SPJ bio reflects on rock and roll's underground glory days

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By JD Stayfree

JD Stayfree

22 March 2022

Hits: 4391

Execution Days: The Life and Times of Spencer P Jones
By Patrick Emery 
Love Police

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.-Voltaire

"I was stripped of all my dignity, blackest clouds hanging over me, I just waited as the moments ticked away, it was like my execution day..." -Spencer P. Jones

"I thought, hold on, I've got a rock band around here some place!"  - Tex Perkins

"Grief felt like fear"  - C.S. Lewis

I WAS ALWAYS ON YOUR SIDE

Man I'm a little bit furious that those fucked-up Fascists at Facebook permanently locked me out and I knew it was coming, because I saw them doing all that same shit to all my friends who are antiwar, pro human rights and civil liberties, all us poor suckers who fell hard for all that phony shit they told us when we were growing up about the Bill Of Rights that they covertly dismantled but insist we still have, even though we very clearly do not, or anyone advocating for freedom for Julian Assange.

The bullshit fact checking, accusations of violating their so-called community standards, all that shit. I posted a lot of links to antiwar organizers and truth tellers who've been purged from Mocking Bird mass media. Zuckerberg and his Great Lockstep cronies decided it was better to purge some of us completely, rather than have us actively factchecking the factcheckers and pushing back against their dangerous bullshit police state narratives.

Thankfully, a very thoughtful and considerate friend thought to send me an electronic copy of a book I'd been yearning to read and I guzzled the whole thing down like a pint while I was unable to contact my comrades on social media.

• beasts of bourbon
• kim salmon
• surrealists
• tex perkins
• spencer p jones
• escape committee
• the johnnys
• patrick emery
• the gun club
• love police

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Surf and enjoy

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By The Barman

The Barman

22 March 2022

Hits: 2717

Return Of The Space Mariachis – Stories From Shamehill (self released)

Surf-tiki rock from the Netherlands? I’m in. Let’s face it: stranger things happen in Amsterdam - usually involving special cakes sold at coffee shops - and this trio of reverb-obsessed retro heads is nothing if not inventive.

With assistance from The Hot Habanero Horns (actually two horns and a harmonica), Stories From Shamehill worked up their second full studio album over five days in 2021 and it’s a barrel of fun.

The Stories have been riding their surf wave since 2012 and have even managed to tour and record in California. Talk about taking coals to Newcastle…

• surf
• return of the space mariachis
• stories from shamehill
• amsterdam

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Here's your Sunday dance card sorted, Sydney

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By The Barman

The Barman

18 March 2022

Hits: 3151

Here's your guide to all that's occuring at the Sydney Rock 'n' Roll & Alternative Special at Marrickville's Factory Theatre this Sunday. You'll find a few of us at the I-94 Bar Stage featuring X, Jupiter 5, Sonic Garage and The Darrans with frequent forways to the Sixties Stage. Tickets are still available here but you'll have to be quick. 

Click on the More link to see the full four-stage line-up and times. 

• sydney
• factory
• marrickville
• rock'n'roll and alternative festival

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Kiss This: Being on the outside with Jesus and The Mary Chain

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By JD Stayfree

JD Stayfree

18 March 2022

Hits: 4890

Barbed Wire Kisses
By Zoe Howe
St. Martin's Press

 REVERENCE

Jim, William, Douglas and Bobby changed my life for the better. I owe those guys a profound debt of sincere gratitude. They are the coolest cool, the blackest black, the grooviest of the groovies.

All those bands who imitated the Mary Chain? I never liked any of 'em. That shoegaze shit was not for me. I was not into acid house or even that much Brit-Pop, really. For me, the Mary Chain was the zenith, the high point of standalone excellence. 1995 was the year The Man killed punk dead in my little underground world, when media consolidation under Bill Clinton ate up all the medium-sized labels that actual real garage bands used to have some remote hope of making records for, corporations bought up all the smallish venues, closed most of 'em, jacked up ticket prices with extra added fuck you fees, like hospitals, at all their enormo-dome sports coliseums, moneybags promotors started pushing those big five hundred dollar festivals in daylight with all the sunburnt sports assholes starring some heir and his laptop, ushered all those idiot normies into music scenes with their by numbers "Alternative" hoax bands.

Every big city had the trust fund Clones impersonating all our favorite bands, but with none of the soul or truth, or pathos or originality-just the surface gimmickry and expensive fancy vintage gear, paid for by their Little Lord Fauntleroy family fortunes. I dunno if it was me who coined the phrase, imitation generation, but no one I saw was putting anything much of their own on to the stage, just cheap, tacky impersonations of good bands the mainstream locals had never heard of, so they all seemed way more impressive and innovative, in their grunge era small ponds, than they really were.

• jesus and the mary chain
• zoe howe
• barbed wire kisses

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Old Farts At Play and The Kids Are Alright

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By The Barman

The Barman

14 March 2022

Hits: 4431

_{Pete Bourke, Phil Van Rooyen and Pete Trifunovic from Sonic Garage.}

Sonic Garage
Pocketwatch
Bayley and the Liquid Squid
Marrickville Bowling Club, NSW
Friday, 11 March 2022

You can say “Boring Old Fart” but it’s good to stare rheumy-eyed into the middle distance, drool into a beer and recall much less complicated times in hushed tones. Times like the early 1980s, when the biggest challenge on a Friday night was to decide which two or three rock and roll shows you were going to attend, all of them within a short distance of each other.  

If they were local bands, the door charge was free or modest, and if the headliner was on the national touring treadmill, entry might set you back a ten spot. At least one of the supports was a band you’d never heard of, but paying your money and taking your chances was all part of the ritual. You got to conduct a post-mortem as soon as their set was over or over a hair of the dog at your local the next day. 

• radio birdman
• circus chaplains
• celibate rifles
• marrickville bowlo
• mushroom planet
• sonic garage
• pocketwatch
• bayley and the liquid squid

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Special Sydney Rock 'n' Roll offer for I-94 Barflies

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By The Barman

The Barman

14 March 2022

Hits: 2130

The Sydney Rock 'n' Roll & Alternative Festival is at The Facotry Theatre in Marrickville this Sunday afternoon with our own I-94 Bar Stage hosting X, White Knuckle Fever, Jupiter 5 and Rubbernecker. On adjoining stages you can catch The On and Ons, The Porkers, The Intercontinental Playboys, The Smart Folk and The Flippin' Kick Outs among many more. This limited offer gets you two tickets for the price of one and admission to all rooms. Click on the banner above and use the code I94BAR50 at check-out. 

 

Does he still have the magic? Yes he does! In praise of Billy Idol

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By JD Stayfree

JD Stayfree

07 March 2022

Hits: 5963

❝Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.❞  —Joseph Goebbels 

❝A nation of sheep soon begets a government of wolves.❞ —Edward R. Murrow

❝Laws are created to be followed by the poor. Laws are made by the rich to bring some order to exploitation. The poor are the only law-abiders in history When the poor make laws—the rich will be no more.❞ —Roque Dalton García (1974)

❝The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.❞ —Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)

❝Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.❞ —James Connolly

❝It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.❞— Chris Hedges

• generation x
• billy idol
• steve stevens
• the roadside ep

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Silver or Black? Leadfinger deliver solid gold

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By Robert Brokenmouth & Colin Gray

Robert Brokenmouth & Colin Gray

07 March 2022

Hits: 3957

Silver & Black - Leadfinger (Golden Robot)

Yeah, well, I may have been away for a while. Haven't had a lot of time to listen to music. I mean, for a few months, music was that occasional thing in the background - which is not the way to enjoy music. There are (in fact) only two ways: live and in your face, or turned up loud and in your ears. Any other way, the stuff can only hint at a timeless upland of dancing and carrying on like a horny dog at a wedding, rather than the entire emotional brawl.

So turning on Leadfinger's “Silver and Black” is a bit like a starving, dehydrated man tottering into one of those “45 beers on tap” pubs with an Irish heart-clogging cook, accommodation, someone else's credit card and a couple of months to kill.

• wollongong
• stewart cunningham
• friday night heroes
• leadinger
• silver & black

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Dive in for "Flood Zone" and help someone keep their head above water

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By The Barman

The Barman

04 March 2022

Hits: 2924

Venerable Australian label Half a Cow has moved with lightning speed to respond to the floods that have devasted parts of the Australian east coast this week.

One-hundred percent of the proceeds from the digital release of the quickly-assembled, all-Australian “Flood Zone” compilation will go to Queensland and New South Wales victims of the inundation, via the GIVIT platform.

Copies downloaded during Bandcamp Friday will be exempt from Bandcamp charges. It can be purchased here.

Participating acts are The Lovetones, Crow, The Ramalamas, Key Out, The Finalists, Darren Hanlon, Froggy Prinze, Bum Spa, Claire Birchall, Baby Blue, Montana, Tim Guy, Thee Cha Cha Chas, Adele & The Chandeliers, Turnstyle, Lost In The Woods, The Nature Strip, Monnone Alone, Victoria, Stressless, Bambino Koresh, La Huva, Smudge and Falling Joys.

Says label head Nic Dalton: "Thanks to all the acts for helping out! Some songs are old, some songs are new and some have never seen the light of day before."

• bandcamp
• half a cow
• nic dalton
• flood zone