Sunday, July 24, 2011

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

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