There’s a Neil Young biography (maybe one of the earliest about him) by Johnny Rogan from 1982 that documents the great man’s “Ditch Trilogy” period in some detail. A section about Neil’s 1973 UK tour - before the release of “Tonight’s The Night” – makes him sound unhinged.

Rogan’s telling has Young believing his own audience patter that he’s “in Miami Beach” (tagline: “It’s cheaper than it looks”) and delivering ramshackle, desolate songs that the audiences had never heard before – when all the punters wanted was a run-through of the hit album “Harvest.”

Besides criticising the op shop stage décor, Rogan painted Young as near incoherent, bombed out of his brain on whatever was handy and mumbling. It’s like the man’s mind was a bottle short of a full case of Corzo.

This is swampy, tub-thumping, blues-y bayou rock and roll with more meat on its bones than a fat lady in a St Kilda cake shop at lunchtime. Of course it's from Melbourne, but it probably's done time washing dishes in a Memphis roadhouse, soaking up Alex Chilton stories.

The Beat Taboo take their cues from so many different places that you could easily name-drop half-a-dozen influences and come up winning and grinning. I suppose the Cramps are the obvious one (dig the "Human Fly" references on "Splinter Beach") but that's a tag that's as limiting as it's lazy.

Looked at their whole career, the Cramps were really a portal leading back to a rich assortment of '50s rockers and freaks. To whom, The Beat Taboo (and plenty of other garage-y bands) owe a deep debt.

There’s a school of thought that says continual exposure to dumb rock and roll will lower your I.Q. by a significant degree. Well, fuck that. You don’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar to enjoy hard and fast, Real Rock Action. But don’t be getting off on your snobbery trip, either.

Rock and roll can be thoughtful, intelligent and insightful. That doesn’t stop it also being thicker than a San Franciscan fog. Chuck Berry had his subversive moments, but “Johnny B Goode” ain’t one of them. Little Richard: “A whop bop a lu lop a-whop bam boo”? What the fuck is that about? Don’t even mention “Ob-la-di ob-la-da”. It’s a shit song anyway.

The point is that you can like smart rock and simultaneously roll around in the swill trough. It shouldn’t be one or the other. They’re not mutually exclusive. The Franklin School were flat out wrong. (Look ‘em up if you don’t know.) High art is one thing but getting high (or drunk) mindlessly at warp speed is another. Even if you're not into over-indulging, rock and roll is as much about fun and having a laugh as anything else. And it doesn’t get much funnier than middle-aged Melbourne punks Grindhouse.

OUTLAW BLUES AND ENDLESS GRACE....

If you're feeling unloved and forgotten, frightened and voiceless, alienated and misunderstood, in these brutally dark times of Trump, surveillance, controlled media, Gestapo cops and endless war, get these CD's. They will comfort you immensely. "Brilliant Disaster" is sort of an EP but also perhaps, the best LP I've heard since Ian Hunter's ‘90s masterpiece, "Rant".

The way you know every slick American music rag has been hijacked by the corporate state to promote war and Wall Street, bigotry and consumerism, is they keep putting war criminals, former wrestlers, and vacant lap dancers on the cover instead of the Cohenesque, Paul K… Maybe he ain't that famous, but his songs have had immeasurable emotional impact on most everyone they have been properly introduced to.

Aberration are one of those bands who you have probably heard of word of mouth. Did you ever see them live back in the ‘80s? No recordings survive so you just have to believe they where good if you didn’t see them kicking around Sydney in 1983-87.

Aberration were playing high-energy British metal/punk until as the liner notes to this album “Tuckerbox” attest, destructive forces took their toll. The band split with little to show for their wild live reputation.

Fast forward 35 years. “Tuckerbox” is the first release for Aberration, one member of which survives in Alan Creed. It‘s newly-recorded and 10 tracks of sheer raw power.

Melbourne band sell out. Again.

Seedy Jeezus: "Polaris Oblique". Rhetorical question: how do three hairy men make so much bloody racket? And why is it so damn good?

Patrick Emery's given this one four bottles in the review below, but you know what? bugger him with an awkward object, it's five or more easy. Thwack this on the car stereo and you'll be making sharp turns and mounting sidewalks in no time. 'Polaris Oblique' is big, heavy, and soaks like alcohol into a villain's hanky.

The Seedies know their shit, they know their rock'n'roll; Lex Waterreus (gesundheit) (he's the talented swine with the voluminous guitar and the brilliant artwork) sounds like Plant on a good day, and one must assume he has the whacking great dong to match.