punk

Fuzz garage trash rock's best-kept secret is a multi-headed, twin-drummer-driven thing that eats the frail and aged and comes from Switzerland. The aptly-named Monsters have three albums ("Birds Eat Martians", "I See Dead People" and "Youth Against Nature") to their credit, and this compilation on Australia's busiest underground label compiles their best, adding a couple of exclusive bonus recordings.

HITS BACK - The Clash (Sony)
Welcome to my new favourite Clash album.   Well that’s an odd statement, isn’t it?  I mean to say, it’s just a compilation album, isn’t it?  Another entry in a seemingly endless series of Clash compilation albums bearing titles like “Story of”, “Essential”, “On Broadway”, “Singles” and “Super Black Market”.    Who actually needs another reshuffling of this well trod back catalogue?  According to Sony Music, we do.   Like, surely this is an anniversary of something or other.  This time the compilation explores the central conceit of a “hand written set list by Joe Strummer.” This begs the question; was there ever a set list that wasn’t hand written before, say, the early nineties and the availability of the home computer with printer to even the most drug addled musician?  Love the hand writing and spelling, Joe.  Slade and the City of London Freemen’s School would be proud.

It’s might be a truism that Kevin K is rock and roll’s best-kept secret. If you’re a regular here you’ll no doubt be sick of hearing it (and I’m sick of writing it.) But I have to say it again: Kevin K is rock and roll’s best-kept secret. So if you’re in the dark, just go with the flow and get acquainted. Trust me, it'll all be for the best.

I was a fan of Sonics/Seeds/Shadows of Knight-inspahrd garage grunt right up until the moment when the likes of the Hives (My new favorite band? Not likely, pal) and the execrable Jet arrived on the set – which coincidentally was around the same time I started running, not walking, away anytime some SXSW shill offered me a new band’s CD-R that sounded “just like the MC5!” It seemed to me that the whole trip was starting to sound not just stale and derivative, but even a tad bit formulaic. What to do, then, but recede back into my bunker with my Boris and Ornette Coleman records? But The Barman pulled my coat to these guys, and the Barman is an honourable man.

If one of those great, booze-soaked rock and roll weekends like Garage Shock or the Las Vegas Shakedown were still a going concern (correct me if I'm wrong and one of them still is ) the Bloody Hollies would have been one of those bands that came in unheralded, blew everyone away and sold a ton at the merch table. And anyone who picked this album up would have been plenty satisfied 'cos it's 30 minutes of fire-breathin' punk fury.

It could be as the title says and allude to obsession, but “It’s Psychological” also proves you can make an entire LP from songs about U-boats and shit food and come out winning.

Maybe it’s something in the sub-tropical water or the inexplicably-labelled local beer (that’d be Fourex to you and me) but Brisbane’s small underground rock scene is teeming. HITS are the heavyweights, Mick Medew is the elder statesman, but there’s plenty more happening if you use a coin to rub the panel on the scratch lottery ticket and look underneath.

No ballads were written in the making of this album.

If you’ve heard or seen The Stukas, you knew that already. The Stukas are Sydney’s most enduring punk act, luxuriating in the glow of being known as their hometown’s “most hated band”. They play old school, take-no-fucking-prisoners punk rock.

But you probably knew that already, too.

Detroit rock? It never sounded so Australian as this Queensland band. Tokyo Beef slams out nine original songs on their second album and it reeks of Fourex pots and durries on a Gold Coast Saturday arvo down at the old Birdwatcher's Bar on Cavill Avenue.

The cover imagery is a Japanese Zero winging it past a burning wreck and it's apt enough. These songs are above mid-tempo punk rock with no safety net. Played live in the studio, theyy're first or second takes, for the most part. One guitar, bass, drums and a stand-and-deliver drawl.

Guitarist Punk (yep, that's his band name and for all I know it's the tag that his cellmate gave him) doesn't stand for subtlety and his tightly-coiled leads and sharp licks are all over these songs, free of overdubs.

This is bass-heavy punk rock from Sydney with an initial "we're-drinking-cans-at-the-football-on-the-hill-so-sing-along-with-us" flavour. This is five, short and sharp songs with names like "No Logo Is A Joke" and "You Want It" so you might suspect that it's all politically incorrect. Of course, first impressions are often wrong. It's punk rock with a left-of-centre social bent.

Super Best Friends (wasn't that a South Park episoide?) have already had the Triple Jay thumbs-up - but don't hold that against them. They knock around with Children Collide and Violent Soho so it's going to work as punk rock for the generation that can't remember last Friday night, let alone the Sex Pistols.

Guitarist Johnny Barrington sings in a broader-than-Sydney-Heads accent without sounding like he's bunging it on( like those worse than awful Australian hip hop acts.) Matt Roberts' bass sound hand playing s more pliable than the GDP of a small West African country and Adam Bridges' fluid drumming kicks things along nicely.

There's a lot of crunch in the guitars and a whole bunch of shouting. Blips of sythn run through "Karma Karma" so it's not just rote punk. The songs are catchy with choruses and drop-outs. All in all, perfect festival fodder. I can hear the kids at the next Splendour In The Grass singing away to "You Want It" or the scathingly anti-xenophobic "The Bleachers."

Fast, furious and fun - and a step above most of the latest wave of what passes for punk rock, Super Best Friends might lyrically fly over the heads of some the people who pick up on them but that's not going to stop anyone having a good time. - The Barman

1/2

Things have been quiet on the Kevin K front in this part of the world (Australia) since the demise of Vicious Kitten, the Canberra label that was single-handedly instrumental in bringing his music Down Under. French label Lollipop looks to have picked up the slack with "Kiss of Death".

In these times of re-packaged music there might well be a sucker born every minute. At various times, that sucker has been you and me. So when an adept pusher of pre-loved material and sometimes extraneous bonus items like UK label Jungle puts out the clarion call for worshipers of Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers to sign up for yet another collection of posthumous mixes, who are we not to answer?

If you are looking for some nice, FM radio-friendly songs with melodies, coherent vocals, studio overdubs and perfect mixes, stop reading now. This album is not for you.

"Landfill" is one fast, fuck-knows-what album that’s like getting a shot of who-knows-what, you-know-where. Getting much info on the band off the internet isn't great but who cares this album is a good, fast 30 minutes of Brisbane punk rock at its best.

_{Ferocious Chode get down at Bombay Rock.}

Hello I-94 bar users and abusers; it’s been a while but I'm very pleased to let all you Melbourne punters out there know that the wonderful Bombay Rock (on Sydney Road in Brunswick) is back up and running as a venue. 

The State of Victoria has championed the Australian underground music industry. Fuck, it is good to see Bombay Rock back. Run by Smash, the wonderful lady who also backs up playing bass and looking bad-arse with Ferocious Chode (more later), who has hand-picked all the venue’s acts. 

Then, there’s the most friendly crew of bar staff - shit, they make you want to drink just that few more - and for the prices, this old pensioner can certainly do that. So folks, I highly recommend this fine place. And Smash, you are awesome.

You thought "the New Invincibles" was a tag invented for the Aussie cricket team? Think again (especially after the Ashes loss). It’s the dying days of 2005 and this debut album from a Perth, Western Australia, four-piece - which came out a few months previously - almost slipped through the cracks. Almost. Thank the punk rock gods and pass the ammunition.

Here’s a 4-CD collection of rough gems from Latin America, Spain and South America that sums up all that’s great about ‘60s garage rock and roll.

In the last year I've seen or listened to more ragged garage bands than most of you have whinged about the weather. I've endured more crap than than a proctologist whose patients are addicted to laxatives. I've listened to the same three chords played ad infinitum, sometimes very badly and often in the same order. We all suffer for our art, sometimes moreso for the art of others.

Fourteen years old by now, "Lost My Head for Drink" sounds both ahead of its time and retro, and has an elusive timeless quality. Who else puts out such a fabulous mixture of mellow tunes and stifling ferocity? Rock discovered parallel with caustic, free-flying jazz? This version of Bloodloss is its own genre. Simple as that.

They’ve spent years trying to smell like rotting prawns in a hot European sun and on their newest album, the succinctly titled “M”, Swiss garage-trash combo The Monsters can finally lay claim to being tighter than a fish’s arse.

“M” celebrates 30 years of fuzz mania with a dozen songs of dubious intent that are delivered with grim precision. Some of this stuff makes a Helmet record sound sloppy, You couldn’t insert a cigarette paper between the furious boogie riffing of “Dig My Hair” or the dramatic “I Don’t Want You Anymore” if you tried (although why you’d want to do that is beyond me.) At the same time, The Monsters manage to sound unpolished.

Here’s news for those who thought Jeff Dahl had put his guitar in a rack and drawn an end to his prolific punk-glam career. He’s back with a new album - and it sounds like he never went away.

Dahl had been laying low with protracted health issues since pulling up tent pegs at his Arizona desert digs and moving back to his own (and his wife’s) childhood home of the Hawaiian Islands. Prior to slipping off the public radar eight years ago, Dahl was a force of rock and roll nature, turning out a string of abrasive, hard-rocking records and publishing one of the world’s greatest magazines, Sonic Iguana.

Reissues of obscure 1970s and ‘80s worldwide punk rock are not uncommon.  It seems that not a week goes by that some little-known band from the era getting a reissue of their rare $600+ single.

Sadly, IMHFO, most of the bands were pretty ordinary at the best of times…lacking guts, originality, style or any other characteristics that can make olde time punk so great.  These two releases here are the minority. If you call yourself a punk grab these pronto.

The Babeez 7” is brought to by Melbourne label Buttercup Records who have also issued titles by The Meanies, The Chosen Few and Deathwish. The Babeez were one of those great Melbourne punk bands from 1977 whose three-song single “Nobody Wants Me” is right up there with Razor, Rocks and The Leftovers in the Aussie ‘70s punk gold stakes.

This three-song single includes two early versions of songs from the first 45 and to hear them in this even more stripped down sound is a treat.  It sounds like a well-captured four-track recording. The guitars are not as prominent as the versions on the first 7” but it’s great to hear the vocals as clearly as this.