1978 - Young Charlatans (Eminent Vinyl)
If you go on YouTube you can see a remarkable clip of two 18-year-old kids, Rowand S Howard and Ollie Olsen, being interviewed by the ABC. As the teenagers walk down St Kilda Road in Melbourne, they are jeered at for looking like aliens with art school aesthetics.
It was 1978 and a vastly different time. In the beige, conservative world ruled by the Tories and the Country Party. Every second house had porcelain ducks on its wall and a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth the 2nd. The Robert Menzies vision of Australia ruled and the fashion sense embraced Dennis Lillee’s porn star moustache and safari suits.
The Melbourne music scene reflected that - with a few exceptions. it was mostly all blues and pub rock. Australians like old music. And most were still stuck in Sunbury circa 1973. The Saints and Radio Birdman had toured the city and left a mark. There was an explosion in their wake. Just like the handful of kids who saw the Sex Pistols at Manchester Trade Hall at the end of 1976, many of the kids who saw Birdman and the Saints went on to form their own bands.
The Menzies disciples could not stop cultural change. Roland and Ollie, with their eyeliner and assortment of punk and op-shop clothes, must has looked to them to be dandies who had crossed the sensibilities of Oscar Wilde with English anarchic punk fashion. Certainly, they were the man the men that fell to earth.
What was less well known was that they were both demoing and creating some of the most cutting edge post punk music anywhere in the world. Roland S Howard had already penned “Shivers” a couple years of earlier and demonstrated a touch of genius.
As author Clinton Walker correctly states, at the beginning of 1978 there were only two bands looking forward: The Young Charlatans and the Boys Next Door. I would add Garry Gray’s The Reals,
The Boys Next Door had a secret weapon in Tracy Pew’s primal, Stooges-inspired bass playing, while Nick Cave was a charismatic pretty boy who sang falsetto. The band was basically new wave, and the darlings of St Kilda.
North, across the Yarra River, The Young Charlatans found it hard to get gigs; they were so much more edgy and raw than their contemporaries and certainly more visionary. Cave went to many of their gigs and was in awe of Roland’s songs and style.
The Young Charlatans lifespan was less than eight months but their impact on the local scene cannot be underestimated.
Ollie and Roland were two 18-year-olds who shifted base to Sydney, occupying a rented squalor flat in Darlinghurst towards the end of 1977. The only band that was emerging that had attitude and urgency was X and they were dangerous.
In Sydney, the pair recruited Jeffery Wegener who was couple years older and who already had a degree of public awareness as the first Saints drummer and schoolfriend of Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper in the erly ‘70s. As a player, Wegener was already ahead of the pack.
They teamed with New Zealander Janine Hall, another like-minded soul on bass, and the band moved back to Melbourne in the New Year. The demos and raw live performances on this record are from the first month of 1978.
This is well-packaged document comprising eight raw demos and six live tracks. It opens with a blistering “Broken Hands” and there’s a wild urgency in this song, borne out of attitude and the freshness of youth. Some use that cliche of post punk, “angular”, to describe some music and maybe, in this case, it fits. It is brutal and feels like hitting speed humps.
“Beginning of a Real War” is a demo and ranks as one of the most intense pieces of music I have ever heard come out of Australia. It actually sounds like an early Birthday Party song - played with razor blades. You can almost see the blood smeared guitars.
“Drowned” moves into the Gothic sphere and is played with equal amounts of tension and intensity as the song’s demo recording breaks apart, distortion cutting through as the meters go into the red. Roland’s guitars are stunning and add completely to the vibe.
“Win/Lose” is blazing punk song-with the intensity of the Dead Kennedys but recorded at least 18 months before they were known. The songs that Ollie attacks are certainly more aggressive and brutal. You feel that he must have been existing on a very strong diet of the debut Clash album, and that he captured Joe Strummer’s distorted vocal edge by almost swallowing the microphone. The song is so urgent.
“Shivers” is more ragged than the Boys Next Door’s version. Roland’s vocals wail almost the way early Bob Dylan’s did .The song is passionate and personal, imbued with the torture of first love. This is the version of the song that must be remembered for prosperity.
I once asked Roland in St Kilda a coffee shop what he thought of The Screaming Jets' version He said it was drivel but it paid the rent for a while. The thought of an incredible and sensitive, cutting-edge Australian classic that’s now sung on rock cruises to people with studded belt bellies and dragon tattoos (ie. middle age drunks) somehow irks. It’s a fragile letter of hurt that was written by a 16-year-old, a sensitive and creative teenager. It’s quite surreal.
“Model” on side two is the first of the live songs captured on primitive recording equipment; the sound is patchy and has tape hiss and distortion. That said, the recording really fits the low-fi vibe of a band barely out of the garage in 1978.
“Seems So Distant” is the most startling song on the album. It’s full of tension and hints of Tom Verlaine’s guitar. It could have fitted perfectly on the Birthday Party’s debut album, and has that discordance that we hear on that band’s more refined songs of two years later, like “Catholic Skin”.
What's now dawned on me is the complete impact Roland S Howard had on the Boys Next Door, the band he would join later in that year.
Listening to the live side of “1978”, we are served up garage punk on songs like “My Empire” and “Hello World” with their classic chanting vocals.
“Doll Maid” is a bona fide gem that closes the album; it almost has a Paul Weller edge before it bursts away on a nasty tangent with clouds of discordance among the chaos. The guitars are blazing and the interplay between Ollie Olsen and Roland S Howard is sensational,
You can hear that Roland was influenced by Brian James on one side and the melodic edge of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd on the other. Ollie attacks the chords like Joe Strummer with brutality. And, again, it’s so intense.
Now to Jefferey Wegener and Janine Hall: Wegener’s drumming shows signs of his genius and underlines why he became an integral member of Laughing Clowns a few years later.
He was possibly the most creative drummer in the country by 1980 Mixing intense rhythms, time changes, and light and shade – all with Charlie Watt’s coolness. Here, his playing is tough and occasionally ragged, but he has the discipline to give the songs a solid backbone. He also hits the kit very hard. Janine, at this stage, is no frills, and lets the songs shine through. She clicks in tightly.
The Young Charlatans were a startling band compared to anything else in Australia (or even the UK) at the time They were cutting edge and had already moved to what was to be known as post-punk.
In 1978, Radio Birdman was a proto-punk band and appeared dated to English audiences (ED: Or at least to the UK press). Young Charlatans were looking toward the future and could have been accepted by those same audiences. Their sound was modernist and well before its time. Only Pere Ubu could compare when “The Modern Dance” was released in February 1978 - whic h is when Young Charlatans’ rehearsal recordings and demos were recorded.
Certainly, if the band had stayed together and headed to England, they would have fitted in with the likes of Gang of Four, Magazine, The Slits and The Pop Group. They would had been at the head of that pack if they had stayed around. Then again, they would have starved and been at the mercy of the pretentious and obnoxious English music press. Life is unfair.
This album of low-fi and at times poorly recorded demos and live performance needs to be evaluated in context. On its merits, it could be the greatest collection of post-punk songs ever put to tape in Australia. That it was recorded even before that phrase was a term of reference makes it a significant historical document. It is a time capsule of four very creative individuals who were breaking down boundaries at the beginning of 1978.
And its own shrine in St Kilda
