Roadrunner 2(2) March 1979

VO L 2 NO. 2 MARCH 1979

AUSTRAUAS INDEPENDENT MUSIC PAPER

BOYS NEXT DOOR .MENTAL AS ANYTHING. THE ALIENS TOM W A ITS .

MARTIN CARTHY. THE STORY OF S T IF F .

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RO ADRUNNER MARCH 1979 - Page 2

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WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

EDITOR; Donald Robertson.

THE TEAM: Sue Denim, Clive Dorman, Geoff G ifford, Mary Stutters,

MELBOURNE - Bruce Milne (03-802481).

SYDNEY: Stuart Matchett (02-357 5321).

BRISBANE: Scott Matheson PERTH — Ian Henderson (09-364 6642).

LONDON -

Keith Shadwick,

N A TIO N A L NEWS DESK Mick (08-332 5915).

POETRY EDITOR (08-332 5915).

Festering

Donna Maegraith

CONTRIBUTORS: Bain, Peter Paul Bakowski, Jillian Burt, Larry Buttrose, Stuart Coupe, Span Hanna, Michael Hope, Brian Johnstone, Peter Jolly, Donna Maegraith, Peter Nelson, Adrian Miller, Ross Stapleton, Susie Walton, Cee Walker.; PHOTOGRAPHY; Eric Algra, Corrie Ancone, Botherambo, Philip Morris.

PRODUCTION: Clive Dorman,

LAYOUT: Geoff G ifford.

GRAPHICS: Bain, Simon Kneebone,

TYPESETTING; Clive Dorman.

GIG GUIDE; Mary Stutters (Adelaide), Bruce Milne (Melbourne),Stuart Matchett (Sydney), Ian Henderson (Perth), Scott Matheson (Brisbane).

ADVERTISING: Adelaide — Ralph Lante (08-352 6314); Melbourne — Laurie Richards (03-645 2560) Sydney — Michael Burgess (02-211 1472).

DISTRIBUTIO N: S.A. and N.T. B.J. and K.L. Fuller, 105 Main Street, Beverley, S.A 5009;; N.S.W. and A.C.T. Allan Rodney Wright (Holdings) Pty. Ltd., Box 398, Potts Point, N.S.W. 2011; Victoria — Melbourne Wholesale Newsagency, 33 Lonsdale St., Melbourne 3000; Queensland — Scott Matheson, 20 Russell Tee, Indooroopilly, Old 4068; Western Australia — Ian Henderson 40 Macleod Rd., Applecross, W.A. PRINTED BY: Bridge Press, Murray Bridge, S.A. fo r the publisher — ROADRUNNER, P.O. Box 156, Norwood, S.A. 5067.

DEADLINE next issue, all copy and ads — Friday March 16, 1979.

It's a year since the first issue of Roadrunner hit the Adelaide streets. There are times during those 12 months when it seemed that the paper was about to stutter to a halt, but there was always enough human energy and en thusiasm to keep it going. Because although we operate in the real world of printing bills, production expenses, advertising and sales, the important thing, to me, about Roadrunner is that it is conceived and put together by music enthusiasts for music enthusiasts.

That description is probably as good a definition of the term 'fanzine' as I can think of, and if you look at the history of the paper and most of the people working on it, what emerges is a very strong link with the rash of regional fanzines that appeared in Australia in 1977. Stuart Coupe and myself put out a fanzine called 'Street Fever' (in fact, the forerunner of Roadrunner), Bruce Milne and Cee Walker put out four Issues of perhaps Australia's premier fanzine 'Pulp', and Cee Walker was also editor of Brisbane's 'Suicide Alley'.

The main feature of these fanzines was their amateurishness, for indeed the people who put them together were amateurs. Their enthusiasm for music far outweighed their ability to produce a magazine, and thus most of the magazines went under.

Yet, miraculously, Roadrunner kept running, learning all the time about production and operating in the real world while trying not to lose the perspective that got the thing started in the first place. It looks better nowadays, it IS more professional (the 'paid' staff are glaring at me), our production planning and suchlike isn't as haphazard as it used to be. But all of that has heightened, rather than dulled, our awareness of the dangers of "selling out". Our commitment is still first and foremost to Australian music. It will always be. We are equally committed to our readers.

We hope we are leaving our channels open wide enough so that, if that is ever not the case, we hear about it very quickly and something is done about it.

A number of people have rebuked us so far for only running 24 pages, for not pushing this and that, for producing pages that "look terrible". If those people only knew the mistakes we were picking up on the inside! The course we are charting for ourselves Is constantly being amended and improved, we are steering off-course less often, we are looking further ahead for snags all the time (pardon ail the metaphors). We are trying^ damn hard.

We figure that once we stop trying, you'll stop buying. It's the best barometer we know of...

- DO N A LD ROBERTSON

LETTERS Dear RR, While reading your latest issue, I came across a letter written in to you

by Marianne Hunter (?... is that really her name?), a Dragon follower requesting information on where to get Dragon’s “first NZ release ‘Scented Gardens For The Blind’ ” I assume it was printed for readers ’ response, so...

Firstly it is Dragon’s SECOND NZ release album - “Universal Radio” was the first I have a copy o f both these two albums which Fm sure she will understand Fm not willing to part with, but if she hasn’t heard from anybody else by now offering her a copy on vinyl, I would love to get together with her and tape it and chat about our mythical heroes So you can either give me her address or her my address and we can arrange something She sounds anxious for the album and it’s well worth it as the only copies o f “Scented” in Oz are owned already and nowhere to be found in record shops now. I do believe that there is one copy o f “Universal Radio ” in one Adelaide record shop (Record Factory).

Hoping to here from either you or Marianne shortly.

Yours lovingly lOLANDA PRINCIPE Adelaide, 5. A PS: I love your mag, but I have a com­ plaint You never do anything substant­ ial about Dragon!!!!!!

Would the real Marianne Hunter please step forward...and we'll put you in contact with lolanda if the deal sounds suitable — Ed.

Dear RR, ' I think your magazine stinks The columns are too wide. The quantity is low and so is the quality. I ieth (sic) Shadwick is a moron And the price is too high I can buy an NME which is twice as big, (also very funny), and imported from England for 4 jc . Why is it you charge 50 cents? Are you doing this to help the Music Industry or to put money in your own pockets You fucking capitalists I bet you don’t even print this letter.

Actually I wanted to start up a mag and make lots o f money too. But then poor kids like me have no future. It takes money to make money today.

Your (sic) doing one good thing. That’s helping young up-and-coming bands I would have done that too. I eep it up.

Sid Vicious was innocent. R IP . Sidney.

The Russians are going to attack China SSTEVEN (sic) SPEERS (A crazy mixed up kid) Richmond, NSW PS: I knew you would print this letter.

afflicted by some incontrovertible lie, our world won’t end Yours Sincerely ROBER T GRA VES (hr.) and MR TSARA PS: Learn to write poetry, not journ­ alism Sylvia Plath wrote the true poetry of sensibility, no yawns in her lines

Dearest Roadrunner,.

Picked up a copy of your first National Issue the other dc^ all I can sw is — GASP!! What an un­ utterably FAB two dozen pages vou amazing weirdos have got together! So why have you been hiding all this ex­ citement from the rest o f Oz, huh?? I cannot express how truly wonderful it is to at last see the type o f perceptive, energetic, fun rock journalism which Australia desperately needs Here are people fighting against the clinical-bigbiznus-wallpaper-muzak that dominates our boring Modem World, so that the strange, the quirky and the illuminating few may be given breathing space to delight us all Good luck in this noble battle - soon, you can bet that I ’ll be begging you to let me help. As “Stiff” To The Poet, - “We’re NOT the same My colleague and I, having once’resaid NOT the same”. L et’s keep the spent a few nights in this town (err... the you ‘a lternative’ in ‘alternative music’. Con­ Mother o f Silences) and having read that gratulations - you ’re on a lovely letter from that Mr Bowie fan, felt wave o f yourRoadmnner own inspired by its station in stations — Love actuality; and both o f us have kicked the .TULIA tiger (don’t park it here!) and w e’ve seen no tigers around in the parks anyway only the (ahlahlah!) rocks o f the journ­ Dear Julia, We've just cancelled our alist’s screams Oh, w e’re so fragmented, though, that collective nervous breakdown and love you must understand that we may not you desperately. Where the hell are you have perceived the abyss that exists at anyway?

Love St I ilda last week - only a dash of THE TEAM gin and Luna Park - and not the end of xoxoxo everything anyway. And unless w e’re From next issue, we begin a regular monthly "Roadrunner Chartbusters" listing, reflecting what our readers are listening to in the way of singles and albums.

Send us details of the five albums you are playing the most this month, and your five favorite single traks (they don't have to have been issued officially as 'singles' — they can simply be tracks off albums) and we wilt compile them into a "tracks" Top 20 and an "albums" Top 20. If you can't think of five of either, you can submit fewer. There are no "invalid" votes, folks...

Fill out the form and get it to us by FR ID AY, MARCH 16. All votes received after that will be counted as part of the following month's poll. Move quickly — we can't wait to see what comes up...

FIVE BEST TRACKS ..................... ARTIST 2.................................................................... ARTIST

It's our birthday! We're one year old today and to celebrate we've got some prezzies to give away. (We believe that's better than asking you to send US prezzies).

Courtesy of Festival Records we have FIVE copies of The Sports 'Don't Throw Stones' album ( complete with bonus sinqle) and courtesy of W-E.A. we have THREE copies of Cold Chisel's newie ’^Breakfast At Sweethearts" PLUS three rather large Cold Chisel touring jackets (color — jungle green) which is just the thing tor the coming winter.(Except here in Adelaide, where they haven't invented winter yet).

OK, so whaddya people have to do to get yer ears and arms around the above goodies? It's simple (very simple at this hour of night, actually). Just write and tell us which one you want, and WHY, Make your answers as long or short as you want.

Send entries to ROADRUNNER BIRTHDAY PREZZIES, P.O. Box 156, NORWOOD S.A., to reach us by Friday, March 16, give or take an hour or so.

Winners will be announced next issue.

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..............................;........................AR TIST FIVE BEST ALBUMS

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ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 3

One of the old warriors of Australian r'n'r, Ted Mulry has finally cracked the American charts. His latest single 'Lazy Eyes' entered the American Top 100 w ith a bullet last month and looks like it could be a big h it fo r him there. Onya Ted.

Good Morning, I'm from Roadrunner.

As if you couldn't tell. My given name is Micky, I come from Billericky (where?) and I'm doing...very well.

A special Ian Dury type entry in this month's Mai Goss to salute the man's astounding success w ith his 'H it Me With Your Rhythm Stick' single in the U.K.. To date the single has sold 900,000 copies and is poised to join the select band of singles which have sold one m illion copies in the U.K.. Only 24 have ever done it before and Dury's w ill be the most unlikely to ever achieve the honor, if indeed it does. To hasten the process S tiff Records have said they w ill delete the single immediately it passes the m illion mark.

Of course, all this is great news for The Sports , as it means that S tiff, whose mammoth reputation masks what is still a small operation (seven full-tim e staff crammed into tw o small London offices), w ill be flush w ith money fo r perhaps the first time in its history, and w ill therefore to able to splash out big on the boys.

They certainly spared no e ffort at the Sports press reception in London (full report, P.6).

One o f the more distinguished of Lon­ don's music community to catch the Sports was John Lydon (still known as Rotten in unenlightened circles) who has also been in the news o f late.

Although the Sex Pistols broke up ex­ actly one year ago, Lydon is still under contract to their manager Malcolm Me Laren, and McLaren still controls the Pistols' finances. McLaren is also still using the name 'Sex Pistols' as a label fo r every conglomeration of musicians he can assemble (a situation that Lydon objects to). Lydon brought a court action against McLaren seeking to, one, appoint a receiver to sort out the Pistols' financial affairs; two, stop McLaren using the name 'Sex Pistols' ; and three, annul the con­ tract w ith McLaren that Lydon signed when he joined the band. A t the time of going to press, Lydon had gained an injunction against the release of 'The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle' film , al­ though the double album soundtrack has been released in the U.K. (and w ill be released here at the end of March).

Virgin were doubtful about releasing the album, w ith the court case going on, but McLaren who naturally wanted the album out as soon as possible, took a copy o f the tapes over to France and got the Pistols' French record company to press copies. He then exported the albums back to London and they went onsale at a very cheap price and nat­ urally sold by the truckload. This had the desired effect on Virgin who saw thous­ ands of sales going down the drain, and they released the album a week later.

To say that Malcolm is not Virgin's favorite person at the moment would be quite an understatement.

The album itself features Lydon on about half the tracks, including Johnny B. Goode, ROADRUNNER (thanks, Johnny) and a live version of 'Belsen Was A Gas'. Ronnie Biggs sings a studio version of Belsen, recorded in Rio with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. Other tracks

include a disco medley of all the Pistols hits by a band called the Black Arabs, an orchestral version of 'E.M .I.', Eddie Cochran's 'C'mon Everybody' and 'Something Else' (with vocals by Steve Jones), the Who's 'Substitute' and the Monkees 'Steppin Stone' — both of which were part of the early Pistols' live repertoire. It certainly sounds as if there is something for everybody on it and one of Polygram's marketing people (Polygram are Wizard's distrib­ utors) went so far as to predict that the album would be the 'Grease o f '79'.

We shall see.

The Australian scene has been a bit quiet o f late , w ith most bands gearing up fo r the annual autumn onslaught of live gigs. A lot of the bigger bands — Cold Chisel, Split Enz, Dave Warner's From The Suburbs and Contraband — w ill be touring to promote their new albums, while others like Skyhooks and Dragon w ill be showing o ff their new line-ups.

First reports on the latter two indicate both are adopting a more rocky sound than their previous incarnations. One critic at the first Sydney appeararice of Skyhooks said the band's new vocalist Tony Williams sounded a lot like Steve Cummings o f Sports.

Latest Sydney band to put it on the dotted line w ith a big record company are The Reels who have signed to Poly­ gram.

Expect to see a pile of independent records coming out of Melbourne in the near future. W hirlyworld, Peter Lillee (Of Pelaco Brothers/Autodrifters fame) Ian Stephens, Two Way Garden, Euan Thorburn, The Dots and Man and Mach­ ine w ill all be unleashing their records on the unsuspecting public before the aut­ umn leaves fall.

Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons after leaving E.M.I., have signed to co-manager Michael Gudinski's Mushroom Records.

The band were extremely dissatisfied w ith the way that E.M.I. packaged and sold their 'So Young' mini LP. The band had wanted a similar type of project to the 'Loud and Clear' live EP, but E.M.I. slapped their single 'So Young'on it, put a glossy cover around it and put it out fo r $5.99. The band have add­ ed a trum pet player and another sax player fo r the next six weeks or so and the arrangement seems to be going well.

The big stir in Adelaide this month was the temporary closing down o f the Lone Star circuit which has been bringing in lesser known Eastern States bands of a vaguely New Wave ilk fo r the past couple of months. Ray Dyett, who ran the circuit, has now abandoned this policy after reports of vandalism at the Marryatville Hotel and has formed a business alliance w ith another Adelaide promoter John Pike and the two plan to put on live music six nights a week at different venues, starting mid-month w ith Melbourne Stockley, See and Mason.

It remains to be seen what effect this w ill have on Adelaide bands, but already one new circuit has started up to keep New Wave alive in Adelaide.

It's the Fiasco circuit and w ill comprise the Richmond Hotel, The Britannia and the Princes Berkley.

The first single from Sydney's Hitmen on W.E.A. can be expected in the shops at the end o f this month. And ex New Zealanders Mi-sex are recording their first album fo r C.B.S. Australia. Mi-sex were contracted to E.M.I. in New Zealand and have imported 500 copies of the single they released over there 'Straight Laddie', as a taster.

Another ex N.Z. band Mother Goose are back in the country after a success­ ful trip to the U.S. o f A. Apparently they made their biggest impression in New York, where they reportedly 'went down better than Devo'. The wintery weather almost got them just as they were about to leave fo r the West Coast before coming back to Oz, w ith a big gig in Cleveland Ohio nearly being cancelled. But the Geese got there, got. their golden egg and made it back to El Lay safely.

Ex-Kush frontman Geoff D uff has an album out in England on the small Beggars Banquet label. Although the album has been canned in the press, it hasn't fazed Geoff's enthusiasm. It is unlikely that the album w ill be avaiiable on local release.

Some of the more well known independ- ^ ent labels in the U.K. are apparently in a bit of financial bother. Chiswick, which can lay claim to being the first of the new breed of small labels , is close to folding, despite a recent hit single with 'I Need Candy' by the Count Bishops. And the American prototype for all the English indies, Beserkley, is also looking a little shakey. The rising star of the new labels is Fast Products who operate out of Edinburgh. Their records are so popular in London that they can't keep up w ith the demand and it is almost impossible to get hold of them; Bands on the Fast label include the Mekons and The Gang of Four.

Jane C lifton, after Stiletto's break-up, is now acting in the A.PG.'s production o f John Romeril's 'Mickey's Moomba' at the Pram Factory in Carlton. The mus­ icians involved in the production include other ex-Stilettos Andrew Bell and Celeste Howden.

5MMM-FM, Adelaide's not-yet-on-air progressive music station, had a few set­ backs last month. They were all ready to sign the lease on a planned studio site in the city when the owner announced he was a member of the Festival o f Light and wanted clauses inserted in the doc­ ument prohibiting the station from broadcasting any form of "pornography" and prohibiting access to "lesbians and homosexuals".

5MMM declined the offer and are again casting a searching eye over the city fo r a prize location.

Any takers?

LEFT, John Lydon; TOP, Janie C lifton; ABOVE, XTC. Adelaide reggae/rock/blues ensemble Soka have added saxophonist Bruce Sandel (ex-Rum Jungle and Renee Geyer Band). Other bands around the Festival City who've just undergone line-up surgery include Red Caps, Fast Eddie, The Finnen-Smith Band, Stone­ henge (the last tw o have re-opened Adelaide's famous Tivoli on Tuesdays) and Hot Chicken. Lemmy Caution who were causing great excitement among the Roadrunner staff have lost their bass player and second guitarist, but hope to be back on stage by the end o f the month.

Secret Police have been a bit secretive lately but sax player Peter Lindley, recently returned from a skiing holiday in Austria (who says there's no bread in rock'n'roll?) says the band w ill be back in action in the near future w ith a new rhythm section.

The Stranglers, already copping flak from the media, copped some more from their audience at Queens in Brisbane.

The band were forced o ff the stage after only 30 minutes when the crowd started throwing glasses at them. Either

Greg Shaw, editor of America's premier fanzine 'Bomp' is on record as saying that his favorite single of 1978 was The Angels' 'Take A Long Line'. Another influential American-type person, the ubiquitous Kim Fowley was also very impressed with The Angels, especially their live show. In fact he popped in Alberts Studios in Sydney where the band are recording their follow-up 'Face To Face' and did some studio work with the band. It is doubtful whether the recordings w ill ever see the light of day. Interest in The Angels from certain American record companies is running strong at the moment but there is no news of anything definite from D irty Pool, their management agency.

Seems as though Festival w ill be unload­ ing a number of their local acts in the near future although no names have been mentioned as yet...

British New Wavers XTC, who have been receiving a reasonable amount of tele exposure in this country, look set fo r an Australian tour.

They w ill be brought out by Chris Murphy, who was one o f the mainmen of- the now disband­ ed Solo Premier Agency in Sydney.

Late Sportsflash. 'Reckless', the Sports' first album, received an enthusiastic review in the import section o f England's NME last week and their first release on S tiff, a four-track picture sleeve EP, has been picked up fo r airplay by most of the U.K. commercial radio stations.

A fter they finish the Graham Parker tour they w ill be doing a further tour w ith S tiff labelmate Wreckless Eric.

Oh, before I go, I should report a piece of unparalled decadence I observed in the final hysterical hours before pub­ lication at the Roadrunner office last night, vis. a roomful o f 'production' people leaping round to the oombah oombahs of Blondie's new single 'Heart of Glass'. Disco shit??????? Jeeezuz... the poor mongas have finally flipped right out. As I left (breaking glass etc) they were screaming 'But it's just knock­ ed Ian Dury at the top of the U.K. charts'. Tell me it's not true...

Your ever lovin'

FROM SPLIT ENZ

THE FOURTH ALBUM

SPLIT ENZ FRENZY

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A Work of A rt Recorded at The Manor Studios in England Produced by Mallory Earl.

Catch Split Enz live while on tour.

SPLIT EN Z

Htudk'UMMtt'Recotcld Aii^tiuittiUi*RflckPt<ud

MUSHROOM RECORDS & TAPES E36768

AGENTS;

Premier Artists 03-510661 02-925262

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 -P a g e 5

STRANGLERS

The Stranglers' current tour of Australia has escalated into a pitched battle between 'straights' and 'punks'. With The Stranglers cast (by their opponents) as the 'punks', they have found them­ selves at war with The Media.

In a little over a week, they have collected a ban on T V appear­ ances, a ban on radio advertising of a concert, and a run-in with a photographer and his union.

Shortly after arriving in Australia, the band took time out to indulge in some 'blue' language and strike some sneering punk poses on Channel Seven's Willesee A t Seven show. The lads downed tins of lager, leered and poked at the camera while swapping insults and barbs w ith aggressive interviewer Howard Gipps.

They exploited the banality o f his quest­ ions while he needled them w ith curt asides about their apparent lack o f social fibre.

A short piece of the action went to air across Australia late last week, but Willesee broke into the interview and pulled it o ff the screen before his aud­ ience could be further corrupted. Willesee's supposed anger and indignation can be found somewhere in the following transcript from the ill-fated StranglersGipps fiasco.

Willesee, introducing the segment, said: "Pop groups are continually outdoing each other in their ability to find new crazes. When the punk rock invasion started we were inundated w ith punk rockers complete w ith safety pins through their ears, purple sunglasses, and lice...wherever possible. Now we're told New Wave has taken over where punk rock left o ff and w ouldn't you know it... a New Wave group called The Stranglers arrived in Melbourne today from Great Britain. We're told they're very popular, w ith albums making the Top Ten. We tried to find out what makes The Strang­ lers any better — or more likely, any different — to anyone else. Howard Gipps was the victim we sent along to meet them ". Cut to film of The Strang­ lers doing "Hanging A ro un d" at on open air gig and then to interview:

yet is it?

Gipps: No...I don't think so...at least not in public.

Gipps: Well, do you call that an animal act? Look, we are just four ordinary blokes who play music. What's all this image...(bleep)...?

Gipps: Do you make much money?

Band: Unfortunately we have to pay a lot in legal fees and the odd journalist who gets his camera smashed.

Gipps: What do you think about drugs?

Band: They're great.

Gipps: What do you think the parents of most 13 and 14 year old kids would think if they thought they were going to see you guys in concert? ' Band: No idea...I ain't a parent...! am a 13 or 14 year o ld ..."

whose name is hardly worth repeating... it may be interesting to know that Ian Meldrum from Countdown on the ABC called to say that having seen the group on the b it we showed on our programme, he has cancelled them from Countdown and, o f course, that's a bit of a Mecca fo r the...ah...for the new groups and well...good onya, Molly... that's given them a bit of lead...and I hope we d o n 't ever hear from those punks again". _________MOLLY'S ANGUISH_________ M olly was sitting m ortified in fro n t of his television set when he called Willesee.

He'd been having other problems w ith the boys, but the Willesee interview finished

the stranglers’ blues The " w e lc o m e " th e S tranglers have received fro m the A u s tra lia n m edia is n o t u n iq u e .

R e c e n tly / the E nglish ro c k press has started giving c o n s is te n tly bad review s o f th e ir live p e rform ance s and s tu d io re cordings; and ever since H ugh C o rn w a ll was re p o rte d as saying th a t it was a " w e ll k n o w s c ie n tific fa c t" th a t A m e rica n s have sm aller brains than Europeans, th e A m e rica n press has been less tha n frie n d ly . A re cent issue o f C raw d add y gave up one w h o le p a g e 'to v ilif y a S tranglers c o n c e rt in L .A ., callin g the m p re te n tio u s , in c o h e re n t and, o f course, sexist; a lth o u g h th is tim e th e y had le ft the strip pers at hom e.

W ith ail the bad press, it is easy to lose sight o f the fa c t th a t The S tranglers are one o f the m ost successful and p o p u la r groups in England at the m o m e n t. T h ey have released three LPs, every one o f w h ic h has shot in to the T o p Five on the M e lo d y M aker cha rts, and a host o f singles, all successful. T h e y have developed ^a to ta lly o rig in a l sound th a t defies com pariso n w ith any o th e r c o n te m p o ra ry band.

T h e y inspire great lo y a lty in th e ir fans and, m o re u n u s u a lly , th e y re tu rn it. F o r exa m ple, fo r various reasons. The S tranglers fo u n d them selves unable to get gigs in L o n d o n . T hey had to tra vel some distance to the N o rth to get b o o kin g s at all. ThTs le ft th e ir L o n d o n fans — m o st o f w h o m had been w a itin g nearly a year to see th e ir fa v o rite band and d id n 't have th e tim e o r m o ney to travel — d is a p p o in te d .

Learnin g o f the s itu a tio n . The S tranglers organised cheap bus excu rsions up N o rth

fo r all w h o w a nted to go.

The S tranglers also have a fan magazine ru n by a gentlem an called T o n y M o o n . A c c o rd ­ ing to all re p o rts, the band c o n trib u te s a rticle s o f a p o litic a l n a tu re , e x p la in in g in sim ple language to those w h o m ig h t n o t o th e rw is e ' read such s tu ff, w h a t the band th in k s is going on in the real w o rld .

W hich brings us to a p o in t th a t's usually to ta lly ignored by re porters fa llin g over th e m ­ selves to en um erate the n u m ber o f people Jean Jacques B u rn e ll has engaged in fis tic u ffs , and th a t is, th a t The S tranglers are very in te llig ­ e n t and o rig in a l ly ric is ts . T h e ir p re o ccu p a tio n s as w rite rs are unusual and w e ll o u t o f the m a in ­ stream fo r a ro ck o u tfit. T h ey ten d to lo o k to E uro pe, ra th e r tha n A m e rica , and m o s t o f th e ir songs are concerned w ith c o n d itio n s p e rta in in g to th e ir native E ngland, o r w ith C o n tin e n ta l figu res like T ro ts k y , and c o u n trie s lik e Sweden.

T h ey are also capable o f w ritin g very personal songs, a lth o u g h the o n ly song on th e ir latest LP th a t is in th a t category is th e strange "D e a th A n d N ig h t A n d B lo o d " . The title is take n fro m "C on fession s o f a M a sk" by V u k io M ish im a — the Japanese n o velist w h o , in 1 9 70, had h im ­ self r itu a lly beheaded in p u b lic . The song is da rk and m enacing, c o n ta in in g reference to " to r c h lig h t pa rade s", death pacts and Spartan self-d iscip lin e : " / w ill fo rce m y b o d y to be m y w eapon a n d m y s ta te m e n t". It is a very deca­ d e n t-a n d surprising song — ro c k 'n 'ro lle rs a re ' never usually th a t sop histicated .

- M I C H A E L HOPE

THE WILLESEE SCOOP INVESTIGATIVE SPECIAL Gipps: How would you describe your image?

Band: How would you describe it?

We're the Stranglers. Four different people making up a composite group...

Gipps: Why do you call yourselves The Stranglers?

Band: We're lucky and you weren't.

Gipps: What's lucky about being called The Stranglers?

Band: We had a choice and you didn't.

Who wants to be called Howard?

Gipps: I quite like my name and I know other people who like it, too. The Stranglers, to me, just seems like a gimmick... You are out to capitalise on the Punk Rock image...

Band: You're talking out the back of your head. This band preceded the punk rock gimmick by about two and a half years.

Gipps: Come back to it...Why did you call yourselves The Stranglers?

Band: That's the name we decided to use?

Gipps: What's the attraction of being a strangler?

Band: It was a choke.

Gipps: Isn't it just a cheap gimmick?

Band: Yeah, of course. It only cost us three bob.

Gipps: Do you like the things punk rockers do...like the animals acts?

Band: The what...?

Gipps: The animal acts...

Band: Well...(bleep) ..isn't legalised here

him after the Willesee show accusing him o f creating a similar image to that enjoved by the Sex Pistols following their now famous British TV interview two years ago. "I'm not trying to create th a t", Molly fired. " I'd feel the most guilty person in Australia if that happened".

Tour promoter, Zev Eizik, still recover­ ing from the traumas o f escorting Elvis Costello and his entourage of Enfant Terribles around the country, watched The Stranglers' interview being filmed .but d id n't see the finished product on the screen. "I haven't seen what was actually shown. Did they use the end of the interview where the band shook up cans o f beer and sprayed them over Gipps? No? That was interesting. Instead o f getting upset and angry, Gipps turned to the cameraman and asked if he got it...im plying that they'd do a rerun if need be. The Stranglers were amazed beyond belief at the whole thing. They were treating it as.a joke and just having a good time. If he(Gipps) had asked them if they killed people on stage, they would have said 'yeah, we already killed seven and we'll probably kill a few more on this tour'. There were ten other people in the studio from A.C.E. (Australian Concert Entertainment — Eizik's o u tfit), the touring party etc, and they were all on the floor laughing.

It was so unbelievable.

"The interview had an interesting effect on the band. A fter the Willesee thing they did an interview w ith someone from the (Melbourne) Age. I left them at that stage and came back to my office but a half an hour later I got a phone call from one of the touring party who said that during a photo session w ith another paper, one of the group dropped his trousers in the middle o f Bourke Street (in the heart of Melbourne) and the photographer said he was going to lay a formal complaint w ith the Australian Journalists Association and try to get their visas revoked.

"It's just so crazy. The Stranglers are a bunch of genuinely nice intelligent guys who have had this reputation laid on them and there is nothing they can really do about it except utilise it. The Countdown ban doesn't worry me at all. I'm going to sit back and enjoy this to u r".

"YOU COULD BE SITTING ON A DUNNY VOMITING SHIT..."

Cut to Willesee (concerned, frowning a la Walter Cronkite): "Sorry Howard fo r giving you that assignment. We usually let our stories run through but if they want publicity they'll have to try a little harder w ith their answers.

Punk was punk and they're worse...and let's forget it...they, oh...oh, let's forget it".

Later in the programme, a smiling W ill­ esee told his viewers: "In relation to the post-punk rock group whose story we started earlier and got out of because they were so bloody ridiculous, and

him off.

When Roadrunner phoned him a few hours after the Willesee programme went to air, Meldrum was spitting bullets.

He claimed , the group had continually harrassed him by bickering over artistic and technical aspects of their forthcom ­ ing Countdown appearance. However, he said his decision to ban the group stemm­ ed mainly from their attitudes on W ill­ esee: "Their behavior was deplorable and we just can't endorse their attitude on Countdown".

He said the band's manager had called

Molly Meldrum, of course, was taking it all very seriously.

"The simple fact is as long as you have a camera or tape recorder rolling or someone is writing something down in shorthand, you must always be aware that someone could set you up. Now if those guys want to act like assholes then that's fine by them but...Yesterday I went through the most amazing amount of bullshit with them over what they wanted to do on the show. Now I didn't want to spend hours with them working out what they wanted to do. Quite frank­ ly, I'd rather be spending my time w ork­ ing out what Dragon are doing or what The Angels are doing than working on what The Stranglers are doing, because that means very little in this country.

"I booked them three weeks before the blowup because I liked their first two albums and Countdown showed clips of them eighteen months ago. We were approached when they decided to come over here and we said 'sure'. We asked them what they wanted to do so we could check for lyric content and asked if they wanted to mime or play to a live backing track.

"They chose to mime, which speaks volumes, dot^sn't it? " I t was first announced they would do 'Nice and Sleazy' from their 'Black and White' album. We said 'fine'. Their (Continued next page)

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 6 (From previous page) record company then decided they want­ ed them to do their latest single, which incidentally is five months old, called 'Walk On By' — which would have to be the most aborted cover version I have ever heard in my life. So we said 'O K'.

Then their manager got into the act and said they would do a song called 'Threatened' which is Song Two, Side Two, o f the 'Black and White' album, I looked at the lyric content and it wasn't acceptable fo r our timeslot.

There was then a big discussion and it was decided they would do T o ile r On The Sea', but this is five minutes twenty three seconds long. We couldn't cut it down and because o f the ABC's sporting commitments, we have only been getting fifty minutes to air — in fact we only got 35 minutes to air in Sydney and Melb­ ourne last week. So, in those circum­ stances, I'm not going to show five m in­ utes tw enty three seconds o f any group.

Finally it was decided that they would do "Hanging A round" from their live album.

"Everyone agreed but then the tour manager rung me up and said they want­ ed a particular set designed and only

Stranglers: " ...quite frankly the 'Black and W hite' album is fu ll of bullshit and the single 'Walk On By' — you could be sitting on a dunny vomiting shit and you still w ou ldn 't appreciate those".

Is there any real danger from the Strang­ lers appearing on Countdown simply in a musical context? M olly: "Yes, I think so...I th ink so...yes, there is def­ initely. We would be endorsing them ".

TH E S T R A N G LE R S wanted two cameras used. I told him to hang on — number one: I wasn't the show's director, and number tw o: We'd shoot it the way we wanted to. We finally .sorted that out, but I must say I was thinking of cancelling them there arid then. There are fifteen other groups in this country alone that I would prefer to put on the show at this stage.

"N ow I saw Willesee and their attitude was deplorable and by having them on Sunday night we would just be endorsing their attitude. You've got to realise that both Willesee and Countdown go to an immense audience in peak viewing’ time.

"N o w I d o n 't give a fuck what any magazine writes this up as — Nightmoves can win every television award in the country fo r a rock show, but it's so easy to p ut that show together, it really doesn't matter. On the other hand, we carefully sift through everything and

care fo r the industry..."

But d id n 't he th ink The Stranglers were set up by the Willesee interviewer? "N o.

As long as a camera is rolling and the thing could go to air people can't act like assholes. You d o n 't get people like Rod (Stewart), Linda Ronstadt, The Doobies etc, acting like that...

"It's just not Countdown's image.

I d o n 't want anyone endorsing drugs...if they're on any drugs, that's their busi­ ness. It's like if an interviewer asked you if you slept w ith your best friend's wife last night. You'd say 'mind your own business'. They can do that w ith drugs. The last thing we need in this country is someone at a pop or rock level endorsing drugs".

M olly then mentioned that The Strang­ lers' manager had been on the phone, accusing him o f trying to give the group a Sex Pistols image. Flatly denying it, he then turned his attack back on the

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FOOTNOTE: As we went to press.

The Stranglers were copping more flak in Adelaide — and getting it where it hurts. Rock station 5K A informed local promoters' agents CBA-Sphere that it would not accept any advertising at any price fo r The Stranglers Adelaide concert, giving the Willesee show fiasco and "other press reports " as the reason.

Station manager, Ian Lane, said the decision had been taken by the manage­ ment rather than the board o f the station, which is owned by the church.

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SPO RTS NIGHT The Sports made a favorable impression on the English rock press at their first press reception in the U.K. The large crowd of journalists and music industry people forsook the free booze and eats to get a close look at the band (a rare occurrence at these affairs) and gave the Sports a warm reception.

The reception was at one o f London's top rock pubs. The Nashville, and S tiff Records, the band's British record com­ pany, spared no expense in making it a memorable one. The walls were decorat­ ed w ith posters from the sixties depicting the great Australian myths — long sandy beaches, thick juicy steaks and clean livin's sheilas. The refreshment laid on was Foster's Lager (which came with matching Fosters beer mats) and the evening's MC was a very ocker type of chap.

It was very clever strategy on the part o f S tiff (who are noted fo r their creative marketing techniques) because just about every Australian band who have gone to make their fortune in the U.K. of late have been sneeringly dismissed by the music press — not because of their music, which reviewers rarely mention, but because of their Australianness.

Comments like "This bunch of Bruces should catch the next boomerang home and stick to playing corroborees' are not uncommon. By deliberately playing up the crass ocker image, STiff could well

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have nipped that sort of preconceived reaction in the bud.

Noted among the crowd were a large number o f expatriate Australians, inc­ luding Lobby Loyd, Paul Dixon, Gull­ iver Smith and Gerry Humphries. Also seen barracking fo r the band was Graham Parker and most o f the Rumour who the Sports w ill be opening fo r on the fo rth ­ coming tour. One surprise visitor (a well-documented connoisseur of Fosters Lager) was John Lydon of Public Image.

He watched the band from the fro n t of the stage but left as soon as they finished.

- f r o m KEITH SHADWICK (Keith w ill be filing a fu ll report on the firs t half o f the Sports/Parker tour, taking in Wales, Scotland and the North o f England, in next month's Roadrunner — Ed)

Opening March 22 1979 Wednesday thru Saturday 8 -1 1 .3 0

CONTRABAND INTERCEPTED One of the side effects of Dragon's U.S. tour, apart from that band's subsequent lineup shuffle, was the nixing of their stablemates'. Contra­ band's, U S. tour. Both bands are signed to Portrait Records in the States, you see, and the company was so unimpressed with Dragon's behavior over there that a mere 36 hours before Contraband were due to get on the big bird, the word came down — "Stay where you are boys. We're re-evaluating our down under connection".

The news h it the band like a bombshell, according to tour manager, Steve Pearson.

They had thought that if anything was going to go wrong, it would happen up to a week before they were due to go. Once they'd cracked that barrier they fe lt they were home and hosed.

To make matters worse they got the news on the afternoon before they were due to play their 'farewell' gig in Sydney: All the parents of the band members had flown into Sydney to give them a good sendoff; 2SM was broadcasting their departure time. In fact, they were on the crest o f a wave and suddenly they got heavily dumped. Despite the bad

P U R V E Y O R ’S OF PURE ROCK

news they went ahead w ith the farewell concert, accepted the crowd's well-wishes w ith lumps in their throats, and the follow ing day went into hiding fo r tw o weeks to lick their wounds.

One of the repercussions o f the post­ ponement — and Steve Pearson definitely sees it as that, rather than cancellation — was that producer Peter Dawkins who left Sydney to w ork w ith Portrait in Los Angeles, walked out o f Portrait and is now back in Sydney working fo r CBS Australia again. In fact, Dawkins has just finished producing Contraband's first album, to be called simply "Contraband".

Obviously not getting to record in LA as was originally planned was a disappoint­ ment but as it turned out they got the same producer (Dawkins) a fu ll tw o weeks to record, and the cost was a quarter o f what it would have been.^ So the band haven't come out o f it too badly.

Contraband commence a national tour on March 6 w ith new drummer Barry Cramm, lately o f Russell Morris Band an(J Avalanche. The tour, titled "Before The Rain", kicked o ff in Victoria, then takes in SA, NSW and Qld. A new single w ill be released at the end of March, called "Raining Again" and the album w ill come out in m id-April.

- DONALD ROBERTSON

Royal Oak Hotel 527 Bridge Road Richmond Ph. 42.4200

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 7

SID "It's really sad. He was just a 21 -year-old kid full o f good and bad" — James Merberg (Sid's lawyer).

“He did not intend to kill himself. He took the drug to get high on, not to die” — Dr. Michael Baden, Examiner.

New

York's Chief Medical

“Vicious, who rose to fame as the snarling bass player with the Sex Pistols, specialised in such punk touches as vomiting onstage” — Adelaide Sunday Mail.

"! am totally bamboozled and angry and very upset by his death" — Malcolm McLaren, Sex Pistols manager.

“Emma found Sid a flat in Maida Vale, un­ furnished, seven year lease (1984 it ends up).

When I phoned Malcolm to OK it, he said: ‘That’s fine — he’ll be dead by then’. True enough...” — Diary entry, August 24, 1977,

by Malcolm McLaren's secretary (named only as Sophie), reported in the book "The Sex Pistols", compiled by Fred and Judy Vermorel.

“For most of his life he was John Simon Richie, a meek razor thin youth who was often beaten up by gangs of his London neighbor­ hood. But when he died he was Sid Vicious, a punk rock musician accused of murdering his girlfriend, knifing his girlfriend to death. 'The nude body of the spike-haired rock star... was found with a needle nearby and too much heroin in his veins”—Hobart Mercury, heroin in his veins”- Hobart Mercury.

A lienation Melbourne-based power poppers The Aliens ( formerly Adelaide's Riff Raff) hiave broken some sort of Australian record with a blast from obscurity to headliner status in just four months.

They have suddenly been adopted as The Thing for '79 by the dollar doyens of the rock industry and appear set for a big run.

In the wake of support gigs for The Stranglers and Split Enz, they have been booked for a heavy tour schedule over the next three months and are attracting strong interest from Mushroom Records.

Already, their demo tapes have been picked up for airplay on Sydney's 2JJ and 4ZZZ in Brisbane.

While their music is described above as "power pop", no-one seems to be able to put a convincing label on it. Some have taken to calling it "cabaret punk" (a

term coined by Ross Gardiner of the Melbourne Herald) but the band (Danny Johnson, bass and vocals: Geoffrey Stapleton, guitar; Greg Webster, guitar; and Rob Grosser, drums all originally with Riff Raff. Rob also drummed for Melbourne punk band News) denies any punk roots or influence. "We are all really conscious of melody", says Greg. " ...We like people to leave our gig humm­ ing the tunes and that's the thing that melody does. It sticks in your head".

The reaction to The Aliens at venues, however, has been mixed. While Roadrunner's Ross Stapleton is blown but by the band — he claims the first time he heard them, they were a "highly polished and sophisticated band with songs that had 'hit' stamped all over them. No band ...could be that good right from the start" — other Road runner snoops have

ENTER THE (NEW ) DRAGON After months of rumours it was finally confirmed late last month that Marc Hunter is leaving Dragon.

The rest of the group had apparent­ ly been concerned about his erratic behavior, particularly onstage, for some months, but decided to wait until after the recently completed US tour before making any final decision.

The message to Marc before going to the States was clear — shape up or ship out. Of course, as has been widely report­ ed since, the band came close to inciting a rio t while supporting Johnny Winter in Dallas, Texas. The other members of the band laid the blame for the incident at Marc's doorstep, and some of them were fo r terminating the relationship there and then. However, group unity prevailed and the band completed the tour — actually getting their best reaction of the tour supporting the Boyzz in New York.

When the group returned to Australia, further discussions w ithin the band resulted in agreement to again postpone the decision on Marc s future w ith the band until after a quick national tour.

About this time it was also announced, to the surprise of many, that violinist Richard Lee, the leading light in dis­ banded Melbourne group Sidewinder, would be joining the band. Although Lee had contributed to a couple of Todd Hunter's songs on Dragon's last album, "O Zambesi", the difference between Sidewinder's heavy rock and the more poppy and melodic Dragon seemed considerable. The addition o f Lee added more fuel to the rumours of Marc Hunter's imminent departure, and the band's lacklustre performances on the

tour (with Marc appearing particularly disinterested) did n't do anything to curb the flames.

Marc Hunter played his last gig with Dragon in Sydney on February 23.

New member Richard Lee w ill play his first on March 1 at Pleasures in Sydney.

noticed people actually leaving gigs as The Aliens begin their set. Particularly in Adelaide — their hometown - recent reaction has not been uniformly favor­ able The Aliens have also Alienated much of their female audience with lyrics which range from patronisingly anti­ women to blatantly sexist. Feminists in Melbourne particularly have gone as far as threatening boycotts against the band. The band claim there is too much being made of their lyrics, but they don't do much to calm the waters in the way they reply. As Geoffrey told Ross Stapleton in a recent interview:" It's really weird because you get some songs and a really basic thing to me is sex. I mean for everyone it's the one most basic common thing. Like you can be the most incred­ ible intellectual in the world and Just see a woman with a really nice pair of tits and you just want to grab hold of them ~ and that's a fact".

Ironically, The Aliens are managed by a woman (Kerry Hood) and die band attribute much of their success to her. and the hope is that he w ill inject some much needed energy into their live performances. It is going to be hard to replace Marc Hunter for, though erratic, he has a superb voice and a liberal dose of charisma. Lead vocals in the new lineup w ill be taken by guitarist Robert Taylor who song some of the rockier numbers in the old Dragon. Lee can also sing and as well as playing violin is now strumming the old guitar strings. It's going to be interesting to watch how Richard, like his namesake Bruce Lee, enters the Dragon (groan — ed).

-P H IL L IP MARLOWE

" I'll never forget the first time / met Sid Vicious. He was sitting on the Up o f the stage at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonion, Texas... nicking the flesh o f his bare arm with a razor blade. I asked him 'why?'. 'Because it makes people take notice o f me', he said.

That incident perfectly expressed this penni­ less, unremarkable, semi-literate, musically talentless Londoner from a broken home who became an icon to the punk sub culture" — Roderick Gilchrist, Entertainments Editor of the London Daily Mail.

“The punk thing was absurd...the difference between me and Sid is that I never took the image seriously. It was just a joke. Sid, how­ ever, did” — John Lydon, in the London Daily Mail.

“I never personally witnessed the vicious, tough side of Sid, although it was legendary; from his chain-whipping of NME writer Nick Kent at the One Hundred Club before he was a Pistol, to when he beat the shit out of two Swedes, when he walked into a toilet after a gig in Sweden and found them attacking drummer Paul Cook as he went to take a piss. A friend of mine who witnessed Sid in action then left me in no doubt that when the going got tough and the tough got going, you could count on Sid in a crunch” — Ross Stapleton, in Roadrunner's November, 1978, cover story on Sid arrest in New York.

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Soon after the announcement that Marc would be actually leaving came the news that another new member would be jo in ­ ing the group. He is Billy Rogers from Melbourne group Last Chance Cafe. The talents he brings to the group include saxophone, piano, blues harp and what is described as a 'specialist blues voice'.

His addition means that the band will now have four vocalists Lee has been rehearsing with Dragon fo r the past month and the plan is fo r the new line-up to do some smaller gigs in Sydney this month, to enable everyone to settle in and then embark on a major national tour in mid-April. Already Dragon are doing some o f Lee's songs

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ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 8

A crowd of only 200 - 300 caught a mini-milestone in Adelaide music at the St. Peters Town Hall on February 10. The occasion was a benefit concert for the emerging independent Adelaide record label TOMORROW RECORDS, the baby of freelance producer Simon Stretton.

It also marked the emergence of Adelaide new wave band THE ACCOUNTANTS as a strong and highly original musical force...

It was a hot evening and, at 8.30 pm, the lawns outside were dotted with groups of people dressed up in their best punk gear. And really, they're getting the most professional and competent quite good at it. The embarrassingly band Adelaide's got. Their arrangements provincial white shirt and thin black tie are at times in the Elvis Costello vein — seemed to be definitely out o f favour, as due mainly, I think, to the very innovat­ did the ubiquitous black leather jacket ive style of their keyboard player. The* and shades. It yvas the first punk show I'd singer moves around a lot, and the best ever been to that d id n't look like a bikie songs they do are their own, which gathering. speaks heaps, doesn't it, pop fans?

Inside the hall, a much improved Dagoes Third on were The Accountants. played to an empty floor. They no longer Suddenly the lawn outside was empty, sound like duelling banjoes under porr­ except fo r fast food cartons, and the idge and their new singer, a Chris Bailey crowd were inside, jammed up against look-alike, does it quite well. One o f the the stage, screaming, cheering and stamp­ guitarists had cut o ff his beard. I imagine ing, as the curtain slowly opened. This it's hard being in a punk band if you was the band they had come for... have a beard. However, they were good, In the past, the Accountants have al­ playing a set of tight catchy songs. ways been a frustrating band to go and They should have been given more of a see, as they stumble about, angrily chance. I mean, a fair few of the audience trying to get sounds out of malfunction­ had beards, too... ing equipment, watched by a dedicated Second in line were Warm Jets who, by group of followers who desperately want d in t of much sweat and hard work, the group to succeed. It is d iffic u lt to got most of the crowd inside and dancing. understand, but the loyalty o f their fans Next to Young Modern, Warm Jets are is such that they are guaranteed a greater

ADELAIDE crowd reaction than the hap/less bands they support. Perhaps it's their material.

Who else sings songs about catching the 490 from Elizabeth (an industrial suburb of Adelaide), or o f fights between skin­ heads and rockers at local football matches? Maybe it's the image — a singer and guitarist who look like North-ofEngland boot boys, a second guitarist who rivals Keith Richards in "wasted elegance", a bass player who comes over as a cross between a Gestapo aqent and a Kings Cross male prostitute, and a drummer who looks like a refugee from Clockwork Orange. Whatever it is (up till now, anyway), it hasn't been the music because they've never managed to produce any.

Saturday the 10th was different. This time The Accountants delivered. They opened w ith a powerful driving instru­ mental, based on one of the most memor­ able bass riffs this side o f the English Channel, complemented by an extraord­

inary interlocking rhythm from the two guitars. Unfortunately, where they should have had a mix like the Stranglers, who ever did it gave them a mix like Status Quo. Can you imagine the former's "Nice'n'Sleezy" w ith the bass and drums turned DOWN? Still, the crowd d id n't notice. They screamed and stamped from beginning to end, cameramen went wild, the more outrageous punters posed extravagantly, and the band was called back for a four-song encore. The only band to get an encore all evening. They did very few cover versions, relying on their own w riting and arranging talents which, if this is any showing, are con­ siderable.

Poor old Bohdan had to work his butt o ff to get the crowd interested and back inside again — and to give him credit, he almost did it — tearing his leather jacket o ff, breathing fire almost as well as Tony Turps, and doing Iggy Pop covers. I don't suppose fo r one minute he expected to work that hard when he got on the train to come over from Melbourne.

-M IC H A E L HOPE

LONDON London in the New Year has been pretty well devoid of live concerts of any real importance, with only the occasional weighing-in of touring acts to lighten the mediocrity of the city pub/club circuit.

Ian Dury's couple of nights in town were outstanding, and The Cars did sellout shows which showed them to be going through their paces and nothing more on their way to pop stardom. The Stiff tour delivered some of the goods, with Wreckless Eric coming through well and Lene Lovitch making it big (her first LP i^ now out and the single from it getting a lot of airplay).

Elvis Costello ran into problems prior to the release of the new LP and single: He pulled the same stunts at the Dominion in Tottenham Court Road as he had in Sydney, refusing all encores and generally giving the audience short shrift, while the band sounded tired and bored: It seemed for a couple of weeks as though the inevitable media reaction was to overtake him, but the new LP and another round of concerts in the last couple of weeks have revived his career. Only the older numbers sound tired now: 'Detectives' was delivered as though he was sleepwalking. Either he's following manag­ erial decrees for enigmatic behavior too close­ ly or he's just sick of playing the same thing for two years now. Anyway, he's still in a pretty healthy position.

But really, the surprise of the New Year has to be Ian Dury, with a No. 1 single (Rhythm Stick) and two unbelievable nights in Hammer­ smith, as well as a scintillating hour of music on a recent 'Rock Goes To College' show on the Beeb. The Blockheads just have to be one of the best bands around in their own right at the moment, and Dury s own stage-presence is frighteningly strong: The balance between him and the band is exciting and sensational on stage, and they devlier that rare event — a totally entertaining evening on all levels.

One other event that deserves notice is o^e of what is becoming unfortunately an increasing­ ly rare thing: A live performance by the Sadistas (aka The Sadista Sisters). This is a group which through various personell changes over the past three years has managed to put on a consistently bizarre and entertaining mixture of rock and theatre, in the tradition more of European cabaret at its more political extreme than anything from this country. After an enthusiastic half-page article in the Guardian the day before, they put on a show at Uni­ versity College in London Uni which had a turn-away crowd of almost double the capacity of the venue. With a line-up of three actresssingers out front and a backing band of pianist/ vocalist, guitar, bass and drums, they produced a w itty, hard-hitting and stimulating blend of outright theatrical sketches on various themes of urban life and problems, involving the three leads collectively or individually, and straight­ ahead rock songs with punchy and telling lyrics, covering a great range of subjects, from breaking the news of a lesbian love affair to less than perfectly understanding parents, to comments on the political situation in South Africa.

But it's typical of the current London scene that The Sadistas biggest audience remains on the Continent in Berlin and Holland, where they've done many successful tours and their 1976 LP sold very well. The latent black hum­ our of a lot of their wordless sketches, includ­

ing one where two of the women, Jude Alderson and Jean Hart, act out a nightmarish addiction to clothes and gargantuan amounts of food, seems to meet with a reaction of Horror and confusion more than humour from a lot of their audiences here, though the crowd this night, spurred on by the Guardian's intell­ igent article, got into the spirit of things well.

But their problems remain here — problems revolving around their mode of presentation as much as anything, what with the necessity of having to operate with a large production crew including sound engineer, director, stage man­ agers and a fulT lighting crew, that it is only on such tours of the Continent which they’ ve already done where they can hope to survive economically. Sadly, that will keep perform­ ances by them in England for the time being down to a minimum.

That's the best of a very quiet start to live concerts in the New Year, though things will soon be hotting up, with Zappa in town soon, to be followed by the usual contingent of U.S. acts. The only other events here have been con­ fined to media-land, where on BBC-2 Neil Innes, of Bonzo Dog Band and Monty Python fame, has been presenting a series of shows called "The Innes Book of Records ', an imagin­ ative concept involving sketches built around a plethora of musical styles, brilliant camera­ work and tongue-in-cheek performances of the material by Innes himself, .as well as cameos from well-known English eccentrics reading poetry, delivering speeches, acting out fant­ asies and generally behaving normally, which is odd enough at the best of times, let alone on a T V show. It's certainly a refreshing approach to music on the Vision, and should be followed up: At the moment it seems an at times brill­ iant, always professional, forerunner of the much-touted video-disc idea which has been kicking around for a few years now without actually making a startling appearance to sweep LPs out of the shops.

The only other thing of note to happen here that I've noticed at least is the long-overdue appearance of a new creative trend in what is unquestionably the dominant mode of music at present — disco — with the release of Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" (shifting enormous amounts of vinyl here, with an advance order of 100,000 pre-release). Chic's "Le Freak" (huge in the States but peaking at No. 5 here) and Funkadelic's "One Nation Under A Groove". Suddenly we have three examples of what can be done with disco if someone feels like beino creative within what has been up till now a severley restricted market range, while keeping up the ever-important amount of units sold. It was also shown to be translatable to live performance when Chic was over here a month ago in con­ cert and put on an intruiging show. With them, it all hinges round a re-definition of what the guitar and the arrangements can do, taking that ever-dominant rock instrument into a more orchestral position, dispensing with solos of any kind and relying on the performer's ability within quite well defined limits to come up with creative and interesting chord-shifts, rhythmic accents and single-lines. With the current vacuum in New Wave apart from Costello's new LP, it's a heartening sign. Let's hope it ends up being one of many notable changes for '79. So far it's the only one — at least in London.

- KEITH SHADWICK

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ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 9

Suicide survivors

AUSTRALIA'S last-ditch attempt at a punk cash-in, the Suicide label, was born to a blaze of scathing pub­ licity and slid quietly from the pub­ lic eye in the same year. Before Christmas 1978 — by which time most of the seven bands signed to the label had ceased to exist - RCA had untangled itself from the Suicide distribution and cast the label aside.

The Boys Next Door had, from the outset, been unanimously considered the most exciting, most innovative and most durable o u tfit involved w ith Suicide, and they recorded an album's worth o f mater­ ial fo r the label mid-1978. As Suicide was going down the resident tough guy Barrie Earl (his image modelled closely on the more flamboyantly nasty ex-Stiff chief Jake Riviera, no doubt) took the Boys Next Door tapes to Mushroom Records boss Michael Gudinski. Eight months after that recording the Boys Next Door have completed four new tracks to com­ bine w ith last year's, fo r an album to be released on Mushroom in April. When Gudinski talks about the Boys Next Door, he uses words like 'energy and 'progression', and o f the Stiff-plagiarised Suicide Company project being 'ahead o f itself' on the Australian market.

The Boys Next Door had something none of their Suicide labelmates shared — and very few bands in general possess, anyway ... a style o f their own and a sense that what they were doing was new and significant. The songs exhibited intelligence and an individual statement w ith the ubiquitous 'thinking band's' tinge o f paradox. The musical translation o f the songs was frenetic, w ith active energetic drumming from Phil Calvert, Tracy Pew's thudding droning bass sound, a straightforward guitarist Mick Harvey, and Nick Cave, a singer whose crooning and visual display equalled one another in dramatics. This band produced a varied and brimming sound considering the limitations of the bass/drums/guitar in­ strumentation.

The visuals department scored heavily fo r the Boys Next Door. Nick Cave, sharply attired with an awry lounge lizard style, exaggerated his dark eyes to more effectively display the range o f em­ otions from the pathetic to the vitriolic, and jerked animatedly around stage.

Often his antics overbalanced into excess and melodrama, and should have been embarrassing, but only served to make the performance more paradoxical and quite irresistible.

Around July last year, another guitarist, Rowland Howard, a songwriter as well, joined the Boys Next Door. He's previously been a member o f the Young

Charlatans and his presence in the Boys Next Door promoted more scope for arranaement. "(N ow ) evervbodv's olavinq a melody line", said Nick. " I t used to be sort of Mick having to play the chords to keep the song filled out, whereas now it's become a lo t more interesting. There's just a sort of maze of leadlines going on".

The Boys Next Door have proven their durability, and ability to build onto their ideas. They've outlasted not only the other Suicide bands, but the label itself, and time has barely seen year one of their five-year Suicide contract expire! The tracks the Boys Next Door contributed to last year's white elephant. Suicide's "Lethal Weapons" compilation sampler album, suffered at the hands of producer Greg Macainsh, and sounded only vaguely like the Boys Next Door. The album met w ith a spontaneous outburst o f indiffer­ ence from record buyers, despite RCA's lavish and gimmicky promotional push.

The Boys Next Door promoted their single on Countdown — the camera was continually focused on the right place at the wrong time — but it, too, met with customer indifference.

They began recording an album o f their own fo r the Suicide label midway through 1978. Nick explains:"The Boys Next Door recorded it w itho ut Rowland, before Rowland joined the band — about eight months ago now — and it's all old material that we play about a quarter of now, probably. Michael Gudinski was generous and let us update it w ith four new tracks, so we've been in the studio recording those. They're excellent tracks — there'll be four good tracks on the album at least. We've had bad luck with producers. The person who produced the unreleased Suicide album tracks wasn't allowed to, by the way. He came from overseas and was illegally working in Australia. He recorded an album that is very stilted and very contrived, but at the time we thought it was good. The new tracks we've produced ourselves, we

ago (the first band on a bill that should have stopped after Eric Gradman's Man and Machine...before Midnight Oil had a chance to play) could have been the best band in Australia on the night. The pre­ vious Tuesday night at their residency at the gracious Crystal Ballroom, they lacked discipline, and the magic only sparked sometimes. Rowland talked about the feeling of being trapped, and the battle against complacency: "We've been really bad recently, just going on­ stage and mucking around and playing the songs as stupidly as we can and things

MELBOURNE consider important. The rest of the songs now — eventhough I still think there are some good songs on the old recording — the performance is particularly uninspir­ ed. The new is quite inspired".

The sound o f the Boys Next Door employs far more subtlety now — this is a band w ith no lack o f artistic imaginat­ ion. There are more slower songs, more studied time and rhythm ic changes, a cut in freneticism and more dramatic devices rather than sheer dramatics. Nick Cave now takes time to strike poses, time to allow his cigarette smoke wafting through dim lighting to have an effect.

The Boys Next Door, performing at the Cathedral Hall a few Sunday nights

because we're so bored with playing to the same audience every night o f the week fo r half a year or something.

"Also, we're at a fairly low point at the moment", Nick continued. 'In the near future there'll be more instruments added to the band — not necessarily new members — but we'll be having a synthes­ iser. We might even be having another player, going six-piece, and at the moment we're really waiting for that to all come about and material to be w ritt­ en. It must be two months since we've performed a new song onstage".

Suicide might be dead, but it w on't be considered buried for a long while.

One can imagine it being quite some time

before the Boys Next Door escape assoc­ iation w ith the Suicide punk package.

Nick was summoned, as a representative of Melbourne's punk community, among others, to comment during 'Willesee A t Seven's" report on the death of Sid Vicious. "The people who don't know anything about young music still consider us punk" he said. "Gudinski still con­ siders us as a punk rock group", Rowland added."He told us that if we could come up with a song like 'Ca Plane Pour Moi' then we'd have a good single on our hands.

"He doesn't think any of our material is single q ua lity", Nick continued. "In England there are singles that come out every week that w ill obviously never be on the radio — and I'm not even sure that the bands consider that they would be on the radjo — but they're still interesting and prestigious singles, which is mainly what we're concerned w ith. Michael Gudinski doesn't seem to think it'll be a successful album. He's already said that we haven't got any singles th at'll get played on the radio, and then we asked him :'W ill we put out a single?' and he said: 'O f course! It's better to have a flop single than no single. A t least you'll get an appearance on Countdown or something like that'. So that's the way he's really looking at the record, but we could surprise him — I d on 't know ".

-J IL L IA N B U R T

Humans vs Humans, Aliens vs Aliens as Malcolm Fraser's budget, they powered through a set comprising songs like "New Race", "K ic k Out The Jams", "Surf C ity " and "California Sun". That coupled w ith a good batch o f original tunes, and The Aliens made quite an impression.

They're a very young band. Guitarist Brad Shepherd and bassist John Hartley 1976/77 gave us the Survivors, the Leftare 17 and the drummer. Brad's brother, Overs and The Numbers in their original is only 15. Well, if they're this good now, manifestation. And then last year saw the they can oniy get better as musicians, Gobetweens, Fuller Banks and The Debentures and Razar started regular' songwriters and performers. So watch out. The Aliens have landed. gigging around the city. Well pop pickers, Another of the newer bands creating the same has happened this year. Eyes more than a name fo r themselves are screwed up against the tropical sun, The Humans. They're another trio. The whole brigades of guitar slingers have closest I can come w ith a comparison is emerged after their long winters in the something like the heavy pop o f The garage. Most o f the new bands are quite Dictators. So they're not as funny as dire, but then who really cares? The point is more and more bands are being formed and that can only be good fo r music in general. So they m ightn't set the world alight now but in a couple of years'time The Dictators but they sure have bundles a whole new generation o f bands w ill of energy and, in a small club like the be ready to push the likes o f The Angels Curry Shop, they h it you w ith about as and The Sports o ff the top. much power as an ascending Jumbo.

If most of the new bands are less than So what's going to happen if they event­ exciting, there are a couple who show ually decide to head south? Considering real promise. But both seem to ^ in Brisbane's Humans and Aliens are now in fo r big problems — legal problems — and the top clutch of local bands, the next the reason w ill become clear by the time logical step seems to be a trip to Sydney you have finished this paragraph. First or Melbourne and then it w ill really hit up and in line fo r a hassle are The Aliens, the fan. Brisbane's Numbers can vouch a new power trio very much in the trad­ fo r that. The Numbers (of "Sunset ition o f Radio Birdman. But if they S trip " fame/infamy) have been threat­ rock like Birdman, they have the pop ened with legal action by a Sydney band sensibility of the Ramones to back up of the same name, if they attempt to play that raw power. On Friday, February 9, in NSW, Victoria or South Australia. See, The Aliens played support to Brisbane's Sydney's Numbers registered their name leading boy-punks Razar and literally in those states — Brisbane's Numbers blew them o ff stage. Bedecked in surf didn't. The fact that "Sunset S trip " was shirts with their harmonies now as tight recorded before the Sydney band even

"Summer's here and the tim e/is right for dancing in the streets".

Well, not exactly but, as it seems to happen here in Brisbane, each new summer heralds the appearance of a whole brace of new bands.

formed doesn't count. The end result of the whole business is that Brisbane's Numbers are now The Riptides.

A similar jostle between the two Aliens and the tw o Humans now looks to be on the cards.

Fullar Banks and The Debentures, though they formed in the summer of 1977-78, have only this summer begun to pick up a large Brisbane following. On Friday, February 2, they played the orientation week cabaret at the Queens­ land Institute o f Technology. Talk about "heads down, no nonsense, mindless boogie". To be fair to Fullar Banks, though, they would have to be the flashest, most accomplished pub band curr­ ently playing around Brisbane. They have added a sax player since I last saw them

BRISBANE a couple of months ago. The addition o f sax has given them an even fullar (ha,ha) sound than they had before, coupled w ith the fact that their set now includes mostly originals and they are a band worth seeing. That is, if you enjoy boogie rock. I'm not so sure. Not so the several hundred people who danced furiously all night at Q.l.T. You may ask then how I can possibly criticise them.

Simply, there's no chewn, ma babe, no chewn. Think o f their original songs with titles like "Loud Music" and 'The Same Boogie" and you might get some idea of what I mean. See I d id n 't hear a melody all night and the only hooks were the odd guitar hooks. In fact, the whole evening seemed to me strangely old fash­ ioned. Extended guitar solos may have been hip once but I can't see any place

fo r them in 1979.

But if some of the more established bands are losing their momentum, others are coming on stronger than ever. The Riptides (ex Numbers) recently made a welcome return after a four-month lay­ off. Some of their newer songs "Day Job" and "Tomorrow's Tears" are quite impressive and they seem to have matur­ ed musically.

But of all the recent developments in Brisbane's burgeoning music scene, the most exciting concerns not a band but a management agency. Sideline Artists Management was recently formed by one Peter Williamson and his cohort David Darling, both of the local rock radio station 4ZZZ-FM. The company is design­ ed to create a unified collection of Brisbane "underground" acts w ith the aim of collectively organising them.

Already, most of Brisbane's leading underground bands have joined the agency. A t last local bands w ill be able to compete w ith southern acts on even terms. If mediocre bands like Flowers come to Brisbane, they should come as support acts and not expect to walk into the Queens Hotel as headline bands.

But that's getting o ff the track. The most important thing is that local bands w ill soon be playing at vepues such as the Patch at Coolangatta, Easts Rugby League Club, the Cleveland Sands Hotel and the Mooloolaba Hotel as well as more established venues like the Queens and the Exchange. And if that happens and Brisbane bands can finally make enough money to live o ff their music, then the future o f rock'n'roll up here is an open book.

SCOTT MATHESON

r ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 10 Mental As Anything. It's a good name fo r a band and it's appropriate for this particular Sydney band. It doesn't sound like a jazz-rock or a progressive band, does it? You w ouldn't expect a bunch o f aggressive punks, either. It makes them sound erratic and as if their music might be dated and fun. They are and it is.

Mental As Anything play cover versions mainly, with some of their own songs thrown in. It's your basic 50s and 60s revival sound w ith small scale equipment including a big Vox lead amp.

They have a regular Thursday night gig at the Civic Hotel In the city which always attracts a capacity crowd of 450 but o f late they have been venturing out to other major venues in the city and to Sydney's heavily populated and musicstarved Western Suburbs. There s even talk about venturing interstate fo r a week or three at some point in the future.

You see, the members of Mental As Anything aren't really interested in be­ coming rock stars, even though there is talk o f buying a bigger PA to handle some o f the bigger gigs they're now getting.

The current dose o f fame' which Mental As Anything are experiencing stems from the release on (independent) Regular Records o f their triple-A-sided EP e n titl­ ed "Mental As Anything Plays A t Your Party". The record has attracted favor­ able press reaction, not the least o f which was a score o f eight out of 10 from Young Modern's John Dowler in the February issue of Roadrunner. The record has sold out the entire 1000 pressing and w ill shortly be re-issued.

I sat down recently with the band (Lineup: Chris O'Doherty, guitar and vocals; Peter O'Doherty, bass; Wayne De Lisle, drums; Martin Murphy, vocals and guitar; Greedy Smith, keyboards, harmonica and vocals) and recorded this interview: RR: How did the band get together?

MAS: We ail met at art school and just decided to form a band.RR: Where did you play?

MAS: We just played at parties and dances that our friends had. We played lots of blues and that type of thing.

Then we began at The Unicorn Hotel in Paddington. We got a residency at the Unicorn about 18 months ago and as well as that we did lots of benefits and dances at halls around the place..

RR: How did you come to play all those benefits? You became a regular feature of those things, did n't you?

MAS: We just seemed to know the people who were tied up in the organisation o f them. It wasn't that we did them for any particular political reason, it was more that the people who ran them and went to them were people that we knew. Most of the work we got was from people approaching us directly and saying that they were having a party or were organising a dance and we were the sort of band those peofDle came up to.

RR: Do you make a living out o f working that way?

MAS: We eke out an existence. You see, in a bigger name band they get paid a weekly wage of, say, $100, whereas we might make $100 a week but it's not constant. But we never aimed to be a band w ith a record contract and a manager and lots of expensive gear.

There are plenty of people who are much better musicians than we are.

RR: You're in it'ju s t fo r fun'...?

MAS: Well, yeah. People come along and they seem to get something out of it.

The music itself doesn't seem to be all that important. It's a thing created by the band and the audience rather than just the band up there playing.

RR: You've really established yourselves in Sydney through playing every Thursday night at the Civic Hotel. You were also the first band into that particular venue.

MAS: Yeah. Before that they had a pub theatre thing there and a couple of us played in the band fo r that so we asked

the publican if we could play there on the nights that the room wasn't used.

Now Thursday night has become our bread and butter. It's like our office job.

People come and see us there and then ask us to play somewhere else.

RR: Is it basically the same audience every week?

MAS: Well, it used to be the same inner-city desperates every Thursday, but now there tend to be different crowds.

Kids from the North Shore and kids coming into town from the Western Suburbs. Now we'd like to move a bit out into the suburbs but up until now it hasn't been worth our while either financially or in terms o f getting people

RR: Well, what about your record?

You're not signed to a contract or anything?

MAS: No. We just wanted to record and we knew that Cameron (Allen) could produce it the way we wanted. It's our first single and it's Regular Records' first record. They just want to sell lots o f records — they don't want to own part of the band. It w ill be d iffic u lt fo r them because they have to find other bands and get the record distribution set up as well.

RR: Why did you select Regular Records?

MAS: Basically because Cameron wanted to get the sound we were after. That kind

TOONS

to come along and see us. The record has helped a lot in allowing people to hear us w itho ut having to come all the way to see us play to find out if they like the stuff we do.

RR: So you're moving up the ladder?

MAS: No, not really. We're not really interested in the thing o f getting out a single, then an album, then buying a bigger PA and so on. A lo t of these bands go and play and get about $10 a night because they have to outlay so much money on hiring a lot of gear so they can impress and look as if they've already moved another step up that ladder.

o f mono sound. It w ouldn't have worked if we went into the studio w ith someone who was after a particular commercial sound.

RR: Someone who's got a great 'funky drum sound'...?

MAS: Yeah. Like MAS: Yeah. Like Dragon seem to hate their producer but he makes h it records fo r them. Doing it the way we did, you probably guarantee that you never make any money out of it, but you also make sure that it doesn't compromise your artistic integrity.

(This raises a good laugh from the band.

A rtistic integrity o r lack thereof isn't

AUSTRALIA’S ROCK W ROLL HEADQUARTERS

Fully licensed 8.00 p.m. to 3.00 a.m.

Cnr. Phoenix Street and Sydney Road in downtown Brunswick ^

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MAS: We d on 't really like a lot o f modern music because it really isn't rock'n'roll. In fact we're pretty intolerant. The main reason we're inteolerant o f lots o f bands is that they're much better musicians than we are and we're jealous, that's all. We're unashamedly naive musicians. Naive, primitive and jealous. It doesn't matter if you're playing the right notes, the main thing is that you're seen to be playing music. The main thing is the beat and how many "yeah, yeahs" are in it. The beat and speed. These days dancing music is the name o f the game.

RR: Is this as far as tou see your popularity going?

MAS: We just want to play pubs and parties and things. M AR TIN : We have succeeded in getting people to admit that they like a lot of songs that previously they'd have been ashamed o f admitting they liked. For instance. The Monkees, The Equals "Baby Come Back ', Roy Orbison and "These Boots Are Made For Walking". There's also the old "tingle down the spine" thing, too, when you hear an old Beatles or Rolling Stones song that reminds you o f a particular point in your life.

RR: Isn't there a danger here of having people like the band purely fo r the sake o f nostalgia? In fact, nostalgia fo r the sake o f nostalgia?

MAS: Yeah, that's what we've got to be careful of. That's w hy we do our own songs as well. Also, if you do, say. Chuck Berry songs, you've got to give them something o f yourself, in the same way as Dave Edmunds does a Chuck Berry song but gives it his own identity — and his own songs are pretty powerful.

We haven't wasted anything by doing lots o f cover versions because we've learnt what makes a good song through doing lots of good songs. We've learnt a (Continued page 23)

Texas DaveWarners’ from the Suhuihs Cold Chisel lo th Iforman Gunston Split Enz The Stranglers 12

WEDNESDAY 7th

\

one o f the burning issues that keeps the members o f Mental As Anything from their sleep at night.)

RR: The record has cold 1000 copies and that's not bad fo r an independent single. Are you looking towards the h it parade?

MAS: Well, unless it's played on the major stations like 2SM and 2UW, it doesn't get onto the charts. They w on 't play it because of our name: They say it's a slur on Mentally Handicapped People. So we're going to change our name to Metal As Anything on our records.

(Enough o f these humorous interludes.

Commercial stations are n o t prepared to play independent records \Miich are n ot available through the local record stores. They d o n 't play records which their average listener can't get at the record bar down the road, i f the Mentals' record went through a big company distribution rather than a few im port shops the big stations m ight play it.

The story about the name sounds better, though, doesn't it?)

RR: How did you come by the name Mental As Anything?

MAS: It was at one o f our first jobs.

We d id n't have a name so we more or less just left it to the guy running it, who also did the posters and someone mentioned this phrase to him and he liked it so he put it down. It was a Balmain poet who gave the name to him, actually, and we just kept it.

RR: Where to from here?

MAS: Well, another single in a few weeks and then...M ARTIN: Actually I'm just using this as an entry to showbiz. I'm going to star in my own Tonight Show.

CHRIS: I really want to be a record producer and manage a few bands and start an agency. W AYNE: I want to start a drum clinic and move to Texas...

(You can see we've moved on to the silly answers part o f the conversation already b u t a few "What's yo ur favorite c o lo r? " type questions soon has the whole business back on an even keel.)

Sweet Jane

TriURSDAY 8th FRIDAY 9th

Texas

Sa t u r d a y

Secret Police Cheetah

The Honey Drippers

SUNEAY 11th munday

The Aliens

Loose Trousers

th

Jiiiiny and the Boys Tlie Boys Next Door

Out of the glitters

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 11

• •

THE RISE OF STIFF RECORDS: PART TW O

Last issue, Dave Robinson described the circumstances that lead to the formation of Stiff Records in London — the rise of the pub rock circuits, and the dissatisfaction with the Establishment record companies, etc etc. In, part two of the interview, Robinson goes on to recall the early days and growth of Stiff, the self-styled "undertakers to the industry"......

LEFT, DR: We had a tiny office and most of the room was taken up by these boxes of eight-track tapes which were the demos we had from the Hope and Anchor studio days. I've still got millions of them. If I had the time, I'd love to put together a 10-record set in a box. You'd sell about 2000 copies but the people who bought them would have everything there on record. Once it's on vinyl it becomes something special — well, to me, anyway.

RR: How did you go about signing up people for Stiff?

DR: We made a list, actually...a very quick list. Micky Jupp was the final person on it and we signed him recently, so we've actually completed our list of signings.

It was run on a co-operative basis, like the pub rock thing, and we try to keep that in the record label.

People who were doing well co-operated to help people who weren't doing so well — play on their records or give them a song — and it's worked out very well like that.

RR: Where did the idea for putting out the sampler album Bunch of Stiffs, way back in the beginning , come from?

DR: Well, we couldn't really afford to do albums on everybody. We started the company on about $600 Australian and as in the record business, you don't get your money until about three months after you've earned it. We still d id n't have much. The Bunch of Stiffs was to show people the kind o f thing we were into. To put out a sampler that would attract attention.

I'm not into samplers or compilation albums that much, but I think it explains some of the different styles that you're involved in. Some o f the singles which were on it had sold quite well compared to what normally happens to singles that weren't on radio.

RR: It was almost Stiff that revived the single, wasn't it?

DR; I think so.,Well, I w ouldn't like to say that we revived the single but I think we had a b it to do w ith it in that we started a lot o f groups who up until then had been jamming and doing long, involved things and we came along and said: 'Look, three minutes...2V2 minutes if possible. Let's be sharp'. The speed we were working on was that the single was the art form fo r that kind of thing.

We also wanted to turn a record around quickly. We'd hear the song, record the record the following day and have it out by the end of the week. We'd find little pressing plants that were prepared to press them quickly.

So the whole style of it lent itself to the singles track.

RR: What about contracts? You didn't sign people up for five years, or whatever...?

DR: We signed them up fo r one single. That was the basis fo r it. We said:'If it goes well fo r you after that, we'll talk to you further'. Now this was the direct opposite of the big companies where people are signed up fo r a long period, go o ff them but don't tell them and d on 't do anything w ith them but still retain them be­ cause maybe they're going to happen.

You see, the big record companies did work on the principle that maybe they're going to happen. They weren't prepared to make it happen or at least happen up to a par w ith how good it was. So you have a single that is quite good and you try and sell it "quite good".

You try to promote that band at least up to a par w ith the record. I believe it's "in the grooves" somewhat.

A record can only go so far. It's very hard, though. A lot of tracks that I haven't liked, people in America have really loved and you've got to reach as big an aud­ ience as you can because they might like it.

There were a few tracks that 1d id n 't think were much cop but I liked the people involved. Like Larry Wallis' Police Car. I though it could've been done quite a lot better but people in America loved it and a couple of stations on the East Coast programmed it quite heavily and we sold quite a few of that single.

IAN DU R Y AND THE BLOCKHEADS;

We started to export singles. Up until then, exports had been totally in albums. People weren't very interest­ ed in the single — it was too costly to import and then suddenly it became " I need TH AT single". That was the other thing that punk music did.

There was a belief in major record companies that if someone went into a record shop and wanted a Patti Smith album and they couldn't get it then they might buy an Eagles album. Now the New Wave proved that people go in w ith a very firm idea of what they want.

They were prepared to go to five or six record shops to find that one record that they wanted. Suddenly you had an audience who knew what they wanted. The "business music" was starting not to sell and it worried the big companies and we were very cocky. We were jumping round and shouting all the time.

RR; What about the .ads that Stiff took out?

DR: We said that our ads must m irror and attract attention to the artist. We do up our ads so that people say:'This is an interesting ad' — even if you don't like the record, it gives you an idea what the artist is like.

Before that people were taking pages in music papers purely because the manager o f the group hustled a bit. But nobody was applying themselves. The art department o f a major record company were bozos.

They were going "OOOOh, I've always wanted to use this lettering so I'll do the title w ith that'. There was no relationship to what it was. Now pop music and punk rock became a total form where the ad, what people said in their interviews, the whole style was total. They believed in it totally.

You were looking fo r ads that were provocative in the same way that the music was and the same way they looked on stage and the whole thing tied together in that way. Now a lot o f big companies in Britain have started to rip o ff those ideas, and that's good. The news­ papers loved it because people are buying more and more advertising than they used to.

These things rarely come from a major record label.

Polydor in England are doing very well at the moment because they've got a big disco RSO catalogue (Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Bee Gees, etc) and they've also got Sham 69 and Siouxsie and The Banshees who you'd say were straightforward punk.

I feel that there is always a time for things. I think 'S tiff had its time. There was a time which was right fo r S tiff to launch itself and it did a lot of the work by itself. The musicians and everybody who was involved in it were talking about Stiff. Island Records and Virgin Records have had that kind of tim ing and style and put it across at the time and what is hard is to keep it up. I think that S tiff Records w ill stop at some time. It's got a built-in point where it just explodes just like lots of those bands. Where you put out 18 albums one month or something and the whole thing goes up. I look forward to it because I d on't think

ABOVE, DEVO; BELOW, WRECKLESS ERIC

lifelong careers in one company or one situation apply.

RR: What do you see as the major fault of the big record companies?

DR: The attitude by the companies that if the record doesn't sell they they say that the group can't be much good — which is bullshit. The record company's job is to sell the record. It's not to stand in judgement of the record but once they've decided that the group is good and w orthy, they should encourage that band and then sell the record. That their job. That's what they're supposed to be good at and mostly what they're good at is whineing about the group and their management — that's what they mostly do.

If you think about it, very few big record companies have broken any new bands lately. They buy them.

There was a time when all the major companies were going out and offering hundreds of thousands of pounds to little punk bands who'd just got o ff the dole. Then when it d id n 't happen they couldn't understand it.

It's like the Mersey boom back in the 60s. The Beatles couldn't get a record deal eventhough they went around all the companies — even George Martin wasn't that interested at first. But as soon as it happened, every record company was up to Liverpool signing everything that walked around with a guitar. In the punk era it was the same. Anyone who looked like a punk and played, they signed. They did n't know what it was.

Is this good punk music or is it bad punk music? I don't know — so let's sign it up. We'll give them some money but there'll be options in there so we can get out if it doesn't work. It wasn't as if they thought it was important because the music business unfortunately takes - it doesn't give a great deal. It doesn't instigate things except in the rare case. It's a business. A greedy accountant's business.

• It's also a huge business. It's repulsive that one of the few pleasures that we have in this world and it's a luxury — it's not really an essential — it's repulsive that a b it more effort and time and creative talent isn't brought to bear on the bloody stuff.

RR: How did you come to be involved with the music from Akron?

DR; Well, Devo sent me a record which was Mongoloid and Joko Homo. Now we were getting maybe 50 tapes a week and it was getting very d iffic u lt to pick and choose out of that number. So one day you put them all on and say 'yes, no, yes, no' and you make quick decisions. Also someone might have eight numbers on a tape and the last one might be the greatest thing you've every heard but if he hasn't got the klutz to put in on first then you ain't gonna hear it probably. So you're looking fo r somebody who not only can write but also has a b it of brain power behind what he does.

The Devo record looked so interesting that I wrote back to them and said that I'd be very interested. I went out to Akron in December 77 in the middle of a blizzard and nearly froze to death and signed up Devo fo r three singles.

RR: Did they already have those singles recorded?

DR: Yeah. They had them made and I heard the tapes.

They were also receiving some offer from Warner Brothers which was OK because I didn't want to be tied up with them forever because they were our first attempt and at American band and I'm a bit wary of Americans in general. Their attitudes and philosophies somewnat differ to British people. I don't know which is better but...

While I was in Akron, I just found all these bands.

They all just seemed to come around and they knew about S tiff which was very flattering because this was Akron, Ohio, which is about as far from anywhere as you can get. It's got absolutely nothing going fo r it.

It's the "rubber capital of the w orld". It's got no gigs and all these barlds had four-track Teacs in their (Continued page 18)

r

SPLIT ENZ "Have Split Enz been successful?"

"Success means lack o f failure and we haven't failed yet".

In his manager's suite in a St Kilda hotel, Tim Finn seats himself down in front of the omnipresent tape-recorder and a late breakfast of toasted ham sandwiches and luke warm tea. His red shorts and nifty Split Enz t-shirt are quite a contrast to the white suit with juxtaposed colored shapes I'd seen him in at the Palais concert a few nights before. Even without the stage clothes and the accompanying wound-up doll movements you'd still be able to pick him out a mile off — it's that hair, y'know, which must have been inspired by an explosion at a New Zealand mattress factory.

It hasn't been an easy past year for Split Enz. They've only just started playing live after a lay-off of nearly a year; they lost all their equipment in a fire just before their latest bunch of gigs Itheir first return concert was at the Nambassa Festival in New Zealand before 50,000 people), and tuey have lost the backing of an overseas record company. Despite ail this Tim's conversation is marked by his confidence and belief in the band and an optimistic view of the future.

At the time of the interview the new Split Enz elbum, "Frenzy", was ready for release. I asked Tim for his views on it.

"I'm always vaguely disappointed w ith everything we've done and I still am with this one. I'd like to do another one tomorrow — just keep trying to do the perfect one.

It's good; better than anything we've done in terms of the songs and production. There's twelve songs on it which is good; we've only ever had nine before. Good, short songs, quite a variety of styles

covered. Much more streamlined than anything else we've done.

We're aiming fo r a wide audience' After the band's experiences during the last year, is "Frenzy" a depressing album?

"No, it's not, actually. It's the mc^t positive album we've done lyrically. A t least half the songs are very positive and there's very few morbid songs on it. I guess having survived all that dullness, irritation and frustration we just felt positive".

Your songs paint you as romanticists coming to terms with maturity whilst trying to keep a child-like innocence...

"I d on 't think it's child-like cos we're not children. We've become pretty tough in the last few years and learnt a lot. It's a blood'n'guts romanticism in a way. It's not wimpish or sapish. We're New Zealanders,abroad. New Zealanders are a particular breed. It's an innocent country, very young".

Have you had the innocence kicked out of you?

"Yeah, but it's been replaced with something that isn't exactly at odds w ith it. We haven't become cynical or anything. Cynics believe diere isn't good in anything. We still look fo r good in a lot o f things, it's silly to look at things as black. I d on't live in London in a fifty storey tower block so I can't leally say what it would be like if ( did. Having been through a particularly d iffic u lt year I still feel like I want to entertain people, make people feel good fo r an hour or whatever. I d on't want to get up there and start telling them how bad everything is. There's two sides to everything and we try

to cover both sides — the comitragic thing. A lo t o f bands in our situation would be straight comedy or real downer bands".

What's the story behind "I See rte d "?

"That's a one-off thing we did at Startling Studios which is Ringo Starr's studio — it used to be John Lennon's place. The engineer out there got to know us and liked us and gave us some free time when the studio wasn't being used.

So we got a free single out o f it" .

Did you get your year's worth of frustration out on "I See Red"?

"Yeah, a lot came out on 'I See Red' but even that's not a whinge".

The album was recorded at Virgin's Manor Studios outside London.

"We were so prepared we were overprepared. We'd been waiting nearly a year to do it so we'd done all the demos, rehearsed it and w ritten new songs. We'd been waiting too long. We're the sort of band that should do an album every six months at least. There's so much material. The album has twelve songs but by the time we'd recorded it we'd w ritten fifty more".

A mention of the production quality of "Frenzy" compared to their Australian recorded "Mental Notes" brings a gasp from Tim. "Painfully primitive" is how he sums up the first album.

"Facilities in Australia are probably just as good now, I d on't know. It's experience really. The technicians, the engineers and everybody over there are just that much more experienced. It's more competitive over there too, so you tend to sift out the wheat from the chaff. There's a lot o f wankers over there posing as producers asking fo r money up fro n t and

blood things. You ask them what they've worked on and they'll say this and that but when you look on the record, their name isn't even there.

An incredible amount o f hype.

'Top Name' producers become more famous than the artists they're working for, and a lot richer".

The cover of "Frenzy" is a painting by Raewyn Turner (Split Enz lighting director) of the band in front of a corrigated iron shed.

The back cover is sheep in a field, some of which spill over onto the cover (there must be some sort of symbolism there). It's alt slightly washed-out with a heat wavish effect. The most noticeable thing about the cover is the absence of their costumes.

"We deliberately wanted something o f us w ith o u t the costumes. There's no need to promote our image anymore — it's our music that needs to be prom oted".

The breakaway from their extreme visuals could be a major step forward for Split Enz in terms of commercial success. Before going to see them at the Palais, it Vvas suggested to me that if I wanted to go and see a circus I should go to a circus and if I wanted to see a rock band I should go to a rock concert but not a mish-mash of both. That's probably a commonly held opinion of Split Enz for whilst some find their unusual presentation endearing, surely many find it overpowering, disguising the lyrical and musical complexities of the band. Tim disagrees: "If it did we wouldn't do it". But didn't you find that the English press did little but comment on your costumes and visuals?

"They d id n 't always. They had something to say about the music.

Perhaps sorhe of them were

top-heavy toward How did you fir music press respo I read seemed aw "Yeah. They we but they weren't very extreme vise went over there a had been reshape They were very s are very importer we weren't very f th in k ". " I d id n 't read t l much after a whi depressing w h e n ' good and there's bands coming thr which are getting when you gey and they turn out to assholes.

"In Britain the \ much power bec< only one radio st makes a single a 1 A ll that's le ft fo r like it is Radio C; off-shore pirate s weekly press. Bu cos we were treat w ell".

What about Ger comparisons the^ "T hat happenec they just left us < songs like 'Stran made people th ir Genesis. I wouldi we had their suc( want to be comp I d o n 't like them things they do; tl melodies. It's fu r compared w ith gi like --y o u start t we doing?' "IN England the become stars. No l ight but their na stamp of authorii

n' guts Is the image . id the English nse? The reviews fully confused... iren't open raves slaggings. We were lally when we first nd the songs d and reformed, tylised. Fashions It in England and ashionable, I

lesis/Supertramp i made? f initially and then ilone. I suppose ger Than F iction ' ik we were like n't complain if :ess but I w ouldn't ared w ith them cos .M ike some o f the nere's some good my to get roups you don't hinking 'What are

Nick Kent or Charles Shaar Murray.

None of the big writers reviewed us but the younger writers who did wereltrying to write like them.

It's a ridiculously artificial situation.-.They go out and see gigs every night of the week and they get really out o f it on booze or whatever. They must be so bored and jaded. It must be hard fo r them | to sit back and enjoy a gig. The only thing I object to overall is that they write as if it is fact; they very rarely say 'I found this band to be...' " The reviews did mention how ecstatic the crowds were at your concerts, yet you received very little coverage compared to the . new bands... " I can't blame them. It must have been fun w ith all those new bands.

It did bring a b it o f excitement which was needed. It was pretty dull in 74/75. When we got there it was just starting. We'd seen the first punks walking down Kings Road and they'd seen us and we looked pretty extreme. The first gig we did in London was really packed; loads o f punks checking us out. Johnny Rotten was there ( I'm name dropping now). They had to decide whether or not they liked us and whether or not to support us. They decided they couldn't. It's interesting that they needed to decide intellectually] and consciously rather than just enjoying something. They get very intense over there because their leisure activities are pretty minimal.

There's no beach life, there's not much money so they get very intense about their music and live fo r it more than they do over here".

top writers t in their own me becomes a ty. People like

Do you feel the mood In England has changed recently? Is there more accpetance of a band like Split Enz now?

ie English press le. it can be pretty you know you're hundreds o f young ough all the time cover stories and see them live be complete press has too juse there's really ation which lit. Radio One. people who d on't aroline (an tation) and the t I'm not bitter ted reasonably

rom anNcs "D efinitely. It's become more sensible now. Good is good and bad is bad and never the twain shall meet — and they did meet a lot during the initial exposure. It was a very confused time. A ll the record companies were confused which is a good sign. It was all a bit artificial really; created largely by the media. The bands were there but they were getting prominence they would never have got otherwise. Now it's more open. It's helped in the long run — if we'd made it really big initially the band would have been a whole different thing cos the band was very different when we first went over there. It's easy to say that now but I d on't think the band would have lasted; it wasn't very stable.

"Phil (Judd) was growing away from the band because he wanted to have complete control over everything. He wanted to be able to tell everybody exactly what to play, whereas the rest of the band wanted personal freedom w ithin reason. There would have been a strange tension. Perhaps success would have evened it ail out but in retrospect I'm glad we've come this far and we are whar we are. It's good fo r me because I'm writing most of the songs at the moment sna dl'm enjoying that and there's freedom fo r everyone else to write as well. Phil was a very prolific w riter and there would have been far too much material.

It would have been hard to keep everybody happy".

Have you kept up your association with Phil Manzanera?

"Yeah, Neil, Eddie and I worked on Phil's album ('K-Scope'). He's been following our progress. He expected us to happen very quickly

because just prior to the punk thing, which was when we arrived, there was nothing at all. He saw the gap there fo r us. But tim ing was just out. We did the album in early '76 and if we'd put it out straight away, who knows? But we had to wait until October so we just sat around waiting. That's what happens — you get a deal w ith a record company and then they say 'Well, we'll put the album out on such-and-such a date' and by then the album is really old. They have to think about marketing and all that crap".

The conversation shifted to the Palais concert. The two most outstanding moments of the concert both centred around Noel.

The first was when he spokem the second when he finished his spoon solo and the crowd went right off; totally bananas...

"Noel's dabbled onstage before but that's the first time he's ever spoken. We d id n't know how to ' end the particular song and we were just hoping something would happen on the night. In the past we would never have done that but now we sometimes take a b it of a risk. Noel was just playing away and the rest o f the band had faded away then some guy called out and Noel said 'Yeah?'....

After Noel said 'yeah' the song finished dead and the lights went out. The audience stunned at having heard his voice, sat still for a few seconds and then erupted into applause. It looked so perfect... " I t was a fluke. We were laughing onstage cos it was just a miracle that it happened".

Does Noel ever sing on tnc records?

"Occasionally. He does that deep 'I see red' at the end of 'I See Red'."

The response to the spoon solo was amazing...

"I love that sort o f thing.

Something so basic can really get a crowd off. He used to do a guitar solo as well. He'd get up fron t and do a real Heavy Metal guitar bit but he can't play so it was quite ludicrous. The crowd used to cheer ^or that too. It's just absurd, really funny".

Do the onstage roles represent extensions of yourselves?

"I guess so, yeah. We've been doing it fo r so long now it becomes very natural. It always was. We never thought about it, just did it.

Totally spontaneous".

Now that you are in Australia, how long do you plan to stay?

"We're here fo r about five or six weeks when we'll do lots of pub and concert gigs. Then we're going to New Zealand fo r about two weeks. We may then come back to Australia fo r a tour of the main centres again —we're not sure. We're hoping to head back to England again sometime in May".

Will "Frenzy" be released in England?

"It's being sold at the moment.

If we don't get a deal then we don't go back. But we're expecting to get a deal; the signs are there that we w ill. I w ouldn't be surprised if we stayed in Australia longer than we expected but it w ouldn't worry me much. We're successful here and it's nice to feel successful. It's nice to be able to do gigs and make some money out of them. I'd like to record here".

Would you be content to remain in Australia?

"We want to go back but it w ouldn't really worry me. As I said, we feel strong as a band and so wherever we are we know we'll do it w ell". ________ - BRUCE MILNE

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TOUR OF AUSTR A U A 1979 FEBRUARY 1-lELB;

TUE. 27 WED. 28

SYD: London Tavern Hotel Melbourne University (Lunch) Armadale Hotel/Jlarquee Room (Night)

JIARCH THU. 1 FRI. 2 SAT. 3

ADEL:

SUN. TUE .

WED. THU. FRI. SAT.

4 6 7 8 9 10

SUN. 11

Council Club Hotel Preston Institute of Technology (Arvo) 3XY Ifyer Music Bowl Show (Night) Comtdown Manhattan Hotel(Night) Croxton Park Hotel Hearts/Polaris Inn Hotel Armadale Hotel/Marquee Room Bombay Rock Flinders - Adelaide combined ball Stranglers support - early Arkaba Hotel (Late) Arkaba Hotel

PERTH: N.S.W: BRIS:

TUE. 13 Cove Tavern WED. 14 Comb 'n Cutter Hotel THU. 45 Royal Antler Hotel FRI. 16 Manlyvale Flicks SAT. 17 Bondi Lifesaver SILL 18 Pleasures Wine Bar MON. 19 Sundowner Hotel TUE. 20 Collegians Football Club - Woollongong WED. 21 Silvania Hotel THU. 22 Local Inn Hotel FRI. 23 Sydney University SAT. 24 Stage Door Tavern SUN. 25 Northern Suburbs Leagues Club MON. 26 - APRIL 3 W ED. 4 Armadale New England University THU. 5 Lismore FRI. 6 Brisbane - 4ZZZ - Joint Effort SAT. 7 Queens Hotel SUN. 8 A s t e r n Suburbs Leagues Club TUE. 10 Queens Hotel WED. 11 C^eens Hotel & Queensland Institute of"Technology

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ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 15

AGENTS OF FORTUNE ROADRUNNER is here to stay (for a few years, at least) and if we are going to be part of the evolving Australian rock scene,^then we think it's vitally important that we all should be more fully acquainted with how the Australian rock industry works. Until now we have had access only to what the rock industry PR machine cranks out - on records, in the press on radio and u ~ while rock'n'roll consumers have been left in the dark. It's important for us to realise that when we sit down in front of a stereo or go to see a gig, it may well be OUR leisure but for others, its 9-to-5 bread-and-butter. The rock industry IS an industry and in any industry decisions are made which affect us all. The rock industry is run by agents, managers, promoters entrepreneurs, companies — as in any other industry, business people — who collectively control what we hear on the radio and TV, who makes records, who plays the pubs and clubs who you get to read about in Roadrunner, to a certain extent. So who are they? What do they do and what do they think? What do their clients - the musicians - think of them? Where is the industry headed? Roadrunner's ROSS STAPLETON has spent more than a year digging around_the traps looking for some answers. In this and coming issues, he documents what he has found. Firstly, a round-table eyeball with The Agents, the people who determine which bands play where...

One of the most vital and controversial departments of the Australian rock industry is the agencies...the organ­ isations that book bands and solo artists into venues around the country. Booking agencies have come and gone at an alarming rate since the 60s, but in the last couple of years it has narrowed itself down to two main agencies. Premier Artists and Nucleus Headliners. Of the tvyo. Premier is by far the biggest and longest established with its roster including many of the country's biggest names. For Nucleus it has been a constant battle for survival against the established strength and competitive thrust of Premier. In the last year, there has been what can only be described as an agency war. Without detail­ ing the accusations and counter-accusations, it has gotten to the stage that hardly a day goes by without complaints from managers and musicians or other industry people of the latest 'incident'.

At the start of this year, I detailed in J U K E one particular confrontation between the two agencies which involved the booking of the Angels and Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons into the Victorian coastal town of Warrnambool on the same night in direct competition with one another. The piece ("Fear And Loathing In Warrnambool") aroused a great deal of comment to say the least, on the agency front.

It seemed a good opportunity to bring the central characters from the two main agencies together to thrash out the role and functioning of booking agencies and their respective approaches, and also to raise a number of the criticisms and charges flying around. To cover the whole perspective of the agency forum, an added in­ gredient was the inclusion of Neil Scott, manager of Loaded Dice, a Perth band who had come to Melbourne to try to crack It. At first he had vyorked through an agency before his dissatisfaction influenced him mto going independent and approaching Melbourne publicans and opening his own venues for his band.

Finally he was in the position where he was able to offer other bands work.

In Melbourne — the Australian rock'n'roll capital Scott's declaration of independence is as significant as the defection in October last year of Dirty Pool Artist Management, who poached from Premier some of the country's biggest live attractions, including Cold Chisel and The Angels. Dirty Pool recruited key staff from Solo-Premier in Sydney and began its own booking service for its initial roster of four bands (the other two being the promising New Wave band Flowers, and the Dennis Wilson Band. Dirty Pool signed their fifth band, Adelaide's Young Modern, at the beginning of the year)!

But while D ir^ Pool found it could name its own terms in Sydney, it eventually had to sacrifice some of its independence in Melbourne.

With Premier naturally not appreciating the loss of two of its biggest clients. Dirty Pool found that discretion was the better part of valour in trying to overcome the might of Premier and so it returned to the agency fold in part by formulating a special arrangement with Nucleus whereby it would still book its bands independ­ ently but would also do certain gigs booked by Nucleus.

It is now roughly the same arrangement that ^bastian Chase, manager of Dragon, has been operating success­ fully with Premier now for the last couple of years. But obviously with the number of bands involved with Dirty Pool, it's a bigger operation. Since Dirty Pool went it alone in Sydney, other bands' managements including Midnight Oil and Mi Sex have followed Dirty Pool's lead, so much so that the increasing independence of Sydney bands led to the dissolution in January of Solo-Premier in Sydney, and Premier has now been forced to establish a totally new operation in Sydney, and one that in comparison with the strength of its Melbourne operation, has a long way to go to catch up on big brother.

it is against this background that Frank Stivala, Premier's supremo, booker Sam Riggi (ex-Nucleus), Sandra Robertson (former Premier accountant, former Nucleus office manager, and now heading Premier's off-shoot agency. Pyramid), Bill Tharle (ex-Premier, now Nucleus), Rob Cantwell (Nucleus booker with Tharle) and Nell Scott, sat together round the table in January, to discuss the agency scene.

The discussion kicked off with Neil Scott explaining the background to Loaded Dice's move from Perth to Melbourne and their initial connections with Premier: SCOTT: I think we were forced to go through Premier, rather than went there by choice because we first came over to Melbourne through Premier and, fo r reasons no doubt known to Premier, we couldn't get work and it was just a matter of us being forced to go independent.

STIV ALA: I think to answer Neil there. Loaded Dice are a specialist act that take a lot of understanding and unless you are into the trip, it is very hard to get into it and sell and be confident in selling something that you don't quite understand. That was Premier's point of view, that Loaded Dice just needed to be handled by someone that understands and knows and believes in the band to the extent that Neil does, and I think that the way that he is doing it now is probably the best way. He's happy w ith the way he's doing and I think it has worked out well fo r everybody concerned.

SCOTT: Yeah, I'd agree with that, Frank.

RR: Well, Frank, what's your modus operand! when you get approached by new bands who are trying to get the agency interested in them. What do you look for in taking on or not taking on a band, and then how to you sell them when you do take them on?

S TIV ALA: Well, basically if we take on a new band, it depends on whether the vibe in the street is good on the band or potentially they look like being a good band and being able to build over a long period o f time.

That's the songs and just long-term developments in the industry and if there's a future there, that's what we look at, and occasionally the odd band that's real good just slips out o f your fingers because you just haven't been hip enough to spot the potential.

SCOTT: I'd just like to put a question to you there, Frank. I think you took on Loaded Dice because we were a very big band in Perth...

S TIV ALA: Yeah, and I also think Michael Gudinski (Mushroom Records boss) was w riting to the band as well and that was the reason we were interested in Loaded Dice. Basically when I saw Loaded Dice they weren't the sort o f band that I thought they would be.

And the vibe from the orthodox promoters wasn't great but then that's understandable — the vibe on Split Enz and Skyhooks wasn't great when they first started. I just d on't think from my point o f view and Premier's, it just wasn't what we thought it was going to be and we just weren't hip enough to get onto the trip of Loaded Dice to be able to represent the band to their betterment.

RR: Well, you mentioned the vibe among the promoters then. How much notice does the agency take of promo­ ters when there are very few promoters around who have a clue about what constitutes a good band?

S TIV A LA ; We take very little notice of promoters except probably half a dozen creative promoters around the town.

RIGGI: I think another thing w ith Loaded Dice was that when they first arrived in Melbourne, the marketing ideas between yourself (Scott) and Premier were d iff­ erent.

SCOTT: In what way would you say that?

RIGGI: Take fo r instance your country gigs. Now it's hard fo r any band starting o ff to get something happen­ ing straight away.

SCOTT: Well, I disagree w ith you because there have been bands who have come over from Perth and have gone onto the circuit and we never got onto the circuit.

We only got onto the country circuit which we did n't want to do. We wanted to play in Melbourne. We did n't come from Perth to play in the country because we could have done that anywhere, we could have gone to Alice Springs and played.

RIGGI: But the whole thing was it wasn't just a matter o f being shoved into country gigs all the time. Country gigs are important as well.

SCOTT: I don't think they are that important, initially.

S TIV ALA: Well, basically the way we figured was that you needed 'X ' amount of dollars at the time to survive, and the only way to make X ' amount of dollars was by doing a few country gigs and then padding it out with whatever city gigs we could get. Now it wasn't very easy to get Loaded Dice gigs unfortunately.

SCOTT: Well, it's not easy to get any new bands gigs.

S TIV A LA : No. But some acts spark o ff a little b it quicker than other acts because o f the vibe around or the style o f music they play or because o f the guys in . the band, or the promoter reckons they're nice guys and he says 'well, gee, they're nice guys, they don't draw any people but...well, the manager's a real cool dude and the guitar player can really play good...'

SCOTT: Frank; that's bullshit.

STIVALA: It's not bullshit.

SCOTT: It shouldn't happen like that.

STIVALA: But it does. Unfortunately it does.

SCOTT: Well, a band should be as good as it is.

STIVALA: Sure, but a lot of people, especially new people... »

SCOTT: Are you telling me that a band that gets on well with promoters but doesn't draw people is going to have continuous work?

STIVALA: No, no...but...

CANTWELL: Just in the initial stages of actually just getting some work where it's 'they're nice guys — I'll give them a job to help them out'.

STIVALA: Sometimes it's really important...you've got to lick a bit of arse to get the ball rolling. Once the ball's rolling then it's cool. You've got to understand that with a lot of new bands, if there's an aggravation there they don't give a fuck about the band.

They reckon if that band doesn't play they'll get another new band to play. I mean, if Fred Nurk's a pain in the arse or doesn't want to turn down or he arrives late or gives the manager of the pub a hard time, well the promoters they they don't have to put up w ith the shit, there are plenty o f other bands around.

SCOTT' I don't think that's applicable to Loaded Dice.

STIV ALA: No, it's not applicable to them — I'm just generalising and we're talking about new bands and the question was:'Is it hard to get new bands work?' and the answer is yes. It s slow and hard...

SCOTT: Well, w ouldn't you say a prime example of that, Frank, is Dave Warner. There were two bands in Perth equally as popular. Now that's a really good analogy because you've got Dave Warner who came over, played the circuit, played the universities and became very popular, whereas Loaded Dice who were equally popular in Perth, came over and couldn't get work.

STIVALA: Well, fo r a start, the timing was different.

Dave Warner came over when the campuses were happ­ ening and initially there was a lot o f upfront interest with Dave Warner with the cassettes he had out which Archie and Jugheads were selling hundreds of every week (Warner has told me how many cassettes he sold and although I can't reveal the number, Frank Stivala's arithmetic is highly exaggerated — R.S.) and they had very good promotional back-up — they had posters, biogs, badges...

RR: Who provided all that?

STIV ALA: Warner, he did all that, and there was a vibe on Dave Warner before he even got here.

RIGGI: And there was another Perth band who did exactly the same - the Elks . They had cassettes, they had little envelopes saying "Elks Over Australia". They had stamps w ith all their faces on them and that sort of bullshit thing and they sent one to every campus, a cassette and an envelope introducing the band, all that sort of shit.

SCOTT: I guess what you are saying might be true.

That we d id n't exploit ourselves enough and that might be true, but...

CANTWELL' You came over low key whereas these acts came oyer OD.a lot.different level.

RIGGI: See, a problem with a lot o f these bands is they come over and they don't know how to present themselves. They're not together, they d on 't have management, they don't have trucks, they d on 't have PAs. They d on't have to own them, but if they're just together like that, then they can just do a gig like that ...and...

RR: Well, we're talking here abou^ the exception rather than the rule in Loaded Dice's case. Can we keep this fairly general and let's look at how many bands who go along to an agency don't get an agency deal. What's the percentage and what do you really look for because obviously people like Dave Warner and The Elks and people like that with all this promotional backup are very much the exception...

STIV ALA: I'd say that about 20 per cent of the acts that approach an agency — one o f the three agencies around town — get picked up.

THARLE: I'd say it's more like 10 per cent. You get approached by something like 20 bands a week and that can mean, sometimes, you just don't take any.

STIV ALA: Yeah, alright, well let's say about 10 per cent.

RR: How many bands would Premier have added to its books in, say, the last year?

RIGGI: Any new bands that approach Premier or that I get a cassette of, I listen to and if I can see a potential in the band, we'll give that band a gig and we'll go and see them perform. From a musical level that I would

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 16 judge them at, I can tell whether there's a songwriter in that band, o f if the band's got potential musically or...and a band that I've seen, ju^st a new band that I've only seen once but they have blown me out, is Jimmy and the Boys. I think that band is»going to be huge. That's the sort of thing I look Jor in a band — songwriting ability, some sort o f stage ac^ or presence on stage and once you find a band like that, you spend a lot o f time on that band.

CANTWELL: Yeah, but that's a specific example...

STIV ALA: I don't think any agency takes on any new act that has just come out o f a garage and it's ready to take on the world. Unless there are 'name' players in the band and there is something to sell that you can hype up. I know Premier doesn't take a band on straightaway — we'll let them hustle a few gigs for themselves. But basically, it's up to the act to get out there on a street level and help stimulate its own vibe by doing the Carlton inns and those flippo gigs that are happening, and then from there the vibe might filte r through a bit. You hear that there is a band called Joe Blow and The Nobs up the road and there is a real hype and you go along and suss them out. Or eventually they w ill approach you themselves.

RR: Do you think agencies are too tied down sometimes to giving gigs to 'name musicians who break up, for a new band and then immediately you sign up their next combination regardless of what they may be like?

S TIV ALA: No, we d on't do that. I d on't think you could pick an example of an act with Premier that has been together a long time, then breaks up and get another band together. We don't do that.

RR: Let's take a 'name' musician who has never had a great record of success in keeping with his reputation and who has just started and is up for grjibs, Eric Gradman. How do both a^ncies look at Gradman now that he has just done his first couple of gigs. What does an agency look at with him and where would you take him from here?

RIGGI: Well, I haven't seen Eric Gradman's band so I cannot comment.

STIV ALA: I haven't seen him either (He did the night after this interview — R.S.) but I've known Eric Gradman from The Bleeding Hearts days and he's a friend of mine as well, as we've done a b it o f business in the past and I think w ith Eric's band, I think it is probably just a matter of time before he feels he's going to need an agent or the vibe's big enough fo r someone to say 'we'll give you the big apple'.

RR: Is it a case of someone like Eric Gradman comes along and there might be a vibe out for Gradman now (he had only done one gig before this discussion, but the vibe was definitely out — R.S.) and both of you race out and there is this Nucleus-Premier rivalry — you are each trying to get the good bands and if Gradman is a good band, each of you would want him?

S TIV ALA: Probably, but Premier haven't approached Gradman yet. I d on't know about Nucleus?

CANTWELL: No, we haven't.

STIV ALA: I think it's a bit premature in his career fo r people to go out w ith knives and the fucking battlegear to try and grab the act.

RIGGI: Yeah, but I d on't see how it happens like that.

The way I see it, bands work through either agency and

they work, and if the agency delivers fo r them, they work hard on them. I mean, all bands care about is whether they get work and they get money to cover their overheads.

THARLE: No, not necessarily.

RIGGI: Well they do. I mean there are some bands who just don't work. They end up w ith one gig.

SCOTT: I think that's true.

RIGGI: I think bands need to work.

THARLE: It depends on the band.

STIVALA: New bands need to work.

THARLE: New bands, fine. But prim arily some bands also consider the placing of the act and everything and whether you are doing anything fo r them.

ROBERTSON: I think that's true when a band gets to the stage of being a big band and then the placing is important...

S TIV ALA: Not even a big band, but a new band. My theory with a new band is that you work them in every shithole possible. Just work them because the only way a new band w ill get better is by work, and if they have got to work in fro n t of 20 people...

RIGGI: Have you got to use that word 'shithole'?

STIV ALA: ...or 200 people, you just work them and from there...

RIGGI: D on't print 'shithole'...

STIV ALA: They can print 'shithole' and I d on't give a fuck ... and from there you start weeding out the shitholes and putting them into the gigs that are going to mean something and they're going to be good. But initially the idea is to just work and work and work and tighten up and build up and get it together.

Dave IVdrner speaks out (as usual)

Since Dave Warner's From The Suburbs first h it the eastern states early last year, the band's excitingly different 'suburban rock' has steadily taken it to a position where few could argue now to the band's in­ clusion in the half dozen top bands in the country.

If anyone doubts that assessment then the release of their new single "Nothing To Lose", their second album "Free Kicks" and a heavy touring schedule up and down and across the country in the next three months, w ill clear up any remaining doubts. The Suburbs with the redoubtable Johnny Leopard all flash and fire leading the way, are one helluva hot band on a good night, and they seldom put in bad ones.

They provide the music which propels the hot gospeller of suburban rock, Dave Warner, through his huge re­ pertoire of songs. I often think Warner gives his band far less credit than their due, but there can be no argu­ ment that the essential ingredient in this band's climb to the top, is Warner himself.

Many punters see him as the spokesman fo r just about anything under the sun and, of course, Warner's songs range far and wide in the bases they touch. Warner is also, happily fo r journalists, a very quotable musician and Warner only too well recognises the value o f the quotable quote. So he is both brash and outspoken, but much of what he has to say is only outspoken because few others dare to honestly speak their mind.

No such problem exists for Warner, so it was only natural when embarking on garnering the views o f the rock establishment on the rock establishment, that we should turn to one of its most vitriolic spokesmen, who delivers the goods yet again w ith the occasional support o f his bass player Paul Noonan: RR: A t the end o f last year you had a run-in w ith Premier Artists over money owed to you. Are there a lot of things that you still find you d on't like about the industry that you have to battle with?

DW; Oh yeah. Specifically in Melbourne where it's really backward.

RR: In what way?

DW: It's a whole lot of people who have been in the industry for about 20 years who have made Melbourne a self-sustaining little industry place. Everyone goes along to these same inner c i^ pubs and they fool themselves that what they're doing is of relevance to rock'n'roll and the people in Australia, and it isn't.

PN: Too many people in Melbourne think they're the important ones and not the bands.

DW: But even some of the bands think that because they get 100 people at Martinis (small trendy Carlton pub and the very first place I saw the band — R.S.), they're a top Australian band, and it just means nothing.

What means more is to go and draw 200 people at Chadstone or Mordialloc (outer Melbourne suburbs).

I think that's one of the reasons why Sydney bands are doing something recording-wise— they're not stuck in that closed circle.

RR: What about the difference between Melbourne and Sydney at the moment in the industry? Presently there seems to be an extraordinary difference in everything...

DW: Yeah. There is and I think that that is where Perth is very similar to Sydney, and Adelaide could be.

You don't have that inner city established rock'n'roll industry crew who go along to everything all the time.

RR: What do you put that down to? The climate or what?

DW: Yeah, I think climate determines consciousness a bit. It's probably just habit and rock'n'roll has been based in Melbourne is a lot of ways, and now I think it may be shifting to Sydney. It's a whole symptomatic thing. It's the whole agency-promotion-promoters type of thing...size of venues.

RR: Do you see it as significant that something like D irty Pool has been created where the management o f top bands get together and are now doing their own thing and breaking away from the agency scene and there has been behind-the-scenes goings-on to stuff them up?

by

ROSS STAPLETON

DW: It's a very significant thing. The same thing happened in Perth to us when we started. When we started, there were two agencies in Perth, but they didn't adopt the sort of tactics that were adopted here.

RR: What do you mean by the tactics adopted here?

DW: Well, it's basically tactics designed so that if you aren't with somebody (an agency), then they deliberately try and fuck you up, whereas that doesn't happen in Perth. Or even if you are with somebody, they will try and cajole you, try and put one over you.

In a sense they don't mean to do it. They don't do it in a malicious way. But the only way they can sustain themselves to take fifty bucks here and fifty bucks there is to piss everyone around in general because they've got too much on their plate. Now in Perth we started as basically an independent band and a couple of other bands did too, as we just had more promotional sense that what the agencies did and we just built our venues up and went out to bigger venues.

RR: Did you directly negotiate w ith the promoters in Perth?

DW: The publicans direct...because, you see, there are no promoters in Perth and there is virtually no such . thing as promoters in Sydney from what I can gather — it's pretty much venue-agency to the band. Well, if the band can go straight to the venue then it's a similar situation to Perth. It doesn't matter what the agencies try and do, they'll never be able to break that sort of relationship if the management of the band has got itself pret^ much together. They'll always try above the agency because they can deal direct with the publican and that's what keeps it all going.

I was talking to Adrian Barker ( Melbourne promoter and manager and associated w ith the Nucleus agency, who appears in a forum o f managers discussing the rock industry from the management point o f view in a forthcoming issue o f Roadrunner — R.S.) who hit the nail on the head when we were discussing the agency situation. Adrian said that he thought the guys at Premier still have the idea that the suburban pubs are still into Led Zeppelin and stuff. That they haven't progressed beyond that. They're still five years behind the times in what they think will go over there. Now The Angels were kept away from there until they went and did it themselves and that's obviously where their market is. Same with us. I mean, it will take us a couple of times to crack it there but when we do (it's already happening) we will obviously be much bigger than now. it was the same thing in Perth. These people in the inner city areas, they don't buy albums. They've all been around for a long time and they know that they can go and see a different band every night of every week. But those people out there go to their local pub and they see a band they like and if they like them, buy their records and they really get into their records and you mean something to those people out there.

RR: That's where Sydney strikes me as so incredibly different to Melbourne. You can be any sort of band there w ith an extremely different approach and yet you can still go out to the suburbs and play there and people w ill go along to see you...

DW: That's because those people out there will actually be into that music because they're tired of all this boring old shit they've been handed down through the years, but I don't think the agencies have cottoned on to it. I don't think they realise that we will go down well out there.

RR: The other point is that in the past the agencies haven't let those bands play out there...

DW: I just don't think they realise. They look at a band like us or The Angels or somebody, and because we go down well at campuses they say 'oh yeah, campusinner city band — put them there', but they don't twig that those people are basically the same as the people out there (in the suburbs).

RR: In what way d on't you think Premier delivered the goods, from the band's viewpoint?

DW: Oh, it's just basically that when we come over, I say 'well, we need so much money to do it to survive'.

They say 'yeah, we'll do it', then you come over and they don't.

PN: You're a touring band with Mushroom which is supposed to be associated with Premier and you've got to get money together to go to Sydney and they tell you their pay day is Thursday and you have to wait until then and they'll send you the money, it s fucked.

RR: So you blocked the entrance and the cheque magically arrived after that, did it? (Warner's roadies unloaded the band's gear in the doorway o f Mushroom House where Premier has its offices, preventing people from entering and leaving the building, and Premier was told the gear would not be removed until the band had received what was coming to them — a chequg that is — R.S.) DW: Yeah. We got the cheque pretty quickly after that.

RR: They d id n't feel you had taken an arbitrary action which was totally unfair?

DW: Oh, of course, they claim It was, but I mean I don't care — we got the money.

RR: Well how do they react to the band after that when the agency is linked up w ith Michael Gudinski who is also head o f your record company?

DW: I just don't think it matters. I don't think those people are bigger than what the public are and that's what it basically boils down to, and the public support us because we're good.

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 17 ROBERTSON: I think the placement is important when a band gets to the stage where they have signed a recording contract...

S T IV A LA : Well, even before that, Sandra.

ROBERTSON: Yeah, or where the vibe is hot on an act and it is important where they play.

RR: But what about the question of where a new band starts out that might be very good and the agencies sit back and wait for them to prove themselves and they're playing dives and for one reason or another which maybe through no fault of their own, it could be mismanagement or whatever, they never get beyond that stage and because they don't get beyond that stage the agencies don't pick them up, and in a way you could blame the agencies for that band not happening because they weren't encouraged.

S T IV A LA : Hang on. Sometimes an agency doesn't even know a^band exists unless someone brings that band to the agency's attention. There are a lot of bands that d on 't approach agencies that have been together three, four, five or six months. Who can I use as an example?

ROBERTSON: Paul Madigan d id n't approach an agency straight away...

S T IV A LA : He was on the road fo r six months before he approached an agency.

SCOTT: I think it's a valid point about bands having to work fo r themselves initially. I think that's a very good point because I think that a band that doesn't do that isn't any good fo r the agency because they are just a band. But I'm just wondering when does the aqency actually come into it? Do they come into it when they' re really big or...?

ROBERTSON: Not when they're really big but when the vibe...you hear about it. Like a band might do one gig and someone w ill say that band is going to be great.

A remember when I saw Sports and it was only their second gig or something and they were on the The Station (Hotel, Prahran) on a Saturday afternoon.

SCOTT: Sports are a bad example, though, because they already had well known players in the band.

ROBERTSON: Its not a bad example because the Pelaco Brothers weren't a big band. They had a following but it was a small cult following and it wasn't anything to do w ith mainstream rock'n'roll. They weren't a known band.

S TIV A LA : Actually, the Pelaco Brothers used to only do The Kingston (Hotel) and the occasional hippie gig.

RR: Well, that was the same with Bleeding Hearts, wasn't it?

S TIV A LA : No, they got out o f that trip. They were working fo r Premier. Then they left Premier fo r Nucleus.

Then they came back to Premier. But they got into a lot more situations. Like they did a Country Joe and The Fish tour, they did a lot o f campus dates, they did cross-section gigs.

ROBERTSON: They were probably a b it early — a bit

before their time, more than anything else.

S TIV ALA: The reason Bleeding Hearts broke up wasn't because of lack o f gigs, but they broke up because of egos in the band and because...

ROBERTSON: But w ouldn't you say they were a bit ahead of their time?

S TIV A LA : Yeah. If they were still going now, they would be the hottest band in the land. Yeah, they vyere ahead o f their time but musically they were a little b it inconsistent as well.

RR: Alright. Well, moving on, a point that was raised last night during the managers' forum (coming up in Roadrunner — Ed) by Jon Blanchfield who was grinding an axe for Red Hot Peppers (whom he manages). He was saying the trouble with Melbourne now...

S TIV A LA : Are we talking about Melbourne now or rock'n'roll on a national basis?

RR: No, he was talking about Melbourne now in a state of demise from what it was and how the emphasis and the dollars are not in Melbourne now but in Sydney.

S TIV ALA: No, I disagree w ith that. Jon Blanchfield unfortunately...Hang on, let me rephrase that. On an overall basis, there are big dollars in Sydney but then there are big dollars in Melbourne, also. Now what you have got to understand, any act no matter where they come from — Sydney or Melbourne — when they are on the road, eight out of ten times they earn more money interstate than what they do in their hometown, no matter who the act is.

RR: Are there $3000 gigs in Melbourne?

S TIV A LA : Sure! Dragon do them all the time. I mean.

Dragon do $5000 gigs.

CANTWELL: Maybe there aren't as many, Ross. That could be the point you're making. You can't do Monday to Sunday $3000 gigs.

RR: Now we're talking about the big dollars here for established bands, and since the year dot it has always been Melbourne in the past that has always been the established home of rock'n'roll in Australia. This has been the Mecca, eventhough the record companies are in Sydney. The work situation has always been Melbourne, and now that seems to have definitely changed and from my visits to Sydney I certainly see...

S TIV A LA : Well, I think the reason that has changed — and please agree or disagree with me — is that Melbourne was the last place to catch on to the disco fad.

Unfortunately, Melbourne got it last and when Sydney was getting out o f the disco bullshit, Melbourne was getting into it.

RR: What the single most important thing to you when you look at a band seeking an agency deal?

RIGGI: Well, the most important thing is the songs that they write. If there is one or more strong song­ writers in the band, a few good players, the band sound good - I mean, they are all rough. A ll new bands sound rough. You never get an incredible band that comes up to you...

ROBERTSON: It's almost an indefinable thing. It's

a feeling you get from a band and you can't put it down to any particular point.

SCOTT: Would you say it was personal taste?

ROBERTSON: No, I wouldn't.

RR: I would have assumed it would be very much a question of personal taste...

RIGGI: No it's not. I'll tell you my personal taste.

I think Jimmy and the Boys are a great band, but on personal taste that is not the sort of band I would play in. If I went fo r personal taste I would be looking at teenybopper bands or rock'n'roll bands. Like I'm not into a lot of New Wave bands, but I can see the potential they've got. My personal taste covers everything from straight bands to the most musical band you could ever pick.

RR: There is a lot of bitching in the industry as to why some bands get taken on and others don't...

RIGGI: Well, obviously there are a lot of new bands who want to get into agencies. Every band that gets together always approaches an agency. I mean I've never come across an agent yet who has gone out of his way for a completely new band. I mean the only new band I've ever seen that I've ever gone out of my way for ...not me personally, but I've been into seeing the potential in that band, is The Aliens.

I saw the Aliens one day just by chance. I walked into a gig they were playing and I looked at them and I think that band has got a lot o f potential...and the band wasn't Nucleus at the time, and I fe lt that the band wasn't getting played in the right places and handled the right way, and I approached the band because I was into the band. I thought they had a lot o f potential and I said 'I think this is not what's right fo r the band, I think you should be doing this, this and this' and they were blown out because they were approached by someone. Usually new bands always approach agencies to handle them (The Aliens d id n 't — both agencies competed fo r them — R.S.) but if I see a band that I think has got a Jot of potential. I'll approach them. I'll get behind them.

When I joined Nucleus, Sidewinder ise Bombers and the early Sidewinder. When I joined Nucleus, Sidewinder were doing only one gig a week, no-one knew anything about Sidewinder. I went to see every band in that agency and the only band that stood out to me was Sidewinder, and I got behind them and built them to a $500 a week act...

STIV ALA: ...a gig! (much laughter).

RIGGI: ...a gig, sorry. But I got behind that band and they d id n't have management and spent a lo t o f time with that band. And then when a suitable manager came along I vibed the manager up on the band.

RR: Well, alright, what's the Nucleus attitude to new bands?

CANTWE LL: Fairly similar to what we were trying to define before as the aspects that help you to decide whether to pick up a band. Distinguishing between (Continued page 23)

'"an offer you can't refuse To give you some idea of what we're offering, here's ; a brief rundown of ROADRUNNERS No. 1 to No. 9: '

As a special Introductory offer, ROADRUNNER is offering you, the discerning reader, a slice of living history. For a mere $12, you can have a full 12 months subscription of the mag of '79, plus the full set of 1978 back copies — the first pioneering batch of ROADRUNNNERS.

No. 1; Beach Boys; Dennis Tek interview; Sex Pistols Break Up — The Death Of Punk?; Norman Gunston interview; Young Modern.

No.2. Ian Meldrum interview; Rob Stoner on Dylan; Busker's Diary; The Residents; Ry Cooder; Chick Corea.

No. 3 Boys Next Door; The Sports; R iff Raff; High Rise Bombers; The Monkees; Supernaut.

No. 4 Billy Connolly Pt. One; Bob Marley; U-Bombs; Ockerbilly; Young Modern (the magazine); Filth; Psychosurgeons; Tom Robinson Band.

No. 5 Sex Pistols — What Really Happened; Dylan by Adrian Rawlins; Warm Jets; Weather Report; John Martyn interview; How to be a rock and roll writer, by Annie Burton; Billy Conn­ olly, Pt. Two. No. 6 Special Australian Retrospective Special — The Vibrants, Jim Keays, Russell Morris; The Stigwood Empire; Status Quo; Kraftwerk.

No. 7 Marc Bolan; Independent Oz Singles; Stiletto; Graham Parker interview.

No. 8 Who is Sid Vicious?; The Accountants; The U-Bombs; Bowie; Virgin's Laurie Dunn on Oz Rock; The Pretty Things.

No. 9 Interview special: Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, Dave Warner, Young Modern, and Barry McAskill on the rock industry; Two Way Garden; The Sports.

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As Festering Mick says, "Invest In the future — buy a slice of the past!"

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ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 18

MARTIN CARTHY

W elifo lks, th a fs p o litic s ...

Martin Carthy gets the muse back into music. He's probably the best-known English folk musician. His career has spanned nearly two decades, during which he's mastered many different styles of folk music. Probably his greatest single impact has been as a solo artist, where he has pioneered a very individual style of folk song accompaniment on the guitar. He's also an excellent unaccom­ panied singer, with a disturbing, unusual voice and a noted collector of songs.

I saw him at the Little Cinema, Adelaide University (capacity 150) and was most impressed with him as a live performer.

Carthy is in his mid-to-late thirties.

He lives on a farm in Yorkshire with members of the Watersons, a folk singing group. On stage, he looks like a dark­ haired, slightly-built, slightly-eccentric Englishman. He has a pleasant manner, with a good sense of humour (he spoke about his 'whinging watch'). When he starts singing, he gains another dimension entirely.

Carthy's impact on folk music has been dominating. His support act in Adelaide, John and Liz Munro, commented that they'd had a hard time working out what to play because they usually include a lot of his songs in their repertoire. He has played with Steeleye Span, the Albion Country Band, and he still sings with the Watersons; but it was as a solo artist that he toured Australia last month.

His Adelaide concert was excellent. I recognised about a third of the songs he played from his records, and some from Watersons' albums. He began the concert with a song from his 'Sweet Wiveisfield" album, "Skewbald". This is the first Martin Carthy record I ever listened to, and I can remember vividly the strong impact it had on me at the time. I got a copy of it, and like every­ thing that grows familiar, I stopped really noticing it. But when Carthy started to sing "Skewbald", It came alive with the same intensity that It had when I first heard it. That experience set the tone of the concert. As a live performer he infuses his music with an urgency that makes the listener sit up and take notice.

I recorded this interview with him after the concert:

RR: What's the relevance of folk music to the present day situation? Folk songs were originally very political. But are they now more than historical curios?

MC: The songs that I sing are not part­ icularly historical. We talked about the "Bonnie Lass Of Anglesea". That's not a historical song. It's a story — and it has implications in the way it's structured which make it relevant to every age.

I have no idea when it was w ritten — and it doesn't matter because nothing changes basically.

RR: So you see folk music as always relevant because it puts into allegorical form the basic struggles and concerns of humanity?

MC: Yes. Very definitely.

RR: When, then, does music become apolitical?

MC: I don't know. Perhaps when there's no words. But even so, the "Heroica" was written fo r Napoleon. That makes it political.

RR: At what level of intervention by the business of music does it lose its ability to be a commentator?

MC: When it stops thinking. It needn't lose it. I've not been really involved in that side of the business very much — only in the eight or nine months that I was with Steeleye for the last time.

Then I saw it. It's very easy to get swallowed up in that. Very easy indeed.

So I imagine that if one stayed around long enough one could very easily be blunted. There are thousands who have, and a few who haven't. I think you have to continually be aware of the problem and guard against it in yourself.

RR: Do you have to live the songs you're singing?

MC: Well, I don't do songs that I don't like.

RR: But is it conceivable that a person with a large recording contract and a large, lucrative circulation could still sing songs that have political impact? I mean, is political impact necessarily exclusive to people willing to play small venues like this?

MC: Well, not necessarily. It makes it easier to make contact in a small venue like this. I prefer to work in places this size, but I can only talk personally, I can't talk generally.

RR: On the other hand, you'll never become a rich man.

MC: But I do very nicety. I'm not a poor man. I'm not rich, but I'm certainly not poor.

RR: You've stressed that folk music is political. Do you have any formal political commitments of your own?

MC: No, I haven't. I don't really know why. I do concerts fo r causes. My politics are definitely to the left.

RR: You said you make a good living from folk music. You must get a lot out of it apart from a reasonable living to make you keep doing it when — if this tour is any indication — you work very hard. Would you like to say what you music gives you on a personal level?

MC: Well, I enjoy doing it. I get tremendous enjoyment from it. I think that I'm one o f those people lucky enough to be able to do exactly what he wants to do — and what he's best at — for a living. It's a historical accident. If I'd been born 20 years earlier I certainly w ouldn't have done what I'm doing now.

RR: Why not?

MC: Because o f the historical situation.

For a start there was a depression. I was just very lucky. I found the kind o f music that I love, and was able to take advantage of certain things like LP records and tape recordings to learn songs from here, there and everywhere.

It was a series of historical accidents.

RR: Folk music has been made more accessible by the music industry. Do you think that it can be a force for change in society?

MC: Well, it is a force fo r change. It is the underground. It's music's counterculture. It's not controlled by anybody. It's just there. The folk clubs in England are just there because people want them to be there. They are collections of individuals who are not bound to each other in any way, except in the loose way that they want to be.

RR: I really like the "Bonnie Lass Of Anglesea". I wonder if you've any idea how old it is?

MC: I've no idea. Pretty old, I would have thought. The idea's very old. It's obviously political, isn't it? It has a

great deal o f relevance to the sorts o f things that are happening in England, America and Europe.

RR: Do you think that folk music generally has a strong political tone?

MC: I consider fo lk music to be political — right and left. Some of the songs are extremely right wing.

RR: In that way, then, would you say that folk is directly opposite from other types of musical cultures where tastes are imposed from above?

MC: Absolutely!

RR: How does folk music, as a force for change, fit into the music industry?

MC: The fo lk scene is like a collection o f little bugs in the woodwork, there.

Just living there and doing very well inside there. And breeding more things in there.

RR: You've worked with Steeleye, the Albion Country Band and now with the Watersons. What sorts of memories do you carry of these eras?

MC: Albion I remember as a great band dogged by bad luck. I thought we were a terrific band. I still think we were terrific — streets ahead of all o f them.

But it seems that we just weren't to be.

We had a lot of bad luck; and a lot of bad press — bands need their share of good press if they're going to survive.

People liked Albion. A lot of people came to us when it was all over, and said 'what a shame it was that you broke u p!' A couple of them I would have , liked to slug! In fact, one o f them I came w ithin an inch of slugging — because he helped destroy us!

Steeleye...Well, of course, there were two periods. The first Steeleye is mostly pleasant memories. Great memories of the beginning, but a few problems at the end. But basically a good time. I really enjoyed it.

The second Steeleye was great! There were a lot o f non-musical fights outside the group. The group d id n 't fight. Except we had probably two rows during the whole course — and they were real humdingers! But bands always have their rows.

And the Watersons...Well, it's a continuing thing. And I love it!

-D O N N A MAEGRAITH

RO ADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 ~ Page 19 What is the real America? A desper­ ate existence of amphetamines, a la Lou Reed? Or is it a charmed life of cocaine opulence as subliminally suggested by the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac? No, the real America finds itself working a dead-end job, entrapped in a domestic situation and watching TV or drinking a few beers fo r its 'kicks'. And the predicaments and pastimes o f main­ stream America have been chronicled w l ^ unerring accuracy by only one artist — Tom Waits. The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Loud Reed each sell many more records than Walts, however, which goes to show that glamour/chic continues to sell better than reality.

Waits remains a cult figure not through any lack o f talent or creativity — pres­ tigious magazines such as New Musical Express, Rolling Stone and Down Beat hold him in high esteem — but rather Waits being completely disdainful o f the 'demands' o f commerciality. The idiom Waits uses is jazz — beat era jazz, incess­ ant and insistent, the perfect vehicle to transport us to the earthy environs he inhabits — but a definite obstacle to a wider audience In these days of 'safeis-superior' music. Additionally, Walts has never released a single, preferring his prose to be presented in a 40-minute fo r­ mat, to be appreciated as chapters, rather than snippets, o f his visions of America.

The essential explanation fo r the deft­ ness and precision w ith which Waits delineates the day-to-day dreams and dramas o f underdog America is the fact that Waits is part o f his subject matter — he lives the life he relates. A ll that differentiates Waits from his fellow American is his 'unusual' occupation and mode o f dress.

Unshaven and in his late 20s, resplend­ ent in old sports jacket, wearing-a ragged, crooked excuse fo r a tie and a motheaten beret. Waits slouches at his piano, delivering manic monologues and tales of American melancholy in a voice that is that obvious victim o f too many nicotine-tinged nights and drunken dawns. Waits had no formal musical training, content to learn his craft by listening to the innovative ivory-tinkling o f Mose Allison, Thelonious Monk and A rt Tatum and the composing skills o f George and Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer and Cole Porter, as well as a liberal dose of the verbal virtio l of Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce, Waits first appeared on the recording scene in 1973 w ith a debut album entitled 'Closing Time'. 'Closing Time' was a very mature debut album indeed, showing Waits to have a fine understand­ ing as to the essence o f songwriting — simple yet poignant lyrics coupled with strong melodies. Encouragingly, Ian Matt­ hews and the Eagles chose to record '01' 55', elevating the song to minorclassic status. Also o f note was an intell­ igent and evocative use o f orchestration.

Waits had done his compositional home­ work as the album has a tru ly timeless quality perhaps best showcased in the title track, an instrumental possessing both a fineness and a beauty w orthy of the late Duke Ellington.

1974 saw the release o f the more them-

A M E R IC A at street level

B ar craw ling w ith 1bm W aits l was conceived one night in A pril, 1949, at the Crossroads Motel in La Verne, California, amidst the broken bottle o f Four Roses, the smouldering Lucky Strike, half a tuna salad sandwich, and the Old Spice and the One Eyed Jacks across the railroad tracks, the drapes hung like trousers between the drizzle-lit abandoned parking lot, and the w ilted corsage on the night stand; M r and Mrs Private First Class J. Frank Waits gave me my first big break.

Nine months later on a Sunday morning, I was born in the back seat o f a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted "Times Square and step on it!" Years later on a snowbound Christmas Eve in W hittier, Calif., but a toddler, on m y way home from work at the factory, crawled past a pawn shop and noticed a piano hanging up in the window, amidst the false teeth, the bent saxophones, the cracked clarinets and cameras. I knew I had to get my hands on that sucker, so

M

with beers in m y eyes, that night tucked into bed, with visions o f Robitussin and Wild Irish Rose in m y head, I disclosed this dream to my mother, and my mother in housecoat and muckalucks went down to the pawnshop that night and put a brick through the window and dragged home the piano for me.

Well, the rest is history.

M y first album entitled "Closing Tim e" marked the beginning of a remarkably promising career, national tour in 1971, bringing me to N .Y.C . to open the show fo r Charlie Rich for a week at the infamous Max's Kansas City and I was on my way. Giving way to my second album "The Heart O f Saturday Night" and later "Nighthawks A t The "D iner", "Small Change" and then "Foreign Affairs". With the release o f my latest record, "Blue Valentine ', I remain extremely transient, living in hotels 10 months o f the year, and on the verge o f becoming a rumour in my spare time.

atic 'The Heart Of Saturday Night'.

The album is a tribute to America The Transient w ith Waits as the voyeur of the down-trodden, chronicling the lives o f the drifters and losers, the relentless ones bumming and thumbing around on some private, eternal odyssey. Sketching the sagas of simple people w ith simple lusts. Waits succeeded in distinguishing himself from the plethora of emergent singer-songwriters via his ability to ele­ vate the seemingly mundane to the magical and the routine to the heroic — the truck driver in 'Semi-Suite' and the sailor in 'Shiver Me Timbers' are seen as extraordinary rather than ordinary men.

With 'The Heart Of Saturday Night', Waits indeed captures the vibrancv of

THE S T IF F STO R Y (From page 11) garages so it was real garage music because they don't do anything else. It was very incestuous in that you found bits of Devo in each band and it was very like the pub thing so I recognised it quite quickly.

I met a guy called Liam Sternberg and I said:'Look, I'm going to put you on a retainer. You run around ail these bands and find out any that are interested and I'll put an Akron compilation together. So we found all these bands and put out the best tracks from each.

A couple of them we've signed long-term. That's Rachel Sweet and Jane Aire. It's probably just coincidence but just after we were there, suddenly a lot o f big record companies arrived in town and started signing people.

Warner Brothers signed Tin Huey and the Bizarros were signed by Sire.

It was all like a time in London when a group wanted to get a record deal together they'd go to a company and say: 'S tiff are very interested', and somebody would sign them up and I thought that was great. It was wonderful that groups could rip o ff big record companies by saying that S tiff was interested. I used to encourage them.

Bands used to come around so I'd say:'Well, you tell them I'm interested in this'. For instance, the Boomtown Rats came and saw me but they wanted too much money so I told them to go and see Ensign Records because I knew that they had lots of money to spend and, you see, now they're stars.

Anyway, once all this signing up went on in Akron, they all left. Devo have left. Tin Huey are gone and The Bizarros have left. So people leave their home town once they've got a big deal.

RR: Who came up w ith the cover which you scratch and smell burnt rubber?

DR: A guy called Paul Conroy who works fo r S tiff came up w ith that and I thought it was a cracker idea.

I admire many artists including Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Wally Cox, Mose Allison, George "Crying In The Streets" Perkins, Crazy Eddie, Rodney Oangerfield, Harry 'T h e Hipster" Gibson, Martin Mull, Benny Boulder, Symphony Sid, Fran Landesman, Booker T & The M.G.'s, Victor Borge, George & Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Gordon Jenkins, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Prez, Bird, Shearing, Basie, Ray Charles, M onk, Bud Powell, Johnny Hartman, Nat King Cole, Steve Allan, Charles Bukowski, Nelson Algren.

When I grow up I want to be a promo man. I've been everywhere twice, including Belgium and Tokyo. I like pointed shoes, gum underneath tables at expensive restaurants, girls who wear brassieres, small lapels, cigarettes, luggage, passports, water colour prints in motel rooms, and a wide variety o f different things. I enjoy what I do as an entertainer — it's certainly better than wages. A A — Tom Waits, December, 1978. " ^

an impending (and expended) Saturday night. Amidst a backdrop o f nameless bars and saloons. Greyhound bus term in­ als and dubious greasy spoons, we find Waits' cast of human debris candidly revealed — loving, fighting, unwinding and tenaciously searching fo r satori in the neon of nocturnal America. The album earned Waits the title of 'Street Poet' from many respected critics, an appellation Waits' record company thank­ fu lly declined to hype, a la Bruce Spring­ steen.

Waits consolidated his cult status with 'Nighthawks A t The Diner' (1975).

The album was culled from two nights' 'performance' by Waits and his empathetic quartet in fro n t o f 200 people

We were really smelling out people's homes because it's actually quite nauseous. Back in the flower power period, there were a few smelly records. They were mainly strawberry and things so we decided to make a really terrible one. You can actually put perfume into records. There's a lot of things you can do with vinyl - fo r too long, it was just black.

RR: What bands aren't on S tiff that you'd like to get?

DR:W'ell, I'd have liked to keep Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe obviously. I'd love to have Rockpile on the label. There's a little group which I saw quite a while ago and was very keen on called Strangeways who eventually signed to Anchor. Their first single d id n't happen and Anchor have pushed them into the background on that basis of C minus. I spoke to their manager and said that the only record Anchor had broken was 'How Long' by Ace and that had hit w ritten all over it. So I d id n't think Anchor had much credibility.

One of the drawbacks of running a company is that you no longer can just groove around the music scene and see everything. You have to put in the hours fo r the company. This past year. I've made 42 trips to America and yob don't get to see too many bands that way. You tend to get blinkered as to what's going on.

You have to keep a musically open mind.

That's why I'm interested in a lo t of Australian bands like The Sports. We always encourage our licencees to send us records of new bands. We tried to find companies in each country who were interested in S tiff and they became our licencees. We're w ith RCA in Italy, Decca in Germany, Phonogram in Sweden, EMI in Australia, CBS in Greece.

RR: (Incredulous) In Greece?

DR: Yeah, our telex runs hot. We hustle people and pour information out to them. I don't mind if they get uptight. That's another thing about the business — everything's so diplomatic. Nobody ever gets angry.

lured into the recording studio by the promise of free booze, burlesque and jazz. The listener is taken on what Waits himself describes as 'improvisational adventures into the bowels of the m etro­ politan region' and 'inebriational travel­ ogues'. The exuberant edge o f the stories and scenarios presented here reflect the influence o f Waits favorite w riter — Charles Bukowski, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and Damon Runyon. 'Nighthawks A t The Diner' reveals the live Tom Waits in all his raw, ribald and rhythm ic glory and as a raconteur o f rare perception.

If 'Small Change' (1976) has any under­ lying theme it is one o f world-weari­ ness. It is a tapestry o f emotional up­ heaval played out in large American cities, harsh and oblivious to the trag­ edies and traumas born daily w ithin their depths. The failed, forlorn and forsaken are to be found in maudlin reminiscence ^ekin g solace in cheap thrills and cheap liquor. The album showed Waits perfect­ ing the further absorption o f orchestrat­ ion into his work, elevating songs such as T o m Traubert's Blues' and 'I Wish I Was In New Orleans' to a truly 'epic' stature. The ravaged condition o f Waits' voice coupled w ith the impassioned de­ livery of the lyrics suggests that 'Small Change' is Waits' most autobiographical album.

While 'Small Change' was damned by the critics as being too maudlin, 'Foreign Affairs (1977) was hailed as a master­ piece. The album from cover to content has a strong cinematic feel capturing the vastness of America w ith unparalleled vividness.

'Foreign Affairs' remains Waits' most cohesive or 'directed' album, indeed unfolding w ith definite flow and pacing, running through the gamut of emotions like a classic movie — from the light-hearted camaraderie of 'Jack and Neal' to the melancholy reflection of 'Sight For Sore Eyes' and the romantic tragedy 'Burma Shave', Waits manages to make the sum seem greater that its parts. The album genuflects to a more romantic America, an America of great promise and even greater freedom, the American o f the 50s as seen in Kerouac's 'On The Road' and Steinbeck's 'East of Eden'. For a work of such breadth of vision 'Foreign A ffairs' remains a grossly neglected album.

Waits' latest album 'Blue Valentine' is also his most contemporary work to date, given its urban verve by a greater utilisation o f electric instruments. Here Waits juxtaposes reality against roman­ ticism with stunning effect. On tracks such as 'A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun and '$29.00', Waits (accurately) depicts America as an environment of increasing brutality - but the album has an over-riding air of optimism, of survival and even victory against seemingly insurmountable odds as evocatively encapsulated in the tracks 'Kentucky Avenue' and 'Somewhere' All life is here, a fascinating assemblage o f charlatans, shysters and innocents playing out the hand fate has dealt to them.

Over six albums. Waits' crystallisation of the REAL America remains unequalled and his musical ethics remain unimpeach­ able. Investigate w ithout delay.

- PETER PAUL BAKOWSK!

I get angry so regularly that sometimes I have to be cool fo r a period so that my anger has some effect and it hasn't lost its usefulness. I can't stand people being nonchalant about the work they're in. If you're lucky enough to be in the music business and you like it and that's why you're in it, then why should you not be dedicated to it? Because it's very exciting and you get the best possible opportunity of playing god. You can find a group, make a record, see it become a hit and see the group go on to start another series of groups who are copied. I mean it's fantastic. What more could you wish for?

RR: I'm fascinated that S tiff Records actually sell in Greece?

DR: Well, they came to us so there must be an interest in the country. VA/e've got a licencee in Iceland and I'm as keen that he sells 200 copies of a record as Germany selling 30,000 copies.

There's good bands everywhere. Music has become the poetry, the folk idiom of our time. It's exciting to see things from a distance and see that Australia or anywhere has great bands. Like the Boomtown Rats came out of Ireland red hot, ready to go and I'm sure there's a group in Iceland that I'd like. I know that in Finland, for instance, there are some really fanastic groups like the Royals who are really sensational.

We can't put out all the records that we get.

When we came to do the Graham Parker tour of Australia we discovered Mushroom Records. They sent us the Sports album to see if we'd have them as the support on the tour. I listened to the album and thought it was fantastic. It sounded to me like Elvis Costello singing Graham Parker or Van Morrison songs. When I found that realistically they weren't that influenced by those people it just proved that something is going on everywhere. I was really excited about that record.

- STUART MATCHETT

SOPHISTICATED SPORTS powering vocals. It provides a perfect comple­ ment to the melodies and certainly showcases his musical training for it is both lyrical and thoughtful. In fact, I think jf it wasn't for his presence on the album, Costello would have had only a duplicate of his last album. Naive may be a petulant little shit on stage but he knows what he's doing when it comes to music.

The cover and inner sleeve of this album de­ serve a mention because of their obscurity and the trouble taken with them. I'm not going to bother trying to interpret them because any meaning that can be read into them is purely subjective... they're a symbolist's delight.

The lyrics are similarly obscure and the same applies as above. Only Costello knows what they're really about and anything you or I make of them is conjecture. This raises the question of whether the lyrics are important or is the music the thing? Costello may have had a grand theme for this album and his subject is obvious but its importance is de­ batable particularly when the music stands on its own merits. Yet something about Costello's style is disturbing. It's a feeling that you've heard it somewhere before although you know it wasn't the same. Just as he created a unique identity and labelled it with a synthesis of in­ famous names he synthesises a unique sound by combining various musical styles which seem obvious although you can never quite pinpoint them.

- SUE D EN IM

churning out his manic vocal messages a la Janis Joplin; Ian Moss (my candidate for President of the Australian Lead Guitarists' Big League) weaving some beautiful guitar work into the "softer" numbers and solid wall-to-wall into the fasties; Don Walker(keyboards/writing/ arrangement) sewing it all together and Phil Small (bass) and Steve Prestwich (drums) providing the boom-booms.

If Cold Chisel have any weaknesses, it's def­ initely in the songwriting area and, as with most Australian bands, translating a great stage show into a worthy loungeroom concert. Some songs on "Sweethearts" are a bit too samey. Some are just plain ordinary. The Chisel are a mainstream rock band, which is not the place to look for creative music. There are only two tracks on the album which I would describe as good original material — the title track, which is great and which is the one particular track that shows just how good this band is music­ ally, and the following track "The Door".

But that's only if you're a boring old fart like me and want something NEW. And there are times when even boring old farts feel like raging. In those circumstances, I have raged several times to Chisel live. Now I can do it in the lounge as well. If you're into good, driving rock, it's as good an album as you'll get any­ where in the world.

In their present format, I have no doubt Chisel could blow plenty of overseas darlings off the stage. If Don Walker (largely the "brains" of the outfit) does his homework from now on, they may be able soon to blow anyone off the stage — and out of the record shops, too.

- C L I V E DO RM AN

THE BOYZZ "Too Wild To Tame" CBS WAYLON JENNINGS "I've Always Been Crazy" RCA NORMAN DAYDROP "Rare Gems — Previously unissued Chicago Blues recordings from the collection of Norman Daydrop" CBS THE SPORTS "D o n 't Throw Stones" Mushroom The Sports have now left our golden shores in search of what they might find in Stiff's England, but as a parting gesture they have left behind a new collection of 12 songs to ensure that they are not entirely forgotten while they are away.

Recorded at Armstrong's and mixed in England, "Don't Throw Stones" sees the Sports transformed from a good live band with an album out to a fully fledged studio band where the vinyl product becomes some­ thing different from what you see on stage.

Several factors are at work in making this a different album from "Reckless". I guess the most obvious to the ear is the switch in prod­ ucers. Joe Camilleri, himself a performing artist was a good choice to translate where they were at musically onto their first album.

The result remained loyal to and reflective of their performance on stage. With Stiff's Pete Solley producing their follow up album, it was inevitable that Sports would lose some of the parochialism of the first album, and concen­ trate on preparing therpselves for their assault on the English market. Solley's base naturally was more his experience in the English scene than a knowledge of Sports music. The result is an album which, in some ways, bears more relation to what was happening in Britain during the late 60s, than Australia in the late 70s.

Correspondingly, a change in musical direct­ ion seems to have been signalled by the exit of rockabilly guitarist Ed Bates, who gave the band much of its original direction, in favour of Martin Armiger, who could be said to have given the band a new lease of energy as well as a thirst for expanding their musical limits.

Perhaps even more significant for this album, however, is the emergence of guitarist Andrew Pendlebury.. Bates, together with Steve Cuhnmings, had provided almost all of Sports original material. With his departure, this task fell not to newcomer Armiger, but on Pendle­ bury. From a one-third share in one track on the "Reckless" album, to co-writer of seven on "Don't Throw Stones" is a great effort.

Side One opens with Armiger's "Suspicious Minds", which hints right from the opening bars that Sports are up to something. "Live Work and Play" follows, and is probably the most "New Wave" influenced song on the album, though its weak chorus is more "old hat". Title track "Don't Throw Stones" shows grave signs of Sports being buried alive beneath the production gimmickry, but they manage to come out smiling because it's such a great song.

With its Who-like ("Pictures Of Lily" era) harm­ onies and phrasing, as well as lyrics of about the same era, this is about the most excessive ex­ ample of adapting to the English climate-. Could have been a big hit in 69 — it will be interest­ ing to see what it does in 79.

After the spate of Cummings/Pendlebury tracks on Side One, Side Two opens with a Cummings/Bates leftover which fits well enough onto the album to suggest that many of Sports' apparent changes are so far really only skin deep.

Armiger's "H it Single", from Bleeding Hearts days, I feel, would have fared better on "Reck­

less", with Camilleri's sympathetic treatment.

As it is, it sounds a bit too much like a des­ perate attempt to reassure old friends that, in widening their horizons. Sports are not going to forget their roots.

If all this is not enough, there is a re-record­ ed single of "Reckless" / "Mailed It To Your Sister" included as a special bonus for all those who don't wait around for a cheap secondhand copy of the album. This single, if nothing else, allows you to sit at home in the comfort of an armchair and ponder the d iff­ erence between Aussie and British recording techniques.

- A D R IA N M ILLER

When we die we have to answer to God. "W hat!", he'll say. "Y ou spent 50 years on a production line producing baked beans and then died! I created you fo r that?", he'l! say aghast.

Most of us, of course, can claim that we couldn't help it. "It's society's fault", we can always say. "I didn't have a chance — honest!"

But not The Boyzz. They were given lots of money to produce what we, in the 60s, used to call a "meaningful experience". Instead, they made this record.

First of all they dressed up as a gang of bikies — a secular cult so conservative, they make the CIA look like communists — and posed for the cover. They then went into the recording studio and did an imitation of Van Halen doing an imitation of Bruce Springsteen. I'm going to burn my copy.

The second record is by Waylon Jennings.

He's one of those cowboy types that get given awards in Las Vegas. Here are some of his lyrics:"l've always been crazy and the trouble that it's put me through / Been busted for things I did and didn't do / I can't say I'm proud of all of the things that's I've done / But I can say I've never intentionally hurt anyone" ^ Really...is it IM PO R TA N T to do this kind of thing? What excuse is he going to give when he's called to the judgement seat?

The third album titled above, I liked. It's a collection of blues songs recorded during the 60s, and should provide years of pleasant listening.

- M IC H A E L HOPE

ELVIS COSTELLO "Armed Forces" Radar The third album from Elvis Costello comes hot on the heels of his Australian tour so Costello fans have already been introduced to some of the material on it. However, as anyone who attended his concerts would testify the live Cost­ ello is quite different to the recorded one.

This album immediately strikes you as being similar to his previous two but further listening reveals its true quality. Costello's vocal style is undoubtedly responsible for this initial impression because his distinctive style does not appear repetitive. There is no mistaking that tense and sometimes strangled singing, vehemently attacking the lyrics and bending vowels into the Costello mode.

The production on this album is clean and precise highlighting Costello's singing and negating his guitar playing to the point of irrelevance... not that that matters with the Attractions behind him solid and strong all the way. The thythm section of Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas provide a consistent base for all the tracks here. Although it seems very basic and simple at first, close listening reveals an intricate rhythmic partnership. Now that may be more by design of the producer than natural partnership but whatever the case, it works. One thing that is certainly not contrived on this album is the piano and organ playing of Steve Naive. His playing andds color and depth right through the album despite the over­

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 20

COLD CHISEL "Breakfast A t Sweethearts" Elektra Another album from a great live band.

And fo r the first time, in my opinion.

Chisel have got together a set of songs that collectively prove they are one -of the few precision bands in Australian rock'n'roll.

It becomes strikingly clear on "Breakfast at Sweethearts" that this band carries no passengers. Each member does an incredibly good job of his chosen function — Jim Barnes

TED NUGENT "Weekend Warriors" Epic Ted Nugent's never been what you would call a technical guitarist, more straight to the point w ith standard heavy metal riffs and shrieking solos played as fast as possible fo r maximum effect. So it came as a pleasant surprise to hear he has made a positive attempt to progress on this, his latest album.

Gone are the Ted Nugent and band references (a reason why his last band split). This time his new band (save for Cliff Davies who is the only member from the last band who stayed on) are given a chance to show their musicianship with Ted's guitar mixed down and blend­ ing in better than previous albums where his guitar was always overblown.

On the other hand, while he has progressed musically, his lyrics still retain a somewhat corniness of his last couple of studio albums, viz songs like the well meaning but dumb "Good Friends And A Bottle Of Wine" and "Tight Spots" with its references to parts of the female anatomy; musically great, but the lyrics...

"Venom Soup" featured an unexpected surprise beginning with not one of Ted's solos but "Shock Horror Outrage", a bass solo from new member John Sauter. Not your usual bass solo, mind you: This one feat­ ures a great throbbing, phased echo followed by an opening similar to the Eagles "Hotel California" before the power cords are struck and Ted lunges into his solo.

Nugent still retains his warped sense of humour — this time ripping o ff one of his own riffs with "One Woman" owing more than a little to "Cat Scratch Fever" and his singing (he handles most of the lead vocals by the way) is a bit of a joke, while blessed with the talent of being a great guitarist, his singing, in a word, sucks.

"Weekend Warriors" is probably Ted Nugent's best studio album to date and while the radio are deciding to play it or not, rush out and buy a copy and show your support.

- G .M A R T Y N

FRANK ZAPPA "Sleep D irt" Reprise Although the subtle change in the big band sound towards softer, more atmosperhic jazz w ill disappoint many Zappa fans, the hallmarks o f this album are the precision of the players and the overall tightness. Which makes it, along w ith a few other things, a strange album fo r it appears to be studio jams given titles, placed on an album and released...the curious aspect being that no musicians are credited anywhere on the cover.

The only information you get is the titles and their order.

w Among the familiar echoes from the work on earlier albums is the percussion and vibe work on "Spider O f Destiny", the guitar work on Time Is M oney". Much of "Flambay" seems farniliar though I cannot say why this piece, which sounds so much like slow, nightclub jazz, should sound so familiar. Despite the obvious influences, tracks like "Regyptian Strut" show that Zappa continues to use a base of classical music to build his own themes on. His addition of high, rapid brass on that track helps to disguise it and give a feeling all its own. Much of the rest of the albums seern ^lyaerimental and unsure of direction: The title track is a purely acoustic number very short in length. It is immediately followied by a long electric track that at its end shifts back into the vibrant guitar work of the more familiar Zappa material. As a concluding track to the album, it is a strange ending for a set that seems to drift throughout. Although the above comments may sound as if the album leaves no real impression, that isn't true, for much of the listening is pleasant and takes many turnings into areas that previously Zappa has made nothing of...the introduction of a totally acoustic number is one such; the greater emphasis on rhythm work is another.

Again, it is the precision of the playing that impresses itself on the listener. It seems that this album may represent a resting point or a change in direction, and for that reason may be a tidewater mark in the way Zappa plays; for that reason it may interest people who normally don't listen to him, while it is fairly certain that many who already do may be disappointed at what they may see as an attempt to create a more commercial product.

- CHASJENSEN

pleasant voice; always a doubtful starter album-wise despite brilliant debut solo album " I f You Saw Through My Eyes" on Vertigo in 1971. Recording in England again after a long period in America that's going to be hard to shake o ff on some tracks he can't seem to remem­ ber whether he's Ian Matthews or Boz Scaggs.

Track titles such as "Gimme An Inch, G irl", ''D on't Hang Up Your Dancing Shoes", and "Shake It" , provide a few hints at what happ­ ened to the man whose lyrics were once so introspective and interesting. Apart from the odd clanger, though, "Stealin' Home", as the title hopes to suggest, is something of a return to form, with Side Two displaying p m e particularly assured moments. Whether it's enough to launch him to international fame and fortune is another matter. If in fact it matters at all.

Interesting tracks include "Man in the Stat­ ion", "Yank and Mary (Smile)" and "Sail My Soul", which is another in the series of quiet fireside chats with God which began with " If You Saw Through My Eyes".

- A D R IA N M ILLER

Succinctly and sardonically, Clarke chron­ icles the conditioning, fears/phobias and ob­ sessions of the common wo/man. In "Psycle Sluts" hedonism and excess are erorcised in an explosive unaccompanied verbal outpour (far superior to the [studio] single). In "Salome Maloney", the disco is accurately seen as a sexual showroom — an insidious rather than innocent institution. However, is these two songs (as with the rest of the album, actually) Clarke casts our "social ills" in both a humor­ ous and humanistic light that stops the album from ever being heavy going (Kevin Coyne take note!). So for your money you get both the astute and the amusing or put it another way — mirth with a message. Very sympathetic syncopation is provided by the "Invisible Girls" — various craftsmen culled from diverse Mancunian combos. Relentless, ominous rhythms (Bo Diddley AND Kraftwerkl) elevate "(I've Got A Brand New) Tracksuit" and "Health Fanatic" to 'epic' status.

In these two songs/scenarios, Clarke paints/ implants a vivipl view of fear-filled businessmen committing themselves to crash courses in anything to delay anticipated/imagined cardiac arrests. Chilling. The two 'straightest' (in sheer

musical rather than lyrical terms) songs are I Don't Want To Be Nice" and "Teenage Werewolf" — both would make better singles than the chosen "Post War Glamour Girls".

In both songs you get a taste of Clarke's surreal­ ism. Additionally both songs seem to lampoon punk negativism/nihilism — clearly there are no sacred cows in Clarke's songbook. Three songs deal with women — "Readers' Wives", "Strange Bedfellows" and "Valley Of The Lost Women". Compassionate but never condescend­ ing. Clarke is not vindictive towards women (like Costello) nor does he see them as victims.

Clarke realises we are all victims — our routines and rituals are seen for what they are — re­ pressive and ridiculous. The album's cover de­ picts a Groucho Marx mask suspended in space - this sums up what Clarke is "all about" or the "raison D'etre" of this album. Hope­ fully the listener will lift the platter from his turntable and remove (forever) all masks.

This album (beyond any category) sums up the punk ethos — "(Society) Let me be MyselfT'As important and impressive an album as Costello's or Dury's debut albums.

- PETER PAULBAKO W SKI

POCO "Legend" ABC Poco have always struck me as a band who fo r reasons best known to them, get a great kick out of pretending they're The Eagles.

Now that is neither a startlingly perceptive nor original observation, but Poco seem to want to do less than zero to shake off their"Eagles B Grade" image (with reserve players, e.g.

Randy Meisner, Tim Schmidt, periodically promoted to the league team). The only slight (repeat slight) contrast to be drawn from the latest release "Legend" is that while Eagles Mk. 1 are beginning to flirt with life in the fast lane, Poco's bum is still firmly in the saddle.

Best track is "Spellbound" (why wasn't that on "Hotel California"?) while "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night" are also picking up airplay. 'Course, if recent single "Please Come Home For Xm as"/"Funky New Year" is any indication of what can be expected from the forthcoming Eagles album. Eagle buyers might be better advised to switch from the real thing to the imitation (I don't care if Poco did it first). Or better still, buy a second or third copy of "Hotel California". Or better still, buy a horse.

-M O S K O S E R K A S

THE BLUES BROTHERS "Briefcase Full Of Blues" Atlantic Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, the Blues Brothers are, in reality, rumoured to be John Beluski and Dan Aykroyd out o f a U.S. TV show "Saturday Night Live".

Somehow they've scored some o f the best musicians around — Tom Scott, Steve Cropper, Matt "G u ita r' Murphy, Steve Jordan, Tom Malone etc, recorded a concert of classic blues and R&B songs, and are now one o f the biggest things in the States.

ROCKIN' RHYTHM

In fa c t, it's an impress In fact, it's an impressive recording. I'm not sure it would have ever commanded this much attention without the looney parody of the Brothers, but, throughout, the musical performances are outstanding and, while there's no doubt it's a fun record, the material is interpreted with feeling and authority.

Jake sounds as though he's been singing this stuff for years (maybe he has...), with Elwood's harmonica and background vocals and this large band, they inegrate so well it's bloody uncanny. This is a performance made for the love of the music, and it shows — it's fun, but the comedy never overshadows the songs.

It's worth a listen, if only to hear musicians of this calibre having such a great time.

- IAN DECISION

JOHN COOPER CLARKE "Disguise In Love" CBS

IAN MATTHEWS "Stealen' Home" Polygram Ian Matthews, ex Fairport Convention, Matthews Southern Comfort, and Plainsong; the main w ith the extremely

Say the words "rock poet" and 5 w ill get you 10 yer average punter w ill come up w ith Patti Smith. Ever since Ms Smith ''got religion" (where are yibu Little Richard?) I've been looking for a bit more realism/reality in me rock'n'roll thank you very much. "Disguise In Love"

by Mancunian poet, John Cooper Clarke, gives me almost more than I can handle.

SECOND HAND RECORDS

M ove It On Over. George Thorogood & The Destroyers.

A fter a debut alburn that took the industry and rhythm & blues fans by surprise, comes a follow-up from George Thorogood & The Destroyers.

"M o ve It On Over" features ten tracks w ith George laying it down solid every time. There's songs by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Johnny Cash, Hank W illiams & Brownie McGhee. "M o ve It On Over" — rockin' itiythm & blues. The second album from George Thorogood & The Destroyers.

STQCKiiDE

D IS T R IB U T E D BY

RGil

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 21

M A G A ZIN E / Give Me Everything / Virgin

THIS MONTH, the singles are reviewed

by Joe Camilleri of Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons, w ith help from Falcons roadies Geoff and Tony. A t times the conversat-i ion deviated from the record at hand, but the sidetracks were often as interesting as the review comments so I've left most of them in — D.R.

Tony: That's the best track so far.

Joe: Yeah, that's pretty good actually. The thing about that record is once again that it's a production dream. It'd be interesting to hear what that band was like without all the sugar-coating and stuff.

Tony: Whoever produced it did a great job.

Don't you reckon it sounds like Arthur Brown?

Joe: No, I don't see the connection with Arthur Brown. The thing is you can have great sound, that synthetic commercial potential, and that's what that's got. Right down the line.

VAN MORRISON/Natalia/W EA Joe: They're great songs. It's a bit unfortunate that they've not sold anything. No-one s play­ ing it. Same old problem. You get better than ever, in some ways, and just out of style, out of fashion , out of mind.

YVO NNE R.S.O.

ELLIM AN/M om ent

By

NICK LOWE / American Squirm / Radar

Moment/

Tony: It will make a great theme for a flop movie. They should have John Travolta in it.

JAMES G R IF F IN /I Smoke Money/ I Thought It Was You On The Boulevard/ Australia Is Just A Suburb Of The USA / Too Hip To Stumble. (Australian independent EP) Joe: I reckon with this guy, you'd have to see him live because he's got four different sorts of music on this record. "Australia Is Just A Suburb Of The USA" is an interesting b it'o f work. The band's a bit strange, too: I don't know if they're just session musos or a working outfit. If it's a working outfit it must be a weird combination. They haven't got any real direction. As far as the songs go, on a first listening they're kinda...dull. Apart from "Australia...". He should give that to Dave Warner.

WRECKLESS ERIC / Crying, Wishing, Hoping / Stiff Joe: Yeah. That's the kind of song that'd grow on you, wouldn't it? After a while. It's a Buddy Holly song, isn't it? (Yes) I can rem­ ember it. It's really strange. Like I said, it sounded like an Australian imitation of an English act, and it turns out to be Wreckless Eric.

Tony: Didn't he used to be a cleaner at Stiff Records?

Joe: Just goes to show you can start from the bottom. I kinda liked it the second time through. It's not a baddie.

PIC: ERIC A LG RA

PE NETRATIO N / Life's A Gamble / Virgin Joe: Some guy gets a formula and they cert­ ainly hop into it, don't they? That's not a bad little record — I reckon the feminists in Victoria will like that. The Kamika?e Kids could do it as an EP

HAW KW IND / Silver Machine / (United Artists, Joe: No, I can't handle that one.

Tony' They went out in the same bag as the Moody Blues.

Jc They're very popular, aren't they?

Toiiy: About five years ago, when hippies were still around.

d 1 1 r r 0 1-4 • 0 18 ■ Ba C tO om m . crystal ballroom

Joe: I don't think it'll do very well here. It's interesting because it's definitely directed at the American market. Interesting kind of work on that one with that jangling guitar, very sixties sound. I think it's a good record. It's one record that I find I have to listen to a few times. That's the second time I've heard it and I still haven't got right into it. Nick Lowe has that effect on me with his records, like with "Jesus Of Cool". I didn't like that at first but it really grew on me. It's unfortunate that these singles don't get an opportunity except on stations like 3RRR or 2JJ. But even at their strongest peak those stations will never break through. I don't think 10 per cent of the people are aware that it's available to them. Maybe when FM comes in, 'cos it has to come in strong, there might be a little more awareness. Maybe if some of these commercial stations go FM it'll make a difference. This tune will probably be one of the top 10 tunes in the 3RRR top forty, but it probably wouldn't even get a hearing anywhere else. It's hard to tell, of course. Costello's breaking through and there's a few others.

IAN D U R Y A ND THE BLOCKHEADS / Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick / Stiff Geoff: I like it a lot.

Joe: It's a killer isn't it? I can see why it's “Number One in England.

Tony: It is Number One in England, is it?

Joe: Yeah. I don't think that means much at ail anyway. Well it does mean something — 60 million people...

Geoff: It shows out — it's the best thing we ve heard.

Joe. To me anyway, I quite enjoyed it. The way he's used the most common beat around today and made it acceptable to even the minority.

JOHN COOPER CLARKE / Psycle Sluts CBS Joe: There are bits and pieces you can't really grasp. That accent is what got me in first or all (Manchester accent). I think that's the best thing that's happened today. Mighty.

It's a pity he uses music on the other tracks on the album. Sounds like a bit of a compro­ mise.

THE SPORTS / Don't Throw Stones / Mushroom Joe: It's an interesting thing, cos, like, I pro­ duced their first album and when you compare them, there's just no comparison with this. It's a very good production. The thing I find is that they're not, within themselves, playing...

At the moment they're a Peter Solley (producer of "Don't Throw Stones") band. So in some cases they've lost some of their originality. But he saw what the songs were about in his way and they did it that way, which is fine. I think it worked. It got rid of a lot of slackness in the songs. When you record, it's different than when you play songs you haven't record­ ed. You normally listen to the producer. And. see, they didn't know him, he wasn't someone who just helped...he said"Well, we'll do it that w ay" and that's it, instead of trying to get that creative thing out of them. Now when hey're live, they're playing his way. Maybe in three or four months time the new lot of mater­ ial they write, they can develop what they've learnt from Peter, and relate more to them­ selves again. It happens ever time. The $30,000 in a studio always helps an act, whether or not they sell records or not, it'll always help an act get tighter and more aware of what they're doing. Even just doing demos is fantastic. You see where the songs are, and you always need someone else to take it. I think they had a great break in that respect. They had the ability to take that great step, and I think ij's one of the biggest steps an Australian act has had, on a small scale, cos they are still a minority group at the moment. Whether they take off depends on this record. They're not a Little River Band act — they haven't got the money behind them. Ail they've got is what they're doing in England. Which is a fantastic thing.

But they've got this record which is up to the standard of any record that's being played today. I've been singing "Don't Throw Stones" all week. Adelaide has just been Sports-wild this week. It could crack the disco market as well, although there isn't much of a disco market in Adelaide...

c

... march

*79

friday 2nd (2am license) • johnny & the hitmen

Saturday 3rd

downatalrs

Saturday I0th jimmy & the boys secret police

I lt h the stra n g lers frid ay I6 th Sunday

• johnny ^ the hitmen • f lo-vrers every friday

fri day 9 th mi-sex romantics

k

Saturday••

• ian Stephens & johnny topper in *the time the land forgot' every tuesday ..

• boys next door & guests including .. news • whlrly tshirl

• bohdan X

• two-way garden

eric gradman*man & machine Saturday I7th ..wait for it I * friday 23rd the dots all ens Saturday 24th young m o d e m models

» crystal ballroom . crystal ballroom • fitzroy st stkilda • crystal -ROAORUNNE R, MARCH 1^79

Page 22

ROADRUNNER, MARCH 1979 - Page 23

MENTALS

lot about w riting just by playing these classic pop songs.

RR: What about your original material?

They're not just about true love, for instance...

MAS: Well, enough has been written about "thinking about my baby" or "let's go o ut into the country, baby" pompous romantic stuff. The songs we write might have a b it o f whimsy in them but they're not too divorced from reality — they're about things that happen to everybody — dancing and drinking...that kind o f thing.

RR: What about the fact that you don't sound exactly like your record when you play those songs live?

MAS: Well, there's a difference between the sound o f a band live and a band on

record. People have come to identify modern music as what they hear on record and it's become a rare thing fo r people to go and hear a band down at their local hall or pub because they've all got record players in their homes.

So in the studio we used things like echo to give it a good recorded sound.

CHRIS: Really we just got some session musicians, told them our idea fo r each song and they went o ff and write it and then recorded the whole thing using synthesisers.

MAS: We'd Ijjce to send cheerios to Vanda and Young and also to Little Patti who is one o f the great personalities o f Australia.

RR: Thanks fellas. Shouldn't you be doing a sound check or polishing your shoes or something...?

- STUART MATCHETT

RV?KING THE TIGER i saw her on Saturday nite she/dressed in black with her kid crying and then/again in the late nite delicatessen me/waiting for cigarettes and/her stabbing into her purse to pay for the crisps/to keep the kid quiet she had given up on words and bought something as fragile/as herself

a poem works when/ all the women dressed in black with kids crying on Saturday nite say/ my beard is beatiful

they both passed she/pushing

and/ mean it - R O R Y H ARRIS

mu/ic ADELAIDE'S SECOND­ HAND RECORD STORE.

We buy your unwanted records and tapes. See us now for the best price in town.

Upstairs, Cnr. Frome and Rundle Sts., City.

S U R V IV E TH E DEPRESSION - SHOP SECONDHAND!

M U S IT I^ N IC S SUPPLIES

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AGENCIES

personal taste or whatever. I think it is more the viability o f the act. Sometimes it is personal taste which might happen to coincide w ith something that you think is going to happen as a musical trend or whatever, but more often that not it is the way in which the thing is packaged.

RR: Well, can you give me, say, an example of a band that you have been asked to check out for Nucleus and you, say, ended up taking them on, and can you tell me the reasons you took them on?

CANTW ELL; The Aliens would most probably be an example although they have just gone to Premier. But to be really honest it came about by somebody knowing somebody in the band. They had an affiliation w ith the

MONDAYS:

RESIDENCIES

TUESDAYS:

WEDNESDAYS:

THURSDAYS:

^

STEREO SYSTEMS, FLOOD LIGHTS and ELEC. ACCESSORIES

2D 1

A D ELAID E

SATURDAYS:

u m b /e llo

PH:

J

F R ID A Y M A R . 16: SPLIT ENZ, Arkaba; REDCAPS, Hotel Richmond, Rundle Mall, 8-12, $2; STO CKLEY, SEE & MASON, Maryatville, 8-2; CHAMPAGNE JAM , Pier Hotel, CO LONEL L IG H T BAND, Lord Gleneig, 8-12, free. SOAPBOX O RCHESTRA, Melbourne Hotel, Melbourne St., Nth. Hotel Angas, 8-12, $2.

Ad., 8-12, $1; G ILES TA N N E R Q U IN T E T S A T U R D A Y M AR. 17: SPLIT ENZ, Arkaba; (jazz), Bogarts, Melbourne St., Nth. Ad., BUFF'S BAND, Cremorne Hotel, $2.50 inc.

10.30-?; F L Y BY N IG H T , Lord supper; U-BOMBS, Britannia Hotel, Kensington Melbourne, 8-12, $1; FA T A LB ER T BAND, Rd., 8-12, $1; STO CKLEY, SEE & MASON, Seven Stars Hotel, Angas St., City, 8.30-12, Marryatville, 8-2; KATCH, Pier Hotel, Gleneig, free; SOME D R E A M , Creole 8-12, free.

Room, Cnr. George and O'Connell Sts., Nth. S U N D A Y M A R . 18: SPLIT ENZ, Arkaba; Ad.; R E D E Y E , Seacliffe Hotel, $2; BARRY J.C.NASH BAND (country), 2-4pm, Rymill M cASKILL's ON F IR E , Angas Hotel, City, Pk., free; SECOND HAND SHAKE, IAN $2; C'EST LA V IE , Lord Melbourne, 8-12, P A U LIN , Amphitheatre, 2-4, free; BRUCE $1; SOKA, Musicians Club, G REY'S V IN T A G E A L L STARS, DICK 167 Gouger St., City, 8-12, $1; O FF THE FRANKLES JAZZ DISCIPLES, Mall, 2-5, C U F F' Lord Melbourne, 8-12, $1; SOAPBOX free; STO CKLEY, SEE & MASON, Elizabeth O RCHESTR A, Brighton Hotel; BRAND ED Rugby Club, 8-12.

Hendon Hotel, 110 Tapleys Hill Rd., Royal TU E S D A Y M A R . 20: Rock'n'Roll, Tivoli Pk., $2; CRO TCHETTES, Piano Bar, Cobb's Hotel, 8-12.

Restaurant, 12-3am, $2; STREET W E DNESD AY M A R . 21 O L' 55, Arkaba CORNER JACK, Cremorne Hotel, Unley Rd., SALISBURY CAE CONCERT BAND, 12-2 812, $2; PIONEER JAZZ BAND, Seven Stars Hindmarsh Square, free; W A LL STREET, Hotel, City, 8.30-12, free; FLY BY N IG H T , Pier Hotel, Gleneig, 8-12, free.

Lord Melbourne, 9-=2, $1.50; CRO TCHETTES, T H U R S D A Y M AR. 22: ROSE T A T T O O , piano bar, Cobb's Restaurant, 12-3am, $2; Peter Jackson's, 8-12; REDCAPS, Princes BANK OF FR A N C E, Lord Barkley, Hindley St., 8-12, $1.50.

Melbourne, 9-2, $1.50; R E D E Y E , Seacliffe F R ID A Y M A R . 23: BANK OF FRANCE, Hotel; "Orange Music" — various acoustic STREET C H O IR , Hemp Show, Games Rm., acts, Clayton Wesley Church, Parade, Norwood, Adel. Uni; FAST ED D IE , Richmond Hotel, 912, $1; "Traitor's Gate" (folk), Angas Hotel Rundle Mall, 8-12, $2; JET, Pier Hotel, Gleneig, City, 8-12; CRO TCHETTES, piano bar, 8-12, free; SOAPBOX ORCHESTRA, Angas Cobbs Restraurant, 12-3, $2; SUNDAYS: Hotel, 8-12, $2; ROSE T A TT O O , Marryatville, SOAPBOX O RCHESTRA, Aldgate Pump 8- 2.

Hotel, 7.30-11.30, $2.

S A T U R D A Y M A R . 24 OL. 55, Arkaba T U E S D A Y , M A R . 6: M O THER GOOSE, CHAMPAGNE JAM, Cremorne Hotel, $2.50 OLd Lion, Melbourne St., N th. Ad., 8-12, $2; inc. supper; ROSE T A T T O O , Marryatville, K H A N , STO NEHENG E, Tivoli Hotel, 8-12, 8-2; FAST ED D IE , Britannia Hotel, 8-12, $2; HELTA SKELTA, Pier Hotel, Gleneig, $1; Celtic Music Club folk dance, Irish Hall, 8-12, free..

Carrington St., City, $1; BUFF'S BAND, W E D N ESD A Y M A R . 7: W ARM JETS, Adel­ Pier Hotel. Glenela. 8-12. free. aide Uni. lawns, 12-2, free; SUE BARKER and SU N D A Y M A R 25: O L' 55, Arkaba; LAST O NIO NS, (jazz), 12-2 Hindmarsh Square, CHANCE (country) 2-4 Rymill Pk., free; free; M O THER GOOSE, Old Lion.

THE HOUNDS and Acrobatic Support, 2-4, T H U R S D A Y M A R . 8: RICfC W AKEM AN , Amphitheatre, free; ROSE T A TT O O , Elizabeth Old Grey Whistle Test, ABC-TV, 9.55pm , Rugby Club, 8-12. final; M O THER GOOSE, St. Leonard's Inn W E D N ESD A Y M A R . 28: T H IN LINE (jazz) 8-12,Anzac Highway, Gleneig.

12-2, Hindmarsh Square, free; SKYE, Pier F R ID A Y M A R . 9: PRECIOUS M EM O RIES, Hotel, Gleneig, 8-12, free.

Crafers Institute; SOKA, DA V E W ARNER and T H U R S D A Y M A R 29: Rock'n'roll at the JO JO ZEP, 'O' Ball, Adelaide Uni; SOAPBOX Princes Barkley, Hindley St., 8-12.

O RCHESTR A, SOKA, SA IT Orientation Ball, F R ID A Y M A R . 30: K ID R O Y A L , Arkaba; SA IT, Nth. Tee; M O THER GOOSE, Whyalla; BANK OF FRANCE, Richmond Hotel, Rundle SKYE, Pier Hotel, Gleneig, 8-12, free; R ED ­ Mall, 8-12, $2; SOKA, Angas Hotel, City, CAPS, Angas Hotel, City, 8-12, $2.

8-12, $2; F O R E Ip N BODY, BOTTOM DRAW ­ ER, 5M M M women's show, Norwood Town S A T U R D A Y M A R . 10: THE STRANG LERS, Hall, $2 & $3, all welcome.

D A V E W A R N E R , M IS E X , Apollo Stadium, $8.90; DA V E W A R N E R , Arkaba; MOTHER S A T U R D A Y M A R . 31: STAMPEDE, Pier GOOSE, 8-2, Pooraka Hotel; FOUR REASONS Hotel, Gleneig, 8-12, free; K ID R O Y A L , Pier Hotel, Gleneig, 8-12, free; CHAMPAGNE Arkaba; BUFF'S BAND, Cremorne Hotel, JAM , Cremorne Hotel, $2.50 inc. supper; $2.50 inc. supper; FINE CUTS, Britannia Hotel, Kensington Rd., 8-12, $1; Folk Fed­ FAST E D D IE , REDCAPS, Britannia Hotel, eration folk dance, Irish Hall, Carrington St., 8-12, $2; CROTCHETTES and SWEET R E V ­ ENGE, Fest. Centre Amphitheatre, Noon-?, C ity ,$ 1 . free; FO R EIG N BODY and acoustic acts, A P R IL 6, 7, 8: COLD CHISEL, Arkaba; 14, Burnside Town Hall Women's Dance, $4 and 15, 16, KAPUNDA FOLK F E S T IV A L . $2; Folk Federation dance, Irish Hall, Carring­ ton St., City, $1.

SU N D A Y M A R . 11: D A V E W A R N E R , Arkaba; All listings correct at the time of going to BRAND ED (country) 2-4pm, Rymill Pk., press and are subject to variation. Gig guide free; R O A R IN G JE L LY , Amphitheatre, 2-4pm, listings are FREE and we encourage as many free; M O THER GOOSE, Elizabeth Rugby as possible. Send details of bands, venues, Club. admission price, dates and times to M A R Y TU E S D A Y M A R . 13: Rock'n'Roll at the STUTTER S, P.O.BOX 156, NORWOOD, S.A. Tivoli, Tivoli Hotel, 8-12.

5067. D E A D LIN E N E X T ISSUE TUESD A Y W E D N ESD A Y M A R . 14: BANK OF FRANCE, M ARCH 20.

12-2, Hindmarsh Square, free; Beginning Jazz No. 1 (1 of 20), ABC-TV, 10.45 hr.); DUE TO A LAST M IN U TE C O M M U N IC ­ STREET CORNER JACK, Pier Hotel, Gleneig; A TIO N S DISASTER (The gig guide is left 8-12, free. till the last minute to get it as up-to-date as T H U R S D A Y , M A R . 15: STO CKLEY, SEE & possible) THE N A T IO N A L LISTING S D ID MASON, Peter Jackson's, 8-12; FAST E D D IE , NO T M AKE IT IN T IM E FOR TH IS ISSUE. DISTRESSED INNO CEN TS, Princes Barkley, Please send listings to the Roadrunner editor $2. in your state: O LD — Scott Matheson, 80 Russell Tee, Indooroopilly 4068; NSW Stuart Matchett, 386 Bourke St., Surrey SINGER W ANTED Hills 2010; V IC — Bruce Milne, P.O. Box 318, Hawthorn 3122. We aim to make our To complete new R'n'B band national gig guide a bible — your aim (in our Ring (08) 339 2541 after 5pm direction) will help.

FRIDAYS:

the stroller/turned and without smiling said/ that my beard is beautiful later/ in the pub the barman wanted to know when/ the poets union is to resume their readings and/ "how does a poem work'

E N T E R T A IN M E N T

GIG GUIDE

2936126

TYPESETTIN G The Neighborhood Typesetting and Design Office has been set up to serve small (and usually poor) groups and publications who can't afford standard commercial rates. We think we're the cheapest in Australia and we can typeset anything — magazines, newspapers, books, newsletters, posters, reports, cards or letters to your mum — in a range o f d ifferen t typefaces. We can also organise just about anything in the layout/graphics/design area. And we can offer super-quick service for users outside South Australia. Our rates (for typesetting) start at $7.50 per 1000 words (proofread and corrected) and $5.50 per hour for graphics/layout/ design. If you're already publishing and paying too much, if you're publishing but not typesetting (the changeover often works out at less than you're currently paying for typing) or if you've got something coming up, phone Clive on (08) 295 8116 or 297 2133 for a quote, or write to P.O. Box 156, NORWOOD, S.A., 5067 with details of your job.

agency, and sort o f suggested we go along and see the act and various people in the organisation actually got ,xcited about them and we felt that...

RR: But that's not a typical example, is it, where you go along with a vibe already established, which an agency probably would have picked up by then, wouldn't It? CANTWELL: The last bastion of rock'n'roll.

S T IV A LA : 'Saturday Night Fever' and John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John — all that sort of affected Melbourne, and then suddenly all these pubs were getting more people fo r the disco than they were for rock bands, so they all put in a disco. Spent a hundred bucks and make $1000 p ro fit, instead of spending a grand and making $100 p ro fit. So basically Sydney — 18 months, tw o years ago — was really depressed.

You couldn't work Sydney all that well. They have

died in the arse since. The leagues clubs have accepted the fact in Sydney that rock'n'roll puts bums on seats and they're quite happy to pay big fees. And the other thing is with Sydney, a lo t o f early week gigs in Sydney are door deals, where there is a promoter there who pays the act three out of four dollars, and if the act is of the calibre o f The Angels, who are the hottest thing since sliced bread in Sydney, they can make $3000-$4000. But in Melbourne, we haven't got an act that is a sensation like The Angels are in Sydney, and, like The Angels, are only a sensation in Sydney.

(The Angels' last trip to the Gold Coast at the start of January saw them pull 1700 to The Patch which broke John Paul Young's house record by 200, and their last time in Melbourne in late January saw them play three big venues w ith the doors closed each night — R S.L They are not monstrous anywhere else.

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