Saturday, March 15, 2008

Lethal Weapons - Suicide Label Punk Compilation - 1977



30 years ago this compilation of Australian Punk was released by
the Suicide label. I was reading over at the ausrock forum that its
about to be re-released, so heres the original ripped from vinyl,
in its unmolested form. Out of the bands on this fantastic classic
compilation, two bands stand out, the teenage radio stars and
the boys next door.
James Freud and Sean Kelly started out in the teenage radio
stars, later worked together in the far more successful band
The Models. James also had in short solo career.
The Boys Next Door Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Phil Calvert
and Tracy Pew, went on to record two Lps and and Ep,
that I can remember off the top of my head, before morphing
into the Birthday Party, the rest is history.
Most of the bands of this were from Melbourne or Adelaide
with the two exceptions The Survivors from Brisbane and
Sydney’s Wasted Daze.
The tracks from the boys next door and
the teenage radio stars alone make this worth having,
But theres plenty other enjoyable songs on this Lp,
I remember playing this a lot when I was a young fella,
so its a bit of a nostalgia trip.
Wasted Daze are a little out of place with their straightforward R& B.
The Jab songs are great new wave pop songs,
The Survivors tracks bit more punk pop,
The Negatives ‘Planet on the Prowl’ is over six minutes long,
probably the reason the Negatives were the only
Lethal Weapons band to get just one track
and quite alike anything else I'd ever heard at the time.
X ray Z's ‘Three More Glorious Years’ is my favorite track,
classic political anthem,written by Doley in disgust at the
Liberal party’s win that year.“A fair few of us were bearing the
brunt of Fraser’s dole queues,” he says.
"It’s a satirical send up of the chosen man."
All in all in interesting listen.
This final quote from a mess and noise article found here

Counting the Beat contains a brief segment on Suicide in which
Gudinski announces that, “The label achieved… nothing.”
But Lethal Weapons has become notorious.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of its story is that
Mushroom’s arty arm White Label saw fit to reissue it a mere
five years after it first appeared; it was already becoming legendary.
Now, Aztec have reissued it with one extra track
a TRS b-side – and spectacular sleevenotes.




Download Here

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post Bob, I have this album on Vinyl...Would have to be a great Aussie collectors Album

bob nebe said...

Ive got the re-release on mushroom's
white label(standard black vinyl), if you have the white vinyl original release it was quite rare.
ciao bob

Anonymous said...

Yes mate, mine is the rare white one.

bob nebe said...

Thats fantastic, Ive never seen one,should be worth a bit, but how would you part with it
ciao bob

bazzil said...

I just read "Stranded - A Secret History of Australian Independent music" by Clinton Walker (again) and he reckons the original release on black vinyl was rarer???

Anyone else heard that?

bob nebe said...

I've got that book too i shoulg read it. I ndid however read something like that recently and I just tracked it down.
This is a paragraph from a most informative article you can find here

http://www.messandnoise.com/articles/1301167

"Lethal Weapons is a queer fish, right down to its presentation. The cover image – blood oozing from a gun – is bizarre. The credits are so convoluted you need a pen and paper to work out which tracks were recorded by whom: the 2007 reissue corrects this absurdity with a straightforward track listing. The original LP was pressed in white vinyl as a limited edition (Chris Walsh and Garry Gray turned theirs into ashtrays). The second pressing – in ordinary black – was, in fact, far more limited because, despite a strong press advertising campaign, the album failed to sell. The Teenage Radio Stars’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Baby’ was released as a single, and the group played some interesting supports, such as an unlikely Skyhooks show in August."

So the original suicide pressing in black was rarer than the white.
My copy is the Mushroom Records L27112
(White Label 1983 re-release)
it presumably is the least rare release and is only found in black vinyl

ciao bob

topper said...

this loink is not working...it's starting over and over again

topper said...

this link doesn't work at z-share

can somebody help ???

topper said...

thank you

Ralph Dodger said...

Excellent - many thanks!

Anonymous said...

None of the links seem to work... Maybe I've missed the boat.

bob nebe said...

back up