Sunnyboys surging towards sell-outs
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5800
A heads-up that the Sunnyboys' February 2018 Australian tour is selling like wildfire with one Sydney gig (February 10) at Marrickville's Factory Theatre sold out in 36 hours, and tickets for a just-added extra date (February 9) now 85 percent gone.
Is it a surprise? No.
The fact is that the second all-oringal member incarnation of the Sunnyboys has now lasted longer than the band did in its first life.
The time around, without the pressure of recording schedules and the demand for chart hits and with a mutual love and respect for the music they made, Sunnyboys can just do what they do best; play live.
Joining the fun will be Sydney surf-punks The Celibate Rifles, who have carved out their own indelible history in the Australian music scene over a 35+ year period. The Rifles will join Sunnyboys for their first show on the Sunshine Coast since 1982; the Sunnyboys' first Brisbane performance since 2015, and most other dates.
Melbourne fun-punks Painters & Dockers, will join the rejuvenated Sunnyboys for a massive Melbourne Zoo performance.
Aints add another in Sydney
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 3264

Double dose of Salmon and the Hard-Ons in Sydney
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5609
It’s leading up to the Festive Season but don’t expect to hear Christmas carols at Sydney Rock 'n' Roll & Alternative Market on Sunday, November 26.
Hard-Ons - just back from a successful European tour and pictured above- and swamp rock elder statesmen Kim Salmon head the musical entertainment.
Yes, you’ll get the usual range of cottage and unique goods, records, Tiki mugs, art, homewares, food, drinks, fashion and Tiki mugs at The Manning Bar at Sydney University.
But you’ll also cop a double blast of Hard-Ons and Salmon, the latter in solo mode after hisnational tour by the classic line-up of his old band, The Scientists.
Joining them earlier in the day are Hanks Jalopy Demons, Keiron McDonald Combo and the usual array of DJs. Entry is $6 before 12pm and $8 after, with kids under 12 free.
I Thought Thunderbolt – Big League (Off The Hip)
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- By Ronald Brown
- Hits: 4961
Young Melbourne Indie band Big League have released their first album, “I Thought Thunderbolt”. What the fuck that title means is anybody’s guess, but it doesn’t matter when the music speaks for itself.
The follow-up to “The Dandy Hub” EP is a joy; good pop songs, fuzz guitars and trong song-writing. It’s sure to get airplay on enlightened Melbourne community radio stations like PBS and Triple R.
Heart Beatings - Midnight Crisis (self released)
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- By General Labor
- Hits: 9569
Everybody's heard the rumors about a seedy gang of leather clad strangers seen obscenely strutting up and down the boardwalk, right around the time that all those teenagers started going missing from the amusement park and comic book shop, on the shore, like some ageless, ’80s hellraisers, who refuse to die.
Some believe those kids joined some hard partying Ricky Kasso hesher-cult, many have even claimed some second hand knowledge of a fire flickering batcave filled with opium den antiques and gypsy tapestries and a big blacklight poster of Jim Morrison, reptiles abounding...
I, personally, suspect it's all just a big conspiracy theory, the stuff of urban myth, bored kids with overactive imaginations, who have spent to much time watching zombie-hunter shows on cable, reading that "Twilight" book series, and chatting about Slenderman and Bigfoot and Anne Rice stuff, online.
The Sonic Race - The Sonic Race (The Sonic Race)
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4809
These boys come outta the blocks right at your face and do their best to tear it off. So you’re dancing like a middle-aged dickhead in the living room (or I am, anyway), loving the sharp, smart changes, the handclaps, the groove, the bounce and bluster.
Given the band and the song this website is named for (it's not Pinky and Perky, nor New Order, nor The Smiths. Give up..?) it’s almost a no-brainer that you’d probably enjoy “The Sonic Race” EP.
In fact, I’d say this: if you’d never heard Birdman, MC5, Stooges, Dictators or the Dolls … or anyone like them, and you heard The Sonic Race… you would go out and buy an instrument and learn how to play it, and drag people in until you could all go out and play like demons and lay waste the countryside.
Where There Once Was a Fire - Andrew McCubbin featuring Melinda Kay (1am Records)
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 5094
McCubbin & Kay had me before the LP was half-way through Side A. Such a deeply romantic, real record, the songs are so well-constructed, so relaxed in their delivery that you just fall into that trap anyway, also you end up applying the words to your own life… And it gets better… you know how some LPs absolutely nail an emotion, or a period you went through?
No?
Well, you haven’t lived much, is all I can say. I mean, you don’t have to play this one at 1am … though that would be a perfect time, and I will be doing just that fairly shortly. Mind you, pretty much anytime is perfect for "Where Once There Was a Fire".
Not Very Much - Lonely Stretch (self released)
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4262
The single is not dead. It’s just shifted sideways. These days it’s a taster or a teaser to a new LP, rather than a serious stab at the big-time.
Long gone are the days when The Temptations, Slade, or REM could issue a song and watch the dollars roll in.
Never heard of Lonely Stretch? It’s their first release, I don’t think they’ve played any gigs yet (spare me that tedious bullshit about how "ya gotta’ play a bazillion gigs and go into thousands of dollars worth of debt before you’re considered to have paid yer dues") and they’re all Adelaide, kinda, with a knowing series of drives to and from Melbourne under their belt.
Get Some - Mushroom Planet (self released)
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 4948
This is rated seven bottles. These fuckers (a reformed Sydney band from the '80s) have no right being this good.
Blue Oyster Cult? Yeah!
MC5? Yeah!!
Iggy? OH SHIT YEAH!
Well, that’s my job done then. That’ll be $500 bucks in used tenners in a brown paper bag.
[silence]
[crickets chirping]
- Citadel to release special edition of Stems classic in time for Oz tour
- Lime Spiders return with one Sydney show before Spain
- A track-by-track of "Rough and Ready" with Scott Morgan
- Tony Thewlis and stories of Weird Love, Blackadder and a re-possessed TV
- Last Of The Buffalo - The Heartache State (Golden State Records)
- Grinding Eyes - Grinding Eyes (Off The Hip/Tym Records)
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