Since, I was recently taken back by Suzie Stapleton’s compelling performance at the Bitter Sweet Kicks album launch Prince in St Kilda on Anzac Day, I did some searching. I found Suzie’s hypnotic and dark EP, “Obadi Diablo”, and it’s been on heavy airplay for more than two weeks. I contacted Ms Stapleton and requested a copy of her self-released debut EP of a few years back. Again, I was not to be disappointed.

Melbourne’s Bitter Sweet Kicks believe in the ethos of hitting hard and fast and then moving on. Each of their three releases to date has been a seven-track affair, long on dirty, high energy rock and roll and short on indulgences.

Their influences couldn’t be more obvious if they’d stamped the words: ‘AC/DC’, ‘Dictators’ and ‘Joan Jett’ on their heads with a branding iron. If you like this hard rock outfit from Arizona, the good news is that there are two more recent albums with which to assault your senses.

It’s been a long time since Garry Gray strode stages in Australia with a de-toothed chainsaw swinging at hip level as he fronted the psychodramatic Sacred Cowboys, so it’s reassuring to hear his menacing tones emanating from a studio again. This four-track EP is a taster to an album and measures up to expectations nicely.

Never underestimate rock and roll’s ability to look inwards, and backwards, to re-heat its own bones in an attempt to sound new. Cue Lonesome Shack, who hail, geographically if not spiritually, from the flanellete shirt and trucker cap American frontier of its North-West.

It seems a lifetime ago when the two great outposts of Sydney rock and roll were its northern and southern beaches. They were feeder tributaries to the inner-city and spawned bands like the Celibate Rifles and the Trilobites, to name just a couple. 

The venues that were their spawning grounds have long closed down, the bands willing to play their own music thin on the ground. Only a hardy few are still willing to take a risk and make the swim up-stream.

Sometime I-94 Bar scribe Ken Shimamoto has birthed a new band online. Brokegrove Lads is a psychedelic improv rock group with musicians from Fort Worth and Albuquerque and their first release is a single, composed in tribute to late Deviants vocalist, writer and Pink Fairies alumnus Mick Farren.

One of Australian underground music’s most special, enduring and well-travelled talents Penny Ikinger will play shows in Perth and Fremantle for the first time in May, en route to Japan to record with Deniz Tek.

There's not much more information than what's on the poster but onetime Stooge Jimmy Recca (now living in L.A.) is playing a show in Arlington, Virginia. If you want to know about Mr Recca and his Stooges history, you could do no better than reading this interview by Ken Shimamoto originally penned for Easy Action Records.