You may know Melbourne's Dave Laing from many places. He’s been a record label head for decades, with his own Grown Up Wrong and Dog Meat labels, home to such influential bands as Powder Monkeys, Bored! and Hoss, and more recently Lipstick Killers, Screaming Tribesmen and Flamin’ Groovies.
He’s also worked with the likes of The Pretty Things, The Imperial Dogs, Dead Moon, The Cheater Slicks, Billy Childish & Thee Headcoats, The Devil Dogs, Teengenerate, The Real Kids, the Screamin’ Mee-Mees, The Barracudas, the Jeff Dahl Group, The New Bomb Turks and Chris D.
What you may not know is that he's a power pop freak - one who doesn't merely trudge through the record crates, either. These days he's a music publicist and (again) runs the two labels that he started way back in the 1980s. He's also an occasional music writer for Ugly Things and elsewhere.
Last year UK label Cherry Red released one of those astonishing box sets that they excel at. “'I Wanna Be A Teen Again! - American Power Pop, 1980-1989”. It was curated by the very same Dave Laing, who also wrote the liner notes and publicised it.
(It's not on vinyl. Of course, if you're a record-collecting geek who cannot abide such modernity as a Compact Disc, there's not much I can say (except to observe that you are one sad pathetic creature).
One of the reasons that multiple-disc compilations are so damn good is that they tick a lot of boxes. First, the songs aren't chosen by algorithm bots which seem to think you want to listen to the same thing 24 hours a day, but by real human beings. Second, you're not gonna be familiar with most of these songs (which means you're going to go nuts trying to find more by the bands which impress you the most).
Of course, if you're geek enough to know a lot of the songs here, the CDs are a groovy go-to which will allow you to piss off the neighbours while you fire up the barbecue and suck down the stubbies.
You know, never mind the AFL, put on a Cherry Red box set.
Well, in my house, anyway.
Also, of course, these compilations are vivid, real, writhing, living music history of dreams made, failed, crashed, burned, or else hints of future stardom and globetrotting fame.
Here's Dave's original press release:
Over 75 tracks full of hooks, harmonies and high energy from the American and Canadian power pop scenes of the '80s! With a British-American group - Katrina & the Waves - and a Canadian-Australian individual - Chris Masuak from Radio Birdman - included for good measure!
All the best from The Knack-inspired early '80s power pop explosion as well as subsequent movements including the Paisley Underground and jangle pop, and the late '80s power pop underground. Includes punky power poppers (Ramones, Stiv Bators, Zeros, Fastbacks), power pop chart toppers (Cheap Trick, The Knack, The Go-Gos, The Bangles, The Romantics, Rick Springfield!), power pop legends (Paul Collins' Beat, Dwight Twilley, Eric Carmen, Shoes, The Rubinoos, Material Issue) and some unbelievably great obscurities, including original Blondie member Gary Valentine's version of his classic "I'm Always Touched By your Presence, Dear" as recorded by his solo band The Know, and the collection's title track, by The Toms."
Tied in to the power pop threat are a number of releases now on Grown Up Wrong!: Albums by '70s Tasmanian popsters Beathoven and Sydney 1980-81 power pop group The Breakers, as well as a reissue of the sort of power pop classic that is The Eastern Dark's legendary "Julie Is A Junkie" b/w "Johnny and Dee Dee" single.
So, I put a few questions to Dave ...
I-94 Bar: In your liner notes to “I Wanna Be A Teen Again!” you say that the term power-pop "has always been subjective, but I see it as something that can be encapsulated in the phrase 'hooks, harmonies and high-energy”. Now, that includes an awful lot of bands, from the early Beatles, The Who and on and on. What distinguishes it from rock'n'roll or ordinary pop?
David Laing: The Beatles and the Who are basically the beginning of what has become known as power pop. Indeed I really see it as something that specially started with Beatles songs like “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You”. Those songs redefined what people meant by pop at the time, and it’s a powered up - by amplification or an intensity - version of that style of pop which writers like Greg Shaw and Max Bell and bands like Pezband (the first band in the '70s to use the term) were specially referring to when they first started using the term.
And what Pete Townshend was doing with songs like “The Kids Are Alright” and referring to (along with ‘64-‘65 Beach Boys) when he first coined it.
The thing with this is - it's all fairly academic. People bemoan any talk of genres and the like and I get that, but by the same token if you wanna talk about music, there are particular styles that each have multiple adherents. It's the same as in film, popular fiction, etc.
Yes, good music is good music - but if you want to try to figure out what it is you like about something and then use that knowledge to help you find more of it, genres are handy. So if I sound like a wanker talking like about this stuff I probably am, but it's really only because I love this style of music - just as I love a number of other styles of music - and I'm keen to understand what it is about it that I like ...
I-94 Bar: You also write that "power pop for me requires a conscious attempt to be power pop - or, at least, to do all the things that we fans expect power pop to do. And, of course, the ability to do those things well." But surely there are plenty of examples of power pop where the band hasn't really set out to be power pop?
David Laing: Yeah. I've covered that by the "or, at least, to do all the things that we fans expect power pop to do" bit. No-one referred to bands like Badfinger or the Raspberries or Big Star as power pop when they were around - so they obviously weren't setting out to be power pop, but they were consciously setting out to take the pop elements of '63-'64 Beatles and the like and contemporise them, which in many instances brought more power to the pop.
What I was trying to say with that point was that to me it is actually a fairly specific thing and I don't think anybody really hits on it by chance. They're knowingly referencing a certain style ... A lot of power pop fans hate the thought of it but there are examples of bands from outside the genre - KISS, Boston, Queen etc - who, with certain songs, made a real point of referencing that style too, and I consider those particular songs to be of the genre as well ...
By the same token, there are plenty of bands who - or songs which - combine melody and power who or which I don't consider power pop because they're not referencing and are too far removed from the early Beatles thing ...
I-94 Bar: What's so special about the very specific period 1980-89? I mean, the '70s were chockas with glam - which, musically, was also power pop, but also power pop songs which weren't connected to glam, surely?
David Laing: Nothing special about that period really. I chose it because Cherry Red had already done a '70s power pop collection so I suggested an '80s one. The first point I made in the liner notes is that the big explosion of power pop - which coincided with the term (which Pete Townshend had coined in an interview in '67) being bandied about - was pretty much from '78 to '81 or '82, so the decade demarcation is actually unfortunate as it splits that period down the middle.
I prefer the '70s stuff myself - early '70s things like Raspberries, Blue Ash, Badfinger, Big Star etc, mid '70s like the Flamin' Groovies' “Shake Some Action” album, Dwight Twilley Band, Cheap Trick, the Nerves etc, and then the stuff that came in '78 and after, like Bram Tchaichovksy, the Stiv Bators Bomp! singles, Young Modern etc etc ... And yes, there was some great glam power pop, too.
I-94 Bar: You also mention that "around 1982 ... the term power pop quickly fell out of favour as it was seen as a millstone, or at least a surefire way to get shit-canned by critics". Why did this happen? I mean, love songs have always been a staple in popular music, so why would a high-energy love song be worse than the endless dreary ballads proffered as valid entertainment over the last century?
David Laing: It happened with the backlash to The Knack. The hype around them turned a lot of people off, and a lot of other bands were tarred with the same brush; the failure of The Knack's second album also meant the record companies lost interest in a hurry. Indeed, a lot of music critics were suss on the supposed genre from the get-go because they felt it was retrogressive and/or a hype from the get-go.
That'd be Beathoven...in mono.
That said, as I point out in the liner notes, there were still things happening in the style that were well received - things like the Go-Gos and later the Bangles, Smithereens, even later Redd Kross. All those acts avoided the term power pop like the plague.
I-94 Bar: Surely the origins of the popular song go back at least to the 1500s; do you think the modern popular song took root in the stage musicals 1920s and 1930s? That reminds me, are you a fan of PG Wodehouse?
David Laing: Dunno about the 1500s but I guess jongleurs - roving minstrels - were doing thing their thing at the tail end of the Middle Ages which was around then and obviously some folk songs go back centuries. Folk pretty much meant “of the people”, which I guess means those songs were once considered popular.
I would hazard a guess and say popular song probably took root with the advent of sheet music and then it got stronger again with the proliferation of radio and then with recorded music, which was well established by the '20s.
If you're connecting this to power pop, I think there was a strong country influence on power pop (and in turn going back, a strong British folk influence on country music), which came in through such Beatles influences as the Everly Brothers and Carl Perkins. The Who were hugely influenced by the Everlys too. The Beatles early on were also into show-tunes so that earlier 20th century 'pop' carried through for sure.
And no, never read Wodehouse; always assumed it was low body count sort of stuff and thus probably not my bag.
I-94 Bar: So, how did the “I Wanna Be A Teen Again!” box come about? Did you approach Cherry Red with an idea? How complicated is it to acquire the permission to use each song on a compilation?
David Laing: Yep, I pitched to Cherry Red. Been trying to get a few things up with them for a while and took an opportunity to meet with them when I was in London in early 2024. Their '70s power pop one had done alright (despite reservations from within the worldwide power pop fan base) and I said to them, with confidence, that I could do a much better job on the '80s one. And yes, it's a complicated process - but it's what Cherry Red do and they're pretty efficient at it.
I-94 Bar: Dave, what made you re-boot Grown Up Wrong!?
David Laing: For a long time there's been stuff I wanted to reissue, compilations I wanted to put together etc. The second ever Grown Up Wrong! release, from 1986, was the raw as hell live album by The Survivors (Jim Dickson, Bruce Anthon and Greg Williamson's punk-era Brisbane band) and the second or third Dog Meat release was the possibly even rawer live album by Los Angeles' The Imperial Dogs from '74, so I've always been into archival stuff as much as new stuff.
Now I'm very much into the archival stuff - and that's how it will stay thanks to an unpleasant and bemusing experience with the two lovely people who recently took on the management of a young local group I was doing stuff with on Dog Meat.
When I worked at Shock, after I stopped doing Dog Meat (basically due to burn-out), I was eventually able to do some stuff in the wake of the “Do The Pop!” comp, which was super-successful and which I guess proved to the powers that be that there was money to be made from doing it, so that enabled me to do archival releases by the Hitmen, Screaming Tribesmen, Sacred Cowboys, Reals/Negatives and more.
Then I had a brief stint at Fuse and that was when I first revived Grown Up Wrong! for archival releases by Hot Knives (a Flamin' Groovies offshoot), and again the Screaming Tribesmen and a recently recorded live Young Modern album.
Then, during my six or seven nightmare years working at Warner, I was able to revive the Festival imprint and do some stuff that I'm really proud of like "Down Under Nuggets", "(When The Sun Sets Over) Carlton: (Melbourne's Countercultural Inner City Rock Scene Of The '70s)" and the reissue of the first Sunnyboys album - put together by Tim Pittman - with the added live in the studio album length pre-album demo session that I came across on a spreadsheet of tapes in the Warner Australia archives.
After leaving Warner I revived Grown Up Wrong! again in 2018 or so. At that time I had the thrill of releasing the Scientists' 1979 live 3RRR broadcast, which I'd taped off the radio back in the day and always absolutely loved, and an expanded version of the incredible live album by Scott Morgan's Powertrane called “Ann Arbor Revival Meeting with Deniz Tek and Ron Asheton”, and then a couple of Flamin' Groovies releases licensed from Warner UK and Skydog, including a collection of every Jordan/Wilson tune from '71 to '80.
And then came the Lipstick Killers 2xLP and 2xCD sets, which I'd been planning for quite a while and dreaming of doing for much longer. I was really thrilled with how they came out and the reception they got internationally too. And then belatedly the Lipstick Killers 'Tour De Force - Live in Adelaide 1979' LP late last year.
I-94 Bar: It's been seven years or so now; is it all as hard as it seems from the outside? What keeps you doing this?
Dave Laing: It's been 40 years actually - on and off - since I started Grown Up Wrong! and released the single by Melbourne's then just broken-up Gas Babies. The A-side was a Flamin' Groovies cover of course. And then Grown Up Wrong! became Dog Meat in '89 and that lasted til '96 or '97 and then I did nothing label-wise until I put together “Do the Pop!” in 2002
What keeps me doing it? Like I said, lots of stuff I still wanna reissue, compile, etc. I can't play music so writing about it and doing this stuff (and doing radio, which I did for maybe six or seven years in the '80s/early '90s on PBS, and then RRR) is maybe my own complicated and time-consuming form of musical expression. Either that or a complicated and time-consuming attempt way to associate myself with favourite artists and/or draw attention to myself ...
A peek inside the Beathoven LP.
I've also revived Dog Meat, with releases so far by Simon Juliff (Melbourne guitar pop guy - ex-The Roys - in a sort of skewed Big Star/Kinks kinda way, whose band features Joel Silbersher and Jimmy Sfetsos from Hoss and Greg Bainbridge from the Surrealists), Pat Todd & the Rank Outsiders (Pat is my old friend from the Lazy Cowgirls) and the young local band whose name I'm not gonna mention anymore thanks to their new managers.
Next up on Dog Meat will be an expanded and remixed by Mikey Young, 2LP/CD version (with the complete show) of the Powder Monkeys' “Blood Sweat & Beers” live album from '99 and a 2LP./CD “Best of” the Australian Dog Meat stuff from the label's first go round. So ideally, Bored!, Powder Monkeys, Hoss, Freeloaders, Philisteins, Splatterheads and more. And a second Simon Juliff album. Then more Powder Monkeys, a new Hoss album...
I'll also mention (even though you haven't asked!) that I also write for fanzines and the like and have done for 40-plus years. Back in the '80s I did stuff for "B-Side”, Lindsay Hutton's fab “Next Big Thing” out of Scotland, and some of Steve Lorkin's great zines like “The Foreign Object”.
Apart from the occasional thing on I-94 and a big interview with Andy Shernoff of The Dictators, and a big piece of the great Daddy Cool that I did for the now-on-hiatus "Please Kill Me" site, over the last few years I've mostly done stuff for Mike Stax's long-running zine "Ugly Things'' out of California, which I started writing for in the late '90s with a big Real Kids two-parter. I've just completed a four-part, 63-page interview with Ed Kuepper about The Saints that I'm really happy with, especially the first part. The fourth part has just been published.
I-94 Bar: What you've been up to lately is pretty special. You have reissued the Eastern Dark's single 'Julie Is A Junkie'/'Johnny and Dee Dee'. Now, I never saw the Eastern Dark; what made them special for you?
Dave Laing: They were kind of perfect for me in the combination of influences/styles - so much I loved thrown into a blender - and the brilliance with which they executed it. I was lucky enough to stumble across them early - third or fourth gig, on the second night of my first ever trip to Sydney in April 1984, at the Trade Union Club, supporting The Died Pretty and Decline of the Reptiles, in what was a fill-in spot for someone else.
Mark Roxburgh photo
I had seen James Darroch play in Melbourne with the Celibate Rifles (most memorably one night at the Seaview Ballroom when he came on stage in bare feet, the most destroyed pair of jeans, mirror shades, no shirt and a fur wrap) so I knew who I was witnessing, and they were simply incredible. One thing that really struck me was - a week or so beforehand I'd just discovered and become a bit obsessed with the fantastic song “Gotta Tell Me Why” by the Slickee Boys, and then these guys played it.
But everything they played was great. And then, that night I met up with my penpal/tape-trading buddy Steve Lorkin, and I ended up staying at his house for a week or more, and James was friends with Steve and his numerous housemates, so he was around and I got to know him a bit. Next time I went up to Sydney they'd just recorded the single and James gave me a cassette to take back to Au-Go-Go, where I'd recently started working. So to have that connection was all pretty exciting. I was 19-20 at the time.
A bit later the band came to a barbeque at a share house I lived in in Prahran and James couldn't wait for his turn on our tiny barbeque so he ate the steak he'd brought - raw. That was impressive.
I-94 Bar: You've also arranged archival LP releases from two Australian power pop bands of the late '70s, Beathoven and The Breakers, and you've also arranged for exclusive editions of each for Record Store Day UK. Now, who the hell are Beathoven, and why should we care? And, why on earth did they record themselves at a high school (and where the fuck is Pascoe Vale?)
Dave Laing: Where have you been, Robert? Beathoven were Tasmanian Beatles-obsessed young guys in the mid-70s who became bona-fide pop stars on the Apple Isle before moving to Melbourne. Actually, St Kilda - apparently they were neighbours with some Boys Next Door and Teenage Radio Stars).
They signed to to EMI, releasing one single, going on "Countdown" etc etc. Kim Fowley got wind of them in LA and declared them the next Bay City Rollers, and when he came to Australia on a scouting mission over Christmas 1978-'79 he looked them up only to find out EMI had dropped them.
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Eventually they changed their name to The Innocents and released a couple of singles. The Beathoven/Innocents stuff is revered internationally now in certain power pop circles - the guys from The Lemon Twigs are apparently fans. There was a Beathoven/ Innocents collection released on Raven in the '80s and that's being reissued in France soon.
So, they recorded themselves at a high school because that's where they played. What they did, which was kinda wimpy by the rock standards of the day, didn't really suit the pub circuit, so they basically created a circuit for themselves playing high school lunch-time gigs, which were a thing back then. Even AC/DC did some.
The live album is nuts - it was recorded with two mic's taped to the front of the stage so it's pretty primitive and there's lots of teenage screaming. It's a real time capsule - imagine the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl transposed to a suburban Melbourne high school in the '70s ... Pascoe Vale is an inner north-western Melbourne suburb, in between Coburg and Essendon.
I-94 Bar: Come to think of it, who on earth are The Breakers?
Dave Laing: Now you're really showing your ignorance! Who doesn't know the Breakers?? Oh, 'everybody' you say??? Well... on that same down-under trip, Kim Fowley, in Melbourne, met Jarryl Wirth, guitarist with fantastic Melbourne punk group News, who had previously been called Babeez. He liked Jarryl's songs and recorded a couple of them (with, I believe, the Beathoven guys on backing vocals or something) and then in Sydney he met Jimmy Manzie, the songwriter and bass player from chart toppers Ol' 55.
Ol' 55 were moving into a more early '60s Beach Boys/Four Seasons type thing with two brilliant singles “Stay (While The Night Is Young)” and “(Feels Like A) Summers Night” which would've done Brian Wilson proud. Fowley had the idea of putting these two guys together and so, even though Fowley had already left the country, Jarryl went to Sydney and the Breakers were formed.
They rehearsed for maybe a year, made lots of demos, played an early gig supporting the B-52s, made a single, appeared on “Countdown” and in “Puberty Blues” and then split when Jarryl left to join the Innocents (the band that evolved out of Beathoven - Jimmy Manzie had produced the two Innocents singles and the Breakers had actually played on them both apparently).
What’s known in hardcore KISS fan circles is the fact that Kim Fowley, who co-wrote with Manzie the Breakers B-side “Lipstick & Leather”, actually got KISS to demo the song a year or two later. Unfortunately they never released it.
The Breakers live. Photo supplied.
The Breakers stuff is to my ears informed by the then-contemporary sounds of Cheap Trick, the Quick, the Records, the Rubinoos, the Dictators' “Manifest Destiny” album, and the first Cars record. There is a notable Kim Fowley influence too - the song “They Know I Smoke” to me has a real Venus & The Razor Blades thud to it, and he co-wrote some of the songs and his oddball lyrical thrust seems to be have been an influence on other material. I'd call it new wave power pop with occasional hard rock inflections. I think fans of the Hollywood Stars and Redd Kross would dig it.
I-94 Bar: Look, to me this stuff is downright obscure. How on earth did you discover it?
Dave Laing: I was aware of it at the time. Saw Beathoven on “Countdown” - they were a bit wimpy for me then I think. But then “Shy Girl”, their single, is to me, one of their lesser songs - and I bought the Innocents singles when they came out. I was a power pop fan, right?
The first Innocents single “Sooner or Later” is as good as power pop got in 1980. With the Breakers, I was a huge Ol '55 fan when I was a kid and thought Jimmy wrote great songs. By mid-'79, I had discovered both News and Babeez and loved their records so I knew who Jarryl was. Any idea of a band that combined the songwriter from a '50s/early '60s revival type band who had had a number-one album and multiple top 10 singles with the guitarist from a couple of infamous underground punk bands sounded pretty crazy and great to me. The Ramones were '50s/early '60s revivalists in their own way anyway.
The actual Breakers single is maybe a bit too much on the new wave/hard rock end of things for me and not their best material. The demos and live stuff is great.
I-94 Bar: Dave, what an extraordinary story. But, there's obviously so much going on in the background! Releasing records ain't cheap and, like documentary making, ain't for the faint of heart. Were some of those releases a struggle to put out?
Dave Laing: After the first release or two I've never had to front my own money for pressing. My distributor - first Au-Go-Go, then Shock and now Forte Music Distribution in the UK - would pay for pressings and it would come out of sales.
I-94 Bar: Rock'n'roll is a little like worship, worship at an altar, and it strikes me as being incredibly addictive and consuming. I know of two Australian label-owners who mortgaged their houses in order to finance the recording and release of bands which they'd become besotted by. And neither of their marriages survived, either. I kinda don't want to ask this, but I know I have to - how on earth have you coped over the years? What is it about this rock'n'roll altar which captures you so strongly?
Dave Laing: The question is all a bit dramatic. I've coped by doing it when I enjoy it and stopping when I don't. How I've coped working in the cesspit that is the music industry - working for my livelihood as opposed to releasing records that I want to release - is another question.
I-94 Bar: What possessed you to start releasing records? I mean, it's right up there with me being deluded into thinking that the books I write might attract a wider audience.
Dave Laing: When I started getting properly into music I soon started realising that there were some small labels who obviously had a bit of a vision and who created an identity for themselves - based on the sort of music they released - that I found appealing. Bomp! was probably the first one. Phantom, until they released the bloody Machinations, the French label Skydog, and then of course Citadel.
Originally, going back to maybe '83, I was gonna do a fanzine - even interviewed The Scientists, The Hoodoo Gurus, Rob Younger and Chris Masuak and others and had friends from overseas contribute stuff - but I couldn't get my shit together, at which point doing a record label seemed easier, as it didn't involve writing stuff, layout etc. So that's what I did.
I-94 Bar: Now, come on, give. What went through you when you first held the very first record that you'd had made?
Dave Laing: Can't really remember but yeah it would've been thrilling. My most vivid memory of the early days was getting the phone number of Real Kids guitarist Billy Borgioli from an Au-Go-Go mail-order customer in Boston who had sent me a tape of the Primitive Souls, which was Billy and fellow ex-Real Kid Allen Paulino's band at the time (circa '86). And calling him and asking if I could put out a record and him saying, “Sure!”
That was a thrill as the Real Kids were and remain one of my very favourite bands. And I ended up putting out the Primitive Souls' only release, a 12" EP, and then got to hang out will Billy and Alpo in Boston. Back in those days, any money that might have been made was quickly chewed up by overseas phone calls. I remember spending too much time on the phone with Pat Todd from the Lazy Cowgirls. And Billy Childish.
I-94 Bar: You mention The Beatles being power pop. Yet, while the rock'n'roll revolution was clear, surely some of that era was power pop? Little Richard, surely?
Dave Laing: “Some of that era”? Which era? Little Richard was R&B and rock'n'roll and incredible of course, and a big influence on the Beatles. But not on the pop side of The Beatles. That came from the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and mid-20th century pop of all sorts.
Little Richard is not by any definition a power pop artist... see my previous answers my explanations for what I believe power pop to be. Even though the term sounds like it could be broad, it's quite a narrow and specific niche, in the same way that rockabilly is. And.... I'm sort of on the fence as to whether the Beatles are power pop anyway.
As I mentioned earlier, power pop is sort of a “powered up” version of "Please Please Me” and the like. To me. power pop is more a '70s thing, although those classic Who singles definitely go the powering up started ...
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I-94 Bar: Last, a few brisk questions. Seven favourite power pop songs?
Dave Laing: Off the top of my head:
“Shake Some Action” - Flamin' Groovies
“Tonight” – Raspberries
“Abracadabra” - Blue Ash
“It's Cold Outside” - Stiv Bators (his cover of The Choir's song)
“Baby Blue” – Badfinger
“Surrender” - Cheap Trick
“Walking Out on Love” - Breakaways/Paul Collins' Beat
And I haven't included any of the '60s precursors here, as that opens up too big a door ...
I-94 Bar: Seven favourite (NON power) pop songs?
Dave Laing: This is too hard but seven off the top of my head that I really dig:
“Motorhead” - Motorhead (Chiswick Records version)
“Raw Power” - Iggy & The Stooges
“Suspicious Minds – Elvis
“Hot Rails to Hell” - Blue Oyster Cult
“Midnight to Six Man” - Pretty Things
“Never to Be Forgotten” - Bobby Fuller Four
“Baby You've Been On My Mind” - Dion & The Belmonts (doing Dylan)
I-94 Bar: Five gigs which impressed you the most?
Dave Laing: Too hard but - New Race 1981, New Christs 1983, Eastern Dark 1985, Redd Kross most times I've seen them and Dead Moon in NZ in '91.
I-94 Bar: Five awful gigs/ or, if you like, five bands you cannot stand?
Dave Laing: Bands I can't stand - InXS, InXs, INxs, InxS, INXS
I-94 Bar: If you had a free rein to compile five further Cherry Red compilations, what would they be?
Dave Laing: A 6xCD proto-punk set, starting with The Fugs; an improved 4xCD '70s power pop set; a 3xCD “Mod Twang: The Country-Power Pop Nexus” set; a 2x or 3xCD “Let's Do The Time Warp: The Seeventies '50s Revival” set; a '70s-To Now garage rock revival one, starting with the Droogs covering the Sonics and The Shadows (on Knight) in '73 (I have track-listings in various stages of completion for all these somewhere!).
I-94 Bar: My god, I guessed right, you'd already planned the things out ... Five guilty indulgences?
Dave Laing: Power Pop not a big enough indulgence for you?? Ok, I'll add potato cakes (no, they're not called “scallops” in any sensible society); dim sims’ Porter and/or Stout; an interest in all things Fortean - UFOs, the Occult, magic, Jack the Ripper etc; crappy '60s & '70s "Men's Adventure Fiction" fiction- especially series like “The Destroyer”, “Death Merchant”, “King Kung-Fu” etc and; all manner of pulp crap.
I-94 Bar: Since we’re in a bar, whjat are you drinking?
Dave Laing: A pint of Hop Nation’s Melbourne Black, thanks.
Buy "I Want To Be A Teen Again"
Buy Beathoven, The Breakers and Grown Up Wrong! releases
