los tones

Top Ten, in alphabetical order:

Datura4 @ Cherry Bar, Melbourne:
Holy moly, what an amazing show!! Twin guitar action plus rock'n'roll swagger.

Golden Rail -“Electric Trails From Nowhere" album:
Sweet jangle pop, includes the hit single "Oh My".

Grinding Eyes “self titled“ album:
Hi-fi heavy psych, reminds me of Motocaster.

Los Tones - “What Happened" album:
I love the haunting-garage sound of this record.

Here it is folks - this is the sound the “cool kids” make these days. “Cool kids” being what the wearers would dismissive as a totally pejorative term, but essentially being a title for whatever constitutes a “scene maker” in these musically fractured times. “Scene” being another pejorative word.

It’s hard to keep up with contemporary music once you pass a certain age - even when you’re consciously trying to cock an ear to what seeps out of cracks in the footpath and shuns daylight. Of course it’s a given that you shouldn’t pay attention to just about ANYTHING that makes it to commercial radio airwaves, but in this case "contemporary" means the underground shit, maaan. And Los Tones are under the commercial radar by any measure.

The Mummies need no introduction as one of the loudest stupidest most deranged bands on the planet and have been destroying lives, limbs and guitars worldwide since 1989. They’re visiting Melbourne and Adelaide for one week only - and now Sydney gets its chance.

Thursday, March 10 is the date and the venue is Hermanns Bar at Sydney University.

They’ll be joined by Psychotic Turnbuckles and Los Tones.

Tickets won’t last long and went on sale today here. It will sell out.

Why? These bandaged kooks are possibly one of the most legendary Punk/Garage bands on the planet. The Mummies originated the ‘Budget rock sound’ told SUB POP where to get off and now they will blow you a new hole right between those useless eardrums of yours.

The Mummies define what was to be a world-wide revolution of retardo rock and sloped-head slop that erupted in the late '80s and early ’90s, spawning so many bands you can’t even start to name them all.

You can rope in most of the riot girl movement, Beat Man, King Khan, and any of the hundreds of non corporate punk garage combos that are still wrecking guitars worldwide today.

_{The Mummies in full flight. Shona Ross photo}

The Mummies in Australia? No fucking way! Hard to believe, but true. A hit-and-run visit spanning three states in less than a week (with a stop-off in New Zealand on the way home) admittedly but a tour, nonetheless.

The Mummies were The Shit in garage rock in the late 1980s. Conceived as the ultimate anti-band by Trent Ruane (organ, vocals), Maz Kattuah (bass), Larry Winther (guitar) and Russell Quan (drums), they were a lynchpin of San Francisco’s lo-fi scene. Emerging from their tomb sporadically in the ‘90s and ‘00s, they’re renowned for being the band that gave the then very hip SubPop label the finger when refusal to sign was a death-wish. They have made no-frills Budget Rock an art-form.