Hard-Ons - currently undertaking the European leg of their 40th Anniversary tour - have released their new album “I Like You A Lot Getting Older”.

It’s the third album by the band's current line-up of Blackie, Murray, Ray and Tim, and follows 2021's ARIA top 5 debuting “I'm Sorry Sir, That Riff's Been Taken” and last year's “Ripper '23”. 

It’s on CD, digital format and in several coloured vinyl editions.  An exclusive limited edition green vinyl pressing (250 only, with different color on the cover) is available via the album's UK distributor. 

The new album's release precedes the recently announced 40th Anniversary Australian tour, and the Sydney SXSW premiere of the feature length documentary about the band, “The Most Australia Band Ever”. Additional screenings have been announced and all you need to know is below.

 _{Smoked Salmon (Melbourne) (from left) Jeff Hooker, Claire Birchall, Kim Salmon and Doug Galbraith.}

Kim Salmon's Smoked Salmon is the latest project for the Scientists/Beasts of Bourbon co-founder member and internationally revered avant-garde art rocker Kim Salmon.

Kim recently premiered a new video for "How Did They Ever Manage", the first single from the forthcoming new album on Cheersquad Records & Tapes. "How Did they Ever Manage" debuted at #1 on the AIR 100% Independent Singles chart earlier in the month.

The video was put together by Benny J Ward (of Rinehearts fame) at Pink House Productions, featuring images captured by Maxine Pryce. 

Robert Brokenmouth jumped at the chance to put Kim on the spot and ask questions about his latest project. 

Van Ruin
+ The Cants
Link and Pin Café, Woy Woy, NSW
Friday, September 21, 2024
Photos; Tony McNamara

 The Link and Pin has become a special venue that has created its own scene and mythology. It has own mix of outsiders, rock pigs’ mis-fits, eccentrics and those that you will not find at the local RSL club poker machine room.  

It’s located outside Sydney at Woy Woy on the New South Wales Central Coast. In its own unusual way, the venue has been celebrating Octoberfest in September and I say, why not?  Bavarian lederhosen and Ramones tee-shirts make for a great look.

Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorized Biography
By Jeffrey Morgan
(New Haven Publishing)

Did we need another Stooges book? Rhetorical question but slap yourself if you answered in the negative. This is a pared-down and re-cut variant of the coffee table format “The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated History” published by Abrams in 2009 under the authorship of Jeffrey Morgan and Robert Matheu. 

This version is prominently attributed to Morgan although Matheu is acknowledged on the cover and at length throughout.

“Iggy and The Stooges. The Authorised Biography” is still in hardcover and runs to 140 pages as opposed to the original 180-odd. It’s illustrated by the photos of  Matheu, John Catto and Jeff Magnum (yes, the onetime Dead Boys bassist) and others, although the reformatting has resulted in much of the original imagery beinbg deleted or replaced.

John Catto’s and Robert Sikora’s 1974 Toronto shots of Iggy and the Stooges are amazing additions but so were Craig Petty’s St Louis photos.  

The original book was the brainchild of Morgan and Mattheu after both had been co-opted by Italian uber fan and magazine editor Rosano Ciccarelli to contribute to his own Fun House publication in 2005. They tossed the idea around over some beers, let it slide and revived it a year later with Matheu in the driving seat.

Cowboy Logic – Garry Gray & Sacred Cowboys (Kasumen Records)

Just when you through it was safe to go back into the corral, those ornery Sacred Cowboys are back on the reservation. 

Molly Meldrum once called them the worst band he’d seen in five years and the Cowboys - or more correctly sole constant member Garry Gray - has worn that critique as a badge of honour ever since. And why not? Molly didn’t know his arse from his elbow and wasn’t likely to be converted, and his dissing the band on national TV played right into their ethos of confrontation.

X-Ray Words - The Prehistorics (self-released)

Aussie-based perenial European tourists The Prehistorics return with their sixth album. three years in the making and starting just after their last release "Racket du Jour" (2001). The core of the recording band for the last few records, Brendan Sequira (songwriter, vocals, guitar), and Michael Carpenter (drums, production, and plenty more things this time around), enlisted some great guitar players to help out along the way.

It's exactly what you'd expect from a Prehistorics album:  great playing and production, and just that little bit better than the previous offering.

Don’t Let Go. A Memoir – Rob Griffiths (Swerve/Off The Hip)

He readily confesses to not being a household name but if fervent enthusiasm for rock and roll and a back catalogue of should-have-been-hits counts, Rob Griffiths should be. 

Best-known as frontman for onetime Melbourne mod torchbearers Little Murders, Griffiths is one of the most underrated songwriters in the country, and now adds author to his c.v.

The autobiographical “Don’t Let Go” is a ripping ride that cranks up in Melbourne music’s underground of the mid’70s and continues well beyond - as told by an immigrant Pommy kid who jumped in at the deep end. 

Griffiths’ first band The Fiction shared stages with Boys Next Door/Birthday Party, News and JAB in a short but noisy existence. Punk was only a starting point: the did wear suits (briefly, at the end) and it was a hint of things to come. Griffiths makes the point well that the lines between genres in Melbourne are, and always were, heavily blurred.

His ‘60s influenced Little Murders rose from The Fiction’s ashes, soaring in popularity on the back of the burgeoning mod movement of the early ‘80s. When both band and the “Quadrophenia” trend foundered, Griffiths became a club DJ, a small-time record label chief and band manager, often in tandem with a day-time career as a schoolteacher.

Australian sonic chanteuse Penny Ikinger is touring France and Spain in October 2024 to promote her latest album, "Travels and Travails".

Fittingly for an international tour, the record is a compilaiton of new and older material recorded around the world that showcases her collaborations with artists from France, Australia, Japan and the United States. 

Thje tour is in both solo mode and with a mostly French band, The Not, a high-energy outfit that came together in a seedy Paris bar. 

The Not features Penny’s long time musical collaborator Vinz Guilluy (Penelope Inc, Charles de Goal, the Holy Curse, and Bad Music with Rob Younger) on bass, Greek guitarist Roy Mitakidis (ex-Sonic Tramps), JB Didier (ex-Rhinosonics) on keys and Frantz Arnould (Whodunit) on drums. 

Penny Ikinger and The Not
France and Spain Tour
OCT
13 -  L'Alimentation Générale, Paris,
w/ Glenn Burns (AUS)
17- Funhouse, Madrid
w/ Jibaros (ESP) 
18 - La Casa De Sabica, Pamplona
19 - VIII. ZZ Rock Jaialdia, Zumarraga 
26 - Skate Parc Le Moulin du Rousseau,
Périgueux, FR 
(solo)
w/ Kosmik Twaregs (ESP)
Tickets

It was 45 years ago when Melbourne’s Little Murders released the single “Things Will Be Different” on Au Go Go Records. The single put Little Murders and Au Go Go on the musical map, quickly selling out two pressings and garnering praise from around the world, including from Greg Shaw's BOMP! magazine.

In 1981, Little Murders were the leading mod band in Melbourne and went on to release three more singles and the “STOP” album before disbanding.

Between then and now,  the reconstituted Little Murders have released eight studio albums, two compilations and a live record, toured Japan, had a documentary made about them, recorded in Los Angeles and had international and local artists record their songs for a tribute album. Which brings us to the here and now.