A Blog to share the sometimes rare, sometimes unusual,
but always sublime music from Australia,
from the 70s to now.
With a particular interest in Brisbane Music
This wonderful rare 1980 Lp from Cathie O'Sullivan is
Celtic harp folk songs sung in her beautiful voice.
I saw Cathie back in the early 80's one cool night
outside, at the Maleny Folk Festival, it was one of the
stand out performances of the event and I promptly
bought her Lp
Track List
01 Planxty Dermott O'Dowd
02 Green Bushes
03 The Lost Sailor
04 Song Of Artesian Water
05 The Halting March
06 Barbry Allen
07 Molly Baun Lavery
08 The Teams
09 The Miner
10 Cliffs Of Moher
11 Norfolk Whalers
12 Old Copper Plate
13 Love's Coming
Well I had a ripper of of weekend, it started with going out to see
the Rockwiz show " Some kind of Genius" on Friday night
and continued on into the West End Block Party the next day.
Rockwiz was fantastic, so funny with some great guest stars
including Tex Perkins. I didn't take a camera so no photos.
I should have however, turns out the wife had procured front
row seats!
So off to West End, the block party has came out of the older West
End Boundary Street Festival and in the same tradition is a
celebration of the community that is Brisbane's West End.
Highly multi-cultural, eclectic and on the cutting edge of do it
yourself culture. The festival had some of the best of the not so rock
bands Brisbane has at the moment as well as circus performers,
spoken word and visual performances
The band above is the Rusty Datsuns, a great folk bluegrass outfit,
I'm looking forward to seeing them again
They have a great little cd as well!
The local Ice Cream Factory Circus performances are another fav
I find it exciting so many people are into this stuff these days
Karl Williams was great, the kind of blues I love, what a voice!
And the Brazilian street dance is the sort of thing that always gets
my attention, sorry I missed the capoeira later
Sharmaran gave us some wonderful Middle Eastern music while I ate
Greek food and waited for the band I most wanted to see
The Mouldy Lovers are a fantasic party band, playing their very own
exciting self described sub tropical gypsy music
They are the kind of band you have to see for yourself so
I shot some video for your enjoyment!
Michael has sent the 2nd cd in his trilogy of 3 very interconnected bands from the Gold Coast. The first being the Strand Cd found here and the 3rd will be the Seven Ballerinas, which I am so looking forward to. Here is also the link to some press clippings of the Strand here and the Ratpack single here. The Seven Ballerinas single is here and press clippings in info on the band here. This recording sounds great I can here quiet a bit iof the Strand or even the Sunnyboys sound in them, well worth a listen and I'd love to hear your comments! Thanks Michael for all your work again, now over to Michael for the low down on the band
John Smethurst (vocals and guitar) later founding member of Seven Ballerinas in 1981
Mario Spina (bass guitar
and vocals) later founding member fo Seven Ballerinas in 1981
Nigel Baker
(keyboards and vocals) later founding member of Seven Ballerinas in
1981
Cliff Hoad (drums) later founding mermber of Kings Of The Sun.
On the Coast not many bands played originals back in 79. Or more so not many bands playing originals got work. Was very hard to compete with the cover bands and discos. Formed on the Gold Coast in 1978. Ratpack secured a regular gig at The Paradise Room Surfers Paradise.We were very lucky to have 2 venues (Paradise Room and The Miami Hotel) that gave us opportunity to show original bands can pull a crowd
The Bushwackers follow up to their 1980 Dance album is this
wonderful collection of Bush Dancing music.
It's my favourite of the two, of course there is no album that can
capture the pure energy this band has live. I've seen them a
few times and they are incredible.
I did see a 3 song bush dance as part of one performance
once but never a entire gig!
When the Laughing Clowns broke up in late 1982 and began a new course of direction with Peter Milton Walsh as their bassist the following year, the so-tagged 'free jazz' element of the Clowns would be left in the past.
Like bandleader Ed Kuepper's previous band the Saints, the Laughing Clowns also moved themselves away from their previous releases to push a new sonic boundary with each vinyl release. By 1983, the band had stripped down its sound, and the mixture of horns, drums and fretless and double-bass competing against one another for the forefront with the wafer thin guitar floating through the tidal waves of soloing had disappeared.
In that year the band recorded Law of Nature and it was the first time the focus was more on the lyrics than the virtuosity of its musicians propelling it. Songs began to stop drifting past the 5 minute mark, and the sparse piano playing from the first 18 months of the band courtesy of Dan Wallace-Crabbe reappears again with adjunct member Chris Abrahams, while the delicate layering of electric and acoustic guitars (which made the basis of Kuepper's debut Electrical Storm) showing its first signs of life.
With Ghosts of an Ideal Wife, the Clowns final album posthumously released in the early months of 1985, the band had already broken up in the December of the previous year after an east-coast tour of Australia. With the bolstered brass backing comprising of Glad Reed on trombone with
Louise Elliott and Diane Spence taking on various members of the
saxophone family. With bassist Peter Milton Walsh amicably departing to pursue his songwriting with the Apartments and the band adding the eighteen-year old Paul Smith, the last (1980s) line-up of
Laughing Clowns surprisingly dusted off a selection of tracks from Prehistoric Sounds - including Everything's Fine, Swing for the Crime, and Brisbane (Security City) - songs which hadn't graced their setlists since their first shows in and around Sydney in 1979. For the 1984 tour, Kuepper made good use of the large horn section to breathe new life into the songs in which the Saints had never played live during their signing to Harvest in the UK.
When the Prehistoric Sounds was released locally in 1979 by EMI, it was the same year the Clowns formed (close to a year after the Saints dissolved in London) and Ed Kuepper essentially went out to promote the LP with his new outfit as vocalist Chris Bailey adopted the Saints name whilst removing himself (albeit temporarily) from the band's past when they surfaced in Australia to tour in the year of the monkey (1980).
The final line-up of the Laughing Clowns before their reunion in 2009. Photo by Judi Dransfield-Kuepper
From the opening blast of Crystal Clear (the only single taken from the album which featured the non-album b-side, Just Because I Like) and its anti-funk hi-hat galloping relentlessly for 4:44, to the high tensioned drama of The Flypaper dangling on the edge of side B, Ghosts of Ideal Wife carries the heavy shadows of the past along 37 minute course of bitter pasts goodbyes. Ed Kuepper's finger slide guitar of No Words of Honour, the non-horned New Bully in the Town a sequel of sorts to the American prewar hillbilly of the folk tune Bully of the Town, recorded by the Skillet Lickers in 1926.
And in terms of continuum, Ghosts of an Ideal Wife acts in many ways as the sequel to Prehistoric Sounds itself. Not only the fact that Winter's Way (along with the Aints track Red Aces) dates back to as early as 1975 to when the aspiring photographer Jeffrey Wegener was holding court as the Saints drummer. [Winter's Way
was also a part of the repertoire of the first Laughing Clowns line-up. A 1979 recording of this song with Kuepper on 12 string guitar has since been lost.]
Both Ghosts of an Ideal Wife and Prehistoric Sounds give resonance to a band
breaking up and struggling against the odds to complete what's been
started and duly carrying a a course of songs wrapped up in a colourful, harmonious brass section. The title-track boasts Kuepper's first recorded appearance of the humble banjo with a lengthy solo workout resembling his later acoustic duo work with drummer Mark Dawson on the 1990 album, Today Wonder.
... and then like a cord being pulled out of a wall, the song Ghosts of an Ideal Wife and the album itself stops in mid-flight as The Only One that Knows opens the windows that is side B. The album's only epic, though in the sense of minutes, seven seems quite modest compared to previous workouts presented on Laughing Clowns 3 and Mr Uddich Schmuddich Goes to Town. Nonetheless the tune's drama and its ebb and flow effect courtesy of Jeffrey Wegener's ability to go well past mere time keeping and come back again in a matter of bars.
Like Bob Dylan, Kuepper's lyrics rarely give much away. With his marriage to Judi Dransfield around the corner, Kuepper opens up with another chanson d'amour in the vein of their hit but missed, Eternally Yours with It Gets so Sentimental.
Laughing Clowns close up with the Flypaper - with the riveted ride cymbal catapulting to damaged the damaged lead break and again to a piano, before the single coils light up again and the horn section squeezes the last blow of energy and leaves us with a fading guitar note. Then it's goodbye...
Something 'bout a rise and fall when token signs you've seen/ Your Gods are not love/ You still the wear the names of those who've gone and gone and gone and never return/ Flypaper that's on the wall I've said enough often enough.
Logan and Albert News, December 19, 1984. Donat Tahiraj Archive.
Kuepper had considered retirement from music altogether after five years of fronting his own band and had seriously considered opening up a bookshop. That was until he decided to take a guitar along to his honeymoon and the rest (as they say) is history. Louise Elliott and Jeffrey Wegener soon joined Chris Bailey's version of the Saints for a tour. Glad Reed and Diane Spence joined Just a Drummer. Paul Smith appeared in Ed Kuepper's first solo touring band and on his second album, Rooms of the Magnificent with guest appearances by Reed and Spence.
The Kelpies came to my attention via the classic Phantom Records
compilation "Paths of Pain to Jewels of Glory", which I posted here
a long time ago. They also were on the Sydney punk band compilation
"Flowers From The Dustbin" . So a single on Phantom, some tracks
on compilation albums and this rough and ready LP that comes from
a few different sources. This early 80's Sydney band should have
gone places!
This album comes in at just over an hour and represents the Kelpies
complete recorded legacy. The tracks are derived from three sources.
First up and accounting for well over half the tracks and almost
exactly half of the running time here are what have become known
variously as "The Dungeon Tapes",
"The Kelpies Official Bootleg" and/or "Live At 51 Stanley Street".
Continually broke and forced to eke out a subsistence level existence
on the dole, several of the Kelpies shared an old, rented terrace
house in East Sydney, which became the centre of the band's
world as the extent of their horizon contracted to the four walls
of 51 Stanley Street,
gigs evaporating in the wake of their growing reputation for
precipitating audience violence at their shows.
A reputation that, by the way, was overblown by at least fifty percent
according to them (meaning that yes, there was a lot of violence at
their gigs, but no, they don't reckon they directly incited any of it).
Unable to afford access to a rehearsal studio and increasingly
constrained from performing live, they used their abundant spare
time to line their basement walls with old mattresses, covered the
ceiling with discarded egg cartons and then took to playing their
live set there day after day to stay in practice.
Having turned their basement into a home rehearsal studio,
it didn't take much of a leap of the imagination to convert it
into a home recording studio as well, by borrowing a cassette recorder
and stringing up a couple of microphones from the light fittings.
This then is perhaps the true sound of punk,
it is certainly the true sound of the Kelpies -
young and keen and burning with frustration;
playing not for the sake of fat record contracts,
fame and fortune or even their fans,
but simply for their own satisfaction in an otherwise empty room.
_ John McPharlin
01 Living In A World Of Fear 02 Love Is A Revolution 03 Rich Man 04 I Don't Know Why 05 Dead Meat 06 Underway 07 Brand New Cadillac 08 Life Looks So Good Through A Beer Bottle 09 Change 10 Die 11 Ride 12 Without The Pain 13 Naked Flesh 14 Television
Only 600 copies of this Cd were printed a rare and wonderful thing! Four Hours Sleep is a Melbourne supergroup, of sorts, with music by Bill McDonald (Rebecca's Empire, Frente, Ultrasound), lyrics by Stephen Cummings, guest appearances by Angie Hart and David McComb and the wildcard, a thrilling cameo by ex-Orange Juice singer Edwyn Collins, from Scotland.But More of Her, a one-off release with this line up but a continuing project for the versatile McDonald, is not as clearcut and linear as it seems.
With input also from brothers Peter (Black Sorrows, Chris Wilson) and Dan (Blackeyed Susans) Luscombe and with the grab-bag of singers and musicians given the room to interpret the songs reasonably freely, Four Hours Sleep in this instance has become a varied musical palette with individuals clearly able to influence the final mix at will. Continuity, therefore, is a problem, but not a large one.
More of Her manages to run from a tear-soaked
but totally traditionalist duet between Cummings and Hart
("Stick To My Fingers") to a classic ballad about falling in love
("A Real Miracle", again featuring the voice of Hart)
to a clutch of fairly rollicking guitar-rock tunes. All, however,
display the subtlety and tendency toward sublime melody
that have distinguished both Cummings' and McDonald's
musical history.
The Edwyn Collins connection emerged when McDonald
played bass for him on a promo-tour last year
(he's also more recently lent his bass sound to a forthcoming
Neneh Cherry album)
.
The result, "Don't You Ever Listen To Me", is classic pop in
the same way the top ten "A Girl Like You"
(and much of Gorgeous George) was, and confirms Collins'
standing as one of the finest vocalists of both the Eighties
(with Orange Juice) and, now, the Nineties.
But, in the end, More of Her, succeeds because of the
instinctive musical chemistry between McDonald and
Cummings, who have worked together for years, and, of course,
Cummings' bittersweet lyrics of urban joy and heartbreak.
In this way it could be seen as the Cummings album
you have when you don't have a Cummings album,
as he has always been an active collaborator within the
Melbourne scene. But it's not.
It's just a lowkey but accomplished supergroup.
Chris Johnston - Australian Rolling Stone March 1996
Steve a long time contributor to the SSS blog has sent in his
wonderful recording of a recent Don Walker gig.
From his early work in Cold Chisel, his solo work, to his work
with Tex Perkins as a 3rd of the Tex Don And Charlie trio he is
considered one of Australia's greatest song writers.
Thanks Steve
Don Walker And The Suave Fucks
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
26 July 2012
01 Sitting In A Bar
02 Angry Women
03 Everybody
04 Postcard from Elvis
05 Young Girls Intro
06 Young Girls
07 The Perfect Crime(?)
08 Four In The Morning
09 Nightfishing
10 Hully Gully
11 I'm Feeling Lucky
12 Get Along
13 The Good Book
14 Johnny's Gone
15 HQ454 Monroe Intro
16 HQ454 Monroe
17 Band Intros
18 Harry Was A Bad Bugger
19 Eternity
20 My Girl
21 Stay Positive(?)
Dave Blight - harmonica
Garret Costigan - pedal steel
Glen Hanna - guitar
Roy Payne - guitar
Hamish Stuart - drums
Michael Vidale - bass
Don Walker - piano, vocals
Featuring many bands essential to Brisbane's music history, this is THE gig not be missed for 2012.
The long weekend Sunday September 30
P.O.W. Hotel -Nundah.
Brisbane bassist Susan Welch of punk band The Hostages ('79-81) releases the first in a series of live music reunion shows that present some of the finest of avant garde/punk/post punk/new wave music from '77-82, showcasing the incredible talent that the era produced.. one for the nostalgia buffs, screenings will also trip you down memory lane.. more info here - https://www.facebook.com/events/203721396423466/
Coming to you from Brisbane the home of the striped sunlight sound, this is a my little place in cyberspace to share the music of Australia which may have passed you by. Mostly rare and out of print albums from artists that never made it into the mainstream and my recollections concerning them. If you like something please leave a message in the comments, if you don't, maybe you'd rather not see your music here, or maybe my recollections are wrong, please leave a message too. If you find any links no longer work please let me know and I'll fix it I'm on myspace you can find me at myspace.com/stripedsunlightsound and if you prefer facebook.com/people/Bob
