Independent Music Articles
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This Section of the FMR website takes in a swag of detailed articles written by myself, covering Australian Music from the 1950's to the Prez.  Some great information amongst these interviews and we've added as many pictures as we could muster. the band's and people featured are :



​VENOM P. STINGER (Melbourne -early 80's-late 90's )  /  WHITE RIOT / THE FLECKS (Tasmania late 70's) / TOXIC SHOCK (Melbourne 1980) THE BLUE BOPS /Rae Dixon ( Melbourne 1950's/60's) / THE TRAITORS  (Melbourne 1979 )  with more added across June and through 2019 /2020...


Photo's below ( Left to Right )  :  THE FLECKS -Original Cassette Demo Cover / THE FLECKS -Photo /  DAVID LANGSAM & KEEF  / RAE DIXON - 1960's /
​THE TRAITORS - 7" Sleeve and Record Spread  /  WHITE RIOT -Original Handbill  ( a Tasmanian New Wave Relic  ! ) / STAINED SHEETS Fanzine cover with BLUE BOPS Article inside ( FREE PRINT COPIES AVAILABLE WHEN YOU ORDER - just ask for one.... ) / BLUE BOPS -early 1960's Gig Handbill.

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VENOM P. STINGER



Venom P. Stinger were one of Melbourne's most unique bands
​ with highly original songs, structures, lyrics, etc..from four totally interesting individuals These few pages offer up the trail of where they came from, & where they went & paint quite the picture of band dedication, persistence & involvement. The bulk of the band tree...which will be put up here soon... ( and many other pockets of Australian band history) is due to the snooping and diligence of Adelaide's Harry Butler, whose messy scrawl and god ugly DNA fanzines really set the bar on indepth music info, offering up over 100 issues from the late 70's on and which people (like me) are STILL picking at it's scribbly carcass. Harry penned a good portion of VPS and related info in the mid 80's, so this is in part a upgrade nod, and an extension of his work trolling the underground & it's great to see how incestuous these things can become when one sees it all laid out like an interweaving mass with tentacles branching, and joining all over the place as names reappear time and again & vague contacts become solid links which at times become semi-legendary (in the case of this article i guess the dirty three can be seen as a plateau of sorts based on popularity, and the sick things & venom p. Stinger the heartbeat in as far as their worth and influence all these years down the line). They were an incredible force live, sound great on record, are a hoot to view on you tube, had killer artwork, and I'm proud to of been involved in being a teeny part of their discography at the tail end of their band time. Walking About remains on top of my hitlist of best Aussie songs of all time & my world is better for it,as it's just as exciting to listen to now as it was the week it came out & blew me away in 1988. 


vps  DISCOGRAPHY

JAN 1987 - 'Meet My Friend Venom'  LP  (No Masters Voice)

JUNE 1988 - 'Venom P. Stinger' track on 'Not So Lucky Country' 2LP  (Reactor Records)

SEPT 1988 - 'Walking About'  B/W: '26 Mg'  7"  Aberrant Records

JUNE 1989 - 'Unused' track on HOWL magazine 7" ep  (Issued in Germany)

AUG 1989 - 'Day Will Come'  track issued on V/A: 'Scumbait # 2' 7"  (Treehouse Records USA)

NOV 1990 - 'What's Yours is Mine' LP issued on Aberrant Records Australia &  Normal Records in Europe

JAN 1991 - 'Supercede' track on V/A: RED TAPE cassette compilation  (listed as 'Super Seed')

NOV 1991 - 'Waiting Room'  Cdep  (Au-Go-Go Records)

MAY 1992 - 'Live in Davis CA'  LP  (Anopheles Records) USA

1994 - 'Tearbucketer' CD  (Siltbreeze Records)  USA

1994 - 'Thickskin' B/W: 'Tearbucketer' 7" (Death Valley Records)  Australia

1994 - 'Full Circle' track on V/A: 'Fuck the White Race' CD (16 track comp from Brisbane label Malignant)

1996 - 'Olfaction'  on VULGAR TONGUE 2CD  (also feat band tree mentions Sphyzein,Come the Rubber Pig, White Elephants, The Family, The Dirty Three)

2001 - '26mg'  track on 2CD Compilation 'Who Cares Wins' issued with Initial copies of the book BLUNT - a biased history of Australian Rock by Bob Blunt

2005 - 'Walking About' track on 2CD V/A comp 'Tales From The Australian Underground - Singles 1976-1989  (Feel)

Misc Notes

: The bulk of the VPS artwork was painted by Jim White's sister Anna, with the debut album art featuring on the band's kick drum.

: The Artwork for 'Vulgar Tongue'  was done by James O'Connor who appears in the mid 90's on the band tree

: Rick Ferrara is a name that constantly appears thru Australian Underground Rock writings, having been a member of the Beach Nuts, Scrap Museum (the Pre- Blue Ruin band who featured not only Phil Calvert post BOYS NEXT DOOR, but CONWAY SAVAGE pre -Bad Seeds), HONEYMOON IN GREEN, SKIPPY THE BUTCHER, STONE CIRCUS, WHITE ELEPHANTS, and many more, and deserves a good mention amongst this article, as well as being a tireless producer/mixer behind the scenes for many decades now.

: Jim White of course has appeared on oodles of albums & recordings, from CAT POWER to PJ HARVEY to BONNIE 'Prince' BILLY & on

: 'Walking About' has been listed in reviews, alternative charts, & general street press over the years as 'Walk Away', 'Walking Around','Walkabout'  etc... get it right you peanuts.
Venom P. Stinger - Walking About 7"


THE FLECKS / WHITE RIOT          (TasMANIA)

It’s kinda crazy really that there is still so many bands from the Australian Punk/New Wave outgrowth of the late 70’s who are yet to get their shit in the sun but little by little they will  be documented one way or the other whether the band members like it or give a rats cock !  So many small bands who exist under the radar of the radar, and who in their day didn’t even release a single thing and over time they’ll be dug out & dug up & for the most part their stories will get told. Just like the 60’s garage bands (there are still hundreds  of bands who are yet to be properly documented),& the many Progged out space cadets jamming on 26 minute excess thru the early to mid 70’s (& that’s just two genres), the late 70’s Punk Rock /New Wave Explosion in Australia bought to the fore a veritable FUGLOAD of individuals drawn into the band scene across every state in Australia,with the one that hardly ever gets a look being TASMANIA.


Tassie folk talk of the rest of Australia as the mainland & with that expanse of water from land2land it can seem like it is  another little world sometimes with it’s quiet roads,laid back charm, unfucked landscapes (Queenstown’s slagheaps excluded) which takes in some of the most pristine horny bush (and here I was talking about the national parks an’ all, but as a double vision of that last line apparently the AC/DC cut Whole Lotta Rosie  was inspired by a generous groupie from above town who was both big in size and the giving of the flesh) one will ever see, & to view the white sands of Wineglass Bay as but one example you think you’re in the garden of friggin’ eden ! Even the cities, altho’ a lil’ bit of a bustle,it still makes you feel like you’re back in the 70’s or from a time in the past where shit was that extra bit s-l-o-w-e-r  and the shops still shut on a Sunday.

And so it was in Launceston in 1977 where the full blown Punk Rock’n’Roll band WHITE RIOT took shape and existed there for the next two years with Guitarist /Vocalist Peter Court  at the helm. Now we have to put this in perspective here,as if parts of the mainland were horrified & disgusted with ‘Punk’ in the late 70’s , then Tassie folk were simply shocked & aghast at the notion of a non-conformist sub culture existing in their little happy hamlet. And so it was for the band and it’s followers who would travel from gig to gig in fully decked ripped trousers,safety pins,airborne hair & sneer veneer & taking their lives & their well being in their hands each and every time. Creating a scene (& creating a scene) amongst one-eyed conservo locals from the Menzies era & tuff talkin’ tree lopping NQRty’s from the real backwoods was pretty damn brave and it’d be great to hear a few tales from some of these fans from the day that’s for sure. Recent chats with Peter ( I felt it my duty to track him down in 2007) reveal that it was more to be DJ’s, visitors,promoters etc.. from the mainland who would be more receptive to the band ( A small ‘Ram’ or ‘Juke’ article was posted in ‘78/9 after one of the ed’s saw a small hall gig where the band was hammering out a speedy version of ‘New Race’ by Radio Birdman), as well as the local Bikies who appreciated their Rock & Racket.

There exists cassette tapes of some of the White Riot recordings, and as I mentioned above, the band lasted till the very late 70’s until a name change to THE FLECKS  took hold for the new decade.

This also saw the three members (Guitarist/Vocalist Peter Court, Bass Player Tony Kitson  & Drummer Michael Greer ) shift away from the trad punk style and into a just as cool New Wave zone where they had a full set of songs & played lots thru that year until Peter made the move to Sydney in 1981 & formed another band there Autonomy. One of the Flecks signature songs was a ripper called ‘Circles & Spikes’  which is sadly uncomped to this day & is so worthy of being on a red hot Aussie comp reissue it’s just a travesty that it remains unknown to the indie underground. It’s not the trailblazer bubblegum buzzsaw like the Victims, more a solid hummer with plenty of spirit.Other songs of theirs included ‘Touch of Youth’ , ‘Shitpile’ , ‘Out of Control’ , ‘Flecks Don’t Care’  & ‘1-2-3 Go’.

On March 3rd 1980 the band went into 7EX/Channel 9 studios in Launceston & cut both ‘Circles & Spikes’  & ‘1-2-3 Go’ &  issued it as a pro dubbed cassette ep which was shopped around to the typical places of the day, both radio & print, and there exists some pretty neat live goop from Hobart Uni etc.. off the board so at least the band were documented in this manner as opposed to not at all. A coincidental Missing Link record shop chat in Feb ’09 with one of my fave customers (and Buttercup Recs own) John B saw him mention The Flecks out of the blue in saying that he had a ‘cassette demo’ with a black and white cover and I said back well actually….I’ve been all over this band of late….rah rah rah & this graphic you see here is from that cassette (mine being a 1980 Generic Chapple cassette emblazoned with texta) and it kinda completes the picture for me and was great timing in getting this little bunch of paragraphs out into the world. 

Peter found himself in a new band from 1982 to 1985  called The Drunken Boat  who weren’t too bad it seemed & made a move to London but split as ’86  hit.  So after a few back and forths between us, my idea was to get these two tracks out there for public consumption on a fine slab of 7” vinyl  (with accompanying free live CD) & have the story told with a booklet insert, but a Feb 2009 change of heart put a halt to that & reluctantly I had to respect the music creators decision & crawl back into my hole, so for now both White Riot  and The Flecks can exist as a Stained Sheets text fan piece & a FMR web story and maybe one day they’ll get their time In the sun in a musical reissue form.

Even with the advent of extreme electronic information overload, it’s still satisfying in a way to find a band or three who are outside of the Google realm & whose information and story demands one to ferret & dig deep to find results. This is how I’ve been brought up to view the history of music & I’ve found it a lot of fun and very rewarding to fall into mini-obsessions on bands & people who have fallen between the cracks & who are not readily accessed via a search engine….that holds appeal for me and there still remains that kinda teen kick of seeing a package of photocopies & recordings show up in one’s mailbox as a graspable THING & not a Rapid Share file or attachment,but of course they themselves are truly invaluable & handy, to be able to share info in a flash & pass photos and thoughts from work station to work station in a nanosecond when so many of us are now pressed for time & don’t like to wait on anything at all resembling snail mail..

So let it be known that Tasmania did in fact mix it with the rest as the late 70’s DIY music revolution set a rocket up the clacker of many a local teen & threw them into action,activity,& creativity and it’s great to know that people were listening away from the mainland & that bands were forming & playing shows & fans were presenting & were willing to follow their faves around & offer support  and solidarity in no doubt quite the hostile environment. White Riot & The Flecks…. Add them into our historical music texts, get them into updated volumes,add them to website fan lists & let’s see them hold their place as other bands & people who recorded bedroom or studio music continue to be unearthed deep into 2009 and beyond before their stories fade,their musky tapes & papergoods get tossed at the tip & before the chemical air rips into their pipes & takes their breath too early.  





THE TRAITORS - Melbourne 60's/70's & beyond

The Story of DAVID LANGSAM & The TRAITORS 7" - Melbourne 1960's - 1970's & beyond !  This Article originally appeared in Stained Sheets Fanzine in 2009. Written by Scotti - Edited and Released by Daniel Stewart.
 

Over a decade ago i picked up a copy of this kinda mysterious local Punk /New Wave 7" from 1979 in a cool picture sleeve by THE TRAITORS, & it was one of those oddball records which i used to pull out and play from time to time and fuss over every once in a while thinking that one day I'd like to find out more information about it's origin & history & whether or not there were any other recordings by them lurking about. I'd never seen the band name listed on any flyer, It never seemed to be on any Punker Want /Trade lists and this just made it all the more appealing. My main interest was the BABEEZ connection (Singer Gavin Quinn co shares the vocal on the first track & sings the second outright which could easy of been a NEWS outtake), & graphic wise it reminded me of something that Phil Brophy may of been involved with, especially the lettering style, so the years ticked along and it was in early 2008 that i decided to put my interest to action and found Mr David Langsam, whose project this was, & who assembled a handpicked swag of muso's of the day and off they went to cut the three songs 'Noiseless Workers' , 'Paul' & 'Cops'. As is often the case, David turned out to have a good chunk of history within various Underground scenes in this town, and this then is in part his story & the lowdown on this fine little one-off release from the tail end of the 70's, and we here at Stained Sheets thank David muchly for delving back into his past & bringing this to the present...
 
Hi David, so here we are 30 years on from the release of the TRAITORS sole 7"...Did you ever expect to be bugged by music nerds so far down the line ? & welcome to Stained Sheets also & can you tell us where you were at socially & musically from the early to mid 70's & what that period was like for you
 

Did I ever expect to be bugged by music nerds so far down the line? I guess I hoped that somewhere in my life I might write something that lasted beyond my 15 milliseconds of fame and I know I have done some good things – mainly reporting on the Middle East and Environment issues, but if I ever wrote a song or wrote a band or album review that touched someone, then that’s excellent. I was at a 60th (hope I die before I get old?) birthday party a few weeks ago and it was ‘bring your own poetry’ show. I haven’t done a poetry performance since Eric Gradman ran a gig at the Carlton Nova in 1995, but it was good to stand up in front of an unruly crowd and shout poetry at them. I started doing that in about 1972, because I couldn’t sing or play an instrument. I think that I was Australia’s first ‘performance poet’ doing gigs at Outpost Inn in Collins Street Frank Traynor’s Jazz Club in Little Lonsdale Street and the only survivor of that era, the Dan O’Connell in Carlton. So I guess that as a churlish 19 year old I HOPED some music nerd would bug me 30 years later. Thank you kindly, Scott. Where was I socially and musically?

 I grew up in a political household, demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, was arrested at the Post Office in 1972 in a demonstration intended to end in arrests and clog the court system. The conviction was quashed by Whitlam the following year, when he ended our war in Vietnam. I was part of that heady late ‘60s early ‘70s ‘we can do anything’ gang now called baby-boomers, although we were at the tail end of it. I wasn’t much fussed with the rules of the Communists and Socialists – I remember reading Mao’s Little Red Book at school in 1965-‘66 and thinking all this subservience to the state and women to men was a bit unfair, so philosophically, I’ve been an anarchist all my life. I discovered the absence of a god when I was about 11 – so in a funny way those nominally ‘left wing’ values made me far more self-reliant. It also made me ripe for rebellion and along with a few hundred million others I thought Mick and Keith wrote Sympathy For The Devil and Street Fighting Man specifically for me, but we all did, didn’t we? 




I didn’t really become passionate about Australian bands until Uni in 1973 when I was dragged off to Martinis by a friend and I think I saw the very last Bleeding Hearts gig. Martinis soon became my favorite haunt with Stiletto, the Sports and Jo Jo Zep displacing the folk music scene I’d previously inhabited. The folk scene gave me space to get up and perform poetry. The rock scene encouraged me to get serious about learning to play an instrument. I was reasonably good on blues harp but always had tremendous difficulty with guitar and piano – still do. I used to play harp with some friends at a gig in Burwood, The Green Man, I think it was, and we did Crosby Stills Nash and Young stuff and it worked alright, but I wasn’t very good. But to be honest, all these ‘scenes’ were about meeting members of the opposite sex and getting laid, just as raves and dance parties and grunge gigs are today. The advent of gambling machines in pubs might eventually lead to a population decline – I can’t imagine people getting hot, sweaty and drunk pushing their money into a slot and tumbling into bed with the person next to them.

 I loved punk. The Saints, Clash, Jam, Sex Pistols – they all pressed all my buttons and I loved David Bowie’s comment that punk was ‘a well-earned enema for the music industry’. And it was obvious that it was all tongue in cheek or finger down the throat, but The Who flagged that a decade earlier. I was always England (Stones, Who, Kinks, Zeppelin) over mainstream America, except for Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Arlo Guthrie, CSNY. It took awhile to turn my poetry writing to songs, but Workers was the one I liked best of about 10 I had written by 1979. I wrote Paul while teaching at Penleigh Presbyterian Ladies College – actually I wrote it after they didn’t renew my contract. Workers was written in the staff room of Thornbury High School and Cops came from the ether while stumbling home at 3am across Elgin Street. A young police officer yelled at me because I was walking across a deserted road against a red light. I stood in the middle of the completely empty road on a dead quiet night, each of us with a Twins souvlaki in hand, and he told me I couldn’t cross the road against a red light. So I slowly walked back to him still against the red light and reasonably politely explained that at 3am on the fully lit road which had no traffic at all, I was pretty safe. The next day was hot and I saw another cop walking the beat in uniform and that led to the nursery rhyme style cloaking the scream against rules and regulations. I hope my kids don’t read this because they know they are only allowed to cross the road on a green light.

 I was writing reviews for Juke magazine and Roadrunner and running occasional concerts, so I knew most of the bands and some of them quite well. I hated the NME/Julie Burchill school of rock journalism that sneered at bands, because I knew how hard they worked to put a dozen songs together and then organize a poorly paying gig and play their hearts out, only to be sneered at and decried by some toffee-nose on some minor point. Bob Dylan can’t sing or Mick Jagger’s jacket wasn’t ironed –as if that meant all their previous achievements were irrelevant. It’s a terribly tabloid English thing to do. To spot one minor technical error and write off everything that went before. Thanks to immediate global communication, everybody does it these days.So I though if I’m going to review bands, I need to put together a band and record my songs and see what it’s like from the inside. It was born from Gonzo reporting, but unlike Hunter S Thompson, I didn’t have to get beaten up by the Hells Angels. I asked the best musicians that I knew to help out and with Eddie van Roosendael (Stiletto, Romantics) on drums and Rick Grossman (Bleeding Hearts, Man & Machine, Divinyls, Hoodoo Gurus) on bass, the Traitors (named because they were all playing in other bands and ‘traitor’ was such an explosive word back then like ‘terrorist’ today) it was built on an extremely powerful foundation. I always wanted Randy Bullpin James for the wildest guitar solo and with help from Nick Rischbieth (Romantics) and Geoff Spooner (Jim Keays Band) we had a three guitar band. Gavin Quinn (Babeez, News, New 5) helped out with backing vocals on Workers and sang Paul. Eddie sang Cops. The three tracks were recorded at Crystal Clear by Eric Carter (Lou Reed, Eric Gradman) and remixed by Sven Langebeck (Warehouse Sound, audio engineer extraordinaire).The guitar in Workers is three chords stolen from Reed’s Satellite of Love, (E F# A), but the rest is probably my/our own invention.

Well that's interesting info David & I'm glad that we can explore your history in the lead up to this vinyl project. Let's delve more into your time performing poetry in the early 70's if we can...was this predominantly based on the politics of the day ? or did you also interject your readings with a spot of mirth and mischief ?


 There was a bit of politics in the early ones when I was 14 at school but by the time I started performing the poetry was more obscure. There was a Bob Dylanesque cross-sensation LSD-culture influence, which was not actually related to any personal experience I don’t think, but a flavor to the writing style, particularly in Dr Earth and Red Light Speeding and there was a poem conceived as an alternative to the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil, called ‘Evil’, which was from the perspective of the heroin itself, rather than a user or dealer, enticing users to ruin their lives. Perhaps a bit like Neil Young’s Needle and the Damage Done, but with me belting it out dressed in shiny black holding a blue fluorescent light flashing it around the room. And there was a lot of personal emotional revelation. ‘God Trip’ was typical of where it ended up, a cerebral dig at an issue like god or the state. Anarchism and atheism were then and remain constants. So does irony.About one third of the audience walked out within a few minutes taking the stage. About a third came up to me after the show and said something in one or more poems tapped their own thoughts and the remainder were probably politely confused.

God Trip   (1974) 

 

What you do on the weekend?

Nothing much went round the bend

Slept all Saturday and that was great

Woke up too late to decide my fate

So I went back to bed in blissful hate.

Woke up Sunday morning. It was boring

Went to the National Gallery

Saw a painting by Mallory. It was poor

And what's more, I bought some culture

For two dollars I bought a Boyd

(I wonder what woid I can rhyme with Boyd)

Went for a drive through the town

I saw a cop in an evening gown

Ran him down into the ground

Saw a million people and a million steeples

Empty churches full of sound

Bells tolling that God's been found

Alive and well in a Swiss bank account

Living in Argentina under an assumed name

Hiding in the hills, avoiding fame

Or avoiding blame

That god's insane.

I ran to my room, bolted the door

Loaded my gun waiting for the Lord

To show his face, but he said he was bored

I expected a Holden, but he came in a Ford

I gave him his passport and ticket to the States

He had to run and decide some fates.

I found a drunk who was slowly dying 

With a politician who said 'you aren't really trying'

And a poet who said 'I think your lying'

God felt sick and started crying

I took him flying.

And so the single itself, am i right in saying that it was conjured up as a solitary art project of sorts ? or did you take your rehearsals (& subsequent recordings) a step further into the live realm ?

Rehearsals?

 Nah mate. It was all done in one day with me giving a run through of how I played them on guitar and sang them and then I left it to Rick and Eddie lay down the rhythm section, which would have to be, by definition, loud, powerful and innovative and then Nick and Geoff played a professional variation of my guitar part. A friend taught me to sing three notes E F# and A and I sang workers, with Gavin doing a backing vocal. Randy was only there for an hour or so and put down that amazing guitar solo on the first take. Gavin sang Paul and Eddie sang Cops with Geoff playing lead guitar. While I wrote produced and arranged the EP, my only part was singing ‘Workers’. These guys were among the best musicians in Melbourne at the time. We were all cooking and it was easy. Plus I couldn’t afford any studio time so we had to be in and out in one day. (Thanks, Eric!) I jammed with a couple of bands and have performed songs and poetry and I went on stage in a few places armed with guitars and amps doing short sets mixing poetry and songs. I don’t think I ever publicly played my material in a band, apart from at Montsalvat with my friend Ivars Sulcs playing backing piano to some of my poems, which I have on cassette, somewhere.

 You mention that your inital discovery of live music was via the Australian Folk Scene in the late 60's and early 70's (and no probs for me there as my interest in it's unsung players is almost on par with that of my punk rock obsessions) and to of lived the daze and nites of it from this period, from 15 years of Menzies rule leaving us smack bang in the excitement of 1966 as things were hotting up socially and culturally, then into the times of bad arse facial hair, jammin' prog rock, graffiti with depth, meaning, & humour (as opposed to amateur & messy tagging of today), along with an ever increasing eye on growing global injustice, this all must of been a wild trip !  Are your memories of this decade '66-'76 hazy ?, lazy ?, or crazy ?  Do tell.


Oh dear Scott, where do I begin? Facial hair lasted about six months with me, but at one time my hair went most of the way down my back. But seriously, to write this all down now, rather than talk about it and get you to type it up is daunting. There was just so much on offer. One of my favorite pieces of graffiti was on a wall, I think in Falconer Street Fitzroy that went up immediately after Ming died saying “Keep Menzies In The Ground” a reference to the prevailing attitude to uranium. In the basement of the Pram Factory someone had written ‘Today’s punk is tomorrow’s police cadet’ which itself was a reference to “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon’. There was a lot of very hip graffiti then, some of which remains faded in the brickwork of Carlton and Fitzroy. And it really was sex and drugs and rock’n’roll as far as the eye could see. I remember nights in Carlton when it was still affordable for students walking around Drummond Street and Station Street and if you heard music you liked and had a bottle of wine or a flagon or a matchbox of parsley or some Lebanese Gold you’d be welcome and more often than not, you knew the occupants from Uni. And a lot of people were doing all sorts of party drugs. There was a lot of hash, hash oil, bad grass, Buddha sticks, good and bad acid and some mescaline. And there was a dramatic gulf between that and the opiate users. Junkies weren’t welcome. There was also a bit of an anti-alcohol dope user snobbery: “No man, I don’t drink, I smoke!” But then I discovered Hunter S Thomson and found a bottle of Wild Turkey at King & Godfrey and went from non-drinking to bourbon in one imperceptible second. And Wild Turkey cost a whole week of student allowance! I can’t really say anymore because my children might read this, but let me just say I have always admired Keith Richards song-writing abilities, not to mention his driving skills.

 So back to the 7" itself for a tick then..how did you find the process of getting it cut ? and tell us about the classic New Wave artwork and pen design and how that came to be. And I note that it's issued on AFTER WORK records, but carries a MISSING LINK imprint also along with it's cat # of  MLC-101. And was it like dancing in the rain in the NUDDIE upon busting open the bulk boxes and packing the sleeves to be left with the finished fruits of your labour ?


 Keith Glass must have been the most patient and kind person in the world, because after running Archie and Jugheads and selling me most of my record collection – and most of Melbourne’s at the time – he ran Missing Link and let people like me put out our own material. A saint. Again, I knew Keith and asked he said yes. I gave him the master tapes and the late great Laurie McRae Nishimoto did the art work for the sleeve. Eric Gradman designed the Afterwork logo for our arts magazine of the same name and I saw a name credit for the lettering that I didn’t recognize which could have been one of Eric’s nom de plumes. When I first played it, I was absolutely gobsmacked, because it sounded EXACTLY as I wanted it to. When I played it the last time, it still sounded EXACTLY as I wanted it to and I really don’t give a shit what Julie Burchill says.  And I went through the process of writing rewriting, pulling a band together, finding a studio, recording, remixing and putting onto vinyl so at the end of it all, I knew the difficulty bands go through to put out their work. It ain’t easy. And for some jumped up, stuck-up would-be critic to piss on an artist for sayng “ain’t” rather than “isn’t” says more about that sneering would-be critic than the artist. I always tried to report on what I saw and heard rather than give an opinion. Sometimes I did, but that was rare and for good reason.

Winter    (1978 )

Waiting for September

I'm waiting for the spring

Hating cold cold winter

I'm hating everything

Freezing at the factory

The boss exploits my toil

Working late at night

Burning midnight oil

Tell me where there's sunshine

Tell me where there's heat

I need a trip up to Queensland

This winter's got me beat

Those trees are all naked

They're all stripped of leaf

Looking like I'm feeling

In this ice Antarctic breeze

Waiting for December

I'm waiting for the sun

Gonna hit the beaches

I'm gonna have some fun

That hot sand can burn my feet

Old Sol can burn my back

Winter I don't like you

Go 'way and don't come back.

It was interesting to note the support given to you by Keith Glass at Missing Link Records and the importance of the standing of this town's Independent Record Stores. Just as they become a meeting place and melting pot of like minded music fans, that torch is also carried on down the line,for example after Bruce Milne began his retail tenure there he then launched his own Au-Go-Go label, which in turn mirrored the same support you describe from Keith, where not only were these kinds of people building substantial catalogue releases they also were very active behind the scenes, funding & helping many releases over decades which others may not even realise led back to them and i think that's a wonderful support base to have, offering up confidence to do DIY projects & to see them through. Can you talk a bit about your experiences with Melbourne's Independent Record Stores in the midst of the pioneering years of the mid 70's and on

 Well the big success story of them all of course is Mark Rubbo’s Readings which started as Professor Longhair’s alternative record shop in Lygon Street in 1972, the year before I went to uni in 1973. It had a vast array of hard-to-find albums and if I remember correctly, bootlegs with the pig trademark. Then there was Gaslight Records in Bourke Street run by a coterie of nice boys from Mt Scopus including promoter Michael Coppel and Jeff Harrison. My cousin Danny worked there at some stage – and I think Gaslight brought records to stalls at Melbourne Uni (and probably Monash and Latrobe) as well. But Archie and Jugheads was the first truly independent record store I went to and as a nervous 18 year old Keith Glass and David Pepperell told me to relax and browse and I didn’t know where to start.

 I thought that the first single I ever bought was the Beatles Paperback Writer from a mainstream shop in Carnegie and I think the first LP was Simon and Garfunkel’s soundtrack to The Graduate, but that was probably 1966 or 1967, so my memory must be playing tricks on me. I had The Beatles’ She Loves You which was released in 1963 and the Stones’ Paint It Black which came out in 1966. And I have a Ray Davies autographed copy of Lola, but that’s as recent as 1970 and a dozen or so Presley singles. I won a copy of a John Young album from a 3XY radio competition and a rather richly painted portrait of Presley from Everybody’s magazine which I had framed and lived on my wall until I gave it to my cousin Marek. I don’t know what he did with it, but it was a limited edition of the King at his pre-FBI paranoia fatman best and would probably be worth something today. By 1966-67, I was Stones rather than Beatles and Rocker rather than Mod. I luckily missed the Bodgies and Widgies but it was a close thing. It must have been 1971 that Chris Cowden and David Radford taught me the dark pleasures of the Velvet Underground and I never looked back. The local record shop in Carnegie had everything that was on the radio and the man that ran it was kindly impatient with me most of the time, but I probably asked a lot of stupid questions and dripped ice cream on his floor, so I don’t blame him at all. I must say I am grateful that my older brother was a bit of a rocker so there was a modern musical influence around the house. I think I bought my own copies of Johnny O’Keefe’s Shout and She’s My Baby, but J O’K was a big favorite of my brother Vic’s as well. He used to wear “electric socks” - we’d call them fluoro colors now I guess - and I bought my first motorcycle jacket from Roger David in Carnegie, aged 11 and for 11 Guineas which was 11 pounds and 11 shillings, which would be $23.10 in those days and allowing for inflation about $230 today. I still have it and although I can’t fit into it anymore my son Alex will in a couple of years. And my friend Roger was always picking up new music and introducing me to the joys of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, The Faces and Traffic. Roger was/is a big Who fan so I was fully immersed in Tommy and Quadrophenia when they came out, but this is starting to get a little mainstream. I heard the Woodstock triple album when it first came out and we’d relive the concert we all wanted to see and missed. I think it has just been re-released in a digitally remastered 3-D version.

 And still being a Melburnian after all this time David, how do you view the growth of the city ?  Seeing areas like the Docklands turn from miles of dilapidated metal and wood cladding ruin to what it is now today (some would say the landscape is now an updated wasteland of boxed concrete shells littered with asymmetric blot). It's a fast moving place with forever changing grand ideas, & amazing vibrancy & culture in so many ways, but how do you view the balance between what you've seen as the years have passed and to where you think it may be headed into 20whatevers ?

 I remember coming home in 1995 and people telling me that Jeff Kennett had turned Melbourne around, but surprisingly the MCG was just where I left it and the Yarra still wound its way down from Healesville to Port Melbourne. In fact, I was commissioned by Euromoney to write a piece on Victoria’s economy under Kennett and I had a very hard time accessing the State GDP figures. When I did finally dig them out, it was clear that Victoria had the shortest and shallowest recession in the late 1980s early 1990s recession of the comparison group of New South Wales, Australia, UK and the US. In fact Victoria hit bottom and began its recovery a full year BEFORE Kennett was elected so all that “turned the state around” guff was merely the master of PR conning the very gullible media. If anyone deserves credit it was John Cain, Jim Kennan and Joan Kirner, but I think they shoot people for saying things like this, regardless of the facts. Under Cain the city development was reasonable. Buildings were designed to be different shapes and interesting, but the city is sprawling so far outside the CBD that if it is not contained we’ll have just another boring US sky-scraper city.

Tonight in Melbourne  (David Langsam 25.8.96  Langsam/Nick Smith 26.8.96)

There's a bar in South Yarra where blondes in red Porsches

Meet guys on mobiles betting on horses

And down in St Kilda the cakes are so rich

You can feed the possums and sleep on the beach

And there's a freeway that cuts through the heart of my town

And a river for gamblers to jump in and drown

Tonight in Melbourne

Tonight in Melbourne

If you're angry alone at the end of the night

You can go down to King Street and get in a fight

Or be mugged by a loser - a gambling den louse

whose already lost his car or her house

And nobody cares they don't give a damn

Cause all the high rollers are part of the scam

Tonight in Melbourne

Tonight in Melbourne

And out over Ringwood the air is so thick

The fumes from your car are making you sick

And the EPA man tells us all lies

We've poisoned the air but he says it’s real nice

Tonight in Melbourne

It used to be a city where we all could live

but now it's just a town where you give and you give

And sad poor people drop a coin in the slot

Distribute the wealth from the bottom straight to the top

Tonight in Melbourne

And there's a freeway that cuts through the heart of my town

And a river for gamblers to jump in and drown

And nobody cares, they don't give a damn

Cause all the high rollers are part of the scam

Tonight in Melbourne

 But that said, I love this city. I love New York. I have three boys who walk to school up the road and we know heaps of our neighbors but we have the anonymity of a big city at the same time. And again thanks John Cain for the bike paths. There’s nothing better than a ride along the beach or the Great Ocean Road or a drive up to the Dandenongs or Macedon. There’s always something to do and I had a visitor from London a couple of months ago. The first night he was here I took him to a gig at the Toff In Town, had a drink in the rooftop bar, went down to have a meal in the converted rail cars and watched the band. The next night I was helping launch a book by Steve Brook at Trades Hall (Once a union building, now a comedy venue! Now that’s a sign of the times.) and he was knocked out by the beauty of the building and the fact that it actually does host a Communist Party office! And we didn’t get to take him to The Forum, but that’s a great venue, too.

Well it's been great chatting with you on the strength of us wishing to unearth the story of this particular 7" record by the TRAITORS, & we're glad that we have done so and we thank you taking the time to revisit your past & share your thoughts. We've touched on the music, some politics, your spoken word forays, & general youthful shenanigans, & throughout you have mentioned family, so to finish - are your kids entertained & quietly impressed by your colourful involvement as a Melbourne Mutineer ? and have you instilled in them the importance of individual thought & lifestyle where they can call it as they see it & maybe question a bit deeper what it put up to them on the day to day ?

  Ahhh …. There’s so much I can’t tell them and so much I won’t tell them until they are older. They are great and all three of them have surpassed my humble musical talents already. Alex has passed Grade Two Theory and scored a Credit on his Piano Prac exam and has taken up guitar. Yosl plays trombone and piano and Joshua is very keen on his viola. Alex asked us the other night as we were ordering him to bed at 8.30pm how come if we are anarchists, we get to tell him what to do? Brilliant question and he earned a compromise of staying up till 9pm. I don’t care what he does when he grows up - he can be any kind of doctor he likes. He has steadfastly wanted to be a paleontologist since he was three.  Yosl and Joshua are truly independent and very strong willed. Yosl wants a drum kit to go with his trombone and hasn’t budged for six months. Joshua signed himself up for gymnastics and does an impressive routine to his favorite music Pink, which I had happily ignored until he got his Mum to buy him a CD. That said he likes the Stones as well.                                                                                                                                                     
 Thank you kindly for your interest. Hope I die before I get old.


PLANET RECORDS / THE BLUE BOPS 


Through my childhood I was surrounded by loads of records,especially 7” singles and have my mum Rae(Herself a late 50’s/1960’s Pop Singer) to thank for my current obsessions as the seed was firmly planted in spinning records,oogling labels, covers, & inserts, & generally fussing over them. The one which I held in the highest reverence (& to this day I stare at it like it’s a piece of unearthed treasure from the outskirts of Egypt) was a two track 7” from 1958 by Melbourne Rock’n’Roll Vocal /Instro group THE BLUE BOPS on a label called Planet Records. The two cuts on it ‘Mona Lisa’  b/w: ‘ Tiger’ was, for me like stepping into another world !  Altho’ not born myself until the late 60’s I was totally taken with this record at a very young age (along with the 7” gem ‘Proud Mary’ by CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL which was all over the stereo and the radio around 1970 not long after it’s release the year previous). From that early age I knew that The Blue Bops 7” was Different to the other  7”s that were around & that it truly was a DIY release with it’s purple label with text and label logo…it just carried that mystique & character & would make the mind wander with it’s spacey themes.

My mum and the band’s main vocalist/guitarist George Hopkins were high school sweethearts for a time which totally added to it’s Melbourness & appeal, as it was just so damn LOCAL !  The single itself is made up of two tame numbers (locking in some lingo of the day) with the A Side a short Rockabilly styled shaker which sounds (through all the pops and crackles) like it’s from two decades earlier & coulda come spinnin’ around at 78rpm’s as opposed to 45rpm (subtract that figure and you get an LP rekkid ! ,& no nitpickin’ over the third ok). The flip continues the theme but messes with your head a tad more as they have added Tiger growls which kinda sound like a band member belching after a hardy nite on the sherbets. This used to spin me out and I swear I played that friggin' record a few hundred times and then some. Not only did it kick booty with it’s rad Leopard Print sample action ( 1958 in Melbourne we still are here), but it offered up the Pure Aussie tagline of ‘You Keep my Heart a’ Jumpin’ like a Kangaroo’ which would make any digger proud and it keeps you rockin’ along with ‘Just to see you smile really drives me wild I wanna growl….WOW ! & ‘ I go insane cause I can’t be tamed like a tiger ( cue dodgy growl ) Oo Oo like a tiger ( grrr ) & on we go….

Two tracks of goodness where the bloke wants to get dirty with the girl, the classic well traveled theme & THE BLUE BOPS must of been stoked to get their 7” out (It never came in a Picture Sleeve) & to be playing gigs all across town.

So there I sat with a quixotic notion of this lone single and it’s time in the musicality of this town & it followed me through rental house to rental house & to record shelf and record shelf, setting up camp & being always there. It wasn’t until way down the line in the mid 90’s that I made moves to follow up the story & I tracked down Mr George Hopkins in the Eastern Subs of Melbourne & coerced him into meeting up with me and my mum in East Melbourne so I could grill him about the 7” & tick another box of nerdydom. The meeting was a tad uncomfortable I must say as I might of bought along my walkman but I did not use it & here I was, some young roustabout sitting on a table amongst two ex: lovebirds & asking crap like ‘So - tell me about the 7” where was it pressed ?  and all this kinda garb whereas the poor bloke probably had no friggin’ idea (correct !) & most likely just wanted to play catch up with his old flame & not be pestered by some jerkoza prodding him for minute details of something he was doing 3 decades previous. Kinda like someone asking me …’So Scott - tell us about your lunchtime school races involving Icy-Pole sticks down the School fence drains’ or ‘So how many times did you play in your cubby house in 1971’ that kinda thing, so looking back it was probably a poxy idea to think that I was doing anything good. After that I remember ringing GH up a few times at his work badgering him for any mint copies of the 7” single & after a few of those you could tell that the pesky meter was in the red so I finally tried to let it go and get on with my life. I did get at the band’s scrapbook tho’ & all the stuff you see here comes from that, from TV appearance dates to news clippings from a super innocent time in local music appreciation to the band’s official bizzo card.

But in 2001 & like a crown casino addicted gambling LOSER I still could not shake the bug of THE FRIGGIN’ BLUE BOPS and found myself at the house of the Label founder & all round music eccentric (Ladies & Gentlemen) we give you

JAZZ MUSO, AUTHOR,SONGWRITER,MUSICAL DIRECTOR,VOCALIST, SCRIP WRITER,PROMOTOR, HUMORIST, & LABEL DIRECTOR Mr Bob ‘King’ Crawford !!!!!!!!! He certainly put himself out there on a limb & was (with a few pals) at the helm of quite a successful  Independent Record Company which (amazingly for Australia I reckon) dated back to 1951 inception wise & lasted a full decade (which I think would take it to 1961), organizing recordings,releasing records, constructing all the artwork on plates etc.. & then getting them out there ( a lot of the time under the counter) in direct comp to the shitty allseeing rule of the major record companies of the day (the shit set in early huh), so a real freakin’ trailblazer here and he’d be the first to tell you (as well as write in to any newspaper who said that Mushroom Records  was ‘Australia’s First Independent Record Label’ to set the rekkid straight). I had this wanky thing going on where I was gonna reissue the 7” in a proper sleeve on purple vinyl and blah blah blah all to I guess find some crabby closure on my time with it & to somehow put my stamp on it’s history or some dogshit so I am  kinda glad that I didn’t see this through & drifted off into bits & bobs as If I did  get it out I’d most likely be feeling like an upper echelon member of the TOTAL PEANUT CLUB right at this minute, and it would of meant more time seeing it, talking about it, and having it ‘around’ so it’s best that it kinda stayed in the background I think.

Planet Records lays claims to all sorts of firsts across the Australian Music Landscape as it was shaped and formed. They will tell you that they released the first Aussie Comedy Record, the first with a label containing a photo, the first to pioneer a extended Microgroove, allowing an EP to carry six tracks instead of 4,the first album with the world’s first colour process cover (hmmmmm) & the ‘worl’d first Rock’n’Roll album’ (big fucking call that mate), so yeh, they were without a doubt pioneers in many areas, but whether they were in all  these remains to be seen I guess…BKC, as we’ll call him from this point on ( I wonder if they make a mean burger there?), or could it be the call sign to base in BARGEARSE or DIVISION 4 ( ‘BKC to base come in over’)? No V’s here ok !  and his main label cohort MARCUS HERMAN left a pretty extensive discography of 7”s and LP’s (some are reasonably easy to pick up at junk shops and the like but usually in shithole condition which is often the sign of a well played and loved record), The Catalogue numbers are a bit skeewiff but as the BLUE BOPS is PX -025 whereas other releases on the label follow a PZ catalogue number (for instance PX-011 on Planet is KENNY ARNOTT ‘Robbery Under Arms’  (He was a Cowboy Singer from Horsham), whilst PZ-011 is the friggin’ Mr Genius 7” from BKC as seen on these pages, so it’s all over my head so you bloody work it out ok !  After a mob called Telefil took over the Planet label in the early 60’s that was it for that era of the label & the Marcus Meister (or The Hermster to his mates maybe) kicked on with the kinda cool CREST RECORDS imprint, who issued a swag of Jazz, Pop, Folk, & a few tuff 60’s Garage releases, namely two KILLER OZ 60’s howlers you’ll find a cut each of on the great IT’S A KAVE-IN LP (The LEPRECHAUNS ‘Rain’ , which was the single’s B Side with the opener being the marvelously titled ‘There’s a Trick in Pickin’ a Chick Chick Chicken Today’) & The FRANTICS whose ‘Familiar Faces & Forgotten Dreams’ also rules!  Both labels had their little brand shout outs to entice the record buying public ( If Artists are out of this world they’re on a Planet) & The Best that’s Pressed is on a Crest  for the Crest label (the latter has a cool ring to it I reckon)

Other label monikers which branched off from the Planet  base (some most likely in name only ie: no documented releases) were : Galaxy, Star , Baton, Constellation, Jazz Inc, Talent City, Homestead, Probe, Rebel, & Choir (And astute Stained Sheeter Readers will recognize two names there also used in the 80’s/90’s/2K’s as Top Notch Indie labels…Constellation & Homestead who both have issued a mountain of music but have nothing whatsoever to do with this article apart from that coincidence) And yet another interesting tie-in to BKC is one of his part creations… the MYSTRYS and their super fun & wacky Orbit label 7” from early 1966 called ‘Witch Girl’ b/w: ‘Land Of The Green Sun’
(reissued later in the year on Leedon) They were MELBOURNE’S VERSION OF THE MUMMIES (or vice versa as these cats were three decades earlier than our beloved bandaged Garage Punk heroes,& altho’ they came bandageless it still was pretty out there for it’s day) with their identities hidden under masks and velvet hoods etc… & named ANKARR, ZROAG,KUFF,GMX & STARFINN and altho’ it’s just a morsel over 2 minutes in length, it’s a STACK OF FUN with a speedy beat, cool vocals, & all kinds of tripped out effects & hawaiiany spaced out goodness (you can even view a static version of it on you tube these days of course). So yeh, some interesting trails can be unearthed from the starting point of THE BLUE BOPS 7” when you throw yourself in and see what the hell sticks.

So I say if you wanna rewind and chow down on this town’s (for the most part) unknown & under documented musical past pick up a Planet (or subsidiary label) 7”, 10”, or LP (and this includes everything from straight up Hillbilly to good time party sounds to the big band LP which coincided with the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games!) next time you are out ferreting in the second hand bins or junk shops where you may roam and hear some sounds from a time of innocence, a time of simplicity, a time of old style romance and a time now disafrigginpeared out the window !  I look at my mum,who was a vocalist in the combo THE SKIFFLETTES  and think ‘Man -Check that out ! So dang PRIMITIVE but so Right on’  I’m pretty bloody proud of her I must say for having an interesting history in music & kicking it along as a solo artist as the 1960’s swang into full gear, and all these bands, people and labels mentioned above are just as important to our culture and future shape as any JOHNNY O’ KEEFE, Festival, W&G, JIMMY LITTLE and THE MASTERS APPRENTICES, some household names, others hardsloggers who only stepped into the spotlight later in their years as younger audiences tuned in and major labels who themselves stuck their neck out & created a wealth of documentation whilst employing hundreds of people along the way, so the big and the small, it’s all there to explore and this mag will always be out there rooting for the little guy and the under known so hats off to THE MYSTRYS, hats off to BKC, hats off to THE BLUE BOPS, and hats off to THE SKIFFLETTES and all those other bands and players whose stories remain static awaiting to be told. Look out ! is all we can say…we have our tape players,tenacity, don’t mind a bit of RECORD FINGER (those who flip through hundreds of dogshit Alan Gardiner LP’s and shoddy Classical Records under spider webbed trestle tables will know what I’m a talkin’ about),and like a story to be told , so from whatever the era if you kicked ok ass (and are maybe still kicking it right as we speak) we may be on your case! So with that I farewell ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘Tiger’ and extract myself from it’s stickly addicty grasp until someone at a rubbish tip in Maldon or somewhere comes forth with a pristine acetate of the bands full repertoire wrapped up in musky newspaper and I’ll prick up me ears once again and growl like a mofo tiger…..and the process shall begin again .

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PLANET RECORDS - The First Half Dozen Releases

PX 001 - Jack O’ Leary / Barry O’ Dowd - Irish Medley Parts 1 and 2   7”

PX 002 - Jack O’ Leary -Stormy Weather b/w: Night and Day  7”

PX 003 - The Trailblazers - Cowboy b/w: Mother Went -a -Walkin’  7”

PX 004 - Peter McLean - Hard Headed Woman b/w: Don’t Ask Me Why 7”

PX 005 - Vic West - This Love of Mine b/w: The Nearness of You  7”

GALAXY RECORDS  - The First Half Dozen Releases

GX 001 - Annette Scott - Allegheny Moon b/w: I Almost Lost My Mind  7”

GX 002 - Charles Mc Devitt Skiffle Group - Freight Train b/w: The Cotton Song 7”

GX 003 - Cranes Skiffle Group - Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O b/w: Banana Boat Song GX 004 - Larry Cross - Mountain Greenery b/w: Ten Thousand Miles 7”

GX 005 - The Tunettes - Red Light, Green Light b/w: I Saw Esau 7”

GX 006 - David Ross - The Garden of Eden b/w: The Green Door

The Blue Bops - George Hopkins, Bruce Lee, Geoff Somers, Ron Hayden

The Blue Bops - Songs Played :  Maybe Baby , Put a Light in the Window, Kewpie Doll, 20 Flight Rock, High School Confidential, Rockin’ Robin, Midnight, Tom Dooley, It’s So Easy, Blue Ribbon Baby, Queen of The Hop, A Fool Such as I, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore, Keep a Knockin’, It’s Late, Dream Lover, Pointed Toe Shoes, Tiger, Shirley Lee, Mona Lisa, Down The Line, I’m Feeling Sorry, Be Bop a LuLa, Danny Boy, I Was The One, Oh Yeah Uh Uh, The Shape I’m In.

*They performed all through 1958 on Television and through 1959 as well.  Footage ?

The Blue Bops - Mona Lisa b/w: Tiger 7”  (Planet)  PX-025   1958

The Mystrys - Witch Girl b/w: Land Of The Green Sun  7”  (Orbit)  W/OR 100

(Reissued on the Leedon label as LK-1364)     1966



June 2019 Update : 
If you would like a  FREE PRINT COPY  of the Original STAINED SHEETS fanzine where this article appeared, just let me know in the notes section at your Checkout and it will be included. I have a small handful of this edition left from the time...


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Be Home Before Midnight !..............Rae Dixon Interview

I wanted to find out more about this time, so I grilled my Mum Rae with a few choice questions about life and times back in the day here be the fruits of my curiosity :

How did you first get access to your music ?

 Music was always a central part of my life. As a small child radio & weekly sing-a-longs sessions with friends & neighbours plus the regular dancing & singing classes I attended fostered my love of music and the performing arts. When I was about six years old, just after the war, my parents bought me a piano which I learnt for about a year but was not very good at so it was sold. Later on I would of liked to of learnt the guitar, but somehow it never happened. I was fortunate enough to be a teenager when popular music developed a brave new style…Rock’n’Roll and targeted our age group. Prior to this -Pre 1954, all the music available was mushy love stuff, Sinatra, Dean Martin, croon & swoon, sad , mournful, chinzy & corny !. My friends and I used to listen to the radio and learn the words of all the songs that appealed to us, so singing on the radio was one of my dreams that was to come true later on. Rock’n’Roll and loud gutsy music designed for these new young consumers had just hit the scene with a vengeance and changed our boring well behaved lives forever. I believe this was the start of a generation gap,parents thought we were all going to end up depraved,demented,debauched & destroyed with this evil American influence, as well as becoming deaf !. The older generation could not deal with the new freedom of expression we were displaying,denouncing and deploring the new trend,whilst never admitting that some of it appealed to them too.

Where were you going to purchase music, and on what format ?

 Previously quiet,obedient homebound or studious offspring were finding new interests, leaving school at 14 or 15 to get a job to earn spending money to rake up the abundance of products available for previously ignored young people. A Saturday moring trip to Allan’s Music store in Melbourne with your wages burning a hole in your pocket (after paying your parents ‘board’)…45rpm records, LP’s, Song Books, Sheet Music, & Magazines with stories about our favourite singing stars soon made us broke but happy to be young & alive. TV was almost upon us, and in 1956 the Olympic Games brought in it’s wake a few weekly programs. For us the magic of ‘The Hit Parade’ was a ‘must watch’. TV sets were only to be found in the homes of the rich and famous but the local milk bar where we used to meet saw the potential and installed a 14” set for our enjoyment and a large share of our meager earnings. We flocked down and jammed in to feast our eyes on the amateur miming skills of the performers as the top ten was replayed in black and white. We all ended up with stiff necks and full stomachs, leaving the shop owner counting his till, bulging with our hard earned pounds, shilling & pence.(my wage as a 15 year old was two pounds eighteen shillings -less than $6.00 a week)
The music was like a magic potion, a link to bring most young people together with a common interest, latching onto the trend, most suburbs soon had a music store,music teachers were in demand and Ringwood became the hub of our buying sprees. It was easy to make friends in those days,people were reasonably content before consumerism took hold. There was full employment and always a better job for the taking if you were not happy. People were safe & secure and life was simple. Most people in Boronia where we moved in 1949 were families with Dad out working 51/2 days a week and Mum running the house and bringing up the kids. Until TV sets came down in price 3 or 4 years after the Olympics around 1959-60 only the well to do had their own set. Radio still remained our regular music medium. Advertising became more prevalent with previously contented families being targeted as behind the times and missing out on an opportunity if they didn’t succumb to the buy now pay later ethos. Up until then people waited until they could save up to buy a large item,small items were put on Lay-By and personal debt and credit card stress were yet to rear their head and upset our once peaceful lives. Eventually we did get with it and a 14” B&W TV set became king of the lounge room & the family entertainment centre. Books, games, drawings, writing letters, family discussions & listening to the radio became almost obsolete & life was never to be the same again.

How then did you begin to make moves to becoming a Singer ?

 Live shows featured a myriad of local entertainers, singers,musicians of every genre. Here was a chance to have a go at my childhood dream of being a performer,maybe even one day appear on TV !  Some of the cats were so pathetic I was thinking ‘I could do as good as that’ and started to practice. My voice wasn’t all that spectacular but I had a good sense of rhythm & movement, plenty of confidence and a good pair of legs so I thought what the hell I have nothing to lose. I was 17 and working in the family printing business in Ringwood (now a part of the Eastlink Ringwood to Frankston Freeway). While collecting the mail one day I passed the Ringwood Town Hall, which was then opposite the Ringwood Railway Station. I noticed a poster announcing an upcoming talent quest and wrote down the number for auditions. Back at work, I rang the number before I lost my nerve. I was told to front up the next night armed with 3 items to perform with sheet music for pianist and the key I sang each one in. Panic set in ! I had no idea what key I sang in, & suddenly I felt my confidence draining away….what was I doing ? was I going to make a big fool of myself in front of a room full of local people ?  At home that night I looked through what sheet music I had,which wasn’t much & settled on some Everly Brothers hits ‘Maybe Baby’ & two others, hoping for the best. The big night arrived, I was nervous,didn’t know a soul,clutching my sheet music I fronted up to the desk to fill out the necessary forms - no turning back now !  There were people milling about everywhere, many in costume, some with instruments, all flushed with fear and excitement. I was told to go over to the pianist and discuss my song and get the key sorted out. I felt a bit stupid but was soon put at ease when she zoomed in on the correct key in a few moments. She wished me luck and directed me over to a group waiting in the wings. I found people to be friendly,all asking questions and chattering loudly. Soon we heard the compere announce there would be talent scouts looking for new acts for Radio and TV shows, so just do our best to impress and who knows ? There might be a star born tonight. The lights went out and we were on -act after act did their bit then it was my turn, the longest 3 minutes of my life up till then. I sang It doesn’t matter anymore & it went off without a hitch & I floated off stage in a blur, a feeling of unreality like it was happening to someone else. The next act was a Skiffle band called The SKIFFLETTES. I watched them backstage then went down into the audience to watch the last few acts from the front of the large hall. Soon it was over, a couple who did a song and dance act won the prize, we were all thanked and told to try again in the next round of auditions. Back in the foyer I was approached by a guy from the Skifflettes Group. He said he was impressed with my songs and asked if I would be interested in coming along to one of their weekly rehearsals,explaining he was the Producer of the United Entertainers Concert Party. The group met on Wednesday nights in a small room belonging to the Hawthorn City Council Band, in the grounds of the Hawthorn Football Club. It sounded like fun so I arranged to go to the next meeting and check it out. It was 1958, I was to be a part of the United Entertainers for the next three and a half years until my marriage in 1961. These years were to become some of the best years of my life, full of fun, friendship, fantasy, satisfaction & fulfillment.

When you performed solo & with a band , who chose the Set ? and was it predominantly covers or originals ?

 With the concert party,most of our shows were based on a theme format. Many of the artists stuck with a tried and true item & played the same material at almost every show. Sometimes we did a show Friday Night, a Matinee on Saturday afternoon, and another show Saturday night. Rehearsals every Wednesday & sometimes Sundays meant that we did not get much time for socializing so the group became an extended family. When doing solo work, I was free to choose my music, usually 2 songs per show. I also sang with the Skifflettes on a regular basis, Len the Producer chose the set, we did encores & normally finished with all the group on stage. Being classed as a Pop Singer, I was lucky to have free reign. All my work was covers, mostly Elvis, The Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Chuck Berry, The Nelson Brothers, Tom Jones, almost anything I could lay my hands on sheet music wise. Later a young guy called Ricky joined the group and we teamed up as a double act as well as doing our solo gigs.

What was the most exciting part of performing at this time ?

 Some of the other singers performed original work but the loudest response from the audiences were to applaud music they listened to on the radio,stuff they were familiar with. I was always on the lookout for new material, as soon as a new upbeat song hit the airwaves, I latched onto it & by the next week’s show would try it out. Often the songs were so new, the lyrics were not fully formed in my head,somehow words that fitted into the song flowed out and no-one seemed any the wiser. I was running on adrenaline,and luckily for me never got caught out or lost for words. Probably the loud music, tight dresses, & gyrations got me through more than any talent I may have had. The secret for me was loving every moment of being up there,giving the audience no matter large or small a great show for their few shillings admission price. Finishing every show with a feeling of achievement & a sense of belonging to a group of fun people who enjoyed what they did. As a volunteer organization, knowing we were helping to raise funds for many different clubs and charities was a buzz & the UE’s were always in demand. Often kids would hang around and get us to sign their programs & this made us feel big time, adding to the pleasure of the night and adding a little boost to the ego !

How many times then do you think you would of taken to the stage ?

 In the 3 years of my involvement with the United Entertainers, I must of done about 250 shows,plus about 40 separate engagements, weddings,parties and other private functions. We always saw these as a bonus as we actually got paid for these private gigs. Being a part of the group was like a pleasurable hobby,we paid towards the cost of the rehearsal hall & supper,plus our own weekly transport to and from the weekly shows. It kept me busy,plus working full time in the family business. Life was good & these experiences were some of the happiest times I can remember.

Did you make your own Clothes & Jewellery ? Or was it just the hottest retail garb of the day ?

 Most of the gear for the UE shows were handmade. I scoured Op Shops for bits & pieces & had a case full of outfits for the different theme shows which changed quarterly. For my solo acts, I usually wore a hot little number with a bit of sparkling costume jewellery to compliment the outfit, mostly the slinky and sexy look.

Did any of your band members or audience folk ever try and crack onto you ?

 Ricky, the male rock singer from UE and I were an item for a while, and later on Aldo -a young Italian guy and I became close friends. I had a long term boyfriend Bobby who was in the Navy so nothing really serious happened with the others as my heart belonged to Bobby. We never got to spend much time with the audience, after a quick mingling and a bit of chatting over supper we would have to pack up the gear ready for the next performance and head home back to reality.

Give us a snapshot of a regular Saturday night out on the town in the late 50’s/early 60’s

 The time frame during the years I was aged 18-21 (1957-1961) was mostly spent with the concert party, so we rarely had a Saturday night free. When we did we’d socialize with a BBQ at one of the groups parents place,sometimes inviting other friends along. If we had the whole weekend free, we would take off on the Friday night to the producers holiday house in Millgrove near Warburton where up to 25 of us would spend the weekend relaxing, rehearsing,swimming in the river and socializing. There were hardly any arguments within the group so being part of this extended family was, for me very rewarding. Other outlets for a free Saturday night were the big dances at Hawthorn Town Hall where various popular artists would perform. These venues were very crowded and a good place to meet new people. Life seemed safer and we trusted other people to do the right thing. A group of us would meet at Ringwood Railway Station & catch the train to Hawthorn and walk. If a guy booked you for the last dance you would expect him to ask if he could see you home. After only having spent about 45mins with this guy, often you would trust him with your life and say o.k.  I was very lucky, my intuition kept me safe and my choices got me home in one piece. If they didn’t have a car (as was often the case) they would catch the train to Boronia with you, walk you home from the station (about 2 k’s) then have to retrace their steps to catch the last train back to the city. Many guys today would not be likely to take on this inconvenience.

Often they would ask for another date & see you during the week and take you to the movies,other times you would never see them again,perhaps bumping into them on the dance floor where you would smile at each other, knowing you had seen them somewhere,but not even remembering their names. We did not have the phone on at home and I was not encouraged to give out my work number. One Saturday night a group of us decided to try a dance at Balwyn that had been recommended as worth a visit. This was the time of full circle swing skirts, stockings with suspender belts ala Marilyn Monroe & 4 inch stiletto heels. No cars so we caught the train from Boronia to Canterbury Railway Station then walked uphill about 3 k’s to the Dance Hall. To my surprise the band turned out to be a hot group called THE BLUE BOPS, the lead singer an old boyfriend from Upwey High. It was good to catch up and to see that they had their debut 7” out which was doing well for them.

Another Saturday night fave was the big shows at Festival Hall.  Bill Haley & the Comets, Jerry Lee Lewis to name a couple with the shows always packed. It was all very civilized, no trouble that I ever saw, everyone there just to enjoy themselves and lap up the experience of seeing the performers on stage. Johhny O’ Keefe was of course very popular, I remember having a crush on his tall red headed Sax Player. These were exciting times as the music was giving our own age group an identity.  As I got older & the guys I went out with had cars, the Drive-Ins became the favourite venue for Saturday night action. For a special occasion you might taken into the city for a live show,but this was rare. I became engaged at 21, & married at 22 in Mt Evelyn. Saturday nights as a married couple were spent visiting family and friends. We had a regular group & sometimes had house parties and get togethers where everyone would bring food and drink and party to the record player. The ‘In’ drinks for females were sickly egg based concoctions along with spirits, ouzo and coke. Men would usually just stick with beer. When my children were born in 1963/1967 we tended to stay home,sometimes having someone over for dinner and rarely going out at night. When I was about 28 I was asked to sing with a band and loved performing again. I had to stop after a while as my husband did not like the idea. This was my last foray into the entertainment arena, Times were tough, money short, housing interest rates were about 17% so going out was a luxury. By 30 I was a working mum and adapted to life accordingly.

Were you an avid Radio listener before the onset of the glowing electrical box ?

 Radio was the main form of entertainment when I was young, as children we sat by the radio and listened to serials, plays, concerts, and music. Dad always listened to the sport so when that was on we would find something else to do - like jigsaws, board games, craft, drawing, or playing outside. Life was simple and straightforward, everyone knew their role and did not expect so much out of life. Pre- TV people were not so competitive, bad news was not so prevalent and road carnage was not served up with your evening meal. It must of all been there in the background, domestic violence and ‘unmarried mothers’ were gossiped about behind closed doors. Negative happenings were low key and undercover, kept within the family circle. Children were protected from nasty news, divorce and separation very rare. Newspapers were reader friendly and not sensationalized. The Melbourne Truth being the scandal rag of the day and those who purchased it would hide it inside the Argus or the Melbourne Age -two more acceptable media offerings. You knew when people were worried, but stress and nervous breakdowns were not talked about and virtually unknown. There were no self-help groups or books, so young people as far as I can recall were insulated and remained relatively innocent and free.

What were some of the most vivid and striking memories from your youth ?

 As a small child with my father in the army stationed at New Guinea, the air raid sirens calling us for evacuation drill to race with my mother to the local servo which was our allotted muster point. This brought a sense of fear into my heart with all windows blacked out and it was very spooky looking out through a corner of the blind into a stark landscape without the friendly sign of a buzzing streetlight. Search lights arced the sky and even now when used as advertising promotion send an icy chill down my spine. The freedom of working in the city, doing the shops at lunchtimes,meeting new people and hearing other’s adventures of Interstate travel (really adventurous and daring at that time and Overseas travel had yet to take off). Family shack holidays,Boyfriends,Clothing, and Music were all a big part of my life. Performing on 3DB radio and a Channel 9  Telethon kept life interesting. Bodgies and Widgies were a cult for the young Elvis look-alikes and tarty,heavily made up girls in leather outfits were to be seen at all these type of gigs. The nearest I got to being ‘hip’ was to take a guy home to meet my folks. He had a duck tailed hairdo which was all the rage, wore tight pants and blue suede shoes. His name was Bobby and I was smitten. My mother advised me to tell him to have a haircut before he came to take me out again, but this was not on as he was in fashion with no intention to change. I was 17 and working in an Ad agency in Melbourne. I met Bobby when he came into the agency with a telegram. He worked from the G.P.O. and we used to meet at lunchtimes and became an item. If I didn’t meet up with friends, Bobby would take me home on the train, then catch the next train back to the city, then a train out to Dandenong where he lived. He finally cut his hair shorter and was accepted into the family. He joined the Navy and we kept in touch for 4 years and I still have his letters which I treasure.

Teenage girls spent all afternoon setting their hair and sorting out what to wear, looking forward with excitement of what a good Saturday night may bring. My father was the coach of the local Football and Cricket teams, so I knew most of the guys by name. It seems like a relic from the dark ages, but guys were required to come to the girl’s home to be checked out by the parents before taking you out on a date. It must have been terrifying for them and I think they were very brave. As my Dad knew most of them already through sport, it made it a bit easier where I was concerned. The prospective boyfriends were quizzed on where they intended to take me,and what time they would have me home. As most of them did not have cars we went everywhere by walking to the station and catching the train. If a guy came from the other side of town he might walk up to 6k’s all up for a date !  Parents kept a watchful eye on developments,hoping for the best. The only sex education I received was to not let boys touch you down there….not very enlightening or practical. We were all supposed to be quaint little virgins,lot’s of experimentation went on,which was a secret no-one talked about, all purporting to be as pure as the whitest snow !

Were cars and alcohol a part of the staple equation for this period ? Any Drug dabbling ?

 When I first started going out with the guys,very few had cars. One guy had his own car and used to take me to the hill climb wich was sort of a time trial..very dusty track. Also we used to go to the stock car races at Ferntree Gully and the Drive-In. I don’t know how my worried parents let me go,as I was just turning 15 and he was 22 !. I also had an admirer who called every morning into the Milk Bar in Boronia where I was working. I remember his name was Len 6”/4, well built and drove a big red earth moving truck. Sometimes he would come back at lunchtime in his tiny red MG and pick me up and drive me close to home where he would drop me off and wait to run me back to work again. We never went out together, I always hoped he would ask me,but was worried that my folks would say no anyway. Later on I found out why…while on a date at the local picture theatre, who should walk in but Len followed by a pregnant wife and two children !  I was shocked and a bit hurt, how trusting and naïve a young girl can be. It taught me a good lesson to stick with friends my own age. Alcohol was rare in my circles, no-one drank at home, the only drinking I remember was at dances where a few of the rougher lads would partake at the back of the Dance Hall. Drugs were unheard of, perhaps available but under wraps, even at parties. Almost everyone smoked. I tried it a few times but couldn’t get the hang of it. Just as well as I spent so much on music I couldn’t afford to smoke and am now glad I did not start.

Was it exciting getting to hear all the new music filtering in both locally and from Overseas ?

 Music has always been a big part of my life from my dancing classes as a youngster to being part of the United Entertainers and a singer in a band. Music took me away from the mundane and the boring and was always there for me when I wanted it. Unlike other things in life,music never let me down,was reliable, affordable, enjoyable, and a good friend when no-one else seemed to care. When new material came over the radio and later through the medium of Television, if it appealed to me, new music (especially Elvis) never failed to move me with a feeling of excitement. Without music and my two children, life for me would have been a mystery.


TOXIC SHOCK - MELBOURNE EARLY 80's



This 7-piece all female Melbourne band existed in the very early 80's with players from all kinds of backgrounds & levels of experience & left their mark on the local Independent music scene with their live shows,commentary & by bringing like minded people together within their own community which then enhances both creativity & magic at many corners. They cut a 7" picture sleeve ep 'Housewives' in 1981 & this chat here is with Bass Player Sylvie Leber from March 2013 and is reproduced with permission by Constance Legeay (France) & first featured in Issue#2 of MAKING WAVES FANZINE, which is loaded with great articles exploring Punk /New Wave and Feminism & Womanhood (mwzine.tumblr.com/). Big thanks to Sylvie, Helen Smart, Constance, & Stephanie Hughes and let's get into some question & answer on a band who may not of crossed your radar as yet :


 First of all, I am curious so I have to ask; you told me earlier that you were born in France, so how did you end up in Melbourne, Australia?

I came to Australia with my parents when I was 2 years old. My father had a cousin here who said Australia was a good country.  My parents wanted to get away from war-torn Europe and the bad memories and also because of a sense of adventure.  It was between Canada and Australia but the Australian better weather won the competition. 

 What kinds of bands were you in before joining Toxic Shock? When did you start playing music?

I started playing music as a young child while in primary school doing traditional piano lessons for a couple of years. Later I was given an acoustic guitar by my boyfriend and went to jam sessions in friends' lounge rooms. My boyfriend in my late 20's was a bass player. I admired Tina Weymouth and Suzie Quatro and with the advent of punk I felt anyone can play in a band.

I joined my first band at age 27. We called ourselves The Cakes. The guys in the band (I was the only female) were from another part of Australia (the city of Adelaide) that had great musicians but not the right musical culture to nurture them. In Melbourne we were lucky to get lots of musicians from there. We played soul and R&B (Aretha, James Brown, Ike and Tina etc.) Other bands I played in were Nasty Habit (Heavy Metal), Failure, also known as Fail 2 (Post Punk).

 I read that you had initiated the band together with the guitarist Eve Glen ; what made you want to form your own band and did you intentionally want it to consist of only women? Was Toxic Shock more of a feminist project or simply a means for you to perform music?

Constance I think it was a bit of both. I just had this great urge and motivation to play music as I had been jamming with friends on an acoustic guitar and my boyfriend was a quite well known and established bass player and songwriter who inspired me. As a teenage girl i used to hang out in the boy next door's garage listening to his band practice. Girls just hung around admiring the boys. It was similar with surfing then too.

In my twenties I was involved in women's art, theatre and music via the radio show Give-Men-A-Pause. I had worked in women's refuges and involved in setting up one of Australia's first sexual assault centre. So yes I was  an active feminist that believed women's culture was necessary and that women had important stories to tell. It was a logical step to want  to form an all women's band. Hey and of course I knew it was going to be a lot of fun!

 How did the band come about? Were you just a group of friends who decided to form a band or did you have to look for members? 

Eve and i knew each other. When i found out she played guitar I nagged and nagged her till finally she agreed to get together and play with me with the view of getting other women musicians to join us and form a band. The other women were recommended to us by friends and also the news spread by word of mouth that we were on the lookout for members. The band had a pretty close connection with the Melbourne Women's Theatre Group and it's offshoot; the Women's Circus and also the well known Circus Oz. Eve did set painting for them. Yes we had pretty good networks.

 What were your influences at the time? Did you listen to a lot of female punk / post-punk bands of the era like The Slits, The Raincoats, Ut, etc.? Was it these groups that inspired you to form your own band or was it something else?

I think my main influences was everything that was happening in the independent music scene including female punk and post punk but also other genres such as funk, reggae, blues and roots, singer/songwriter music, soul music and good old R&R. I was particularly encouraged by bass players Tina Weymouth, Suzi Quatro, Sid Vicious, Stanley Clark and Jaquot Pestorius.

In reality we were 7 people with 7 different musical tastes and backgrounds so we created an interesting sound. We were also considered to be a quiet band :) and so many people would come to hear us for that reason who would not usually go to see loud bands in pubs.


 What was the music scene in Melbourne like at the time and did you consider yourself to belong to a particular scene? There are a quite a few great Australian post-punk band that I love like The Particles, Voigt 465, Essendon Airport, Tame O’Mearas, The Slugfuckers and The Limp who were included in the essential “Can’t Stop It : Australian Post-Punk 1978-1982” compilation that was released in 2001. Were you friends with any of these bands and could you recommend any other similar bands for that period who you feel deserve more recognition.

I used to go and see Essendon Airport a lot but not any of the other groups you mention.

We sort of were part of a scene. Women's bands like Clitoris, Flying Tackle, Foreign Body, Riff Raff and Shameless Hussies but also Stiletto that had a few women . Other local bands we were connected with were The Kevins and Nighthawks. Most of the bands in the 'scene' were in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne around Carlton and Fitzroy.

We played the same gig as The Go Betweens and their drummer Lindy Morrison was so thrilled to see an all-girl band. Debra Conway of Do Re Mi supported us when she was with the Merinos before her great fame. We also played with red Gum and AfriJah.

You need to know that Sydney music and Melbourne music scene were quite different. Melbourne had a healthier scene as music was in general more independent here.

Your initial name for the band was "The Girl's Garage Band", why did you change it and how / why did you choose the name Toxic Shock?

We changed the name for a couple of reasons; the first being that we changed drummers. Nina Bondarenko left the band as she was involved in playing in the "little bands" (Constance I suggest you check this out) scene and we got Helen Smart as our new drummer . Secondly we were getting known and starting to play big gigs. Just before one of our big gigs at a university we were saying to each other 'what shall we call ourselves?' I half joking half serious said 'What about Toxic Shock' and from then on it stuck.

 Also we played one night at a "Women and Patriarchy" conference and we called ourselves 'One Night Stand' I don't remember if we had split up or if it was before we changed to Toxic Shock. That was in 1980. I wore a badge saying 'I love my dad' as a bit of a provocation and joke.

     I am aware of your lone 7'' single release but since you were playing shows, I presume that you included other songs in your set as well? Did the band have several compositions which ended being unreleased? Did you play covers as well?

Sylvie Leber : Yes we had a full set list which included a few originals and covers  incl Easybeats' I'll Make You Happy, Patrick Fitzgerald's Safety Pin Stuck in My Heart. To tell you the honest truth I can't remember our set list. Too long ago. I've Cc'd Helen Smart TS's drummer in this email who may have a better memory than me.

Helen Smart : Yes, Vicky Bell was a songwriter as well as a great singer. We played two of her songs, "Concrete Evidence" which was a bluesy, heavier number and "Prisoner" (not the TV series theme!" which was a great uptempo piece of power pop. "Prisoner" is the B side of the single.

Most of our set list was covers and most of those were just feelgood, party numbers - things like Love Potion no. 9, Eight Days a week, songs like that. I kind of inwardly rebelled at this because I wanted to be all radical like the Slits and the Raincoats and ride on the postpunk wave, but my personal policy was to shut up about that because it was my very first playing opportunity given to me by people with a lot more experience, so it wasn't my place to lecture them about direction. We also played some reggae songs as the reggae influence was strong at the time. Of course when I say "reggae" I mean our slightly untutored interpretation.

  Whose idea was it to put out the record? Did anyone approach the band or was it your own decision?

We were all pretty keen to record and a couple of us knew David "Daffy" Williams of York St Studios who had a good reputation. It was a wonderful experience. I was on a natural high for days afterwards. I've attached photos which I took during the 3 days of recording at York St Studios.

Daffy and Kelvin producing, Helen Smart drummer, Hellen Sky - electric mandolin and vocals

   The record sleeve states several things including the fact that the money for releasing the record was obtained through a fundraiser event organized by "The Ladies Auxiliary Toxic Shock". Can you tell us about this event? Who were the “Ladies Auxiliary Toxic Shock”? The sleeve also provides details regarding the amount of money that was spent on producing the record. Was the sort of transparency important to the band?

Sylvie Leber : The Toxic Shock Ladies Auxiliary was a bit of a cultural  & feminist joke. Ladies auxiliaries traditionally do very feminine things like make scones and tea and have a support role helping run events or raise money. They all dressed up in old fashioned 50's style ladies dresses and wore a corsage. They were all women who rarely wore dresses. basically they were our good friends who helped organise the fundraiser held at a town hall (mairie). The event was packed we had other women's bands supporting us playing for nothing. A great night and we made enough money to record.

Helen Smart : DJ Peter Grace said these things on EON-FM
(as was) b/c according to him the idea of naming a band after a fatal disease
was completely out of order.

  How long was the band together for and what led to the breakup?

We were together for between two & three years and eventually broke up because Vicki Bell was moving to Canberra (our capital city). We felt she was too integral to the band to find a replacement.

   You seem to be particularly sensitive to women in music and you also hosted a radio program called "Give Men A Pause". How did you start this show and why was it important for you to promote music made ​​by women? What kind of music did you play on the show?

Give-Men-A-Pause (a play on the word menopause) on the radio station 3RRR which still exists today. I started this show because I felt strongly about the lack of women  in rock music  including on radio and was keen to redress this imbalance. I started the show by doing a half hour audition tape for the management. The audition tape was a show with tracks by people who sang out of tune (male and female).  The show had every kind of contemporary music happening at the time. Eventually I invited others to join me to do the show. The show was often controversial. We were even removed from the station because in reality we were ahead of our time. When they surveyed the audience they learnt that our show was the most popular show they had on the station so they asked us back.

   Are you still in touch with the other band members and do you still play music? What projects are you currently involved in?

I'm currently still in contact with Helen Smart and Eve Glenn.

I have been playing in recent times with a North African Rai band La Kasbah and a community orchestra The Footscray Gypsies. I also spent a lot of time a year ago playing and composing with a friend of mine in the lounge room. I don't play nearly as much as I used to and I would like to play more.

Helen Smart still plays and is drumming with Tess McKenna. Lead singer, Fran Kelly, is one of Australia's best known and respected radio journalists and presenters. Previously she was the ABC chief political correspondent in the UK. Hellen Sky is very well known in Australia's modern dance world.

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The Toxic Shock 7" /Picture Sleeve

Below :  BLUE BOPS -Crawford Productions 'Peter's Club' TV appearance memo / JIMMY HANLON -appearance ticket for GTV 9  / BLUE BOPS -Original Set List  ( Inc: the 7" single 'Tiger' )  / THE SKIFFLETTES Feat :  RAE DIXON  ( 2nd from left )  love this photo of my mum & that classic Tea Chest Bass  !!

THE SKIFFLETTES   -    Scotti's Mum Centre of Pic

Vintage Fanzine Reviews

Street Fever

​# 1    1977

back page

This section takes in detailed looks into the world of Self
Published Australian Underground Fanzines from the late 1970's into the early eighties. Some absolute GEMS here and of course as these are no longer readily available, places like this are a good spot to kick back and explore for an hour or so and see what these music mad creatives were doing as the blueprint of Punk was made on the fly. Awesome information was to be found amongst these pages along with killer graphics and photos so enjoy the rewind & will be adding to this section across this new year.  Scotti   early 2019

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Street Fever - Issue # 1 - 1977

So here we go to Adelaide where we investigate one of the very early published works of veteran Australian Writer Stuart Coupe and his A3 Size Newspaper print fanzine STREET FEVER, published with his friend Donald Robertson. It cost all of 50 CENTS (years before it was later worth 'Fiddy') and along for the ride is the 'Layout Crew' of : Lloyd, David, Nick, ANDY VAGUE, David Crowe, CHUCKIE SUICIDE, Tracy, Alex, THE PHANTOM BANTAM, FESTERING MICK MALICIOUS, & Bo (who we are presuming is the office cat). Page One as you'll see is a cool MALCOLM FRASER image all graphed out, with two being your standard credits and thanks page with other Oz Punk fanzines name checked as well (PULP, SUICIDE ALLEY, ALIVE & PUMPING, & SPURT). Page 3 is a full page scrabbly ad for local Record Store MODERN LOVE SONGS, Page 4 is a great chat with under documented 1977 local punks MOIST with a fine accompanying photo of them in handmade shirts, badges etc.. and that's a classic shot right there which is worthy of higher exposure. The bands say they dig LOU REED , THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, THE MODERN LOVERS & X-RAY SPEX the most.
This fanzine was the precursor to the very cool ROADRUNNER magazine, which we'll hear more about later in 2019.    We get a glimpse of the Moist & their lyrical nous in songs like '

Do The Duck'
 
"Standing in a fishpond
You can get up and do it
Standing in a fishpond
There ain't nothing to it
Splash around algae,
Pick it up and chew it,If you get cold feet now
then you knew that you blew it
Do the Duck - Do the Duck "
 
This Int continues of Page 5, along with a Review of the STIFF 7" pic sleeve of 'Watching The Detectives'  by Elvis Costello and a RADIO BIRDMAN Live Review from November 26th @ the Unley Town Hall by CHUCKIE SUICIDE which goes like this :
 
The support band The YOUNG MODERNS played to an audience of a single drunk swaying on the floor in time to the (music) ? I didn't like them either. The crowd displayed good taste in dress (even though there was the usual turnup of Adelaide Hills hippy cum Bikie cum Punks?) None of your mass produced punk here, a few great printed shirts showed up. Wait do I see SLAUGHTER & THE DOGS . Great (Available for $5.00 from MLS). Now to the good gear. BIRDMAN . They came on to play their (usual?) repertoire of excellence such as "Do The Pop" , "Smith & Western" , "Tv Eye" etc.. The second half hailed more great stuff, with Rob Younger wrecking himself to the point of exhaustion, and Deniz Tek again proving himself as the greatest guitarist in Australia. The police showed their faces andBIRDMAN greeted them with " Hand of Law", during which a fight went un noticed by the pogoing crowd. The crowd climaxed to excited masturbation of the ear when BIRDMAN did a rare encore of "Search & Destroy" and "Monday Morning Gunk". I freaked into spasmodic fits of bleeding & vomiting while being kicked into a pulp on the floor. LOOK OUT U.S.A. !  (Thanks to Dave with the mirrored sunglasses for helping me over the stage)
 
Andy Vague finishes off this page with a wrap on a local PIZA haunt. Pages 6 and 7 is a fantastic insight to what it's like being in the U.K. in 1977 by Donald Robertson who strolls the street and catches an advert with news of an upcoming SEX PISTOLS gig (September 22nd at the Stowaway). On the night in question he sees 4 ratbags approaching whom he notices look very London and asks them if they are the Sex Pistols. One of them sneers 'We Might Be' and off they go. He gets to the gig  and sees people in bin liners, multi- colour spiky hair and safety pins etc.. and gets to see the entire gig, a portion of which reads like this :
 
The Pistols came on loose, played their Anarchy Rock and looked like they couldn't give a shit what you thought of them. The first number was "Anarchy in the U.K." The lyrics were inaudible but the sound fitted the title perfectly. The sheer aural assault was incredible. All eyes were on Rotten as he snarled, sneered and spat out his words. On his left, Steve Jones chopping out vicious chords and piercing leads. To the right Glen Matlock pumping out solid bass and behind them all Paul Cook thrashing seven bells out of his kit. The review is quite detailed and goes on to mention how they tackle their MONKEES and THE WHO covers and that was that. The cool thing about seeing this show at this point for Donald was that it predated the Bill Grundy TV interview and subsequent public furore and also predated their contarct with EMI, so as he says.. they were still then a LIVE band on the verge of exploding or immolating so a right on time to see them to be sure.
 
Page 8 features a half page JONATHAN RICHMAN ad taken from ZIG ZAG where he states all his influences up to that time, with a good wrap on the BESERKLEY label following. Page 9/10 is D.R. again, this time offering up a live review of a STIFF RECORDS showcase featuring ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS, WRECKLESS ERIC, NICK LOWE, IAN DURY etc... and sounds like it would of been a great ol' time with the encore of IAN DURY's "Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll" seeing all the bands on the label and their backing band members come up on stage and party out. Some great memories there for him no doubt. Page 11 is a fantastic rare interview with Sydney's explosive and legendary PSYCHO SURGEONS, done over the phone before they were to come through and blitz the city of churches. Mark Taylor offers up a few choice moments, saying that their influences are:
WILDNESS, LIFE, BLOOD, SEX & CHOCOLATE, and that the band currently has 14 originals in their set and do 3-4 covers to pad it out. He says that Sydney sucks arse and that the band really wanna get to Melbourne and that besides RADIO BIRDMAN the only other band playing about is "Trendy Creeps" SIMON & THE DIAMONDS who play at places where Bald Headed Trendys go and show off. He talks about how their first gig was recorded, and how they've been playing parties and the like. The int is well layed out with a great painted logo (and one must remember that back in the day these folks could not send PDF files back and forth over email... if anything was to be added to a layout or an interview it was all done thru the post.
 
Page 12 coughs up a full page WRECKLESS ERIC photo whilst 13 ("Rock'n'Roll - No Future?") is a full page text spread (with cartoon) by DAVE CROWE about the commercialisation of Punk and to wtach for the big bad wolf in major label clothing and the like. His point is that the good bands know how to hammer out great songs in a basic but powerful manner and to still have FUN, whilst underneath there lies another generation of imitators sent forth by record companies to fleece your dollar and bullshit your day. Page 14 is a Review of a PATTI SMITH Bootleg LP ("Teenage Perversity & Ships in the Night") which is penned in a very indepth and lively manner, summing it up as "An Illuminating combination of chaos, aggression, poetry, intimacy, decdence, expression and experience", along with a review of the 7" "Terminal Stupid" by THE SNIVELLING SHITS, plus a top 10 singles list headed by the SEX PISTOLS & completed by RADIO BIRDMAN, with THE PORK DUKES smack bang in the middle, and a Top 20 Album list ( SEX PISTOLS, THE RUBINOOS & centered by THE STOOGES). The inside back page of 15 is a full page review of the IGGY POP album "Lust For Life" by Dave Crowe with two accompanying pics of the Igster reading the Times and one with his buddie Debbie Harry. We finish with a back page graphic of QUEEN ELIZABETH (God Saved The Queen) with safety pin, Razorblades along her hair and a skull earring. All up STREET FEVER is a really important underground print document not only for Adelaide itself, but for this Punk Breaking Year of 1977 in Australia. If, say there were ever a Arts Centre Exhibition of the History of Australian Punk in the year of 1977, it would be fully fucked if this fanzine were not part of it as it has depth, diversity, remembers to include graphics with it's text and is well written, so hat's off to it's editors and yeah, a rock solid document of it's day which holds up in 2010, 2015 and beyond !



2010 update chat with Stuart Coupe



Hi Stuart, thanks for being a Stained Sheets/ Fantastic Mess Records Website  trooper and we reckon ye olde STREET FEVER has really stood the test of time and scrubs up beaut on the rewind. Can you tell us whether this was your first venture in the printed public realm ? And from what point did you get involved in things a tad leftfield as the 1970's kicked along ?
 
I guess when I look back that my first sorta fanzine was in 1970 when I was 14! I talked my school English teacher into letting me do a 'school' publication - again - only one issue - called Labyrinth. It was basically because I wanted a forum to write about music I loved - and I tacked on some school news/sports results to get it through as a school project. It was pretty much my first - VERY formative - attempt to write about music and my efforts were very heavily (almost to the point of plagerism!) influenced by the great unsung hero of 70s music writing in Australia -  Rob Smyth -  who used to write for Nation Review and shaped my attitude to music, writing and spirit. He turned my on to records I still listen to today. When I moved to Adelaide (from Launceston) in the mid 70s I became editor of Flinders University's magazine - Empire Times - and managed to get Johnny Rotten on one cover. I was pretty obsessed by punk rock - queued in the early morning outside Modern Love Songs (hello Bo who wrote for Street Fever) to get the first copies of Never Mind The Bollocks. I was aware of what Bruce Milne and Clinton (Cee) Walker were doing with Pulp and decided to start my own zine. I did that one issue and then decided to become a bit more adventurous and came up with the idea of Roadrunner - which I perceived as a semi-professional zine that competed with RAM and Juke. I'd become friends with Bruce and Clinton and, in  a lovely moment of comraderie they caught the train from Melbourne, stayed at my home and worked with me and the others on an early Roadrunner. I had a beard at the time which I think horrified Bruce - and certainly flew in the face of late 70s punk rock appearance stereotypes.
 
That's excellent !  And great to have a music mentor who can help shape and form your paths of discovery. ROADRUNNER was indeed another important chapter, bringing together three like-minded and active individuals. Can you tell us what your experience was like over the course of the magazine to when you decided to move onto new horizons
 
Roadrunner was a bit more serious than Street Fever. I guess I had a fair bit of attitude and ambition. It was put together by a collective (hey, it was Adelaide, late 70s and when we weren't listening to music we were reading Marx, Engels and Mao - and still in a world where we though Stalin was a great leader of the people) of five. Donald Robertson was the other driving force - we needed someone organised and who cared about grammar and punctuation. Obviously in those days everything was typed on manual typewriters and pages glued together. The magazine was put together at my house and laid out by Allen Coop in a little garage/room at the back of the house. We all sold the advertising. We seriously thought we could take on RAM and Juke - but with what we thought was a street-wise/fanzine attitude to the writing and content. I'd started writing live reviews for RAM and used to write (no telex yet, certainly no fax) to RAM's editor Anthony O'Grady in Sydney, sending him the new issue and half-seriously telling him that RAM's time was up and that Roadrunner was taking over. In the end he phoned me and said "dear boy, how would you like to move to Sydney and work for a * real * music magazine." This was an opportunity I couldn't say no to as my desire to write and be read was, to be honest, greater than publishing a fledgling magazine. A week later I was in Sydney, taking Andrew McMillan's job.  Anthony organised for the Angels road crew to transport my possessions to Sydney. My salary was $95 a week and I spent the first month literally sleeping under my desk as I didn't know anyone and didn't have a home. For a few weeks the staff were totally impressed by me being first to work every day - until they realised where I'd slept, had showered in the office on Glebe Point Road and started writing. I'd done five issues of Roadrunner. Donald continued editing and running Roadrunner and did a mighty job of it. I contributed for - I'm guessing now - the next five issues.
 
An offer to good to refuse indeed !  So off you went, full speed ahead into the world of Music publishing. It must not of been too long then until you then penned (or co-penned) your first book ?  Was that also a satisfying step up, to see a completed book be passed over for you to oogle ?  And on this subject, as the years have passed you have maintained a decent level of active publication. What has been your golden moment as an author ?
 
Writing for RAM was a pretty exciting time. My first assignment was going on tour with Graham Parker and the Rumour. Then I went back to Adelaide with Kiss - and after their show went to see Dr Feelgood at the Tivoli. I was considered the person who'd still do the punk/left field stories. I did the Tom Waits interviews the first times he came to Australia etc. But I was on staff at RAM for a short period. Anthony and I had a  falling out over - of all things - a Redgum review. I loved their first album and did an 800 word review. He thought it was worth 100 words at best. I threw a tantrum and resigned. He rolled me two joints, told me to take care and I grabbed my leather jacket and walked out - but continued to write for the magazine for a few years.  As fate would have it David Dale - who'd stepped in to edit RAM when Anthony was overseas - it was the issue when Keith Moon died - was working at the Sun Herald. That paper had decided that instead of having the motoring writer also do the rock column that they should employ someone who knew about music - so he called  me. I did that for ten years - still - all power  to the Sun Herald - writing predominantly about indie/punk artists - as well as freelancing for anyone who would pay me - and some that wouldn't. I'd met Glenn A Baker at the Third World Bookshop in Adelaide when he was managing Ol' 55. He suggested we do a rock encyclopedia  together - and that was The New Music. Then we did The New Rock'n'Roll together. NOTHING beats the first time you see a book with your name on the cover - but I'm most proud of The Promoters as after editing/writing ten books this was the first one I'd done by myself. In terms of writing - I guess I'm most moved by people who I respect - like Dave Laing from Shock who tells me I turned him on to Big Star and Bernard Zuel at the Sydney Morning Herald saying I did the same for him with Bruce Springsteen - and legions of Dolly readers who have told me they bought Nick Cave, Go-Betweens and Triffids albums because of what I wrote for that magazine. And of course I went back into fanzine world with Mean Streets - my crime fiction mag.
 
Yes, so so many colourful memories there all as a result of your mad passion for music and writing which saw you lead off into all kinds of magic moments of fandom and intrigue.And as we initially discussed your hook ups back in the late 70's with Bruce and Clinton, their journeys too can be traced in the public from Inner City Sound to The Bon Scott Bio to the Kill City Crime Bookstore to TV appearances and to of course Record Labels, both early 80's on through to the 90's where you had Laughing Outlaw imprint super active, Bruce was in Post Au-Go-Go mode across a few new labels and Clinton was reigniting his music loves from Punk /New Wave Post Punk reissues to Indigenous musics mainly buried for decades, so lessons learnt early in your youth would bode well later down the track.
 
So the music itself....who for you still remains your most explosive and reliable half a dozen AUSTRALIAN bands that you can't do without ? and who from OVERSEAS has influenced your day to day and helped shape you as an individual ?
 
I'm kinda biased with some of my favourite Australian bands as I've ended up working with them - I was the first Hoodoo Gurus manager, back in the days of Stoneage Romeos which is still one of my favourite albums. Then I moved on to manage Paul Kelly through the Post, Gossip, Under The Sun era. Since 2005 I've been the label and manager for Perry Keyes and I'm notorious for being obsessed by his songwriting. Of the others - the Easybeats changed my life with Friday On My Mind, the first single I ever bought. Radio Birdman remain the most exciting Australian band I've ever seen. And the Dirty Three simply floor me on so many levels.

Overseas - I have two words for you - 'Bob' and 'Dylan' - and two more - 'Neil' and 'Young'. And two more - 'Bruce' and 'Springsteen'. And whilst we're on the subject - 'Elvis' and 'Presley' The album that knocked me for six in 2009 was the Girls album called Album. I'm proud to have been a Grateful Dead obsessive for over thirty years. I could go on you know . . .
 
All top notch bands and artists there,(and may have to investigate PK) and we here at STAINED SHEETS/FMR are especially enamoured with the Pre- Dave Faulkner/James Baker combo THE VICTIMS, whose cuts of Hi-Energy Buzzsaw Punk SPUZZ still blow us away to this day and sound as fresh as ever. So we've talked music and what about the written word ? The people who have chalked themselves on your bones the most from Oz and O/S would be........    
 
I've always read as much as I've listened. I learnt to write by reading other writers. I guess my favourite writers of all time are Raymond Chandler and Henry Miller - but I could go on for pages. Let's talk music writers. In Australia, Rob Smyth was my first inspiration and remains so. Anthony O'Grady helped teach me the craft of writing in ways I can never fully acknowledge. I'm pretty certain they don't make editors like him anymore. He's one of my best friends and even though I don't always agree with him I'll always read what Clinton Walker has to say. Richard Guilliat is a fine writer - period - and wrote some inspired rock journalism. Both Clinton and I often think that Frank Brunetti (later of Died Pretty)'s piece on Gary Glitter and his gig at Selinas in the early 80s (I was the publicist) which appeared in RAM was one of THE great pieces of rock journalism. The late Annie Burton was an amazing music writer. Robert Forster's criticism sometimes makes me go back and revisit albums I've dismissed - as all good rock writing should. I read and respect Patrick Donovan at the Age and Bernard Zuel at the SMH - but at the risk of offending people there's precious little Australian writing about music these days that can convince me I should hear an album or go see a band.

Overseas I rate all the obvious - Greil Marcus sometimes disappears up his own proverbial but Mystery Train changed my life and the anthology Stranded (and particularly his appendix) did the same - I literally went and found EVERY SINGLE GODDAM RECORD HE RECOMMENDED! I still have the copy where I ticked them off as I heard them. Lester Bangs - attitude, refusal to answer to anyone, Dave Marsh (deeply routed in the history of America - his 1001 Great Singles book is a must read, and ditto his first Springsteen book), Robert Christgau (often too emotionless but equally often great), Nick Tosches (fine, fine writing with occasional lapses into nonsense), Nick Kent is the finest British writer of this or any generation, Jon Landau was as good a writer as he is a manager - and the greatest compliment ever paid to me was Helen Thomas in the 3RRR mag in the early 1980s when she compared me to Ralph J. Gleason - a founder of Rolling Stone, and a beautiful writer about jazz. Peter Guralnick is scholarly without appearing to be, Stanley Booth captures the essence of the music he loves, Robert Gordon on soul, country and Memphis is unbeatable. Do you sense I could go on? And today - every single morning I wake up and read Justin Cage and his blog - Aquariumdrunkard.com is, for me, the best music writing going.

Thanks very much to Stuart Coupe for taking the time to chat with us here  *Article originally appeared in Stained Sheets - Issue 3.1  2010

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 The Rat -# 1    1977
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Well back in 1977 this rag cost one a mere sixty cents !  And for me it's like a snapshot of time, a time capsule not widely distributed, discussed, or dissected and i guess that's just another thing i love about underground music fanzines from this era, the fact that the exist for one, and the fact that i can pore over it..not so much as a museum piece but as a remnant of something real and totally independent held together by two shitty and shabby 30+ year old staples. Subtitled 'This Stage in Time' this Brissy mag was helmed by the mysterious 'Helen' (where are you now?),Ed Kuepper's Brother Wolfgang,(ie: Wolf Blank) Roxy, Billy Rebel, and Reggie Pure out of the suburb of Corinda. Page 2 has a half page booking ad for the very cool combo THE SURVIVORS, 3 is the intro/manifesto where they 'hope to do for Australia what Sniffin Glue  did for the U.K.'... yep fair enuff !  Page 4 is a basic run down on the history of The Saints (their debut was at Sherwood Services Club amongst 180 punters of which over three quarters left, leaving only 30 people to watch their set), The Damned and the Sex Pistols. Page 6 is a scribbly mess of texta with about 20 typical releases one would expect (tho' we must remember we are in a position to take it all fer granted and these records at these locations at this time was actually quite something). Page 7 is a Pistols full page of text, whilst page 8 really fires up with KILLER info on one of Brisbane's least documented late 70's bands THE GRUDGE. Info such as this is golden for future reference & it's inside these kinds of pages only that you'll come across this kinda goop. Raw and gutsy in the same vein as the saints with their first gig at Qld Uni on Oct 16th 1977. A bad audience saw them do it tuff on the nite and a boring old hippy from 4ZZZ gets a serve as a disliker of New Wave. Their 7 song set consisted of 3 originals (a stray cassette anyone?), 2 Saints, one Iggy an the Stooges,and a Sex Pistols song. The lead vocalist is discussed as having 'an unreal deadpan unemotional voice and amazing'. They had a song about Uranium ('Advance Australia Fair'), and one titled 'You really make me puke' (now i really  wanna hear that !). They were previously known as SOUR BRUCE and had fellow pals on board watching their back from THE TRASH & THE PATIENTS. Page 9 is a downer article about people getting attacked at punk gigs and the tension and the boredom of being young in the late 70's. Page 10/11 tackle THE DAMNED with ye olde' typewriter being replaced by handwriting and a short Q&A. Page 12 /13 features more text GOLD with a neat Brisbane scene wrap and mention of The Bad Twists (my first hearing of that band), the previously mentioned bands from page 8 along with the more well known bands like THE SURVIVORS & THE LEFTOVERS (was wondering when they were gonna get a guernsey), and it has fab mini-quotes from both bands.. The Leftovers are interviewed outside Import Store Discreet Records where they talk about a fight between their fans and the Saints fans. They reckon they are 'the best Australian band since the EASYBEATS' & as the int concludes they burn tickets to the local disco...PUNK ROCK ALL THE WAY PAL !. They quote their influences as THE HENCHMEN, HEARTBREAKERS & the RUNNING JUMPING STANDING STILL ( Post - THE MISSING LINKS from 1966 in Melbourne and from all accounts one of our WILDEST groups EVER ! with shitloads of feedback & sweaty live mayhem to accompany each show). They sneer that 'The Saints are boring', 'The Clash are Reggae' and Radio Birdman is heavy mental in disguise...but The Damned are good'. They profess their love of The Stooges but say The Velvet Underground are the true shit and genius. The Survivors chat about their High School hook ups in a band called TINTIN ABBEY and they discuss their love of Hi-Energy Rock'n'Roll and their dozen song set list along with being highly influenced by THE KINKS, THE WHO,& THE MONKEES. They also mention a recent Sydney trek where they played with 'John Kaines and the Casino' (who would no doubt be of course JOHNNY KANNIS) and 'The Babiez' ( Melb's own THE BABEEZ). Page 14 gives up more local info on SAME 13 (name change from 'The Trash' and feat: Wolfgang on Vocals), and more indepth wraps on THE PATIENTS,both of whom sound well worth hearing ! This page concludes with reviews of the Sex Pistols, The Clash & Generation X. The Inside back page is a great two column piece on THE SAINTS where the FATAL label 7" is discussed ('Only 500 were made so if you have one hang onto it it'll be valuable one day and all you farts who threw yours away will realize what Blockheads you are'),and the fanzine finishes up on the back page with more classic 70's typewriter appeal and small wraps on U.K. bands THE CORTINAS, THE USERS,& THE VIBRATORS. And that is that !  
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Plastered Press -Issue # 2 -Melbourne 1977
 
This HAS to be this town's very first Punk Rock Fanzine, as Issue # 1 was released in 1976 and it predated both Bruce Milne & Clinton Walker's involvement in the classic PULP fanzine (which existed for 4 issues 1977-1978). The first thing you notice is that it's oversized , clocking in a whopping 34cm high (that's about 4 cm bigger than a A4 sheet don'tcha know) and it's printed on an old RONEO machine  as we're talking Pre-Photocopier here...y'know the purple ink that looks like a rubber stamp effect....Anyway, I've never seen Issue # 1 so let's dissect Issue # 2 and paint a picture of what these local underground music nuts were churning out in late 70's Melbourne & DIY-ING themselves into fanzine royalty. Page 3-6 has a NEW YORK DOLLS hand written history,followed by a MODERN LOVERS wrap with Discog & Cartoons (all of which have faded into unreadaternity over time).After that there is a full page entitled Funhouse which tells us to venture forth to page next for some New Wave Snakes & Ladders !  The next two pages in box form could end you up on such panels as Get a Job as a Junior Clerk in case you don't make it  and  Find an Uncensored Copy of Kick Out The Jams Motherfuckers or how about You meet an Addict, a Grave Digger & a Dog.... Form a Group  or  Punch a Wimp Rock Journalist  all good harmless fun indeed...Next up is the Singles Review Section where the MONO /ORK 7" of TELEVISION's Little Johnny Jewel  is reviewed, followed by the Modern Lovers 'Road Runner' 7",a EDDIE & THE HOT RODS EP, PATTI SMITH 7", & the SEX PISTOLS 'Anarchy in the U.K.' ( and what decent fanzine of the day wouldn't be adding this in huh?). The next 2.5 pages are taken up by a cool RADIO BIRDMAN  live review from a show at Martini's where they open with 'Do The Pop'  and cut into a set of riproaring originals along with covers of 'Tv Eye' & Search & Destroy'  along with a bit of JAN & DEAN ( 'Surf City') with Deniz Tek  dowing his axe and going forth on lead vocals. Rob Younger  was also in Mascara Mode and at the tail end of T.V. Eye knocked the mic stand to the floor & writhed around amongst beer and broken glass, freaking out the squares in the process & bringing joy to those who were up for the good times of the Birdman live experience from the get-go. At the business end of the fanzine we have Bruce raving about an old Sun Records 7" ( WARREN SMITH ). Now for me the next two pages are the veritable BEES KNEES of this ish, as they have managed to publish the Only Ever Interview  with one of Melbourne's Beyond Obscure bands who have not been documented anywhere else by anyone since....which is pretty rugged really as their line-up was significant for all sorts of reasons, with ties to bands we all know and love... Yep it's  TATROC   !!!!!!, or  TOOTHO & THE RING OF CONFIDENCE. This band grew out of the fertile Swinburne Community School  in 1974 & featured Simon McLean (Tootho), Graham Pitt, Clint Small (and in mid 1975 a Mr Rowland S. Howard joined on Guitar,Saxophone & vocals with Paul Kelly later taking on Drum duties). So let's look at this lineage here and see what a pioneering little bunch of 70's scruffians we are dealing with...Rowland,Graham & Simon  would later end up in The OBSESSIONS, with Clint Small recording a couple of early Au-Go-Go 7"s as well as playing Guitar in the LITTLE MURDERS. Graham Pitt  was also in FICTION (feat: Rob Griffiths -Pre -Little Murders),as well as PIERRES WORLD & the late '76 'Party Band'  ANTENNAE & THE KIDS with Bruce Milne & the core of THE BABEEZ ( Gavin Quinn & Jarryl Wirth ).Rowland S. Howard would of course move onto the YOUNG CHARLATANS (who themselves featured Jeffrey Wegener ( Original SAINTS Drummer, then LAST WORDS & LAUGHING CLOWNS), and into THE BOYS NEXT DOOR  and THE BIRTHDAY PARTY etc...TATROC  songs included 'Let's Brush Again'  ( 'Let's Twist Again') , 'Born To Brush' & other heavy dental music ! They get compared to the VELVETS & THE STOOGES  and talk about listening to 'tapes' of their own shit (if anyone is hoarding these let's give 'em up to the public as a community service in 2009 thank you) So yeh, yet another Melbourne band severely under documented and another piece for the puzzle of Australia's Punk /New Wave Roots'n'Toots that was the fertile breeding ground of the mid/ late 1970's scene (however fragmented and disjointed it may of been). The rest of this fanzine takes in a Crossword and a quickie SAINTS Review of '(I'm) Stranded ' (the EMI reish, not the FATAL orig, but maybe that got some pen time in Issue # 1 ?),and that's about that. Next Issue we move on up to Brisbane and take a look at Wolfgang Kuepper & Co's 1977 first offering of THE RAT, but until then dig what's here and in the now and watch for some kind of fandom listing of these issues in 30 years or so as the wheel turns and the midnight oil burns. And yes, this is PRINT, you can hold it, keep it, smell it, flick it, it ain't a USB stick nor a scratchy CD-R, with thumbnails... it exists as nature intended... it comes from trees  (and let's think Pine plantation over yer classic ye olde Tassie Hardwood shall we...) this is a fanzine, a 30 plus year update to the world of Plastered Press and just like those smudgy purple pages these sheets will continue to be stained.

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Incredibly obscure photo of TATROC ( Tootho & the Ring of Confidence) circa 1975-1976 in Melbourne with a very young ROWLAND S. HOWARD on the right)

The very rare and great PLASTERED PRESS from 1976

Portobello Market Fanzines

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Portobello Market - Issue # 1/ 2  - Melbourne 1982

As promised last ish, we journey back in time to Melbourne circa 1982 when the first edition of this local fanzine was produced. Noticeable straight up for it’s hand texta coloured sleeve, this was put together by three ladies (for a welcome change), Anita Del Medico, Sandra Rigon, & Kelly Flynn.

It’s one of those fanzines which drives me batty to a degree, as I have an inherent dislike  to the underground press produced from the late 70’s to the early 80’s which have each left hand side page blank !  Coming from one whose fanzine experiences lived & fried by the rule of ‘packed in info, font reduction & treating each page as a work unto itself, seeing each flip come up as white nothingness sends shivers down my spine..BUT the benefit of the doubt is of course given as at least they published it & got it out there 

Which is more than no doubt many others from this time who talked the talk but never delivered the goods at the days ends, which is why there is scant reference really from this time of fanzines from the early 80’s, maybe a dozen at best ?..Not good enough I’m afraid but we’ll take what we can get & move forward.

Named after the famous London U.K. market on Portobello Road (this Road itself has been referenced numerous times in song by everyone from Blur to Caetano Veloso) and in existence since the early 1900’s, it sure can lay claim to being famous…The Intro to our lil’ PM rag name checks Sniffin’ Glue,Ripped & Torn & Alternative Ulster followed by a quote from Joe Strummer from the Oz music paper RAM (Rock Australia Magazine) from Feb 26 1981 about DIY and the importance of time & being able to appreciate that it ain’t forever. The page finishes with two ads, one from important Book/Record shop Gaumont @ 123 Little Collins (in which future Au-Go-Go staffer/From the Vault  magazine creator / Vicious Sloth Records proprietor Glenn Terry spent his earlier youth behind it’s counter, and is now part of the GRAND HYATT hotel complex,along with an ad for Gibbys Food shop at 263 Little Collins which is now a clothes shop outlet area.

Page 2 bags out new fanzine Editorial Chaos and it’s Corporate Body interview for it’s apparent dodgy politics and what not, with repro’d SLF lyrics to back up their claim. Page 3 features 7 examples of Melb Punk Street Graffiti of the day (all U,K, bands and U.K. inspired of course). Page 4 is a James Dean fan piece, Page 5 are quite detailed reviews on Angelic Upstarts and the V/A: Strength Through Oi !  comp. Page 6 is their ‘Alternative Charts’ feat: lots of U.K. listings of faves of the day, along with a 3PBS-FM Pure Punk Show  chart from DJ Stephen Swirgoski. Seven is a full page wrap on the Rude Boy  film which was getting a  screening at the fab Valhalla Cinema. Eight is an update on previously mentioned Corporate Body

With brief ‘where are they now’ pieces on each member as the band had imploded and members had moved onto other projects (and history states that some of these ‘other projects’ were THE ZORROS, WEDDINGS PARTIES ANYTHING OLYMPIC SIDEBURNS  etc..).Page 9-11 is a three page chat with the above mentioned radio cat from PBS but is a tad dull as he’s doing the stations main Punk show of the day but says that he doesn’t go out and see any bands live !! (sounds like me circa 2009) but loves punk..well one would of thought that seeing Punk Bands in Melbourne in 1982-1983 would of still been pretty damn ok & sounds like he’s missing out on what would of then been the heartbeat of the local scene as it’s at a time when it wasn’t commercialized to the point that we see now & still held an edge of grit & grime. But the same could be written in 20 years time about people seeing killer bands in 2009 -2010 & how there were still many bands playing locally who existed well under the radar of many eyes and ears & who knew how to make a fine ruckus. There is some ok quotes in this interview all the same and a few decent O bands get name checked such as PUBLIC NUISANCE, CORPORATE BODY, THE ZORROS, THE SICK THINGS, THE MESS and FISH. Now I’m familiar with all them bar fish and have no fucking idea who they were or if they were any good or not (anyone care to enlighten us?). The back page is wasted on crappy handwriting (10 lines on a whole A4) & that is that. 

Issue # 2  is a funny ol looking beast & perhaps the longest  fanzine I’ve seen as it measures thirty six cm instead of your regular 30 which makes it look quite odd. I like Issue # 2 as it prints on both sides of every sheet & is full of ye olde’ typewriter text and letraset which I dig looking at and can appreciate,having used both before electric typewriters specicially for these purposes & it really does make you feel like you’re creating something as you get sore fingers & spend ages scribbling thru letraset sheets and underlining stuff to balance your text etc..  We kick off page 2 with a decent intro, repro’d in part here :  ‘There is such a lack of cohesion in the so-called musical factions at the moment,that one wonders –is there a scene at all ?. If it’s not the Rockabilly Rebels it’s the Oi ! Boys or Rudeboys or Modrockers or the Arty-Intellectuals or whatever’  Aah that old chestnut of scene politics huh…labels and sub-genres and rah rah rah..the same shit we’ve been hearing since the late 70’s BOYS NEXT DOOR crowd V the straight up Rock’n’Roll crowd…they had the exact same crap to contend with…

Pages 3 & 4 are some solid letters which have streamed in since Issue # 1, which is great to see that people have been set into gear & put pen to paper such as ‘Bad Ronald’ who wants more local content as well as something on JELLO BIAFRA. The reply is cool as it makes mention of the formation of one of Melbourne’s best Psychobilly Bands , the mighty CORPSE GRINDERS & their monikers before they settled on that handle (THE PLEBCATS  &  JETT GUNGE & THE MUDMEN, both names of which I myself hadn’t heard bandied around before. The next letter is a biggie from ‘Anarchy & Peace’ & he or she kicks off by calling the PBS bloke from Issue # 1 a FUCKWIT as they say how in friggin’ hell can THE ZORROS be called punk ? And this paragraph gem :  ‘Also his comment which said that Punk today is now Hippies with spiked hair, what fucken shit !  Punk now has 100% more relevance than it did in ‘76/77. Look at the state of the world now and then, it hasn’t gotten any better, it’s got worse. Punk bands now likeCRASS (altho’ they were around then), FLUX OF PINK INDIANS, DEAD KENNEDYS, POISON GIRLS etc.. are far better than any ‘76/77 punk band. Bands like THE EXPLOITED make me sick. Wattie thinks that just because he’s got a Mohican he’s a punk. They EXPLOIT punk music ! . They give themselves away by doing things like playing ‘Top of the Pops’..how fucked for a band who is supposed to be anti-system. I don’t know how anybody could be conned by them’

Now the next letter is kinda gold for me as it’s from a young grasshopper called KING PUNK who, as it turns out is TEN YEAR OLD TIM HEMENSLEY   !

And this is Pure Tim as you can see that even at such an incredibly young age here he is writing in to voice his opinions and better than that, actually finding the fanzine in the first place !  That is genius & we see how he became so involved (by being an outsider in an outsider scene) & went onto do his own shit , beginning with the great ROYAL FLUSH (of whom you can hear 2 tracks from on the Melbourne 1984 compilation ‘EAT YOUR HEAD’ which is such a brill document from manic punk (like CIVIL DISSIDENT), to prime era VICIOUS CIRCLE to scuzz DIY punk (END RESULT) to jokey demented drunk punk ( I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVY) to Popped out Punk ( CHARRED REMAINS) to memorable Punk (THE BODIES featuring DAVE THOMAS who, many years later would play in BORED!With Tim), to beefcake suburban punk (but good) like PERMANENT DAMAGE and Goth tinged spuzz under appreciated punk (MAD FLOWERS) & more excellent tracks from SCUM & MURDER MURDER SUICIDE..it really is one of the best Aussie Punk compilations ever put forth.)

‘King Punk’ states :  I saw your zine at the Comic Shop and bought it (for 60c you can’t miss). I was pleased to find it opened to different & interesting things (thought the page on CORPORATE BODY  was good & enjoyed the PBS interview). But now I’d just like to tell you about me and my activities. I’m one of the youngest punk rockers in the world –I’m 10 & somehow am alienated from the Punk scene. The only gigs I ever go to are either afternoon gigs by bands like 2D (at ‘The Spotted Dog’) & Afri-Jah (Reggae) or Shitty F.E.I.P. (although I saw THE EDITIONS at the St.Kilda Festival). Even the Pure Punk Show got in on the act and said (on air) that I couldn’t join the SEX PISTOLS appreciation club because I was ‘Too Young”. I know they have reasons for it, but I was so pissed off with the “Stupid Young Kid” attitude that I have even criticised them in my fanzine. I feel I’m pretty out of everything, so I started my own scene and formed a band called ROYAL FLUSH. Hopefully we’ll get better in the future. We do songs such as 

“Society Blues”, “Coppers round the Corner”, “ Angel Dust “, “ Fuckin’ Punk” etc.. Apart from that if you’d like to publish my review of “Oi –the Album” you will find it in here. Yours  King Punk

 How good is that ? I’ve said things like before in my tributes to Tim that one has to remember..the guy was TEN YEARS OLD !!! and he’s penning coherent, smart letters discussing live band shows, punk radio, fanzines, and rehearsing punk bands ! It’s quite incredible and for the PBS guy to leave him out of the Pistols appreciation club…man what a shitty thing to do to a Ten Year Old with wide eyed excitement, passion and attitude !!!! He should have been encouraged every single step of the way, but as it turned out, and as he says.. it’s like well fuck you, you don’t wanna support and encourage me, I’ll start my own fucking scene !!!! Just fantastic & as I say..pure Tim Hemmo, he remains such a big inspiration to me and this is yet another cool little contribution from him which adds another piece to the puzzle of his life & broad involvement to Melbourne’s Underground music.

Page 5-6 of Issue #2 is a very odd and uninformative attempted interview with the BOOTBOYS, 7 is a full page on Marilyn Monroe, page 8 is a MOD CHASE with the Corpse Grinders lads chasing down Scooter Mods through the streets of Carlton (with accompanying Cartoon), Nine is 2 film Reviews (Reds and Punk Rock), 10-11 is a Karl Marx piece with a funny Missing Link ad, whilst 12-13 is a good old fashioned Crossword with local and overseas content of the day. 14 continues the PBS interview, whilst page 15 is a great look in to Melbourne Live bands playing, with quite a few that I’d never heard of (and I like to be obsessive about this kinda thing), such as FOREIN ACCENT, ODIOUS COMPARISON ( who do a RUTS cover on this nite), along with some Mod stuff (5:15), some Oi !  (BOOTBOYS), some Ska (OFFBEATS /NO NONSENSE) along with local faves CORPORATE BODY (again).

The back page is a wrap on the last ZORROS  show (8/7/82) and Tim’s review of ‘Oi The Album’, which is hard to read as the typed text has kinda faded out a tad. But on the whole this Second issue of PORTOBELLO MARKET  is a real treat and has a real spark to it. Whether there exists anymore after this I am unsure, so we shall see.  * This article originally appeared in Stained Sheets Fanzine 3.2


Obscure Australian Records Reviewed




The Labyrinth - East Doncaster High School HSC Drama Class  LP
I'm guessing mid to late 70's...From the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne comes this " Reflective journey in Music, Voice and Movement through the maze of patterns of human aggression" . The band is made up of six players ( some of whom may no doubt Google their album and pop us a note), Bass and Lead Guitars, Piano and Synth, Clarinet and Drums. A dozen tracks, most with collective vocals with Rhymy straight up lyrics. Track 5 "Strangers in the Same House" gets a bit more trippy with some electronic noodling and high octave female vocal ( tho' no girls get a credit anywhere besides the actual songwriting). "Bad Habits" is perhaps the most 'New Wavey' here with at least a bit more of a grunt and beat and some biting lyrics & hints of attitude ("Bad Habits - they make you wanna cry - Bad Habits -they make your Mother die"). The rest is mixed with tinges of Jazz, basic pop plop and laid back kewl... I love a good High School Record I must say as you never know what you may discover, and If FMR ever puts out a LP compile of 'The Best of the High School Records -1960 - 1984' then "Bad Habits" may get a guernsey, but it depends on how good some of the other records are out there, so the search goes on




The Lavender Blues - Wake up Sister LP  1978
This is the kind of record that sums up the spirit of this section of the website ! A  totally unknown LP but issued with care and attention (down to it's hard stock Lyric Insert and the fact that it has a Catalogue # LB001). It's sparse folk /old timey tracks with very strong Feminist statements throughout the grooves which both empower and pose questions to the listener. Consisting of Carole,Nicole, and Dorelle it houses EIGHT originals across it's 13 tracks, which is unusual in many ways as these kinds of DIY records can often be too heavy on covers, whereas this really has an identity all it's own. Utilising the power of Voice as it's main focus (along with Guitar and Banjo) it's awash with strong delivery and some real biting lyrics on tracks such as "Lavender Blues", "Lesbian Nation", "I Never Will Marry" , "Suicide Song" and the title cut "Wake up Sister" about a friends dope haze and unwillingness to slow down and reflect on the self. From the artwork to the notes (it was fully funded by the band and family and friends) this is a really strong record and one that is not going south from my record pile anytime soon. 


Peak - Ebondazzar LP  1980
From Adelaide and via Electronic duo Robert Reekes-Parsons and Paul Fisher, this Instrumental soundscape experience is pretty neat with heavy synth wash, distorto vocal effects, electric /acoustic guitar and more. Nine tracks in all on Cement Records with some pretty striking art to match and Black and White Insert. 


Scots School Singers & St. David's Youth Choir
We'd like to teach the world to sing...Albury NSW  late 1960's
Well with a cover like that what Op Shop ferrett is gonna let it sit ? With 23 teens,a German Shepard, and Five Acoustic Guitars in full stereo colour on the sleeve you just know that you're in fer a treat ! And as it sez on the flip "This combination of two modern singing groups brings a fresh, vital swinging charm that is difficult to resist". Without a doubt the domain of the girls, their instruments, voices and input, as only John James pops up as the sole Male (alongside 37 females) so who knows..ol' JJ could well of gone on in partnership with one of the singers/players here and could well have a family of their own and sit around the dinner table at night telling their own early teen kids how the oldies once cut a record on Vinyl back in the 60's but with no solitary copy to show as proof (very common no doubt) so if there are any Alburyians who read or see this, then your proof is just an iPad view away ! As I said above when we were back in Doncaster, sometimes these records can deviate off the track and offer up a SPECIAL / WACKO track or two when their is mad jamming or experimentation involved, but we don't get that here as it's all nicey 'n' lovey and plez without being too painful but hey, it IS a choir so it delivers on it's promise & well.

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John Stewart - Practical Relaxation - A Program for Relieving Tension LP  1960's
So I had to wait a while after playing through this LP before I could conduct any commentary as I was too relaxed !  You've got that classic conservative voiceover (like the 1194 bloke who reads out the time) and he is laying on the audio hypnosis pretty thick so big respect to Mr S and his Side One Chill. 
'Your mind and body are drifting on a cloud...a soft, warm, beautiful cloud...It is all so effortless' . Side Second drops the vocal and is just all Piano Instrumental, but too bubbly and not Dolphiny enough for me as some Flotation tank kinda stuff would of been more on the money, but hey I'm a bit of a fan of the Fidelis Records label (This is TM 115) from just past Mitcham over Canterbury Road in Vermont and I've long been a fan of it's logo as it's a great graphic so browny points for me. It was actually a pretty big label in it's day with over 300 releases, many of which are still to be properly documented (Including over a dozen High School albums and 7"s and full lengths and not just centered on Religion, so quite the discography)



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