Nothing Ever Gets Lost - Claire Birchall & The Phantom Hitchhikers (Off The Hip/Night Owl Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

13 December 2017

Hits: 3936

You know exactly what he’s gonna say: Sydney reviewer gets pissed off at the excess of musical talent in rival city Melbourne. Gets all angsty and laments The Good Old Days when Sydney more than held a candle to Melbourne. You’re partly right.

Cutting to the chase…Claire Birchall IS one of those uber talents from “down south” who grew up in the fertile Geelong scene and now lives in Melbourne. She plays everything from beatbox-backed pop to lean and mean rock. Genres are just a vehicle for the songs. “Nothing Ever Gets Lost” is a gnarly, blues-rock album.

The purple and blue cover art deceptively looks like one of those “Back From The Grave” acid punk compilations. The music, however, is fuzzy and warm and glows from the inside. There’s a great sense of dynamics and Birchall’s voice resonates with character and a world-weary charm. 

• melbourne
• fuzz
• claire birchall
• phantom hitchhikers
• nothing ever gets lost
• night owl records

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Mad Marc Rude: Blood, Ink & Needles. Directed by Carl Schneider

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By General Labor

General Labor

09 December 2017

Hits: 9622

"He was a cocked pistol." -Robert Williams.

Mad Marc Rude grew up in ‘60s New York, the son of an abuser cop and negligent mom, who frequently expelled both him and his sister from the family home. He attended Woodstock the year I was busy being born. 

I think I first became aware of him as a teenager, when I read an article about the Hollywood punk underground in the pages of Rolling Stone. I already published a shitty fanzine and was the rowdy front man for a defiantly outcast Midwestern garage band that performed covers of Dead Boys, Misfits, Cramps, and Gun Club songs, as well as some sucky Dead Kennedys influenced originals with cartoonishly banal titles like, "Victims Of The System". 

• misfits
• mad marc rude
• carl schneider
• circle jerks
• flipside
• scream
• forced exposure
• maximum rocknroll
• battalion of saints

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Silver and Gold - Cub Callaway (East Dominion)

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By The Barman

The Barman

08 December 2017

Hits: 4662

Alternative title: "He Gets by With Some Help From His Friends".

Producer-guitarist Bruce "Cub" Callaway assembled a stellar cast for this, his 2013 return to recording after a lay-off, and it shows.

John Hoey (Died Pretty), Warwick Gilbert (Radio Birdman), Paul Larsen (Celibate Rifles), Clyde Bramley (Hoodoo Gurus) and Julie Mostyn Gilbert (Flaming Hands) all played roles. Lesser-knowns Ian Johnson, Louis Callaway and Harry Rothenfluh also contributed drums.

• ed kuepper
• died pretty
• radio birdman
• flaming hands
• warwick gilbert
• bruce callaway
• cub callway
• silver and gold
• east dominion
• john hoey
• triffids

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Mobile Homeland - John Sinclair (Funky D Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

07 December 2017

Hits: 5019

No introduction needed for the onetime spiritual leader of the MC5 so here’s a personal note about meeting John Sinclair:

It was on a night off during a business trip that involved a flying visit to Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 2000s. Sinclair was in town for that city’s annual Hash Bash and had just played a show at The Blind Pig. I’d been drinking at the Eight Bar Saloon with some locals, including Scott Morgan who did the introduction.

• mc5
• wayne kramer
• john sinclair
• ann arbor
• mobile homeland
• funky d records
• blues scholars
• tino g

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Overage Underachievers - The Smart Patrol (Off The Hip/Screaming Apple)

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By The Barman

The Barman

07 December 2017

Hits: 4224

Do you still believe in record labels? Back in the ‘80s, being released on an imprint that you knew and loved (Bomp, Citadel, Waterfront) was a surefire indication that a band possessed a “certain” sound, and was good.

Screaming Apple is the garage rock label in Germany that doesn’t release duds, so hearing about it collaborating with Australia's Off The Hip for an album by a band called The Smart Patrol was always going to be news falling on receptive ears. 

• powerpop
• mod
• smart patrol
• screaming apple
• overage underachievers

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Raw Art Act - Asphalt Tuaregs (Antitune Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

06 December 2017

Hits: 5168

It’s a truism that many bands from Europe rock but don’t rock and roll. It’s not their fault, of course, it’s just a matter of cultural conditioning. Rock and roll is not their first musical language and the “high art” the place is steeped in suffocates that "low art", like any other form of musical expression, into submission.

So when you find a Continental band that “gets it”, you better latch on to them, tight. 

Some of us are (ahem) old enough to remember a French band called Fixed Uo, who were on Sydney’s Citadel label, and made it to Australia to play and record in the mid 1980s. Rob Younger and Jim Dickson produced an album for them. Soulful garage rock was their stock in trade. They “got it”. 

• garage
• french
• garage soul
• rob younger
• jim dickson
• fixed up
• asphalt tuaregs
• backsliders
• francois lebas

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Brown Spirits - Brown Spirits (Off The Hip/Clostridium Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

04 December 2017

Hits: 4454

Pigeons don’t belong in holes.

In other words, just as soon as you peg Off The Hip as Australia’s home for “Thee Garage Rock Sound” exclusively, they throw another curve ball like this here Brown Spirits CD.

Brown Spirits are from Melbourne and are an instrumental trio made-up of Tim Wold, Agostino Soldati and Andre Fazio, whose collective curriculum vitae includes bands like Mod Vigil, Kids of Zoo, Deep Street Soul, Russian Roulettes, Go-Set and Legends of Motorsport.

To the best of my knowledge (and I’ve heard most of them), Brown Spirits sound nothing like any of the above.

• psychedelic
• clostridium records
• brown spiritis
• jam band

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Scenesters: Music, Mayhem & Melrose Ave (1985-90)

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By General Labor

General Labor

03 December 2017

Hits: 7752

By the time me and a flamehaired stripper with a sports car arrived in Hollywood, to look for the pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow Bar And Grill, it was mostly all over.

We were snorting up the last hours of sequins and vulgarity, mascara and laughter before the bad trip buzzkill of Cobain. We were squinting in the last blinding, big sprays of Aqua Net and final drunken caterwauls at Thursday night cattle calls, where a rogues' gallery of various whiskey sodden, speed freaky, Stars From Mars and Seaweed Eaters and Raw Flowers and Glamour Punks and Dawg Mafia and Queeny Blast Pop diehard, teased haired, Motley-Babies played their hopeless gutter-punk defiantly, even while Seattle was exploding into the mainstream.

It was the sad, last gasps of a cool and androgynous underground scene, as grunge and gangsta-rap and capitalist lifestyle unreality-tv programming were coming into vogue and all the faded  spandex stars of the strip had mostly got rich and sold-out, died, or gone straight.

• hollywood
• los angeles
• gun club
• melrose avenue
• desi benjamin
• Scenesters: Music, Mayhem & Melrose Ave (1985-90)
• DVD
• Bluray
• guns and roses
• izzy straddlin
• the joneses

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JD Hangover - JD Hangover (Annibale Records)

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By The Barman

The Barman

02 December 2017

Hits: 5328

Bleak, industrial blues. That’s what you’ll immerse yourself in on this six-track EP. It’s one part Suicide, one part Delta blues, and fuck any compact with the Devil - if that was a soul left behind at the negotiating table in return for a bus ticket to the crossroads, it sounds like it’s being picked over by vultures.  

Written on the road and recorded with minimal affectations, it’s a collaboration between Anglo-Italo blues rocker Stiv Cantarelli and studio collaborator Roberto Villa. And a drum machine.  

• stiv cantarelli
• Roberto villa
• jd hangover
• Annibale records

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