Some Subsonic Barflies History

“No frills” from the now defunct Brisbane Telegraph

Music supplement in the Courier Mail.

An article from Juke in August 87

the press release from the band to promote the single

a letter from 3PBS in Melbourne to the band asking when would we

tour Melbourne which we never did. The furtherest destination from

Brisbane that we played at was Toowoomba and Coolum

Mark has sent me some more fascinating Brisbane music history,

this time concerning the band Subsonic Barflies.

Their single was covered here earlier and its great to be able

to find more first hand recollections on the net.

Thanks Mark!

You had a review on the Subsonic Barflies single

“Questions” a couple of months ago.

Here are some press clippings, letters from radio

stations etc. on the band as further info for your

readers.

Before I do that just a bit of background on the band:

Myself (guitar) and Peter Greene (drums) played in

an early to mid-80s hardcorish punk band called

Death of a Nun.

(Which recorded some demos that I will get to

you some time soon, but that is another story.)

At the time I was working for Telecom and met

Tim Carseldine (also worked for Telecom),

guitarist with Prince of Weasels, along with Col

who played bass.

(Prince of Weasels had a couple of tracks on the

excellent “At his Fuhrer’s request” LP compilation.)

Tim and I both loved the twin guitars of the Dolls,

Heartbreakers, Flaming Groovies etc.

rather than the American hard core direction that

Death of a Nun was going.

So we split both our bands to form the Subsonic

Barflies and brought in Dave Chamberlain who

previously played drums in the Vampire Lovers

and recorded the drums on their most famous

single Buzzsaw Popstar.

Soon we were getting lots of gigs as local headline

or supporting some great OZ acts like X and

Celibate Rifles and fantastic international acts like

Johnny Thunders and Flaming Groovies

(whom we all idolised).

Any way to cut a long story short the band broke up

over the usual suspects:

sex drugs and rock and roll.

So here are some obscure archives from when people

played rock and roll for fun, before it became

corporatized and commoditised and people saw it just

as a career move.

The first article “No frills” is from the now defunct

Brisbane Telegraph and came out only after a month or

2 of playing.

The 2nd was from the music supplement in the Courier Mail.

More clips to follow.

Cheers

mark

An ad from what is I presume is Time off for a gig at the Crystal club

Another from the Ipswich Advertiser, 16 June 1987

An article from one of the University papers