Oh Christ.  The Barman’s on the phone from Bondi.  Says he’s gonna make me a star.  David Essex once made me a similar offer which probably would have certainly given me a #metoo moment.  A Top 10 list?  Shit.  Have you seen the state of Planet Earth? 

Just when you thought the whole place couldn’t sink much further, they gave a pussy grabbing paedophile the keys to the kingdom and a button for his tiny finger.  I tried not to write.  Mother said something about “if you don’t have anything nice to say…”  I’d been putting my foot in the truth for a long time and it was getting me in trouble.  Hate mail.  Death threats.  I wasn’t allowed to attack their freedom to be dicks.

And it’s been a shit year with a whole bunch of old timers coming back to provide a less than memorable version of the past.  I could name names but, let’s just remember I was there when those moments were something to throw your life behind.  Best thing about saying  that is anyone asking “Is he talking about me?” is probably right.

Noticeable Exception 1 is Top Ten 1.

1. PATTI SMITH plays Sydney 2017.  How to grow old disgracefully…

1. The Aints at the Factory. Theatre in Sydney. The songs of the Saints’ initial period hold up after four decades with Know your product (with a horn section FFS!) being the best live track heard in ages. Harry Howard and the NDE in support were great too.

2. The Clouds at the (now sadly no longer with us) Newtown Social Club. It was as they'd never been away and the new songs are great. The Factory show was even better and Falling Joys were fabulous in support.

3. Nikki Hill at the Newtown Social Club. First time I'd seen her live and I'm now a disciple. Great voice, great presence, hot band with two cranking guitarists. She's the emerging first lady of soul and rock. Ignore her at your peril.

4. Guitar Wolf at the Marrickville Bowlo. In an era when punk has become a cliché, Seiji and the boys delivered the craziest show I’ve seen in years, if not ever, in front of the wildest mosh pit I’ve seen in years. From the opening in Godzilla masks to the human pyramid at the end, it was one for the ages, all powered by an unrelenting rhythm section with the hardest working drummer in showbiz. Good to see Bunt in a larger room and they were great.

KC goes to more live shows than your mother goes to Tuppaware parties. Here's his Top Ten of Sydney gigs.

EVEN – NEWTOWN SOCIAL CLUB
A power pop fans dream and a very early “gig of the year” contender from the Fab Three. Supported by the wonderful On and Ons and Soul Movers on a stinker of a summer EVENing. Is it heresy to say I like them and their songs so much more than You Am I? I eagerly await the Christmas Even show at The Landsdowne on December 23.

THE APARTMENTS – THE FACTORY FLOOR
A wonderful set of sparse songs, full of emotion, not sentimental but heart tugging and soul searing.  Spare and simple arrangements enhanced by nuanced and subtle musicianship of Peter Milton-Walsh’s fellow musicians, including Amanda Brown.

DIED PRETTY – ENMORE THEATRE
Following on from two cracking shows in 2016, Ron Peno and co delivered another amazing set and they were the band of the night at Radio Birdman’s big show. Brett Myers, what a guitarist.

_{The Celebrity Roadie Peter Ross attracts fans wherever he goes. Veteran road manager John Pearce (right) inspects his ponytail to make sure it's real.} 

The On and Ons @ almost everywhere – The Sydney power-pop phenomenon rolls on and gets ready to record a third album. Strong songs from singer/songwriter Glenn Morris and the pedigree of Clyde Bramley, Jon Roberts and Brian Morris make for irresistible pop. Welcome Aboard!
Watch

The Flaming Hands @ Factory Theatre & Enmore – A couple of power packed shows from these '80s icons blew my mind. Julie Mostyn’s crack band of Radio Birdman’s Warwick Gilbert, Peter Bull and Barton Price brought a polished sheen to Jeff Sullivan and Julie’s songs. They should come back again… soon!
Watch

So. The Barman (he of the stained apron and soggy socks) has suggested to me that I provide a Top 10 for 2017. 

He doesn’t say of what, unfortunately, so I am greatly tempted to relate (in considerable detail) each of my Top 10 Excretions this year, including two in which I barely made it to the potty on time. 

However, this is a family website, and we mustn’t say words like "shit’ or even "shitweasel".  

I’ll have to write them instead. 

Neko Case "Hell-On" CD
Another top release, especially considering Neko's then home apparently was lost in a fire, during recording

Lindi Ortega "Liberty" CD
Still got the goods, despite Lindi thinking she was done with it.

Margo Price @ Factory Theatre, Sydney
Great voice, top songs, fine show

Bad Reputation - Joan Jett documentary
Joan tells her story/her side of The Runaways story

Baby 8 - "Painkiller" video clip
Great clip for a tune from an album with an interesting name

_{Penny with her Japanese band the Silver Bells at her "Tokyo" album launch at Melbourne Museum. Pic by Gary Hallenan}

Album: “What Would I Know”, Brian Henry Hooper (Bang! Records)
This posthumous album release is startling in its beauty, rawness and poignancy. Songs about romantic and filial love and songs about death are delivered in Brian’s signature kicking against the pricks style.

Mick Harvey's production appears to form a bridge between the states of life and death. This leaves the listener unsure whether our bard has in fact crossed the River Styx to Hades; while the instruments, like bellows, breathe life into a raging fire. Are they all bellowing from the Underworld or are their feet still firmly planted in the land of the living?

Like Orpheus, the musician, poet and prophet (armed with an electric golden lyre and a distortion pedal) performing in front of Hades, God of the Underworld (clad in a black leather jacket), in the hope of retrieving his ill-fated bride Eurydice, Brian Henry Hooper sings songs to make gods weep.

Spencer P Jones. Spencer’s untimely and tragically premature passing was a lowlight of 2018. The only silver lining was the outpouring of love for the man, his music and his unbridled generosity. There will never be another like Spencer.

Beasts of Bourbon, Prince of Wales. Has there ever been a more emotional gig? Brian Hooper wheeled onto stage by nurses from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, plumes of smoke emanating from his oxygen mask. Spencer Jones, frail but determined to accompany his fellow Beast on stage for one last time. It was as sloppy as the Beasts once were, way back in the day. But it was beautiful.

Brian Hooper - "What Would I Know?" Recorded at Andrew McGee’s Empty Room property-cum-recording in Nagambie, Hooper’s reaction to the initial recording sessions was scathing. “It’s all shit,” he told me one day. But McGee saw enough in the recording to convince Hooper otherwise. A mixture of love, passion, pathos, self-loathing, resilience and gusto, this is a record brimming with emotional depth and musical complexity. RIP, Brian.

Jackson Briggs and the Heaters. James McCann put me onto these guys. Grinding country rock jams that should go on forever. They’ve got a new album out. Listen to it. Enjoy. Repeat.

The Breeders, Forum Theatre. It had been almost 25 years since I first saw The Breeders, at the Big Day Out in Adelaide, February 1994. On a Sunday night at the Forum Theatre The Breeders proved their every bit as vital as they were back in the day. I could listen to that riff in ‘I Just Wanna Get Along’ anytime.

2018 kicked off with the release of Amy Rigby’s “The Old Guys” (Southern Domestic). That was probably my outright, most spun album of the year and always played from start to finish in its proper sequence. Produced by Wreckless Eric, this really should be on every year end list. I hope that one day, the world will catch on because it could sure use her music as a balm right about now.

The Dahlmanns “American Heartbeat” mini album (Beluga/Ghost Highway) features  six songs whereupon Moss Rock City’s finest team up with Björne Fröberg (Nomads) and Chips Kiesbye (Sator) to deliver another chapter in timeless pop. It has a semi-baroque, almost folk quality. Line’s voice really has that Linda Thompson quality come to the fore. When I say folk of course I mean the LOUD variety, not that finger in one ear malarkey. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

My patience with one and two-person acts is often stretched but The Courettes are the exception to that rule. This fuzztastic duo make records that actually live up to the dynamite show. It’s nice to see them receiving the praise they deserve and how things are actually growing for them. “We are The Courettes” is their latest and unreservedly recommended album.

Lucy and The Rats, who are in Australia as I tap away, were the best thing I saw at the Wurlitzer Anniversary weekend in Madrid this past September.

2018 was a shit year but with some amazing gigs intertwined.

We have a sub-culture, in which fragments of our past local music scene survive from a time that was exciting (as Damian Lovelock said) “as England in 1966 or NYC in 1975”.

The folk who peruse and read this website are either musicians, sound engineers writers or rock pigs mostly from a by-gone era. Generally, a generation that was made of weekly trips for vinyl hunts on Sydney's Pitt Street, in particular Ashwood’s and independent record shops like Phantom and The Record Plant. A generation that had subscriptions to RAM Magazine, or Rolling Stone and read fanzines.

Our world was pre-gaming, home computers, no Netflix, no Internet, no YouTube. What mattered was music, and it was our obsession. We were playing in bands, producing bands, writing about music, collecting vinyl records before the hipsters made it expensive.

I've been to more than 140 gigs this year and the Tote is like an old high school friend you knew back in the day, who you catch up with at the 20-year reunion to find nothing has changed at all.

I've seen more gigs at my stomping ground, the Tote,  than any other venue, so here's all the awesome gigs I've seen there this year:

Chris Russell is a lone man and his guitar. He has one hell of a swampy voice - like he's been hit in the side of the head with a lump of Mississippi mud

FLUFF - killer trio that pins the crowd down with a riff and continues to wail in their face 

RVG - awesome post punk band, with an incredible singer in Romy Vager.

Heavy and Hammered. The yearly metal and punk festival put on by Melbourne community radio station PBS.

Little Desert: Roman Tucker from Rocket Science on Keyboards playing with an mix of Jefferson Airplane and Desert stoner rock 

Spencer P Jones tribute gig: The legend that is Spencer P Jones passed away this year and a whole bunch of close mates had a two-day bender and tribute gig for their mate. Kim Salmon, River of Snakes, Digger and the Pussycats all put on killer sets.

I thought I’d take a unique approach to this year’s Top 10 by actually listing my top music highlights of the year which didn’t involve myself.

So you won’t be reading about my killer gig with the mighty Buffalo “Revisited” at the Bald Faced Stag in Sydney, where we performed the astoundingly cool Buffalo album "Volcanic Rock" from top to toe to celebrate the record's 40 years in existence.

You also won’t be reading about the one and only show by The Four Stooges at the Marrickville Bowlo that was in a word “devastating“.

Also you won’t be hearing about The Cool Chambers who struggled against a few odds in finishing recording and mixing our super duper originals for a planned release in 2019...nope...no ...none of that rubbish.

But you will read my Top 10...that has in fact become an explosive hits Top 20 (not in order):

1) Pink Floyd The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Record Store Day Mono re-issue. This sounds as great as I’d always suspected (having never heard a proper mono mix). It’s punchy and dynamic! Psychedelic being invented for many.

2) Amyl and the Sniffers LP Big Attraction/ Giddy Up - real punky rock - see my review on I94bar somewhere and go and see them play a show...the kids are alright

3) Mark Taylor 2 x 7”. If only more records were like this. Lipstick Killers, Psycho Surgeons guitar destroyer steps out front with a really brilliant double 7” with insane packaging, great songs and playing.

4) New Christs at the Marrickville Bowlo. Great band, great sound. Still explosive.

5) Bikini Kill - The Singles LP. Finally out on vinyl. The later day BK 7”s on one record...real punky rock #2!

6) John Foy book - Snaps Crack Pop. John is a true rock and roll dude be it his artworks, music fandom or his time challenging the biz with his Redeye label, his book tells his tale with words and pictures. Keep well John.