Split LP showcases top-shelf French garage rock

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By The Barman

The Barman

29 January 2022

Hits: 2651

Games, Sex and Life – Little Green Fairy/Go To The Station – The Sonic Preachers (Zombies on Mars Records)

This split vinyl album pairing of French veterans Little Green Fairy and evangelistic garage rock countrymen Sonic Preachers is très cool

The concept of a split single or EP is common, but two bands sharing a side of an LP less so. Maybe it’s some canny French move to save money in the pandemic, or a reflection of both bands coming from the picturesque port city of Sète,  (“the Venice of the Languedoc”) and sharing a guitarist? Who knows? Slap it on the turntable and stop worrying. The sound of both bands complements each other.

Little Green Fairy (it's an absinthe) has come a long way in their 20-plus years. Originally taking a derivative leaf from the rough and ready psych garage rock of The Vietnam Veterans, they’ve broadened their sound and it’s not easily pigeon-holed. They remain the go-to band for support spots on the French Mediterannean coast, and have an impressive back five-album catalogue. 

• garage
• little green fairy
• cassette
• chris bailey
• the sonic preachers
• go to the station
• games sex and life
• zombies on mars records

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Seminal sounds

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By The Barman

The Barman

23 January 2022

Hits: 3748

Tombstone b/w Revolution – Proton Energy Pills (Outtaspace)

You can’t replicate the past but you sure can borrow from it. Two founding members of ‘80s Wollongong upstarts Proton Energy Pills have teamed with three younger players to lay down some of their old band’s unrecorded songs and the results are satisfying.

As predecessors to Tumbleweed and the vastly underrated Brother Brick, the Protons lit a fuse under their hometown and made righteous noise on the national touring circuit before falling apart. Three decades on, there was never an intention to release these recordings and their progress to completion was stymied by various health issues.  After hearing the fruits of their labour however, original members Dave Curley and Stew Cunningham (he of Leadfinger) thought: Why not?

• tumbleweed
• outtaspace
• proton energy pills
• stewart cunningham
• dave curley

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Live tribute to Damo makes it to vinyl

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By The Barman

The Barman

22 January 2022

Hits: 3741

Damo The Musical – The Celibate Rifles (self released)

Sunday, September 22, in the year 2019 P.P. (Pre Plague) was the date when The Celibate Rifles took to The Enmore Theatre stage in Sydney to pay tribute to their late frontman Damien Lovelock. The show was originally scheduled for The Factory Theatre, but demand for tickets outgrew the room. And it sounded something like this…

This LP is a dozen songs from the night and a fitting tribute to the man widely known as Damo. With his place at the centre stage mic vacant, some friends had to fill it. More on them later, but first some observations.

The instrumental mix is as punchy as fuck; with an big bottom-end. The vocals are up and down - but put that down to the vagaries of varying mic technique. It was a round robin of singers without the luxury of extended rehearsals. The Rifles excelled in accommodating the rotating cast which gave its best in return.

• live
• vinyl
• kent steedman
• celibate rifles
• damo the musical
• jello biafra

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Debut for Robodebt is no debt and deficit disaster

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By The Barman

The Barman

22 January 2022

Hits: 3257

Flat Till Death – Robodebt (Swashbuckling Hobo)

So a band you’ve probably never heard of, let alone heard, releases its debut 45 and The Barman says it shakes more shit that a dunny carter’s truck on a cobblestone street and therefore you should own it? Best believe it. Four punk rock songs on this baby outta Brisbane, and they’re uniformly raw and energetic.

“Uber To The Penthouse” is perhaps the least developed in that it’s a handful of lyrics wrapped around a riff and the briefest of lead breaks, but it kicks like a motherfucker. Nicko (guitar) is a paint-peeler vocalist and the engine room of Dr Rock (bass) and Tom keep it simple, stupid, and economy is the watchword.   

• brisbane
• punk rock
• swashbuckling hobo
• robodebt
• flat till death

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Voice of the exiles

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

19 January 2022

Hits: 3462

Stranded. Australian Independent Music, 1976-1992. Revised and Expanded Edition
By Clinton Walker (The Visible Spectrum)

First issued in 1996, the brilliant “Stranded” was Clinton Walker's second "overground" success (his first being his biography of Bon Scott two years earlier), and was a more readily-available primer on how Australian music - as a whole - abruptly changed into something both credible and world-class. 

Yeah, and you disagree? Look, prior to 1978 (say) there were only a handful of bands determined, lucky, and good enough to get above the parapet and charge stark-naked and take on the world.

Around 1978, everything changed - though I'll emphasise that the world-wide impending undercurrent of change started way back. Hip young kids taking the present culture and either embracing it or pouring gasoline on it (or both), and investigating the past cultures and appropriating what they identified with. 

In his preface to this edition (with "invisibly" revised original text and very visible expansions), Walker makes several statements I vehemently disagree with. This is unremarkable, as the nature of The Life is that it is mercurial, shape-shifting. For example, where Walker is amused by Sonic Youth's title “1991: The Year Punk Broke”, I thought it insanely naff, wrong and downright stupid.

• rock
• australian
• inner city sound
• clinton walker
• Stranded. Australian Independent Music, 1976-1992.

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The Axeman's Story gets the book it deserves

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By The Barman

The Barman

17 January 2022

Hits: 3765

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

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Melbourne writer Patrick Emery’s exhaustively researched and engrossing biography of the late Spencer P. Jones is that it found a publisher.

Thanks to the internet, book publishing is a low-margin crap shoot. But Aussie publishing houses were already renowned for their lack of imagination and reluctance to take risks on books about anyone who’s not mainstream, middle-of-the-road or, ahem, National Living Treasures. Even those imprints that are outgrowths of universities, our bastions of free thought.

If you haven’t received a formal rejection letter from a friendly Aussie publisher after shopping a musician’s autobiography, you haven’t lived. The stupidity of not keeping and framing a letter that read, in part, “there is no market for this because Radio Birdman fans can’t read” is regrettable in hindsight – it should have gone straight to the pool room - but, fuck you, anyway, self-important publisher twat. You deserve to be shot by a ball of your own shit.  

Patrick Emery suffered his share of similar fools while trying to place “Execution Days”.

• the-end
• beast records
• beasts of bourbon
• paul kelly
• spooky records
• spencer p jones
• patrick emery
• the gun club
• execution days
• love police
• renee geyer
• life and times

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Vale Detroit Cobra Rachel Nagy, "Stoogeling" Natalie Schlolssman and guitarist Gregory Hilleard

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By The Barman

The Barman

17 January 2022

Hits: 3767

_{Rachel Nagy of the Detroit Cobras.}

The year 2022 is off to a very bad start. Over the weekend, the Detroit Cobras announced co-founder and vocalist Rachel Nagy had died.

Nagy co-founded the Detroit rock-soul band in 1994 with guitarist Mary Ramirez, and Greg Cartright (Reigning Sound, The Oblivians) was a musical collaborator. The band released four full-length albums, toured Australia in the 2000s and was scheduled to play US dates in March. No cause of death was revealed.

The weekend also claimed Nadalyn (Natalie) Schlossman, former manager of the Stooges fan club in the 1970s and a dedicated documenter and champion of the band since.

Known as “The Stoogeling”, Natalie lived in Philadelphia and ran the Stoogeaholics Facebook group where former Iggy and the Stooges guitarist James Williamson has paid tribute:

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Ex-Bad Seed a consummate tale teller

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

16 January 2022

Hits: 3315

Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars
By Barry Adamson (Omnibus Press)

This autobiography is so sumptuous and clean that I don't want it to end, so I'm taking it in glorious nibbles. I haven't finished it yet, but sod that. You need to know how damned good it is, so I'm filing the review now. Just order it, buy it, demand it from your music emporium. 

Barry Adamson is perhaps best known to the Australian rock 'n' roll world as a founder  member of Magazine, covering for Tracy Pew while the latter was in jail, and the first four Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds LPs (and re-joining in 2013). He is also an accomplished producer of film scores.

His own band came to Australia in September 2012 on the back of his LP “I Will Set You Free”. I have very fond memories of that magnificent night in Adelaide, not least because I only recall three other friends there: one of whom we all miss terribly.

• bad seeds
• magazine
• nick cave
• omnibus press
• up above the city
• down beneath the stars
• barry adamson

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Even's album for the ages

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By John Ventoura

John Ventoura

12 January 2022

Hits: 3074

Reverse Light Years – Even (El Reno)

This double album features Even at their creative best – a beautifully crafted 17-track, 81 minutes with something for all tastes. It provides a definitive, seminal record for long-time fans and will certainly open the door to new legions.

Ash Naylor is arguably the hardest working “stop and go man” in Oz music. He, (Wally) Roderick Kempton II (bass) and Matt Cotter (drums) make a formidable three-piece. And a durable one.

• eleven
• ash naylor
• wally kempton
• Reverse Light Years
• matt cotter

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