australian

_{Ian Amos photo}

The Sonics in Sydney? What you got out of this gig depended on what you wanted.

If you longed for a show by the “classic” Sonics lineup of “Boom” and “Here Are The Sonics” albums you were always going to be fresh outta luck. That band hasn’t existed since 1967 or ’68. If, however, you wanted a great rock and roll gig with spirited and often inspired renditions of the band’s back catalogue, you almost certainly walked away with a big fat smile on your dial.

In most minds, The Sonics were the surprise packet of the first DIg It Up! travelling revue in Australia a few years ago. Sunnyboys might have been sentimental favourites, The Fleshtones the dynamic attention-getters and Hoodoo Gurus the much-loved headliners, but The Sonics tore the house apart with a raw and righteous set that belied their superannuant appearance.

Let’s make it plain: The Sonics unwittingly made the template for garage punk in the ‘60s and did their reputation justice in Australia.

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.

Legendary first wave Irish punks The Undertones will make their live Australian debut this July.

The Undertones earned seven top 40 UK singles and three top 20 UK albums between 1978 and 1981. Their debut single "Teenage Kicks" was influential English DJ John Peel'’s favourite single of all time.

We three ladies - my daughter, sister and I - got into town, parked in the nearby parklands and hurried to the Cathedral Hotel. There was no sign of religion in the Cathedral, so we sculled a wine each and hurried across the park through the crowds to the Oval.

What was it like? It was six hours on my feet. Occasional whiffs of dope smoke. Beer spilled over me from all sides and from above. The odd three, four or five angry altercations, quickly stifled before the bouncers could arrive.

One of the UK's most important musical exports, The Stranglers, have announced their return to Australia and New Zealand in 2018 with their biggest tour in 30 years, "The Classic Collection".

Taking 20 of their most popular tracks from their revered album classics, chart successes and fan favourites from across their 40-year history, The Stranglers will prove their longevity and impact with a set made of of tracks including "Golden Brown", "Always the Sun", "Peaches", "Strange Little Girl", "5 Minutes", "No More Heroes" and many more.

Hard-Ons have a new album about to land - their first with their old drummer Keish de Silva back as lead vocalist. Here's a film clip for lead track "Crushed" shot by Jonathan Sequiera, producer of "Descent Into the Maelstrom" and boss of Cheap Music Videos, who you need to engage if you want your band to have a filmclip without morgaging its backline. 

The Hard-Ons
So I Could Have Them Destroyed Tour
NOV
8 - Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne, VIC

15 - Rosemount Hotel, Perth, WA
16 - Mojos, Fremantle, WA

22 -  Vinnie’s Dive Bar, Gold Coast, QLD

23 - The Foundry “Punk Fest”, Brisbane, QLD

29 - Altar, Hobart, TAS

30 - Pub Rock Diner, Devonport, TAS

DEC
6 - Crown & Anchor, Adelaide, SA

7 - Brighton & Seacliff Yacht Club, Seacliff, SA

13 - Lansdowne Hotel, Sydney, NSW

14 - Dicey Riley’s, Wollongong, NSW

_{Tony Thewlis and Kim Salmon fronting the Scientists at Sydney's Southern Cross Hotel in 1982.}

The Scientists at their peak were unmatchable. A glorious collision of droning, caustic, fuzz guitars, minimalist bass, anguished lyrics about alienation and ominous, funereal rhythms, they created something unique after landing in Sydney in 1981. 

Originally ragged New York Dolls-inspired popsters back in Perth, the re-constituted Scientists stripped their music back to its darkest roots, concoting their own brand of psychedelia and incorporating influences like Suicide, the Stooges and Captain Beefheart.

Too big for their own Surry Hills backyard, the band moved to the UK in 1982 and, in typical expatriate Australian underground band fashion, starved before going on to influence countless other acts into the ‘90s and beyond.

Seminal Seattle four-piece Mudhoney returns to Australia in 2023, nine years since their last local shows. A mammoth odyssey spanning April and May will have them playing headline shows across six states, with a handful of festival dates among them.
 
Mudhoney has an enviable career spanning three decades 13 studio albums, five live records, and headline shows around the globe. Their provocative debut single “ and 1992 hit “” cemented them as pioneers of the grunge explosion.

 
The band has managed to find time to lay down tracks in the studio this year for their next opus due in 2023, which follows their 2019 EP “Morning in America” , giving Australian fans the opportunity to hear all of the new and a bunch of the former favourites live.

Dates after the fold.

Stranded. Australian Independent Music, 1976-1992. Revised and Expanded Edition
By Clinton Walker (The Visible Spectrum)

First issued in 1996, the brilliant “Stranded” was Clinton Walker's second "overground" success (his first being his biography of Bon Scotttwo years earlier), and was a more readily-available primer on how Australian music - as a whole - abruptly changed into something both credible and world-class. 

Yeah, and you disagree? Look, prior to 1978 (say) there were only a handful of bands determined, lucky, and good enough to get above the parapet and charge stark-naked and take on the world.

Around 1978, everything changed - though I'll emphasise that the world-wide impending undercurrent of change started way back. Hip young kids taking the present culture and either embracing it or pouring gasoline on it (or both), and investigating the past cultures and appropriating what they identified with. 

In his preface to this edition (with "invisibly" revised original text and very visible expansions), Walker makes several statements I vehemently disagree with. This is unremarkable, as the nature of The Life is that it is mercurial, shape-shifting. For example, where Walker is amused by Sonic Youth's title “1991: The Year Punk Broke”, I thought it insanely naff, wrong and downright stupid.

Hard on the heels of an announcement of a visit by The Sonics, '60s British rock legends The Troggs (what’s left of them) finally return to Australia this November to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Wild Thing” with an extensive tour.

Led by sole founding member Chris Britton (pictured) on guitar (Reg Presley and Ronnie Bond having left the planet), the inspirational source of songs like “Wild Thing”, “With a Girl Like You”, “I Can’t Control Myself” and “Love is All Around” will play 13 shows across four states in November.

The line-up includes bassist Peter Lucas (who has been with the band for 40 years) and drummer Dave Maggs, who has clocked up a quarter of a century.

As Comets on Fire burnt out – inevitably perhaps, given the band’s incendiary exploration of psychedelic expression – guitarist Ethan Miller looked to the warm and free spirited grooves of ‘70s rock when forming his new band, Howlin Rain.  

For lyrical inspiration, Miller cast his eye over the complex cultural melting pot that is the United States. Howlin Rain’s fifth album, “The Alligator Bride”, was released mid-way through the Trump era; the band’s latest album, “Dharma Wheel”, was conceived just as Trump’s tumultuous presidency ran head long into the descending clouds of global pandemic.

A prolific touring act, Howlin Rain had been scheduled to tour Australia in April 2020, only to find itself marooned at home as international borders banged closed. Now heading back to Australia for the first time since Comets on Fire toured here 15 years ago, and with “Dharma Wheel” finally released after 18 months’ abeyance, Ethan Miller talks about Howlin Rains’ symbiotic relationship with America, American culture and Americana.

The Dammed
The Factory Theatre, Marrickville
Thursday, August 20 2019
Photos: Monique Simmons

Culturally, Britain was so different to the USA in so many ways in the ‘70s, and that had much to do with distance.  The US is a vast place with all sorts of cultures and entrainment influences. The south was different to the west coast and out was again different to the east. And that really showed in the disparate pockets of music that sprang up everywhere.

On the other hand, England was more centralised. Long before the ‘70s dawned, it had the ingrained tradtiion of music halls as its historical DNA.

Music halls were everywhere. At one time there were more than 200 theatres in London alone. They hosted events running for four hours and ranging from comedy, clowning, horror to serious drama. For more than a century, popular theatre was a staple for the working man and middle class alike. 

Well, you may ask, what has this got to do with The Damned appearing live in Sydney on a Thursday night? I say, everything. A Dammed gig is like a trip through classic British pantomime and theatre, full of drama and packed with wit and slapstick. 

_{Wreckless Eric. Joe Mabel photo.} 

Talk about Wreckless Eric and what immediately comes to mind is his enduring hit "Whole Wide World" – covered in stadiums and sheds from Aberdeen to Alabama – but there’s a whole lot more to the story than just that.

With more than 40 years of recording and touring behind him he shuns the dictates of nostalgia and doesn’t do comebacks for the simple reason that he never went away. Except maybe where the Antipodes are concerned and where he'll be touring for the first time in 28 years in November.

After more than two weeks of raved-about Australian shows, English punk-era singer-songwriter Wreckless Eric heads home shortly. But before he does – and after he plays his sole WA show at the Rosemount (with guest Joe Bludge) on Monday November 26 - he’ll be playing one last gig in Melbourne, this Tuesday November 27 at the Merri Creek Tavern in Northcote.



Opening for Eric on the night will be the Merri Creek Tavern’s publican, much-loved singer-songwriter, Weddings Parties Anything mainman and Wreckless Eric superfan Mick Thomas.
 
Fans of either artist – Wreckless Eric or Mick Thomas – won’t want to miss this super intimate show, so get your tickets here.