I sent this collection of songs to Bob over a year ago but they were full of clicks and pops and he never posted it.. I had another chop at it today to remove the noises and here we are... download here.
Ratpak featured :
John Smethurst
Mario Spina
Nigel Baker
Cliff Hoad
This group played around the Gold Coast circa 1979 then for reasons unknown to me broke up. Two of the musicians here reformed in a different sounding band that got lots of 4zzz airplay at the time - "Seven Ballerinas". The Ratpak sound is not unlike early Riptides to my ears. Great power pop - 'get up of yer ass and shake it' stuff I could listen to all afternoon over a few XXXX at the Miami hotel. A few extra tracks have been posted on the meyedream youtube channel. Not so much full videos as still pics with soundtrack. Good songs well worth checking out.
I guess its a good thing that noise filled version never got posted as its now a good excuse to bring to wider attention that John Smethurst was induced by the Crazy 88's just the other week to get back up on stage for an old Seven Ballerinas song "Circles".
You can check out a wider explanation of that performance, a link to a better quality audio file and sad news of Mario's passing away and other passings of Rock n Rollers of that Gold Coast scene at last years Seven Ballerinas post here.
6 comments:
Hi There!
Just found your site. Lots of stuff I have found that sets nostalgia in motion. I'm Swedish and went to Australia in 1986 and stayed for a year and a half. I went to see bands and was accused of having the largest collection of Australian music in Europe. However the whole collection perished in a fire. Still have a bit of the vinyl that I saved. I saw Hoodo Gurus in Cairnes and Screaming Tribesmen in Sydney. Paul Kelly, Saints, Psychotic Turnbuckles and The Church among others. I remeber buying every single item of the wall of Waterfront Records. Overweight on the plane home is an understatement. Now I find so much of that music here on your Blog. I continued ordering from Waterfront when I got home and collected for years. But there's this one record I bought, I liked it a lot and the only problem was it was a little Pop oriented and that did not fit the style at the period :) It had a girl singing, the cover was (I think a drawing (bubbles?) (or a girl?) don't remember. It's the only band in the world I don't remember the name of. Thought maybe you could help me. Anyweay, thanks for your work and interesting Hamburg visit.
Cheers, Kasper
Thanks for posting this Ratpak stuff. I've been enjoying it for the last few days.
Any chance of a re-upload of this EP, please?
Would be much appreciated.
Sorry I seem to have miss placed these files, I shall see if Chuck can help
Thanks! Would be great if he could.
And all the best in 2015!
No luck?
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