What's in a name? Dave Houston releases the Bats

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By Patrick Emery

Patrick Emery

14 August 2023

Hits: 2282

Black Bats guitarist and singer Dave Houston is slightly apologetic about the name of his Melbourne garage-surf-desert-psych outfit, Black Bats. 

Back in 2015, Houston was putting together a surf-garage EP when, searching for a name for his bedroom demo project, he looked to the Halloween theme for inspiration. 

“I was going to call it Black Cats but then I thought that was a bit um … [laughs] so I called it Black Bats, just this one surf-garage EP, then the name stuck and I’m stuck with it! It’s a terrible name!”

• melbourne
• Dave houston
• black bats
• stay dead
• cactus room

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R.I.P. Louis Tillett

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By The Barman

The Barman

13 August 2023

Hits: 6027

Singer-songwriter Louis Tillett has died in a Sydney hospital after lengthy health struggles, aged 63. The announcement was made online today, a week after his passing, by partner Rachael Slattery:

I am very sorry to have to pass on the news. One week ago Louis Tillett passed away. Jack and I were with him to the end. We thank Royal Prince Alfred and Concord Hospitals for allowing Jack and I to stay for days and weeks at a time leading up to his passing. 

Please remember him as he was, in the words of Hellen Rose, a Cheeky Druid. He brought joy to our pain, light to our darkness, and a good dose of mischief. I have gone to great lengths to make his Music available everywhere possible. I will leave links in the comments for you to find them. Louis has donated his body to Science. There will be no funeral as such. But please stay tuned for news about his Memorial.

Louis Tillett will be remembered as one of the most talented songwriters of the Australian underground scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. 

Tillett released nine studio albums and a live recording in a career that started in Sydney in 1977 with an experimental version of the Wet Taxis. That band finally coalesced as a more conventional ‘60s punk-influenced outfit in the mid-1980s and supported an Australian tour by Nico. 

• Citadel
• penny ikinger
• wet taxis
• charlie owen
• louis tillett
• hot records

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Vale Ron Peno, frontman for Died Pretty, The Darling Downs and The Superstitions

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By The Barman

The Barman

12 August 2023

Hits: 2512

_{Ron Peno with his most recent co-writer Cam Butler at his last Sydney show with The Superstitions in November 2022.}

Died Pretty, The Superstitions and Darling Downs frontman Ron Peno passed away at his Melbourne home on Friday night after a four-and-a-half-year fight against cancer. He was aged 68.

Died Pretty announced the news earlier today. The band’s statement reads:

With great sadness we announce the passing of our singer Ron S Peno who left us peacefully on Friday evening in the presence of his loving wife Charity and his son Zebadiah, at his home in South Yarra, Melbourne. 

For the last four-and a-half-years as he battled cancer, Ron displayed a resolute positivity and a profound depth of character that has proved inspirational to his fellow band members, manager and many friends. In the face of adversity he was towering.

• kim salmon
• died pretty
• ron peno
• screaming tribesmen
• cam butler
• the hellcats
• superstitions
• darling downs

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Ex-Lazy Cowgirl Pat Todd lands Oz album deal, heads down for a tour

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By The Barman

The Barman

07 August 2023

Hits: 3801

Resurgent Ausitralian label Dog Meat Records is thrilled and proud to release a new album by a resurgent rock 'n' roller and an old friend Pat Todd and his band The Rankoutsiders.

“Sons Of The City Ditch” is the seventh album by LA's finest rock'n'roll band and comes some 36 years after Dog Meat’s first dalliances with Pat, back when he fronted the legendary Lazy Cowgirls. 

The new album shows that Pat’s voice and songwriting have only gotten stronger, and that he's got another killer band behind him, one that mixes classic '70s punk rock roots with country, blues and rock'n'roll in a manner that sits somewhere between “Exile on Main Street” and “LAMF”.

Pat Todd will be touring Australia solo, in a double-bill with Mad Macka from The Cosmic Psychos and The Onyas in late 2023. Stay tuned for details.

The new album is highlighted, as usual, by Todd's fantastic songs. A prolific writer with an eye on life in the margins - whether they be in small towns or the big sprawling city he has called home for 40 years - Todd routinely hits the mark where youth and the advancement of age find common ground in alienation and wilfulness. 

• mad macka
• cosmic psychos
• los angeles
• pat todd
• rankoutsiders
• sons of the city ditch
• dog meat records

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Spoilt for choice as Spawn and Cable Ties weave magic

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By Patrick Emery

Patrick Emery

06 August 2023

Hits: 2960

Cable Ties 
at Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Spawn 
at The Catfish, Fitzroy, VIC
Friday, 4 August 2024

I missed the supports for the Cable Ties  (pictured right) album launch tonight at Max Watt’s, not because of any indifference on my part – Maggie Pills, Porpoise Spit and Our Carlson are all acts worthy of checking out  – but because I was waylaid at The Catfish in Fitzroy caught up in Spawn’s sprawling psychedelic journey. 

I first saw Spawn at the Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood in late 2020. Coming a few weeks after the Victorian Government had released the shackles of the second lockdown of that year, the gig was liberating, a timely reminder of the critical importance of live music to the contemporary social and economic fabric. 

The fact it was also a benefit for Spawn bass player Jewel De Gelder, who, tragically, would pass away a couple of years later, added a layer of poignancy. 

Spawn is a band rife for observation, analysis and cerebral contemplation. Come for the stoner-psych riffs and pot pouri of cultural influences, stay for the trip. The concept of a personal journey is caught somewhere between the cynical discourse of the corporate management industry and the slightly disconcerting hand-produced flyers advertising self-help retreats for members of the information class lost in a middle-class existentialist void. 

But when you’re at a Spawn gig, you’re swept up in a spiritual quest. Close your eyes, feel the mood, roll with the moment. Sabbath-strength riffs, a sitar wielded like a stoner-rock axe, an Eastern musico-cultural inflection that renders 60s raga-rock a cheap middle-class white boy imitation in comparison. As for Sarita McHarg’svocals, wow, that’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before, in this world at least. 

• melbourne
• live
• cable ties
• spawn
• all her plans

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Japanese voodoo rockers Bailtones head to Oz

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By The Barman

The Barman

02 August 2023

Hits: 2579

Japan’s premier exponents of voodoo rock, Baitones, are heading to Australia in October, playing shows in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.

With two decades of rocking in their home country under their belts, Bailtones will be making their first foray overseas.

Likened to the Birthday Party crossed with Gun Club and the Cramps, Baitones recall all of the above but still manage to remain uniquely creepy and glitteringly sexy, as well. 

Ugly Things magazine says:

“If you're into Nuggets, Pebbles, The Sonics, The Cramps’ ‘Gravest Hits’ or ‘60s garage punk in general then you really should pick up this record, a Japanese band that takes this style and make it their own. This music has never sounded that hot before.“ 

Our spy who has caught them in the flesh in Japan adds:

“If Las Vegas was an outfit, these guys would be wearing it. Holographic gold lame, leopard skin, fishnets, abundant bare flesh trimmed with bones and fur adorn Baitones, like some mutant Mae West cannibal from the year 3000.

"Baitones create a fashion all of their own, part burlesque cutie, part jungle beast and part sci fi villain.”

Judge for yourself at these shows:

Bailtones (JPN) Australian Tour
OCT
4 – Old Bar, Fitzroy, VIC
5 – Brightside, Fortitude Valley, QLD
6 – The Duke, Enmore, NSW
7 – Zombie Cannibal Stay Gold, Sydney Road, Melbourne, VIC

• japanese
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• bailtones

Detroit DoGs unleash a vinyl re-issue with bite

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By Tim "Napalm" Stegall

Tim "Napalm" Stegall

01 August 2023

Hits: 3930

“We're the most underground, underground band out there,” says Loren Molinare of the Detroit-born-and-bred early L.A. punk veterans The DoGs, whose second LP “Hypersensitive” from 2012 will finally be released on vinyl via prestige Polish punk ‘n’ roll label Heavy Medication Records on September 1. 

“We’re really proud to reissue this ‘lost classic’ for the first time on vinyl,” says Heavy Medication president Derrick Ogrodny. “We're honored to work with such protopunk legends and think it’s about time these DoGs had their day.”  

“We're one of the last bands with original members that actually sound like a proper Detroit rock band,” continues Molinare, the man Ogrodny calls “the Pete Townshend of punk rock.” “And yes, I mean some things never change. We carry on that tradition. That's what we do.

“We're just kind of picking our spot. We're white trash Detroit rock ‘n’ rollers about the same age as the old black blues men who were out doing it before they died. A lot of our peers have passed away, and we do not take it for granted. 

• detroit
• stooges
• mc5
• the dogs
• los angeles
• heavy medication records
• mary kay
• Lauren molinare
• Tim stegall

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As a scribe's tale, it's flamin' groovy

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By Patrick Emery

Patrick Emery

31 July 2023

Hits: 3814

Shake Some Action: My Life in Music (and other stuff)
By Stuart Coupe
Penguin Books

“You’re talking to Stuart Coupe?” remarked my wife excitedly, after I told her I’d catching up with Stuart at the tail end of an impending work trip to Sydney. “Tell him I used to read his column in ‘Dolly’ all the time! We all did!”

To thousands of teenagers – especially teenage girls – in the 1980s, Stuart Coupe was the guy who wrote that column in Dolly, championing music he liked, dissing commercial dross he didn’t, and offering various observations and advice on various non-music topics, including kissing and the art of romance.

Not being a reader of the magazine, I wasn’t familiar with Coupe’s work with “Dolly”, though his by-line did appear in regular dispatches in music magazines and newspapers. Decades later I interviewed Coupe for my Spencer P Jones biography; one thing led to another, and he became instrumental – in fact, was the critical force – in my obtaining a publishing deal. So, full disclosure, I consider Stuart Coupe a friend and sincere supporter of all the best things in music. 

“Shake Some Action” tells Coupe’s story, from his childhood in Launceston, to his formative years in Adelaide as a music writer, to syndicated columns (and "Dolly"!), the chaotic world of band management, the heady, drug and alcohol fuelled world of music industry largesse and the harsh economic reality of tour promotion and label ownership. 

• stuart coupe
• patrick emery
• shake some action
• bruce springsteen
• penguin books
• green records

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pocketwatch's Sydney launch is no wind-up

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By The Barman

The Barman

30 July 2023

Hits: 3620

Sydney teenage powerhouse rock trio pocketwatch, will mark the release of their debut EP, "It's Time" in their home town on Friday. Rock along to Marrickville Bowling Club and you’ll receive a CD copy as part of your admission.

“It’s Time” will also be on all major streaming platforms from August 4. Support acts are Polly and Vertigo and tickets are here.  Accompanied under 18s will be admitted.

• marrickville bowling club
• pocketwatch
• it's time
• polly
• vertigo

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