Nothing Is For Everyone – Drugs in Sport/Sound of Speed – Lachlan X Morris (Outtaspace)

Split records can be problematic. Too often the vehicles of economic convenience for cash-strapped but otherwise disparate bands who pool their money and patch two sides together in order, just to get a release out. And there are splits like this one where some pop-rock magic works together.

Drugs in Sport and Lachlan X Morris both come from Newcastle in Australia. A onetime hotbed for blue collar rock and roll, the former Steel City has gentrified and diversified. This shared release on Central Coast label Outtspace is five songs from DIS and four from Lachlan X over two sides of 12-inch vinyl, and proves that there’s still rock and roll life in Newie.

The Crisps – The Crisps (Vi-Nil Records)

Pure garage pop goodness and it’s only two decades late. Chances are you’ve never heard of them.

As mentioned elsewhere, The Crisps were a Sydney assemblage of great potential back in the 1990s. The reasons they went nowhere are lost in the mists of time – probably hidden under a floorboard of the abandoned Hopetoun Hotel.

A vehicle for the songs of drummer-vocalist Stuart Wilson (New Christs, Lime Spiders and dozens of others), the band included members of would-be international stars Doomfoxx, road veterans The Johnnys and underrated northern beaches cowboys Orange County.

They recorded these six songs to help rustle up gigs. Ex-music reviewer-turned-bar operator  Mark Fraser heard them while reviving his Vi Nil Records label, loved ‘em and offered to press them up. And the rest is history.    

BuddhaDevadatta - Buddhadatta (self releasd)

Picture it: Rundle Mall, Adelaide, the height of Festival and Fringe, and your scurrying obedient scribe is trying to hustle through the attention-getting non-event nonsense “street shows”, the magic acts, all treating us to the incredibly naff idea that “an event means LOUD IMPERATIVE music”, on my way to the bottleshop and thence to the bus to arrive at a nine-year-old’s netball final.

Out of nowhere appear three Japanese musicians, one with a basket on his head clutching a sort of semi-acoustic six-stringed thing, another bloke with a curly mohawk hunched over what looks to be a child’s drum kit, and a woman with long red dreads, wearing a beaming smile and holding a bright red, headless bass.

Things Will Be Different: A Tribute To Little Murders – Various Artists (Twist Records)

Tribute records? They used to be all the rage but are they now just a bit naff? It depends on who they’re lauding.

Little Murders are Australian rock and roll’s – no! don’t say it! – Best Kept Secret. It’s a cliché, for sure, but don’t be afraid. It just means that cloth-eared and gormless cretins don’t know who they are. If you’re one of them, consider yourself admonished and start paying attention.

Died Pretty Live – Died Pretty (Citadel)

Live albums were things a band pulled out of its collective arse when members were short on ideas and had “contractual obligations” to a label. These days, they’re a  quaint anachronism in a market that treats digital singles as a currency.

The only contractual obligation Died Pretty has these days is keeping their record label boss and manager, John Needham, in the lifestyle to which he is accustomed (that's a joke, John), so a live recording of a February 2008 performance of the cross-over album “Doughboy Hollow” at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre is probably of interest only to diehard fans.

Guilty as charged but thousands of others will take the same plea.

Drop Out With The Barracudas Deluxe Edition – Barracudas (Lemon Records)

Increasingly, the recording companies attempt to milk the last of the boomer dollars before retirement homes steal the last of our bank accounts.  They’ve already worked out that there's bugger all money in new recordings.  Even dependable old cash cows like KISS and The Who have made public statements to that end.

So record companies have learnt to spew out deluxe editions of the familiar, the obscure and the criminally ignored.  And, if someone is going to put out a multi disc collection of every taped concert on Sunset Strip, well oops.  My finger slipped on the buy button before I read about the goddamn postage.