Lou Ridsdale : Lance Rock Publicity/Z-Man Records/Meredith Music Festival & Golden Plains Festival

Top 10….

1. The Underminers : Heart Part Of Your Mind. The lil’ Ballarat band that done good. I went to primary school with Justin ‘Happy’ Hayward, and am so damn proud of him. Loved The Dead Salesmen and think he’s finally nailed it with this CD as I was a little luke-warm on previous Underminers stuff. Seriously – Album Of The Year status by a country mile. His lyrics never fail to make me weep. The Paul Kelly of our generation.

2. The drummer from The Beat Disease. Caught these cats in action in Melbourne whilst supporting my friends Daddy Long Legs and Mother & Father and he damn near blew my wig off. Like a stick of macaroni he is when he pummels those skins. Tightest drummer I’ve seen in a long, long time. Excellent band too!

3. Announcement of Jim Jones Revue touring Australia in January. No words necessary.

4. Moving to the country - best thing I’ve done in years. Space, gardening, trees, rivers, Macedon Ranges, sanity – they are all mine now. Mine, mine, mine.

5. Patrick Emery - best musical journalist in Australia hands down. Generous, lovely and funny dude.

6. Dimi Dero Inc returning to Oz to tour. Loved having my French pals back on our shores. My love for them is grande.

7. Jeff The Brotherhood at Meredith. Hubba hubba. Hell’ova racket from two Tennessee brothers. Really made me shake my thang.

8. My dear mate Andy Portokalis buying The Tote after all that heartache way back in January regarding the mindless politicians and the ‘Music Causes Violence’ bullshit. Andy and his mates (Jon and John) are the new custodians and have refurbished the old gal with respect for it’s past. It’s in very safe hands. Bruce Milne – what a champion. Sad to see him go from one of my fave pubs in Melbourne, nay the world. That man deserves Australian Of The Year Award for his long hard work in the Melbourne Music scene. The love that flowed from Melbounrians hearts towards Bruce in those black days during the protests etc, was so deserved. I love you Uncle Bruce.

9. Meredith Music Festival turning 20. Unbelievable! Having attended the very first one way back then, and not missing a single Festival (yep, 20 years worth!) I can unequivocally say it’s my fave music festival in the world. Worked on it for the past 10 years and it’s easily my most loved weekend of each year. Hats off to Rexy, Nolsey and Peelster for all their hard work and love over the years.

10. The Bonniwells CD – Unprofitable Servant. Please allow me to indulge myself in one biased entry here. I love this band so so much. So much in fact I signed them to my record label after Marky Nelson from The Stabs tipped me off. Trippin’ little Melbourne trio who have just burst onto the scene and I can’t wait to see what they have in store over the next few years. They do a fresh twist on a psych-garage homage to yesterday via The Cramps/The Sonics and all those kinda bands which I love. Excellent engineer work too via my dear mate & best ears in the business Michelle Dilevski aka Static Attack. Loose and loud. Love ‘em.

Shock Records old stager and head of Savage Beat Records.  Compiler of Do The Pop.

RECORDS/CDS

Devotions ‘s/t’ (Crazy
A new John Felice album is NOT gonna be my album of the year? Come on… Recorded mid-90′s (with Steve Wynn producung!)and finally mixed and released by the band’s guitarist this year. Felice’s best record since the since maybe the second Real Kids album – it’s not quite as gut-wrenching as the Lowdowns album but it comes close, and the rockers are better.  Get it here

Rocket From the Tombs ‘We Sell Soul’ 7″ (Smog Veil)
Almost too good to be true. Cheetah Chrome and Richard Lloyd’s guitars combine perfectly. David Thomas has never sung better. Vital stuff. New album and Aussie tour please!!!

Imperial State Electric ‘s/t’ (Psych-out) Nicke Hellacopter’s finest hour. Swedish rock’s too I think. Nicke has discovered a winning MC5 + Raspberries = Kiss formula, and is writing tunes that live up to the style. Best high-energy hard pop record since the Monarchs ‘make yer own fun’

Jenny Dee & the Deelinquents ‘Keeping Time’ (Q-Dee)
Awesome and authentic girl group sounds out of Boston. Jenny’s voice is the spitting image of a young Ronnie Spector, she writes new classics for the genre, and their Motown-inspired version of ‘Shake Some Action’ is sheer, absolute genius.

Hacienda ‘Big Red & Barbacoa’ (Alive)
Maybe not as good as ‘Loud Is The Night’, but San Antonio’s Tex-Mex Zombies have the sound and the feel down perfect. The most soulful group on the planet.

O-Rex ‘My Heads in ’73′ (Gulcher)
Brooklyn teenage fanzine-writer living-room rock from the mid-70′s. Pre-Gizmos! The title-track, which was recorded in ’76, shows these guys to be miles ahead of the game as far as retro-rock intentions go, and their ineptitude gives them a singular charm. Some great tunes though, and , bizarrely, a cover of Skyhooks ”You Just Like Me Cos I’m Good In Bed’

Radio Birdman ‘Live In Texas’ (Citadel)
The Zeno Beach material better sounds better than the studio versions – the looseness adds something – and it’s great to have their version of ‘Hot Rails To Hell’ on cd. A great band to the very end.

Pete Molinari ‘A Train Bound For Glory’ (Clarksville)
He’s been pegged as a folkie, but Pete comes on more post-Skiffle/pre-Beatles rock. Only Marty Wilde and Billy Fury never sounded this good. Amazing voice, great songs. “A Street car Named Desire’ might be my favourite song of the year…

Stooges- Have Some Fun: Live At Ungano’s (Rhino Handmade)
Naturally….

Barrence Whitfield & the Savages ‘s/t’ (Ace)
Beautifully done reissue of super-high energy ’84 debut record from previously unknown Little Richards-style R&B belter and band made up of ex-members of Lyres/DMZ/Real Kids. Peter Greenberg’s guitar is amazing. Catch Barrence here in April.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ deluxe reissue (Sonny)
‘Live in Hyde Park’ dvd (Sony)
Forget the dvd’s and the book that come with it for now – Darkness is a desert island disc for me, and now packs more punch. Bruce at is leanest and toughest and the band at their most turbo-charged. The 2 cds of outtakes, released separately as ‘The Promise’, is great too, but most tracks were indeed best left off the original album. Still it does nclude my fave lost Boss song ‘Rendezvous’ – like the Searchers with Phil Spector and the Wrecking Crew  – as well as his original ‘Because The night’, and they’re as good as any songs released by anyone this century… This stuff is Bruce as Brill Building singer/songwriter extraordinare – whatever else he might be, he was once the Leiber/Stoller and Goffin/King of the ’70s – and not an E Streeter is wasted in his quest to tap into the styles of producers like Spector and Bert Berns. Curiously – and Divine Riters take note – a lot of this stuff reminds me of the sweet keyboard/guitar sound that Decline of the Reptiles got on tracks like ‘What I Feel’ and ‘Spanish Rose’ (which is a Springsteen-stlye title if ever there was one). The Hyde Park show is recent and shows Springsteen and band’s power undimished. Passion, energy and the souped up sound of 3 guitars,2 keyboards,sax and a killer rhythm section going for it.

Scott Morgan ‘s/t’ (Alive)
With this and the Powertrane studio album, it’s been a great, and relatively prolific handful of years for our hero.

Bermondsey Joyriders (Gary Lamin/Cocksparrer)
Actually from ’09, but I only just discovered it. Great London punk blues trio who come on like a cross between the Hammersmith Gorillas and one of Tim Kerr’s outfits like Jack O’Fire. Mainman Gary Lammin was in original line-up of Cocksparrer, who I’d always written off as some horrible Oi band. Whatever they later became, I checked out their early stuff (‘Decca Session’ CD) and it’s great glam-influenced street punk. Rat Scabies has just joined the Joyriders and I can’t wait to hear more.

BEST NON-ROCK RECORDS

Charlie Parr ‘When The Devil Goes blind’ (Level Two)
Best old-time acoustic blues styled-guy around. ‘I Dreamed I Saw Jesse James Last Night’ and ‘Where you Gonna Be (When the Good Lord Calls You Come Home)’ are absolutely classic songs – Charlie takes the themes of pre-war blues and relates them to the shitty modern world in a way that will tear into your soul. Here’s here over summer – check him out.

Joe Pug ‘Messenger’ (Shock)
Like a young Bob Dylan without the Woody Guthrie affectations. Great songs, great voice, great heart.

The Duke & the King ‘Long Live…’ (SilvaOak)
Cosmic country-soul from the hills of upstate New York.

Bill Kirchen ‘Word To the wise’ (Proper)
Latest from Commander Cody’s original teletwanger. Great, hard, bar-room country. The guy is never less than great.

Crazy Heart – OST (New West)
Yeah, the soundtrack to the Jeff Bridges movie. The new tunes written by T-Bone Burnett and pals are simply great country songs, and Jeff Bridges nails them in a style that’s equal parts booze-hound & world-weary, like classic Waylon and Kristofferson. No shit – the guy is my favorite new country singer. There’s more to country music than Johhny Cash y’all.

Chris Altman ‘Que Paso’ (Ridin’ High)
Melbourne’s own country-rocker. Ex-Vandas. Great songs and a warm and rich 70′s sound. Huxton Creeper Paul Thomas on pedal steel! Johnny Casino fans will dig this.

GIGS

Best live bands in Australia - Hoss, Hitmen, Johnny Casino & the Secrets. New Christs would probably be on the list if I actually found out about their rare Melbourne shows before they played them… and I reckon I’d dig the Hits and the Bonniwells if I’d actually made the effort to see them too… Next year…

Best gigs by o/s bands - Motorhead in Austin, Dwight Twilley in Austin, Pete Molinari in Austin, Eilen Jewell and band at the East Brunswick and Joe Pug at the NSC in Melbourne… More that aren’t coming to mind no doubt…

BOOKS

If I had more time to read I would have finished these, but a cursory glance of each tells me I’m going to dig em – the Keith Richards and Cheetah Chrome autobiog’s, and Murray Engleheart’s ‘Blood Guts & Beer’.

FILMS

I loved ‘The Runaways’…

OLD STUFF I’M DIGGING

Late 70′s/80s Hawkwind, plenty of Blue Oyster Cult (Cultasaurous Erectus is a new discovery for me), plenty of old Michael Moorcock novels (they’re short, and tie in nicely with my Hawkwind fetish and even BOC’s Elric tribute ‘Black Blade’), late 70′s Springsteen boots, early Kiss, Martin Armiger’s ‘I Love My Car’ from ‘Pure Shit’, Hitmen!

JOKE OF THE YEAR
Any answer I’ve had for the question ‘when are the new do The Pop’s coming out?’

Adelaide author, Birthday Party biographer, reviewer and live music promoter

Given that Rowland S. Howard’s death completely coloured my year, this is my top ten music hits, in no particular order…

1) Mandy
2) lemon juice in water
3) Masuak in Adelaide
4) Dimi Dero in Adelaide
5) Rowland S Howard: Pop Crimes
6) The Ramones first lp
7) The Beatles (mono box)
The Rolling Stones (Exile on Main Street dble lp)
9) discovering we can make music as well as write stuff
10) The Hell With You

Sir David Graney Knocking Himself Out

Wolf and Cub – Science and Sorcery. Brilliant 21st century ROCK band . The vocalist has such a great touch, like Marc Bolan.

No Through Road- WINNER (Low Transit Industries) Another band from Adelaide. Two guitars, bass, drums and a tall, shameless lead singer. Catch them live. The opening lines of “Girls are the devil…”girls are the devil an’ I wanna go to HELL!”. A lot of other great tracks including “party to survive” and ” Berlin wall”. A real unit.

Wagons- The Rise And Fall of Goodtown (Spunk) No real support from the nations youth broadcaster so they got off their asses and toured everywhere and people dig them. As opposed to most other Melbourne acts who are happy to just play to their mates.

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 – Goodnight Oslo (Yeproc) Always look forward to his stuff. the band cooks and the lyrics are superb.

Kurt Vile- Childish Prodigy (Matador) Just got this. The title says it all. Loud guitar rock, great lyrics, voice and general touch.

Bonnie Prince Billy- Beware (Spunk?) The first lines …”I am your only friend /does that scare you?” Great lyrics, the best! Soaring country rock harmonies and bending telecaster sounding notes. All great. The first time I’ve ever really tuned into him.

Kes Band 11- All instrumental. genuinely freaky talent. Unpredictable.

Flight of the Conchords- I told you I was freaky. Speaking of freaks. Loveable and hilarious.

The Holy Soul- Damn you Ra!- (Illustrious Artists) Catch this band live. They cook!

David McCormack- Little Murders (das Kong) 20 tracks and all killer. Great lyrics, voice, rhythm section, guitar sounds. First album for 4 years.

The Model School- Memory Walls. Sydney band. 5 piece.Pop rock. Great lyrics and singer. Kind of country and kind of disco.

Boz Scaggs- Speak Low. Great album of classic songs with a small jazz band. Class!

Nick Lowe- At MY Age. Classic songwriter with a minimalist album.

The Pet Rocks – Wayward Ways. NZ/Sydney band. Great songs and sounds.

The Best Believes. Sydney studio cats make a  great album of deluxe pop.

The Shower Scene from Psycho- Exploding Hits! Double retrospective.

"Snatch the pebble from my hand, Grasshopper"

I-94 Bar Elder Statesman who blogs at The Stashdauber

1. Nels Cline – Coward. When Nels joined Wilco, I quipped, “Finally that band has a reason to exist!” – namely, to give the avant-guitar genius a payday so he can make records like this one. Whether he’s playing chamber jazz with his own ensembles, feedback-and-noise duets with Thurston Moore, or Miles Davis-meets-the-Stooges jazz-funk-skronk with Banyan, he’s always inventive and interesting – my fave currently working axe-slinger, along with Boris’ frequent collaborator Michio Kurihara. On Coward, he overdubs all the parts himself, and the results include a shimmering 18-minute tribute to the murdered microtonal guitarist Rod Poole and a six-part suite which touches bases that include Ennio Morricone, surf, Pink Floyd, garage-psychedelia, industrial noise, break beats and Bollywood. I’ve had this for almost a year now and sometimes I still don’t want to hear anything else.

2. Bobby Previte – Pan Atlantic. Previte’s a Lower Manhattan eminence who came up playing in upstate bar bands. He’s always been a composer first, a drummer second, thank Ceiling Cat. Using just five pieces, this record combines jazz, classical, and rock textures and procedures to produce an orchestral, cinematic sound in the same way as Zappa’s Hot Rats and Zorn’s The Big Gundown did. Who else would overlay a rhythm bed from the Chicago Transit Authority songbook with blood-curdling freeblow saxophonics? Previte’s band of European improvisers blows hot, but always within the framework of the composer’s designs.

3. Snowbyrd – Diosdado. A local – well, at least from Texas (San Antonio, to be exact) — release with a compelling backstory. Despite having the worst band name in recent memory, these guys – a pair of Anglo brothers on vox/guitar and a Chicano drummer, sorta like Rank and File, with a revolving Spinal Tap bass chair – play a potent mix of desert-dusty psych and y’allternative that sounds to these feedback-scorched ears like a blend of Lazy Cowgirls, Rich Hopkins’ Luminarios, and Fort Worth’s own late, lamented Woodeye. Drummer Manuel Diosado Castillo, in whose honor the album is titled, founded of an S.A. cultural arts organization and died of cancer back in January. He was almost too much drummer for this music – think Keith Moon sitting in with the Bottle Rockets – but he brought much power and drama to the songs, many of which are proudly hometown-scene referential in the best possible way. Per Manny’s wishes, they’re going on with a different drummer. Bless them.

4. Bonedome – Thinktankubator. Journeyman Dallas alt-rock muso Allan Hayslip (Vibrolux, Prince Jellyfish, Rock Star Karaoke) steps up to the plate for his first outing as frontman and sole writer and knocks one out of the park, evoking (to these feedback-scorched ears) the spirit of Big D’s best-ever contribution to brainy pop-rock, obscuro genius Reggie Rueffer’s bands Spot and the Hochimen. Melodic yet aggressive, with the smartest lyrics I’ve heard in a long time – maybe since the Hochimen’s Tierra del Gato a few years back, in fact.

5. Dennis Gonzalez/Yells At Eels – The Great Bydgoszcz Concert. I once had the honor of playing a gig with 20something Dallas bassist Aaron Gonzalez, at the end of which he showed me his fingers, which all had skin hanging off them from wrestling that big upright. Since he and his brother, drummer Stefan Gonzalez, coaxed their trumpet-playing dad Dennis (whom I’ve known, off and on, for 30 years now) out of musical retirement a decade ago, they’ve gone from strength to strength, but this album – released on the tiny Euro Ayler label, with Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado joining the trio – is the first one to capture the improvisational fire they’re capable of in live performance. The versions of Stefan’s “Crow Soul” and Ornette Coleman’s “Happy House” are particularly fine. This year, Dennis also self-released a 1989 board tape of a band he co-led with tenorman Frank Lowe, and Mayyrh Records dropped the recording of Aaron’s droney ambient live action Age of Disinformation.

6. Flaming Lips – Embryonic. It’s impressive that a band as popular as the Lips – who made the transition from underground to mainstream about as gracefully as anyone ever has and whose arena rock spectacle surpasses anyone’s from this side of the Atlantic with its blend of majestic grandeur and self-effacing humor – would make a record as willfully Out There as this one. By At War With the Mystics, they’d pretty much mined all the gold from the vein of existential psych-pop they’d struck with The Soft Bulletin, so there was nothing left for them to do but finish Wayne Coyne’s sci-fi movie, record a cover of Dark Side of the Moon for iTunes, and return to their more anarchic In A Priest Driven Ambulance sound, albeit with better execution and production values. Sure, Radiohead did it before, but I actually liked (read: gave two shits about) the Lips’ “accessible” music.

7. Reissues: Neil Young’s Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972 is as important for the manner in which it organizes and presents his compleat history as it is for the music, which in his heart of hearts, he knows is his best. It’ll probably never supplant Decade in my collection, however, brevity being the soul of listenability. The Rationals’ Think Rational is the fulfillment of a damn-near-40-year-old dream, bringing together all of the band’s early singles, the demos and oddities from the never-offically-released 1966 “fan club album,” and others even more obscure. These guys never cut a bad side. Now if somebody will just reish their 1970 Crewe album…

8. Live: The Gunslingers from Grenoble, France, were a lot more awe-inspiring at the Chat Room in Fort Worth (sizzling energy and a packed room on a Wednesday night) than they were at their SXSW showcase (a soundman with a cloth ear and uncooperative borrowed equipment). The No Idea Festival at Lola’s Stockyards brought avant-garde improvisers from Austin, Zurich, Berlin, and Japan, along with some locals, to the heart of Fort Worth’s cowboy culcha. Old punks the Nervebreakers at Club Dada in Dallas sounded every bit as good as they did back when they were opening shows for the Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones, et al., and it was a gas to see so many people I hadn’t run into in 30 years.

9. DVDs: The Patti Smith documentary Dream of Life is an intimate portrait of an artist I’ve always underappreciated, whose full stature has only really become apparent in her maturity. Lou Reed’s Berlin is just the best live performance film I’ve ever seen. (Having Julian Schnabel of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly direct didn’t hurt; having Steve Hunter on board as bandleader-guitarist clinched the deal.) Forget Lou’s and this album’s reputation for bad vibes; the sheer joy of the musicians playing this music is palpable, and it sounds once and for all like great work.

10. Miscellaneous: Doc’s Records opened within walking distance of my house late in the spring, so I’m once again experiencing the joys of digging through crates of vinyl where the percentage of diamonds over dogshit is high (and, um, spending way too much money). I haven’t heard their album yet, as it’s an obscenely expensive import, but Italian funk band Calibro 35’s Youtube videos are shit-hot. And of course, the Youtube vids from the reconstituted Iggy & the Stooges’ shakedown cruise in Rio are a harbinger of good things to come. “Straight” James Williamson’s return to the fold — welcome back, sir! — mitigates the sadness from Ron Asheton’s untimely death.

Speaking of which, my father’s passing this year occasioned a lot of introspection. Mainly the idea that I haven’t done as well as I should at a lot of things that I think are important, and that the time to rectify that is finite. Started scribing for the FW Weekly again, which I’m enjoying more now that I no longer rely on it for my livelihood and I can pretty much write about anything I want. Stoogeaphilia is playing less this year than last, but I think it’s possible I’m enjoying it more, and Hentai Improvising Orchestra appears to have a lot more potential than did PFFFFT!; we’ll see. I was going to wait to submit this list until I got my copy of Easy Action’s 1971 Stoogebox with Ron and James on guitars, which is supposedly in the mail, and the Tom Waits live album that’ll be out November 17th, but whatthehell.