye side but for some reason she pulled out of the project, so I suggested Maureen, who I had just seen doing a production of Cabaret. She did a couple of novelty singles after that, but I was not involved with those. I believe they got John Robinson from Blackfeather on guitar for the later projects.

Barley Rye is a raga of sorts, competently handled, but of little interest to fans of distorted guitars, and evidence for Humphreys' claim that those musos were out of their depth when it came to the hard stuff (we'll come to the punk-era exploits of the Barley Rye band in a later post). Dynamite is where all the action is - an explosive rocker with Kimbo contributing some wild fret-shredding and a killer guitar sound, and Maureen bringing admirable grunt and sass to her obviously trained vocal style. Some rude, honking baritone sax rounds out the '73 glam signifiers. The only thing that could possibly make it better is a song-ending explosion, but the instrumental crescendo is a close enough approximation.

A second single on Infinity (K-5487, 1974) followed the more usual Australian glam archetype, pairing a cover (Wild Thing) with a weaker original (Sweet Morning). Wild Thing is about as essential as a cover of that song can be (i.e. not very) - there are moments when it swings convincingly, and it is saved somewhat by Maureen's vocals, but the formerly wild guitars have been tamed and the sax is far too smooth to match Dynamite's obnoxious blurting. The flip is a Barley Rye-level throwaway which would probably find a more appreciative audience elsewhere.

Dynamite [Download]

Ginger - Get Back Mama 7" Polydor 2079 053, 1974

Record collecting isn't a competition, except when it is. Immersed in the dusty, mouldy, rancid stacks of 45s at Gould's Book Arcade, I'm suddenly aware of a new presence lurking around the racks - the gent responsible for releasing the D.A.s flexi, who just happens to be Sydney's (other) most ardent grillfat collector. Usually a chance meeting would mean a lengthy discussion about Buffalo rehearsal tapes and the greatness of the Toxic 45, but digging is serious business so pleasantries are foregone for a quick nod of recognition before it's back to the trenches. Time passes - minutes? hours? days? - with nothing for our troubles but blackened hands and the early signs of mesothelioma. For Mr Grillfat, the tedium becomes too much and he throws in the towel. Literally at that very moment, the Ginger single peers out of an unlikely handful of sleeveless oldies 45s. I laugh loudly - it's more of a cackle, really - wave the record over my head and taunt Mr Grillfat with a cry of "Lightweight!" as he walks off into the distance. It's a sense of superiority unique to a man standing knee deep in filthy garbage to kill time while his wife's at the gym. I pay the requisite 95 cents and leave feeling smug and in desperate need of a decontamination shower.

Fast forward a few years and a copy of the Ginger 45 appears on eBay UK as part of a killer glam collection. Condition is listed as VG, which is less than ideal but undoubtedly better than the G (for Gould's) copy filed at Wallaby Beat HQ, so I pull the trigger. And here we are, 35 quid later, yet again wondering why we've seen just two copies of a major label Australian glam record in the last decade.

Suzi Quatro had greater and more prolonged chart success in Australia than just about anywhere else, so covering a track from her debut LP probably seemed like a safe bet in 1974. Get Back Mamma is a fine song in its original incarnation, but when we feel the urge it's Ginger's reworking that's more likely to hit the turntable. With a symbolic dropping of an "m" from the title, Ginger's arrangement is tauter and the attack more basic; not only that, the amateurish take on Suzi Q's bass solo is endearingly sloppy, and the replacement of the original's electric piano with a bleeping, pulsing analogue synth adds to the over-the-top feel.

We suspect that Ginger was initially a studio project in the finest Euro-glam tradition, but a touring version of the band was assembled to promote the single. Among those involved were two-thirds of unrecorded Sydney band Today, Chris Brockbank (a.k.a. Chris Phantom) and a young Michel Brouet (later of The Press). Sadly, the attempt to coattail ride on Suzi Q's popularity was a resounding failure, sealing the single's fate as a low-lying layer of the Gould's crust.

Get Back Mama [Download]

Supernaut - Unemployed 7" Polydor 2079 116, 1978

As mentioned last week, more top shelf Aussie glam-punk is on the table. Here's a tasty treat of dole queue defiance from 1978 by a band better known for gender-bending than genre-blending, Perth's Supernaut.

Ahhh, Supernaut. Famous worldwide now for their absolutely brilliant glam masterpiece debut I Like It Both Ways and the fantastically suggestive flipside to their second 7", Lick My Lolly. There's an LP and five 7"s from their glam era, all but one (Young And Innocent) worth tracking down.

Unlike Branded, these guys tasted massive pre-punk success, I Like It Both Ways being a Number 1 smash. Following the also successful LP, which came out in December 1976, the band set up camp in a Melbourne studio to record their second album (provisionally titled Test Pressing). Recording stretched out over a year or so and eventually the album was scrapped as too dated. Part of this decision must have been based on the band catching a whiff, as 1977 waned, of the new thing coming from England and thinking, "Bloody hell! We can do this!". All that was released from the session was this punky 7" from April 1978. Props to the band for following their noses, especially given that major label land and radio ignored punk pretty much completely here.

Maybe they weren't just looking at the UK but immersed in it. In an online interview vocalist Gary Twinn (an English ex-pat, as were the blonde Burnham brothers) talks about going to see the Clash in London and buying tapes of the shows at the markets the next day, so they may well have spent time in London during '77 and '78.

Wait! Wait! Come back! This doesn't sound anything like the Clash.

So what do we have here. Mid-paced but high energy glam-punk, with a distinctly punk lyric and sneering vocal delivery. It's clearly more East End and Sarf London than Westway. If I had to name names I'd say a bit of Sham with a big dollop of Cock Sparrer - both bands with a history in glam and Faces style swagger. With anglo accents and backing vocals from the (Fremantle Oval) terraces it's definitely LDK-friendly, though those low down kids might wonder what the CES is. We're thinking of reclaiming simple thuggy drum beats as an Australian thing because here's yet another prime example. Maybe this is the true wallaby beat.

The lyrics are great too, we particularly like the couplet "Listen to the news at six, all those lies about statistics". Overall a really infectious song.

Unemployed

Unemployed era Supernaut, working it live. More here.

After Unemployed the band signed with Wizard and issued one more 7" as Supernaut before becoming The Nauts and issuing an album and one final 7". We're in two minds about featuring that stuff here, check back in 2012. Some of the early glam singles (interspersed with songs from The Nauts era) were briefly reissued on CD in the mid '90s, a time when Supernaut was affectionately viewed as a campy joke (at least in their home town). The disc seemed to disappear almost instantly, and amazingly, no subsequent reissues have surfaced.

To avoid confusion over the Englishness of it all,
a special company sleeve exists.

Branded - You Been Branded / Generation Breakout 7" Infinity K-7044, 1978

In our last installment, David Burnette, Lee Cutelle and co. had just released two singles as Beaut - classic pre-punk powerpop on the first, and a disappointing, less realised version of same on the follow-up - both with negligible commercial success. Come late 1977, and after nearly a decade of toiling away with not much to show for it, the changing musical climate in the UK seemingly gave Burnette and Cutelle pause to reconsider their approach (after all, they weren't alone in the scramble to react to punk). The result? A record perfectly attuned to the zeitgeist of...1974!

Reconstituting themselves as Branded, the ensuing single (released in early '78) projects superficially as a Sweet song generator set to one part Chinn/Chapman, three parts Connolly/Priest et al., with the output fed through a Never Mind The Bollocks filter. You Been Branded bludgeons with a powerchord-driven riff and an all-downstroke verse, and continues Beaut's proto-thug drumming absent the "proto". Generation Breakout takes thematic cues from Teenage Rampage (and swipes the chorus for good measure), but delivers its lyrics with a more direct, punked-out attitude. The verse from Fox On The Run makes an appearance as the central riff, and it's all driven by a reductionist Rock And Roll Disgrace beat. An argument could be made that the phased guitar sound dominating both sides is Sweet-informed also, but given the timing, we reckon Anarchy In The UK is the more likely inspiration here.

Now, all parlour game deconstruction aside, this is no mere pastiche. If we can adopt the talkin'-to-the-kidz tone of the Generation Breakout protagonist for a sec, do not let us stand in the way of the geniuses-at-work composition of these tunes, and your enjoyment of said. Anyone can take/copy/play with their influences but we all know it's rare that the results gel as perfectly as they do here. To pull this off requires innate understanding of rock'n'roll, an ability to margin walk the dumb/smart line, songwriting chops (optional) and gonads the size of cantaloupes (mandatory).

In addition, there appears to be a schema of punk rock at play here that genuinely views the likes of the Sweet and the Pistols as interchangeable, and it's that insight that enables the parts to be assembled so artfully, subtracting their sum from the whole will leave you with change. The end result is a glam-punk monster - arguably the most effective collision of those genres produced in this country (though admittedly, competition on that front is slim; we revisit the subject next week).

Unfortunately, we have no hard facts to relate when it comes to scum stats, only the frustration born of personal experience in locating this record. It surfaces less frequently than the Beaut 45s (and even more infrequently with the generic - and purely rhetorical - pocket sleeve pictured below), perhaps indicating the label's diminishing patience and a pressing size closer to actual demand (i.e. none). This would be the band's only single (the Branded who had an LP were a South Australian country band), and the end of Burnette and Cutelle's association with Infinity. As far as we've been able to ascertain, other '70s recordings remain unreleased.

Post-Branded, Messrs. Burnette and Cutelle seemingly went into hibernation for a few years. When they re-emerged, their next move would unleash collector scum nightmares for decades to come. Stay tuned.

You Been Branded


Generation Breakout

Q: And missed this?

A: And missed this.

Sparkle - Crazy Like A Fox 7" Infinity K-6318, 1976

I see ex-high school Rugby League players flouncing down Oxford Street in 1975 in stacks, tight pants and blouses. I see them stopping at Taylor Square and swapping mascara tips with Rob Younger who is sticking up posters for his new band at the Oxford Funhouse ("hey, grouse name, man, but The Rats was better"). I see them shooting shit on the pros and cons of the New York Dolls and Keith Moon's solo album.

1976 sees our heroes releasing one of the pinnacles of Aussie glam, a camped up, Dollsy version of a song off Moon the Loon's '75 LP. Awesome. The flip is a lesser offering - not bad, but those with punk sensibilities may find these honkies overdoing the tonk, and underdelivering on mental illness (a la Napoleon XIV). Still, some nice guitar throughout.

Anyway, the truth is probably more mundane - there's a brother and sister from Perth involved, but the band was based in Sydney. This is their one and only...

The Infinity label has some real hidden treasures, but I wouldn't buy the label willy nilly, you'll get burned.

Crazy Like A Fox


Coming To Take You Away