live

Aussie stoner favourites and Wollongong’s proudest exports, Tumbleweed, are off on a national Australian tour in August and September, playing the “Galactaphonic” LP in full for the first time, as well as a slew of favourites. 

The band has re-grouped after the untimely death of bassist Jay Curley.

"Galactaphonic" came out in 1995 and critic Ian McFarlane described it as "an epic masterwork, a strident album full of fierce, booming metal-boogie and catchy, hard-edged rock'n'roll". Tour dates:  

The Corner Hotel Melbourne
Friday August 21

The Manning Bar Sydney
Friday September 11

Rosemount Hotel Perth
Friday September 18

Fowlers Live Adelaide
Saturday September 19

Waves Towradgi Beach Hotel Wollongong
Saturday September 26

They emerged from the fog of COVID a year ago to give the pandemic the middle finger, riding a container ship to Australia all the way from Pismo Beach. 

The Psychotic Turnbuckles have again been coaxed out of semi-retirement in their palatial beachside mansions on the California coast to Destroy Dull Sydney one more time. Tickets are on sale here.

Make being at Marrickvile Bowling Club on Saturday, February 26 your New Year’s Resolution to see The Undisputed Champions of Rock and Roll bring the thunder.

Jessie the Intruder, The Grand Wizard, The Psychedelic Unknown, Count Forza and Gorgeous Karl Domah will be laying waste to two pretenders to the throne in Melbourne’s The Vibrajets and The Dark Clouds.

Comprised of past and present members of The Stems, The Shimmys, and The Breadmakers, The Vibrajets aren't the garage band the pedigree might suggest.

This is wigged out and twangin' surf and frat and rock'n'roll that goes back to the source – and is best enjoyed while shakin’ your moneymaker on the dance floor!

The Boys rode the original wave of UK punk in the ‘70s, missed the crest and ended up in the shallows; it wasn’t their fault. They suffered from poor distribution after signing to a second-order record label, but in the end they were far too musical to be lumped in with most of their contemporaries.

The Boys - specifically singer-guitarist Matt Dangerfield - had their origins in England’s most celebrated non-functioning band, the London SS, whose ranks included Mick Jones (later of The Clash) and Tony James (who went on to Generation X.) Both their subsequent outfits and the Sex Pistols made their first recordings in Dangerfield’s rented Maid Vale basement. Talk about being at the scene of the crime. Casino Steel did time in a glam band the Hollywood Brats who almost out-pouted the Dolls.

Reach for your ear plugs: Iconic Aussie firebrands the Celibate Rifles have extended their acoustic Brisbane performance by adding two extra amplified dates in Queensland.

Originally announced to be playing a one-off acoustic show at The Bunker in O’Malley’s Irish Pub in the CBD on 23 April, the band will play The Underdog Pub Co on 24 April and The Coolangatta Hotel on 25 April.

Five years after their music last rang in anyone's ears, the enduring rock-pop sounds of Voodoo Lust are about to be heard again. 

Voodoo Lust returns to Sydney for one show only at The Factory Floor in Marrickville on Friday, November 20 and tickets are on sale here. They play Brisbane's Beetle Bar on November 28 with tickets on sale on the door. 

Voodoo Lust was an integral part of the explosion of the Australian independent pub rock circuit of the 1980s with a string of independent chart hits and tours with some of the biggest names in rock and roll.

They’ll be joined by Leadfinger, the power quartet led by Stewart Cunningham (Asteroid B612, Brother Brick), and the gloriously ramshackle inner-west garage rock heroes The Escapes.

Gary Slater of Voodoo Lust.    Shona Ross photo

One of the hottest Sydney days of the year translated to one of the coolest gigs in almost as long when Voodoo Lust made their first appearance for five years in the Harbour City last Friday night.

With the mercury clocking 42 degrees Celsius (nearly 103 on the old scale) on this fine Friday it was no time for sitting out in the sun (setting or otherwise) and the appointed venue, Marrickville’s Factory Floor, was accommodatingly air-conditioned.

Remember Voodoo Lust? You would if you set foot in an Australian East Coast rock and roll venue in the late ‘80s. The Voodoos toured the shit out of this place and were a powerpop-punk outfit extraordinaire.

Sublime Sydney pop-rockers The On and Ons are preparing to unleash their second album, “Welcome Aboard”, this month on the redoubtable Citadel label.  They’ll launch it at Marrickviille Bowling Club in Sydney’s inner-west on August 26 with special guests, Loose Pills..

With a line-up of Glenn Morris (guitar-vocals), his brother Brian (drums/vocals), Clyde Bramley (bass/vocals) and Jon Roberts (guitar), this is a band with a musical pedigree that includes the Hoodoo Gurus, the Screaming Tribesmen, Paul Collins Beat and The Barbarellas.

In days to come, when rock and roll has finally been relegated to the cultural nursing home to be read its last rites. It'll be a nice room with dappled sun, shared with other old cogders like Jazz and Rolling Stone magazine.

People will reflect that some of its best times were in Sydney in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. They’ll also realise how good things were, and how easily they slipped away.

This wasn’t going to be one of those high faultin’ essays on the fragility of cultural scenes and the futility of trying to recapture them (because, you know, things can never be like they were.) About how you can’t put your arms around a memory. Telling you: Don’t Look Back. But a story "angle" can just happen.

Sometimes we try to bury nostalgia or pretend it’s not a valid thing. It’s so easy to hope you die before you get old when you’re in the full flourish of indestructible youth…and then you want to take it all back when you realise that the future's not so much uncertain and the end is increasingly near.

So let’s make the observation that if nostalgia isn’t so much the elephant in the room at the Enmore Theatre tonight then it’s taking up much of the available space in the foyer. And that's fine. More than ever, with so many people who were influential in rock and roll dropping off the twig. We all crap on about how bad 2016 was for that sort of thing but of course it's only going to get worse. 

Right: Sluggo from Flaming Hands under the Enmore lights. Shona Ross photo

^{Glenn Morris of the The On and Ons.}

The On and Ons
+ The Amazing Woolloomooloosers
Marrickville Bowling Club
Sunday, 12 December 2021
Photos: Shona Ross

Sometimes things are just obvious. Like using the term “pop music”.

It’s an archaic phrase and more than a little quaint, with its origins way back in the mists of time. Probably severely devalued, too, due to its prolific over-use in modern times. 

According to the The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, it originated in Britain in the mid-1950s as a description for rock and roll and the new music styles that it influenced.

Last Sunday afternoon-evening at Marrickville Bowling Club in Sydney’s inner-western blues delta was an occasion for pop music fans. And whether it was a breaking of the lockdown drought or an appreciation that this was an album launch, they turned out in their droves.

For overseas readers: Cold Chisel created a bubbling, intense hard-rock scene in ythe 1970s and greatly influenced the Australian music industry. 

They came before Radio Birdman. And they started in Adelaide.

To be precise, quite often at the Largs Pier Hotel. Which, if you look at a map, you will discover nestling in Largs Bay, to the north-west of Port Adelaide which, back in the early-mid ‘70s, was not quite as foul as Port Melbourne, but none-the-less, decent people didn’t go there. A local joke goes that over there you can hear the largs baying, but … as I said, decent people don’t go there…

Cold Chisel had a rough-as-guts image, and played rock akin to punk before punk, used feedback where it was effective, and were huge all around the country in the '70s and '80s. It would be interesting to see what might have happened had the Hitmen been this successful at Chisel’s expense… but that is to tempt the cobra called Fate.

Here’s one you might not have expected: Adelaide’s hard ‘n’ heavy Exploding White Mice are reforming for shows, in conjunction with the Adelaide Film Festival.

The Mice were a staple in the ‘80s and ‘90s with their landmark “Nest of Vipers” EP (1983) and a string of albums with a variety of line-ups. They were renowned as one of the best Radio Birdman-Ramones influenced outfits in Australia and took a distinctly poppy turn in their later days.

We're co-presenting a gig in Sydney on June 28, featuring the Psychotic Turnbuckles, BRUCE and Bunt. Your life will be changed if you attend. Jesse the Intruder from the Psychotic Turnbuckles explains that he may not make it in the clip below. 

For those of you who don't know, it's Festival time here in the Little City, which means for all intents and purposes, most of us who live here keep well away.

The Johnnys are playing a Sunday afternoon show at the hottest bar , the Link and Pin, in Woy Woy (an hour north of Sydney) in January. They're following in the steps of the Hard-Ons who playsed a secret gig with their new frontman, Tim Rogers, on December 10 as a warm-up for theiur national tour. The Johnnys do the Link and Pin on January 9 from 5pm. Buy a ticket in advance here.

English psychedelic punk legends The Damned are returning to Australia and New Zealand in March 2017 for their 40th anniversary tour.

Since their formation in 1976 and playing their first gig as supports to the Sex Pistols, The Damned have carved their own path.

They released UK punk’s first LP, followed by 10 studio albums, 15 live records and countless more 45s.

Known for songs like “Neat Neat Neat”, “Love Song”, Smash It Up” and “Eloise”, they’re ranked one of the most influential punk groups.

After a series of line-up changes and a temporary break-up, the band have continued to release masterful music, with their latest offering “So, Who’’s Paranoid?” their first album in seven years.

The tour will be lead by original members Captain Sensible on guitar and the remarkable David Vanian on vocals, as well as long time members Monty Oxy Moron, Pinch and Stu West.

Dates and ticketing dertails after the break.