Thinking of Another Place - Lou Reed (Easy Action)

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By The Barman

The Barman

10 February 2018

Hits: 6057

Lou’s semi-lost period of the mid-‘70s - post-“Coney Island Baby” and before “Street Hassle” - gets  a lot of bad wraps. Not without reason. A big part of why is “Rock and Roll Heart”, an album in the Reed canon that receives little love.

Why? Maybe it wasn’t seamy enough, maybe the production was so-so. The songs seemed weak. Lyrically, it was wishy-washy. The list could go on. Maybe Lou talked everybody out of listening to it when he thoroughly dissed “Coney Island Baby” for being commercially successful. My own take is a little of all of the above. Second-guessing Lou is pointless - and not just because he’s dead.

So you might approach this double CD live release from the esteemed UK label Easy Action with a degree of trepidation. Rest easy. It’s not the born-in-Detroit, Wagner and Hunter-fuelled thunder-and-lightning of “Rock ’n’ Roll Animal”, or the boozy, coked diatribe fest of “Take No Prisoners”, but it’s not without its own considerable merits.

• lou reed
• nina antonia
• velvet underground
• thinking of another place
• arista
• rock and roll heart

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Disintegrate Me - Professor and The Madman (Fullerton Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

08 February 2018

Hits: 6926

What do you get when you mix two veterans of the SoCal punk rawk scene with a couple of its UK equivalent’s most storied names? This here disc, guv’nor, and a fine slice of rockin’ psych-tinged pop it is. 

Sometimes worlds collide in the best way possible and here’s a prime I’ll-have-one-thin-and-crispy-with-the-lot-and-don’t-forget-the-anchovies example. Genres are less a restrictive tag than a challenge for these guys. 

Alfie Agnew (a real-life maths professor) and Sean Elliott (he’d be the madman) are the US-based principals in Professor and The Madman. The pair played together in D.I., a long-running off-shoot of the Adolescents and Social Distortion, the former being from where Agnew came. 

Rat Scabies, of the (stillborn but legendary) London SS, The Mutants and of course The Damned, was co-opted as a recording member after guest-playing “Smash It Up” with Agnew and Elliott at a US show.  The hook-up with Paul Gray - surely the best bassist The Damned ever had (and he’s back with them now), whose prior form includes Eddie & The Hotrods and UFO - came via Facebook. 

• rat scabies
• the damned
• paul gray
• the descendents
• D.I.
• eddie and the hot rods
• UFO

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Munster Times issues 21 and 22

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By The Barman

The Barman

07 February 2018

Hits: 7132

Everybody of a certain vintage who follows non-mainstream rock and roll has a soft spot for ‘zines. One of the reasons you’re reading this electronic magazine is down to two, 48 Crash and Vicious Kitten.

48 Crash was the archetypal Sydney zine of the early ‘80s. Hand-written (and coloured, sometimes), its photocopied pages spoke of Le Hoodoo Gurus, the Visitors, the three-piece Screaming Tribesmen and the Lipstick Killers - bands that struggled to attract mainstream attention elsewhere. It championed the so-called Detroit Sound that fuelled the Sydney music scene for more than a decade.

Ten years later, Vicious Kitten was an offshoot of the record label of the same name and professional publication that aimed its lens at people like Johnny Thunders, Kevin K, Jeff Dahl and Freddy Lynxx. Very Lower East Side, in spirit.

An honourable mention also to Sydney's B Side, that covered the left-of-centre, extreme local musical scene. Unbelievably Bad fills the same niche today. There were the rock local papers (RAM, the bible, and Juke) that were consumed religiously, but zines had all the cool stuff and never mentioned Chisel, Icehouse or Farnham. 

• melbourne
• dave graney
• zine
• dinosaur jr
• munster times
• 48 crash
• vicious kitten

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The Stems announce three Australian shows before Europe

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By The Barman

The Barman

05 February 2018

Hits: 7787

The Stems, Perth's most popular and iconic 80s garage rock band, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the release of their classic debut album "At First Sight Violets are Blue" with a successful all Australian capital cities tour in November 2017. To coincide with the tour, "At First Sight Violets are Blue" was reissued as a limited edition tour CD.

The tour garnered enough interest in Europe for Spain’’s Fuzzville Festival to make an offer for them to appear at the festival. More shows naturally followed and the band are now set to embark for a three week European tour over April/May which will cover Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and the UK. 

The UK leg includes a show at London's historic 100 Club.

• alive
• sydney
• new christs
• australian
• dom mariani
• the stems
• p76
• even
• australian tour

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Down the Unmarked Road - The Tall Grass (Come to the Dark Side)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

04 February 2018

Hits: 5261

Lovely LP. Ugly, too. 

The Tall Grass is Jamie Hutchings (Bluebottle Kiss) and Peter Fenton (Crow). Never heard those two bands, but I gather "Down the Unmarked Road" is a notable departure for both of them. Like Rheyce O'Neill's "Ubermensch Blues", they've focused on the meaning of the songs to create a bittersweet landscape rich in Australiana.  

• jamie hutchings
• peter fenton
• the tall grass
• down the unmarked road

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Übermensch Blues - Rhyece O'Neill (Red On Brown)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

04 February 2018

Hits: 5919

"Ubermensch Blues" is a damn fine LP. Big and moving, it's not a simple thing. Lots of space within the melodies and complex? You'll be returning for repeat listens. Remarkable given that almost the entire work was recorded and played by Sydneysider Rhyece; such LPs don't usually work in my opinion. And what's that title?

Overman Blues. The Nazis thought they were ubermensch; the Japanese and Chinese still know they are. Hell, ever try to talk one-on-one with an Indian of "high caste"? You're way beneath them - the British retain vestiges of their old caste system, but it started to be demolished just over a hundred years ago.

• ubermensch blues
• Rhyece O'Neill
• the weckery

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High Water - Junkyard (Acetate Records)

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By General Labor

General Labor

03 February 2018

Hits: 8221

"Seems like yesterday, but it was long ago...."

JUNKYARD STILL GOT IT IN SPADES!
 
Back when I still thought Axl Rose was a could do no wrong, a rebel hero who had courageously escaped a hellish small-town disreputable dishwasher fate, not unlike my own, the misunderstood, fucking innocent, ginger haired, rural Mike Monroe from the corn-fed Midwest, I recall him wearing an old school Junkyard t shirt in all those "Circus" and "Hit Parader" pinups I had taped all over the walls of my first shoebox bachelor apartment that the totally New Wave love of my young life had helped me paint purple.

I really thought I'd arrived! We had a promising basement-show punk band, in those days, but we still lived in a shitty, dumb, nothing to do, farm town straight out of the saddest Bob Seger songs. I never liked the bigoted, cross-eyed rednecks at the veterans halls, the musclebound, bullying suburban jocks in the Camaro's, the racist history teaching wrestling coaches, the sports-bar drunkards with the barbecue stains, the Izod shirted country-club conformists, nutty extremist church crazies, or dickhead fratboy cops. I never liked their bullshit hierarchy, kneejerk customs, hazing rituals, or boot camp drill sergeant, behavior modification tactics, not to mention, their senseless cruelty and complete lack of style.

• los angeles
• guns and roses

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They Fought The Law and The Law Wasn't On The Guest List

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By The Barman

The Barman

03 February 2018

Hits: 5572

One of our favourite new bands created a stir at their album launch in New York City this week.

Psych--glam-punks Beechwood played Berlin on Avenue A in Manhattan last Saturday to christen the "Songs From The Land of Nod" long-player...only find there were 14 undercover police in the audience.

According to their label Alive Natural Sound, they arrested drummer Isa Tineo: "What major felony had been committed to warrant such manpower? It was for jumping the subway turnstile in 2014 and not paying the $100 ticket."

The incident follows the arrest of two band members for playing a rowdy street party in Manhattan in 2016.  At least 14 extra payers through the door should off-set the fine. Word is the cops let him finish the gig - and liked it. But 14 to arrest one person? That's rock and roll in The Big Apple these days.

• alive natural sound
• new york city
• beechwood
• songs from the land of nod

L.F.F.L.- Teenage Excitement, Romance and Mystery! Working For The Man - The Nomads b/w Fireball - The Dahlmanns (Ghost Highway)

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By The Barman

The Barman

02 February 2018

Hits: 7288

That's a helluva title. It's also a limited edition split single featuring Sweden's Nomads and Norwegian power pop wonders The Dahlmanns, put together for the 60th birthday party in Spain of Next Big Thing zine creator and all-round top bloke, Scotsman Lindsay Hutton.

Just 500 were pressed up for the shindig in Madrid and only a handful remain available...

If you don't know, The Dahlmanns are the World's Best Power Pop Band. No arguments, thank you very much. "Fireball" is the theme song of a Gerry and Sylvia Anderson pre-Thunderbirds TV show ("Fireball XL5") and it was the first 45 that a pre-pubescent Lindsay ever bought in the early 1960s.

• lindsay hutton
• next big thing
• the nomads
• the dahlmans

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