The Saints return - and Hitler isn't happy

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By The Barman

The Barman

29 August 2016

Hits: 5344

The Saints (without Ed Kuepper, if you had to ask) will play three intimate, exclusive Australian shows at Melbourne’s Gasometer Hotel in October. Chris Bailey will be joined by early ‘80s drummer-turned-journalist, Iain Shedden, Pat Bourke on bass and You Am I’s Davey Lane on guitar.

Hitler’s reaction to the news is above. The dates are below and as the venue is quite intimate, bookings are recommended.

Wednesday 5 October – The Gasometer Hotel, Melbourne (18+)
Thursday 6 October – The Gasometer Hotel, Melbourne (18+)
Friday 7 October – The Gasometer Hotel, Melbourne (18+)

• live
• saints
• ed kuepper
• iain shedden
• chris bailey
• davey lane
• pat bourke

Split LP - The Bevis Frond & Fraudband (Kasumuen Records)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

28 August 2016

Hits: 4087

It’s a split 12” LP. Five tracks one side, one track on the other. Which is a great idea; two bands showcase themselves for half the price of the vinyl. Yes, it’s vinyl. More bands should do this.

Fraudband are a secretive bunch; you don’t really know their names, ages, or what their favourite colour is, whether they’re hipsters from Pillockville, young WTFs from the stale burbs or leathery old farts in those vile brown leather jackets which were so in among the more money than taste twats in 1986. Fraudband (brilliant name, I’m sure you’ll agree) want their music to speak to us.

• fraudband
• bevis frond
• Kasumuen Records

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Victory Motel Sessions - King Mud (Alive Naturalsound Records) & The Power To Kill - Beyond the Stars (Beyond the Stars)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

28 August 2016

Hits: 8355

These two discs were each made (mostly) by a two-piece band, drums’n’guitar; and vox and guitars, respectively. They’re both something I wouldn’t have believed possible: successful two-person rock’n’roll that sounds fantastic. Each album does have a few other elements, but they’re precious few and … and again, I wouldn’t have believed it, but … you don’t really miss the others that much. Why?

In King Mud’s case, the songs and the delivery gain, hold and manipulate your attention; their two covers (you should be familiar with at least one) taken over by the Mudders to such an extent they may as well have written it themselves.

King Mud are Van Campbell from the Black Diamond Heavies and Freddy J IV from Left Lane Cruiser. They’re full-on rock’n’stuff, the kind of busy guitar which tells the story, shoves the song forward and devil the details. There’s a distinctive ‘70s American style to the Mudders, but you can clearly hear innumerable UK influences as well.

• left lane cruiser
• alive naturalsound
• black diamond heavies
• king mud
• beyond the stars

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R.I.P. Thug co-founder Peter Read

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By The Barman

The Barman

17 August 2016

Hits: 14010

_{Thug with Peter Read pictured left.}

Thug co-founder and Black Eye Records artist, Peter Read, has passed away. The circumstances are unclear but a friend said Read had been battling liver cancer and was thought to have been in remission. He was living in Melbourne.

Read (Leather Moustache) and Tex Perkins (Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, later to join Beasts of Bourbon) formed electro-punk band Thug in Sydney in 1987, initially to make home recordings. Thug became one of Sydney's most confrontational live acts, with chaotic 20-minute sets featuring dancers, theatrics, bizarre electronic equipment and—at one performance—an entire audience showered in flour. Thug gigs would end with members mock-brawling amongst themselves, at times sparking audience participation.  

Thug, along with Lubricated Goat and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, were part of the underbelly of the Sydney indie rock scene, releasing music on the Red Eye Records offshoot, Black Eye Records. 

Thug's debut single was the "Fuck Your Dad” b/w “Thug". Along with the “Mechanical Ape” EP and “Electric Woolly Mammoth” album, it was released on a CD, “Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way”.

Read temporarily joined Lubricated Goat for their infamous nude-on-national-TV performance of “In The Raw”. More about the Black Eye bands at Cousin Creep’s website. He went on to work as a Front of House sound operator. 

• tex perkins
• thug
• peter read
• black eye records

Pig City becomes a label, signs Some Jerks and Sabrina Lawrie

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By The Barman

The Barman

16 August 2016

Hits: 4567

It started at a Some Jerks gig at the late, lamented Beetle Bar in Brisbane. Journalist Andrew Stafford, author of Brisbane rock history "Pig City", approached his friend Sean Clift, of Red Dust Music Management and drummer with local thug-rockers Lords of Wong.

“Listen,” he said. “This band is great. Everyone here loves ’em. If we can’t sell a few hundred of their records we’re dumber than I thought. Maybe we’ll lose a bit of money but fuck it, let’s do it anyway.”

Several months later, Some Jerks asked Staffo if he’d write them a bio for their new record. “Well, yeah,” he said, “But, funny you should mention it. Would you like to be on this new record label Sean and I are putting together? Then I’ll have to do it!”

And so, after a fair bit of planning and a couple of false starts, Pig City Records was born – a vinyl/digital only model, with Some Jerks’ second album, "Strange Ways", to be the first official release in October, with the vinyl limited to a special hand-numbered run of 300 copies.

• brisbane
• pig city
• andrew stafford
• sean clift
• some jerks
• sabrina lawrie

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Evocative show summons up the spirit of Vic Simms' lost classic

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By David Laing

David Laing

16 August 2016

Hits: 4957

_{Luke Peacock and Vic Simms.}

Conceived by Luke Peacock of Robert Forster-produced Brisbane outfit Halfway, The Painted Ladies are a black and white supergroup brought together to celebrate and reinterprete the classic 1972 live-in-prison LP "The Loner" by Koorie country iconoclast Vic Simms.

The band released the fabulous album "Play Selections from The Loner" in 2014. Produced by longtime Simms spruiker Rusty Hopkinson of You Am I, the album revealed a fabulous and rootsy rockin’ combo and an all-killer set of songs, highlighted by the unabashed all-Australian classics "Get Back Into the Shadows" and "Stranger in My Country".

Both are depictions of a young black man’s life experience that remain both lyically potent and musically thrilling. In the Painted Ladies’ hands the former became a hard-driving pop-soul rocker, and the latter a sullen and beautiful, six-minute moan of alienation and anguish that builds to the sort of electrical storm that your average Died Pretty or New Christs fan should identify with. (And yes, I’m talking to YOU!)

• rock
• live
• vic simms
• koori
• luke peacock

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Mike Caen - Mike Caen (Foghorn Records)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

16 August 2016

Hits: 3768

The media release is cagey, avoiding too much specific information on Caen’s background. He’s fronted bands, played in bands (to quote the bio: "such as Mental as Anything, Dragon and Jenny Morris … played hundreds of shows … from big city stadiums to outback mining towns").

At this point the diligent, well-paid reviewer on a daily paper should do their homework and look the man up, perhaps at www.mikecaen.com.au, to find out more. But I am a lowly scrubber at the I94-Bar zine and I have a mountain of CDs to approach (some with caution) and I am going to quail, claim I don’t have the time ("I don’t have the time for this, dammit" - see what I mean?) and go along with the between-the-lines message from the screed: Don’t look at the man’s history, listen to the bloody songs.

• mike caen
• foghorn records

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Selected Works: I Reject This Reality - Eric Mingus (self released)

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

16 August 2016

Hits: 4309

Even if you don’t like what people call jazz, you’ll react to "I Reject This Reality". It’s far more honest, creative, exciting and interesting than dealing with those talentless oiks, berks and preening nobodies on the telly. Talk about too much methane in a fartbubble - hell, how many channels do we have these days? And how much is really, truly, actually worth watching? Are we children or goldfish to be distracted so long and so often by such bling? Life’s far, far too short. Dig "I Reject This Reality", it’s far more grown-up.

You may recognise the surname. Eric’s dad was famous, and groundbreaking at a time when ground needed to be broken, and the world watched with bated breath for every new jazz development.

Jazz, that is, real jazz, not that muck you hear in shopping malls, nor that cheery "trad jazz" stuff which seems so much part of the everyday background now, is now a rare thing. There is no longer a huge, rollercoasting movement like there was from the twenties to the sixties. This isn’t a new concept; you can say that the rollercoaster of punk and new wave more or less shivered, then sort of dawdled forward from, say, late 1984 (notwithstanding there were still brilliant bands and lps, the tidal wave was receding from the foothills, only to begin to gain momentum in Japan when nobody in The West was looking).

• punk
• jazz
• eric mingus
• selected works

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Ozone St - Los Dominados (Ejected Records)

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By Edwin Garland

Edwin Garland

15 August 2016

Hits: 4589

This record is so damned cool. So damned ultra-cool.

It’s sorta- like the late ’80s indie punk art of Sonic Youth with its rocky side exposed, combined with The Pixies and with the classic English rock pop of T-Rex thrown in. There’s even a nod to US ‘60s girl pop and urban country twang. It stayed in my CD player for a few weeks, and I keep hitting the the play again.

Los Dominados is essentially a band formed from the remnants of Moler, who mixed it up as a grungy, power pop band playing hip, street-level music with tough lyrics in the late ‘90s. Twenty years later, there’s been a vast development in song-writing - as shown in this, the band’s fourth album. We find a broader tapestry of influences and the band members have learned a lot about minimalism as well as using dark and light shade. And about sophistication.

• melbourne
• helen cattanach
• los dominados
• moler
• michael alonso
• harold fisher

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