Four bands, one hot Ipswich afternoon and a slice of Queensland punk history

_{Budge from La Fetts. Mark Chandler photo.}

La Fetts
+ Rioting  Revolver
+ The Spivs
+ Beef Mountain
The Burrow, Prince of Wales Hotel, Ipswich
September 19, 2026

Words: ANGELA EVOL
Photos: MARK CHANDLER & ANGELA EVOL

It was 32 degrees Celsius which is fairly standard Ipswich Spring weather and The Burrow felt like someone had put a stage under a classic Queenslander house and forgotten to install the air-conditioning.

Located beneath the Prince of Wales Hotel, The Burrow is a relatively new live-music space with a low roof, an open side and the relaxed feel of a backyard gig. This was a free Saturday matinee, running from noon until six, with four very different bands and a small but appreciative crowd.

_{Beef Mountain. Angela Evol photo.}

Beef Mountain had the difficult job of opening the afternoon while people were still arriving and finding the least sweaty place to stand.

These Ipswich veterans are led by guitarist and singer Mark Wold, with Brisbane drumming legend Cameron Howe behind the kit. I don’t know the names of the other two members, so I won’t pretend I do, but together they are an assured and unfussy live band.

There is a country edge running through their punk and rock sound, without it ever becoming country rock. They are straight players who let the songs do the work rather than trying to force a reaction from an early crowd that was still small and quiet. There was plenty of experience on that stage, and Cameron remains one of those drummers who makes everything look easier than it is.

_{The Spivs. Mark Chandler photo.}

The Spivs (Declaration: I am part of their entourage) were next and went to 100 percent from the moment they started.

Their sound sits somewhere between ’60s garage rock, rough-edged rock and roll and the power-pop end of punk. The musicians are tight, while frontman Caveman operates on an entirely different level of reality. He prowls, gestures, dances, bends himself into strange shapes and generally behaves like a man who has never considered standing still to be a viable performance option. It should be distracting, but it works because the band behind him is so solid.

A new song, “Go Getter”, was one of the highlights. It slots naturally into The Spivs’ set and has the same immediate energy as their established material. There was some slightly nervous dancing from the crowd, although nobody on the floor could hope to compete with Caveman. The Spivs always bring energy and a certain amount of insanity, regardless of the room or the size of the audience.

_{Riot Revolver. Mark Chandler photo.}

Then came Riot Revolver, my discovery of the afternoon.

Cherry Green is a commanding frontman and one seriously cool presence. There are traces of Hendrix, James Brown and Lenny Kravitz in what he does, but Riot Revolver are much heavier and stranger than that description suggests. At different points they also reminded me of Death, the pioneering Detroit band whose music sat somewhere between hard rock, punk and heavy psychedelic noise before anyone had decided what to call it.

Riot Revolver have that same knack of existing outside a neat category. They are psychedelic, heavy, raw and completely captivating. While the other bands worked within recognisable strains of punk and garage rock, these guys seemed to come from somewhere else entirely.

Cherry owned the front of the room, leaning into the songs while the band kicked out a huge, grinding wall of sound behind him. The crowd might have been small, but people were watching with the kind of attention that comes when something takes you by surprise.

_{Cherry Green. Mark Chandler photo.}

Their set also included three well-chosen punk covers. The one that hit hardest was the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer”. Founding Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome had died only six days earlier, which gave the song an unexpected extra weight. I don’t know whether Riot Revolver intended it as a tribute but the timing was impossible to ignore.

By the end of their set, my main thought was: Who the hell are these people, and why haven’t I seen them before?

La Fetts closed the afternoon, bringing a completely different kind of weight to the stage.

Budge was out front, with Noel on bass, Darrin on guitar and George on drums. From the opening seconds of “Only Way Out”, they went from zero to 100 and stayed there.

The band first emerged as The Fits in Goodna in 1980, growing out of a working-class punk community that existed between Brisbane and Ipswich. They became La Fetts a few years later, but the attitude and original punk ethos remain intact.

There is nothing polished, nostalgic or carefully preserved about them. Budge still works the floor with the microphone in his hand, pacing, leaning towards the crowd and using every bit of available space. Behind him, the band plays with the same directness and urgency that made this music matter in the first place.

^{La Fetts. Mark Chandler photo.}

For me, there was an unavoidable sense of nostalgia. There were a few old punk friends from the ’80s in the room, and watching La Fetts in Ipswich made the distance between then and now feel surprisingly small.

They finished with their most notorious song, “SEQEB Scab”.

The song grew out of the bitter 1985 dispute between the Electrical Trades Union and the South East Queensland Electricity Board. The Queensland Government sacked 1,002 striking workers, including La Fetts guitarist and SEQEB electrician Peter de Hesse.

The band responded almost immediately. They took an existing song, rewrote it around the dispute and recorded a short blast of anger aimed directly at what was happening. “SEQEB Scab” was picked up by 4ZZZ and became closely tied to the strike, protests and wider resistance to the government’s actions.

More than 40 years later, it still sounds furious. It is not a historical curiosity or a harmless old punk song. It came from a real fight involving jobs, unions, government power and people’s lives. Ending the afternoon with it in Ipswich, played by a band that was actually there, felt entirely appropriate.

The crowd remained small throughout the day, which is a shame because this was exactly the sort of event people often complain no longer happens. Four original bands, six hours of live music, free entry and a venue willing to give them a stage.

If people want The Burrow and other new live-music spaces to keep putting on afternoons like this, they need to patronise them. Turn up, buy a drink, watch the bands and support the venue. These places cannot survive on people saying they would have gone if they had known about it after the fact.

The afternoon gave me both ends of what makes live music worthwhile. La Fetts brought the history, the memories and a direct connection to Queensland’s punk past. Riot Revolver delivered the surprise of finding a band I now want to see again as soon as possible.

Not bad for a bloody hot afternoon under a pub in Ipswich.

• the spivs
• la fett
• beef mountain
• rioting revolver
• the burrow
• prince of wales hotel
• ipswich

Love City Rodio hit the right frequency at Iron & Resin

_{Love City Radio.}

Love City Radio
+ The Spivs
+ Gav Doniger
Iron & Resin Garage, Currumbin, Queensland
Friday, September 18, 2026

Words and photos by ANGELA EVOL

Currumbin’s Iron & Resin is not a purpose-built music venue. It is a working motorcycle garage with a restaurant and performance space attached, housed in what feels more like a big tin shed. Vintage motorcycles and motoring ephemera are dotted around the place, giving it plenty of character and making it a fitting setting for a night of loud guitars and rock and roll.

There are lots of people in early tonight and the mood is upbeat and friendly from the beginning. Each act pushes the evening a little further, moving from mellow to bold and, finally, a bit mental.

Read more …

• the spivs
• iron & resin
• love city radio
• gav doniger

Mick Medew and The Ursula 4 are Crankin' It Up

"Crankin’ It Up" is the groovy new release from Mick Medew and The Ursula 4 and the digital single is available for download at The I-94 Bar Records Bandcamp. You can also stream it on all platforms. The video debuted tonight and was filmed and produced by Tracey Walker at TTB Fitness in Seven Hills, Brisbane.

The songe was recorded by Jeff Lovejoy and Jonah McLaughlin, and produced and mixed by Jeff Lovejoy at Black Box Studios in Brisbane. Mastering was by Don Bartley. It was written by Ursula Collie and Mick Medew. Crank it up!!!

• screaming tribesmen
• mick medew and ursula
• crankin it up

It's not too late to take a chance on Perth's Volcanics

Too Late To Run – The Volcanics (Ghost Highway)

Perth band The Volcanics are Australia’s Best Kept Real Rock and Roll Secret. This is their seventh album in 19 years, but if they walked down a city street on the country’s east coast they wouldn’t get arrested (although in Sydney, they’d run the risk of a local council fine for treading noisily without a permit.)

Seven albums. Most bands are lucky if they make one long player, let alone the difficult sophomore effort. Three of The Volcanics’ records were produced by Rob Younger. So was one by Civic and they got to tour with the Sex Pistols.. Yeah, but they don’t come from Perth. 

Read more …

• ghost highway
• jim diamond
• the volcanics
• too late to run

This man needs to be Instutionalised

All The Bridges Burned - The Institutionalist (Self-released)

The media photos of Australian underground multi-instrumentalist and producer The Institutionalist (aka Ernie O) resemble a bloke auditioning for the next season of "Underbelly". Either that or he's lining up a few of the lads to tidy you away.

His biography reveals an extraordinarily busy bloke:

His audio production skills – recording, mixing, mastering, remixing, songwriting and playing – have been heard on close to a thousand releases in the Australian scene since the early 1990’s, from punk, metal, pop, indie rock and folk metal to downbeat, electronica and dance, on labels such as Grown Up Wrong!, Off The Hip, Popboomerang, I-94 Bar Records, Savage Beat, Vicious Kitten and Sound As Ever.

Read more …

• sacred cowboys
• garry gray
• suburban urchins
• urban fringe compound
• ernie o
• The Institutionalist
• ed garland

Honestly, Pat Todd and The Rankoutsiders' "I'll Dream Alone" is a record you need

I’ll Dream Alone – Pat Todd & The Rankoutsiders (Hound Gawd!)

A poster for the band’s current European tour bills Rankoutsiders frontman Pat Todd as “the most sincere man in rock and roll” and who are any of us to argue? He’s an unfailingly nice guy in person, too. The ninth album from the Los Angeles outfit fronted by the ex-Lazy Cowgirls singer finds him and his bandmates in compelling form as they deliver a dozen superbly crafted songs about life’s twists and turns.

Honesty is a much-used descriptor in music that’s hard to pin down. On the surface, it infers an absence of trickery. At its core, it means the ability to be relatable, connecting directly because a band is speaking the same language as its audience. Many try and most fail but Pat Todd & The Rankoutsiders do this consummately.

Read more …

• lazy cowgirls
• hound gawd records
• pat todd and the rankoutsiders
• i'll dream alone

John Kennedy returns with new album, Australian dates

Australian singer-songwriter John Kennedy has survived a stroke, crossed continents, and emerged with an album on I-94 Bar Records that sounds nothing like business as usual.

"The Berlin Trilogy (And Other Collaborations)" is released on 25 September and pre-sales are open on Kennedy's Bandcamp and the label Bandcamp. 

Following his stroke in 2025, Kennedy relocated to Berlin, where former bandmate Moe Jaksch challenged him to leave his familiar pop-rock territory behind. Their Rocking Chair Studio sessions produced three songs Kennedy dubbed "The Berlin Trilogy", a tongue-in-cheek nod to David Bowie’s Berlin years.

The project grew after Kennedy moved to Spain, bringing together an international cast including Peter Loveday, Paco Peneranda, Frank Kearns, Paul Scott, Hybride Goldking, Peter O’Doherty and Hunting At Dawn. 

Read more …

• i-94 bar records
• john kennedy
• The Berlin Trilogy (And Other Collaborations)

We're all Not That Way Anymore

Not That Way Anymore 
By Frank Secich
(High Voltage Publishing)

Circumstantial Evidence
By Frank Secich
(High Voltage Publishing)

So my good friends, I'm having some medical problems that are slowing down my productivity in every area of my life; I don’t get around much like I used to. So sorry I'm late, all my brothers and sisters and friends of the Revolution, but here in the shadows of balls-out, flock camera, no-due-process concentration camps, evisceration of the Fourth Amendment, torture gulags where underage immigrant girls are being impregnated by the homegrown masked Gestapo, tech Fascism and WW 3 - and pretty much everything Lords Of The New Church and The Wanderers spent all their most vital life force trying to warn us about, so it could all be avoided - is coming to life all around us.

Read more …

• dead boys
• stiv bators
• frank secich
• circumstantial evidence
• not that why anymore

Vale Cheetah Chrome: Frank Meyer remembers

_{Sylvain, Sylvain of The New York Dolls, Cherie Curire of The Runaways, Cheetah Chrome of Dead Boys and Frank Meyer. Photo: Frank Meyer supplied.} 

I met Cheetah Chrome in 2003 when Monte A. Melnick and I were writing the book “On the Road with the Ramones”. Cheetah was a treasure trove of wild stories about his beloved NY music scene.

A year later, myself and his former Jeff Dahl bandmate, Bruce Duff, did a tour with Cheetah in Spain, where we were joined by his old Dictators pal Andy Shernoff. It was one of the most fun times I’ve ever had in my life.

Bruce and I played in his band for many years after that — soooo many Dead Boys songs — culminating with a 2014 tour with him and our band, The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs. Lots of miles, lotsa van talk, lots of Sensational Alex Harvey Band, lots of backstage hangs, soundchecks, incredible shows, and mainly just lots of friendship and good times.

Read more …

• james williamson
• dead boys
• cheetah chrome
• cherie currie
• andy shernoff
• frank meyer
• streetwalkin' cheetahs
• sylvain sylvain
• bruce duff