It's a Long Way Back: Mach Pelican reunites with a new single

After a 20- year wait, Melbourne’s Japanese-Australian band Mach Pelican are finally releasing new music. The first is a seven-inch, “A Secret Session “, that features two songs, “Remember It“ and “Summer Sun”. They’re both fun, Ramones-y punk rock. They’re also very Mach Pelican and the kind of music that I find hard to believe anyone could dislike.  

Mach Pelican have an amazing backstory: Three kids from Japan meet in Perth, start a band based on their shared love of the Ramones, go on to become one of the most beloved band bands of the 1990s and early 2000s in their adopted country and tour overseas, leaving three albums and a stack of singles in their wake before a logn lay-off.

Singer-guitarist Keisuke Nakamura spoke with me from his Melbourne home via the Zoom machine.

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• mach pelican
• cheersquad records
• toshi maeda
• Keisuke Nakamura
• a secret session

Old man shouts at cloud

You recall the Monty Python sketch about the poor sod who goes on telly to promote his book and discovers to his horror that the TV presenter is only interested in his lame nickname, “Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson”?

Books are damned difficult to start, maintain and complete; any author should be proud of their achievement in completing a book, never mind getting the sod published. However, Jackson's long hours and hard work are worth precisely zilch in the eyes of the TV presenter and his bosses: all they care about is the ratings scored by making far more of Jackson's pathetic nick-name than it deserves.

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• the molly fet circuit
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2025 Top Tens: Bass-player-around-town, Steve Lorkin from Sydney

Time served with Minuteman, Spectres Revenge, Cool Charmers, Sheek The Shayk,  Dave Tice’s Buffalo Revisited, and others. Manager of The Psychedelic Unknown.

2025 HIT PARADE  (not in any order)

1. Neptune Power Federation: Live anywhere.
My fave Oz band ATM. New album coming in 2026, I believe,

2. Sex Pistols Featuring Frank Carter at Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
On paper this could have been a disaster, however, Cook, Jones and Matlock with young bloke Frank Carter on vocals were a true celebration of one of music’s most influential albums. The purists stayed at home during the night of the gig crying in their lemonade but the true fans were out in force. Great gig!

3. Ray Ahn’s Birthday
All-round good fellow, way out graphic artist and master basser celebrated his birthday with a cavalcade of luminaries gracing the stage at the tiny MoshPit Bar in Sydney. Jolly good fun.

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• buzzcocks
• sex pistols
• rolling stones
• ray ahn
• asteroid b612
• cherie currie
• hoodoo gurus
• the church
• lipstick killers
• neptune power federation
• steve lorkin
• the jane does
• funkadelic
• frank carter
• steven danno

On Aderlaide Writers Weak (sic)

Have you ever been to Writers Week in Adelaide?

If it ever gets up again in the same fashion, don't. Just ... don't go. It's outdoors, the weather is usually frankly disgustingly hot and you're surrounded by wealthy wilting widows, wealthy wilting divorced men, wilting writers, wilting bookfloggers and far too many wanna-be-famous drunks and drabs to count. 

Worse, the place is infested with poets, whining children's authors, politicians earnestly 'mixing with the people', all of whom are either wilting, drunk, or both.

No, I know. I'm a writer and yet, I don't have a lot of time for writers. 

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• writers week

It's applied Science with a serve of Surrealism

It’s called Surreal Science and is described “an off-the-rails salvage job, fashioned into a beautiful cinematic work of abstract sound and vision”. It features members and music of The Scientists and Kim Salmon and The Surrealists with three drummers, three guitarists, two bass players and two vocalists, drawing on a repertoire of 160 songs.

Kim Salmon is leading the ensemble and it tours Melbourne, Sydney and Perth in April, featuring two-hour-long sets with an intermission.  

Guitarist Tony Thewlis; bassists Boris Sujdovic and Stu Thomas; drummers Clare Moore, Greg Bainbridge and Phil Collings; along with production engineer Hepburn and vocalist/guitarist Kim Salmon.

They'll appear in tandem with a visual presentation of the passed, present and future of both of The Surrealists and The Scientists 

As Kim himself says: “Not a tribute but a recognition of their part in this ever-evolving story”.

The Scientists belligerently eschewed standard melody for minimalism, brutality and abstraction but remained staunchly Rock and Roll.

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• the scientists
• the surrealists
• surreal science

Japan indie rockers DYGL are landing on Ausralian shores

Japanese post-punk indie rockers DYGL (pronounced “Day-glo”),  kick off their first Australian tour this week and their new album “Who's In The House?” is  being locally released by Cheersquad Records & Tapes. It's on vinyl and in digital format and can be procured here.

Hailing from Tokyo, DYGL are one of Japan’s most internationally acclaimed indie rock bands. Formed in 2012, the four-piece has built a global following with their raw energy, heartfelt lyrics, and a sound that fuses indie rock and 2000s garage revival with a uniquely Japanese sensitivity.

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• australian tour
• japan
• cheersquad
• dygl
• day-glo

Trapped In A World He Never Made! (part 305)

Men's bums. Do you like to look at them? I confess I'm not much of a fan. 

Now, I realise that there are many among us who delight in sitting behind a slog of male cyclists, sweaty bums waggling like a slowly-moving Volkswagen traffic jam viewed from above.

But these aren't Volksies, are they? No, these are the moist, lycra-clad arses of overly-obsessive sad thin men who are partaking of what I suspect is the twenty-fucking-seventh 'tour down under', held in the gormless, goofy town of Adelaide. 

Yes, I know there are women cycling enthusiasts, but they exist in nothing like the abominable plague proportions in and around the time of the “Grand Prix of Adelaide cyclists”, The Tour Down Under. 

So there I am. Engine running, parked in front of a bunch of damp-cracked men's bums in black lycra. Reminds me of the local river when it gets the blue-green algae and goes all sumpy. The more you see this horror before you, the bigger it seems to get. Posh champagne reflux, anyone?

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• australian writers week
• fringe festival

Positive news for Died Pretty's Chris Welsh

Now for some good news from former Died Pretty drummer Chris Welsh who is recovering at the Melbourne home of longtime friends Tony Robertson (Hitmen, The 31^st) and and Tony’s wife Samantha after surgery to remove a cranial tumour.

“My headache is still pretty bad but gradually improving. The surgery took longer than originally expected. Five and a half hours instead of three,” Chris posted online yesterday.

“I got the results from the pathology biopsy yesterday. Fortunately the tumour was benign. Back for a couple of blood tests, CT scan and oncology appointment next week and back to the neurosurgeon in six weeks. Apart from that I just have to take it easy and rest up.”

Chris has been in a long fight against lung cancer that’s forced him to leave his family in Thailand. A GoFundMe has been raising money to support him since 2023 and you can help here:

• died pretty
• cancer
• gofundme
• the 31st
• chris welsh

2025 Top Tens: Melbourne-based trans-Tasman punter Ewen Hill

_{"Hey you in the black (Birdman) shirt!"}

Hola all the way down the deep deep south from this Melbourne correspondent and avid punter, last seen DJ'ing at an Auckland bar off K Road. My Top 10 (+GST) is based on the chemistry and science of great venues, appreciative crowds and our musicians, all of us doing it hard to keep live music .. umm err.. live 

Don Mcglashan, Newmarket in Auckland, New Zealand
A wonderful evening sans live music but with Don doing a Q&A after the first screening of the film "Anchor Me: The Don Mcglashan story". Don was a member of NZ bands Blam Blam Blam, The Front Lawn, and The Mutton Birds. Do not be shy in trying to track down their music.

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• ed kuepper
• penny ikinger
• new christs
• cosmic psychos
• eddy current suppression ring
• charlie owen
• ups and downs
• painters and dockers
• x
• Don Mcglashan
• SnarskiCircusLindyBand