Roadrunner 5(4) May 1982

Cnr. From e ^ & B undle St A delaide

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Phone 223 7363

NORTH TO ALASKA WITH DOC NEESON

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ADELAIDE’S MAJOR SECONDHAND RECORD STORE Always buying & selling quality used records.

English Import Service Large shipment of American deletions just arrived!!

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Am erican A Engtteh I m parts to anyw here in Australia.

APOLOGY AND CORRECTION NON APPEARANCE BY THE MACHINATIONS AT THE CAPITOL THEATRE ON THE lOTH FEBRUARY, 1982.

We refer to the advertisement which appeared in the March 5, 1982 issue of RAM on page 9 entitled; "Re: Capitol Theatre Sydney 9.2.82", signed by S.C.A.M. on behalf of The Machinations. '

The Angels have just completed a headline tour of the American West Coast which saw them cement their popularity in their strongest American market. In fact there was a near riot in Seattle when the band were limited to one show instead of the scheduled two, due to fans without tickets coming down to the show. Fifteen people were arrested outside the theatre where the Angels were playing.

S.C.A.M. OW Behalf of The Machinations have now reassessed the materials therein published and believe there to be no factual basis for the allegations therein appearing regarding Australian Concert Entertainment. ■ Although in fact there was, due to some unknown cause, an interuption to the power supply to The Machination's stage equipment during two of their performances on the Ultravox tour, The Machinations unreservedly withdraw their allegation that the power supply was intentionally interupted by either Australian Concert Entertainment or the Australian production crew.

The Machinations now realise that, by contract, Ultravox retained full control over the production facilities provided for their performances. To our knowledge Australian Concert Entertainment has always provided its sympathetic support for the aims and interest of the Australian music industry and has given this to Australian performers in general. We further acknowledge the co-operative and helpful liason we have received from Australian Concert Entertainment, and hope that S.C.A.M. and The Machinations can work harmoniously with Australian Concert Entertainment in the future.

We now ask that Australian Concert Entertainment accept thi3 matter as a complete and unreserved apology for the publication of the advertisement in question, and hereby retract the allegations therin contained.

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Doc Neeson, on the phone from Los Angeles, said one of the highlights of the lour to date was the two gigs the band played in the capital of Alaska, Anchorage.

That was one place I’ve always wanted to go,’ he said. ‘It was quite amazing, the light up there is quite unique. It’s a real rock’n’roll town and surprisingly the local radio station was really into the band.”

There was a decided lack of huskies and sleds in Anchorage. “They use helicopters and four wheel drive these days,” said Doc. Audience reaction this time was the best yet for the Angels in the USA. “They’ve 'r n e (\^(r m s a t Hdio-. Tfid ?0S.r\/KXS,\^]f0 HAD

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been just as enthusiastic as Australian audiences: the only difference is that Americans have to get past the security guys, so a lot of them just sit and clap and shout from their seats. In Seattle I jumped offstage into the crowd and that got around that problem!”

Bass player Chris Bailey has just arrived in America after his recent eye operation, and will be playing with the band as soon as he is able. Meanwhile the bass is being wielded by session musician Jim Hilbun, who according to Doc, has ‘clicked in wonderfully’, especially considering this is his first American tour.

After some dates supporting Joan Jett in Arizona and New Mexico and some Californian dates with Cheap Trick, the Angels will be doing their own tour of the Mid-West region (Chicago, Detroit etc.).

This tour is open ended for the Angels.

They could be in America for another five months.

“Every time we’ve been here,” Doc explains, “we’ve had to leave just as we’ve started to build up some interest. This time when interest starts to build, we’ll be around to support it.”

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Missing Link Records was taken to court in Melbourne late last month over their release of the Dead Kennedy’s single, Too Drunk To Fuck’. The magistrate reserved his decision on the charge of obscenity brought against Missing Link; Missing Link defended to charge on the grounds that the song contained powerful social comment and possessed considerable artist merit.

ROADRUNNER was quite chuffed to learn that its review of the single was one of the key planks of the defence.

Hunters and Collectors have finished recording their first album. It will be released on White Label Records sometime in June.

Also set for June release is the follow up to the Birthday Party’s highly acclaimed ‘Prayers Cn Fire’. Titled ‘Junkyard’, it will feature a cover designed by Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth, responsible for the grotesquely styled Hot Rod/Monster TShirts of the mid-sixties. And news from En^and is that Harry Howard, brother of guitarist Roland Howard, is filling in on bass for the still incarcerated Tracey Pew.

And other local albums due out soon include Paui Keii/s looooong delayed ‘Manila’, the Sunnyboys ‘Individuals’ (both on Mushroom) and a mini-L.P. from No Fixed Addrerss on Rough Diamond. The No Fixed Address mini-L.P. is called ‘From My Eyes’, features six of the band’s songs, was produced by David Briggs, and will feature cover art by Palm Islander Aboriginal artist, Johnny Cummins.

Regular Records will be releasing some overseas acts on their new Regular Two label. This follows the announcement of a leasing arrangement with British independent Statik Records. First release on the new label will be last years album

by Yellow Magic Crchestra drummer, Yakihiro Takahashi called ‘Murdered By The Music’. Records from Molly’s fave new band Lunar Twist and African Time will follow shortly after.

INXS are the subject of an intense bidding war among the major record companies at the moment. According to manager Chris Murphy the band parted ways

with their previous label, Deluxe Records, on the 13th February. While the bidding rages, the band’s main song writers, Michael Hutchence Andrew Farriss and Kirk Pengilly are in the middle of an overseas trip, ‘having a look and writing’ according to Murphy. A single from the band ‘One Thing’ produced by Mark Opitz, is in the can and ready to go as soon as a new recording deal is signed, and Murphy is hopeful of having the band’s next album in the shops on September 1st (the first day of spring). . ‘Stay Young’ has just been released as a single in the U.K. and the album ‘Underneath the Colour’ will be coming out there shortly.

The Cheks, the Melbourne based band who signed to Regular Records late last year, have moved to Sydney and changed their name to Deckchairs Overboard.

Their first single for Regular will be released in June, produced by Cameron Allen.

The Riptides, who have been very quiet this year, will also have a new single released on Regular in June. Keyboard player, Russell Parkhouse had to have dental work after being ‘smashed in the face’ by a bouncer at Sydney’s Bayview Tavern recently.

Le Hoodoo Gurus, ‘the best new band in Sydney’ according to some commentators, will have their first single released soon on Phantom Records. The single was produced by Martin Fabyni of Regular Records.

Cne of America’s top rock critics, Lester Bangs, died recently in New York. A preliminary autopsy failed to determine the cause of death, but close friends have said it was unlikely to have been suicide.

Bangs was editor of CREEM magazine for 5 years in the early seventies and was the author of a book on Blondie.

Joe Strummer has gone AWCL from The Ciash on the eve of the release of their new album ‘Combat Rock’, forcing the cancellation of the first half of the band’s British tour. The rest of the band have no idea where Joe is or what he is doing but according to bass player Paul Simeron, ‘I have faith he’ll return when he’s assessed his situation.’

The Rolling Stones are definitely doing a British and European tour this northern summer, and rumours persist that they’ll be heading down under later this year.

PHOTO

Adelaide duo Peak have just released an album of electronic-based music on their own Cement label. It’s the culmination of three years work for Paul Fisher and Rob Parsons, who did the bulk of the recording in Paul’s home studio. The album is only available in Adelaide at the moment, but if it is a success they hope to get major distribution. (Feature article on Peak will appear in our next issue).

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CAPITOL TEEATRE, S Y D

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HORDERN PAVILLION,

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— JODI HOFFMAN

MARIE CUNNINGHAM an outstanding singer from Sydney, requires originai songs for performing and recording.

Prefer melodic with modern feel. No M.O.R., Metal or Folk, thank you.

Write, ring or send cassette to 111 Brooklyn Rd Brooklyn NSW 2253 ph. (02) 4551699

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tour Roadrunner 3

I

H a rris Park is on the other side of nowhere in Sydney’s west. The mud moat surrounding the imposing brick fortress of its Marconi Soccer Club and its uncelebrated location did little to deter the invasion of the New South Wales New Wave Squad of mid 79. The team fought to no avail against the ‘no sandshoes’ entry disqualification, bravely stood offside the RSL types umpiring amongst other things the bar and kicked off to a three-piece outfit featuring a female bassist called The Numbers. Half-time, Flowers did the juke-box routine leaving the creased lurex coated disco babes massaging their built-up soles, wincing at the unfairness of it all, as the squad prepared for the final onslaught of Meccanik Dancing. XTC’s first Australian gig. The opening of the UK/Oz ‘pub’ circuit.

Returning in September 1980, XTC collided with Magazine, accompanied them on a few rounds and pissed off. The time’s right for their return. XTC’s BIG return. ‘English Settlement’ has inhabited the charts and the lifted single, ‘Senses Working Overtime’ is moving up market.

Shadows cast dispertions and last month’s two reports of Andy Partridge’s ‘mysterious’ collapse on’stage in France and then again in Sand Diego before the second of XTC’s U.S. concerts, has thrown doubt on the future of XTC as a viable touring band. “ I was reasonably unwell”, bounced the voice from downtown Swindon. ‘‘Everybody seems to think I’m on my death bed with a selection of oxygen breathing equipm ent. . . but I’m getting better now.” Partridge had gastritis. “ I wasn’t eating and I was falling over through lack of food and stuff, when I didn’t want to eat and all sorts of things like that.”

XTC have “suspended” all performances. “ I came to the equation that everytime I was going on tour my health was suffering” says Partridge. “ If the show itself is going to suffer, you know, because of my ‘other circumstances’, then I thought it was very frustrating actually going out on the road and having to do 99% not very good things to actually doing 1% of enjoyable things which is actually playing the gig.”

It seems that “ health” is not the only reason for XTC’s tour cancellations. Partridge explains, “ I personally don’t like the idea of gigs. I find them very false—the repetition of material that’s been created a long time ago and you’re doing it night after night, probably substandardly as well—there’s lots of kind of fepse showbizzy things tacked onto it that I do find a little difficult to take.”

Does this mean we’ll see the end of XTC as a touring band?

“Possibly. We don’t know.” “ I think we’ll all be much happier if we just work in the studio so I think that’s what we’ll go f o r . . . I feel a little bad that we’ve let people down who have wanted to see us.” (and now that’s cleared up—Yes, drummer Terry Chambers is frolicing on our shores tying nuptial vows.)

A t C emerged in an era of overnight sensations of which there are few successful survivors. Adopting the name in ’75, they began “formulating the kind of music that more or less came to light in ‘White Music’,” their debut album. Guitarist Andy Partridge, bassist Colin Moulding and drummer Terry Chambers, XTC’s nucleus, started playing together in 1973 under such titles as The Helium Kids and Snakes.

The lads are from Swindon, “a modern ghost town”, according to Partridge. “My dad was in the navy and my mum went out and followed him around and I sort of happened to pop out in Malta.” Arriving in England at the ripe old age of three, “The first thing I remember was literally being on the aeroplane and being sick on my father’s new suit.”

Wit and vitality were among the basic ingredients that attracted XTC’s early followers. Interest in the band grew upon their moving to London at the peak of the ’77 punk uprising. Looking back it seems that ‘White Music’ and the second album, ‘Go 2’, both produced by John Leckie received more critical acclaim than en masse acceptance.

“People were saying ‘what is this music?’, ah you know, ‘we’ve never heard anything quite like this before’ and all that kind of thing. But it was obviously more difficult for the public at large to swallow because it was a strange shape to get down, if you know what I mean. It stuck in the throat in some cases. Umm yes, it was obviously a lot more critical than commercial success but that didn’t bother us too much. Obviously in the back of our minds we thought that the first single we ever made would be a smash hit forever and ever, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to, if you’re going to be a little bit different, climb over all sorts of barriers.”

Number four XTC original Barry Andrews left in 1978, dabbled in some solo projects, “took the keyboard chair” in Fripp’s League of Gentlemen and is currently believed to be in a band known as Shriek Back.

“He went because he wrote a lot of songs for ‘Go 2’ and we didn’t think that they were very good . . . I think he felt very frustrated. He had to get a band of his own where he could do his own material and not have to act as a sort of session man or whatever for us . . . “ Dave Gregory, a regular in Swindon’s youth clubs, replaced Andrews. Partridge often saw him playing, thinking “Oh God, I’ll never be that good!” “ Dave’s playing is a lot more rhythmic and sparse whereas Barry’s was arhythmic and a lot more noisier. . . Barry went and took a lot of noise with him and Dave came and brought a little bit of noise in . . . So the only change was a personality change” but it’s all part of XTC’s evolution. ‘Drums and Wires’ saw the recruitment of producer Steve Lillywhite, a more spatial sound, additional rhythmic antics and British Steel’s plans for Nigel.

‘White Music’ had “a lot of nonsense songs on it”, says

4 Roadrunner

Partridge, but by the release of XTC’s fourth album ‘Black Sea’ in 1980, “ I think we were actually becoming interested in the craft of song writing rather than just stringing lots of sounds together because they felt good in a rhythmic sense or they felt good just for the joy of the words.”

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Ir Partridge has indulged outside of XTC and released two dub albums, ‘Go Plus’ and ‘Take Away’.

There was “an experiment” with ‘White Music’ that was never released and no, there’s no plans for an electronic contortion of ‘English Settlement’. “ I thought it was enjoyable to do and quite enjoyable to listen to. I mean it was like borrowing what was going on in other forms of music, especially black music at the time. I thought hell, you can try this approach to our music or to anybody’s music . . . and I wanted to actually use these tools and try a sort of sculpturing process with our music . . . But I think I’ve finally worn out for me what I feel— I can deal with it as a straight forward process. I’m borrowing ideas constantly from those sessions to use on our records. It was kind of like a learning thing, a sort of anatomy lesson that’s taught me how to operate better”.

A long story about a T’shirt somehow springs to mind and I mumble something about The Residents. Andrew Partridge packs up, “My involvement or what? Are they nice people?” “ I quite like some of their things. They gave me the same sort of tingle as the Beatles did in the late sixties with some of their sort of psychedelic things. I couldn’t understand exactly what was going on and it made it more mysterious. Some of The Resident’s things are a bit like that for me. And in fact they are nice people. They have nice eyeballs.” “ I haven’t really been able to say that I’ve loved anything any band has done since I started making music myself. Often when you’re actually doing it, it becomes—you know you pass your, how should I say, apprenticeship, become a wizard and the magic loses its magic. You learn how to make magic rather than just sit back and appreciate other people’s.”

“The only kind of music I find inspiring nowdays or in fact, really over the past couple of years is Baroque Music, funny enough. It seems incredibly structured which is very against what I am (laughing), ‘cause I’m a very loose individual! . . . Bach, Handel, ummm-things from that period. I’m not really well up on it. I just buy a whole lot of Baroque looking records and put them on.”

The entire twenty seconds of Partridge’s “History of Rock and Roll” appeared on Morgan-Fisher’s

‘Miniatures’ album last year. Despite the passion for baroque. Partridge admits that there’s no chance of contributing a sixty second history of classical music.

“No, much longer! It would have to be probably about two minutes spanning several hundred years. Ah no, no chance of anything like that. But I’ve noticed that my writing lately has been getting very folky. I can’t explain this. It’s possibly listening to all this baroque music and quiet tinkly music in general. Some of the songs I’m coming up with are sounding very folky and I don’t know why.”

Now watch it, you’ve jumped ahead four questions, “(laughing) Sorry, I’ll slow my tongue down.”

‘E n g lish Settlement’ is XTC’s fifth LP. Originally distributed as a limited edition double package (and for reasons obvious to some decision making body somewhere) it’s now down to a single album. Hugh Padgham, ‘Settlement’s’ producer also worked with Split Enz on ‘Time and Tide’. “Oh I haven’t heard the album” pipes up the Swindon end of the line, “What’s it like?”

“Their middle bit of career is missing for me. I know that they were creating a bit of a splash here in England when they first came over with their kind of very German expressionist looking make-up and stuff in ’76 and ’77. Then the middle period’s missing and I caught up with them again, I can’t remember the record, it was the album with ‘Shark Attack’ and ummm . . .

True Colours?

“Yes, that’s right. I sort of came back to them then.”

That’s a very poppy album, but ‘Time and Tide’ is more, aughhh, folkish. “ More what?”

More folkish. They’ve three really strong folk songs. “ I’m sorry, I thought you said thuggish. I thought ooooo, quite a change!”

No, folk. And an obsession with things nautical.

“Their Black Sea, do you think?”

Possibly it could be, yeah. Neurosis in disguise (mucho hysteria). g e t t in g back to ‘English Settlement’, let’s talk about this folk thing. The other day a friend of mine walked in with a copy under his arm saying that it was the best

folk record released in a decade. "What tnglish Settlement’?” astonished Andy asks, “Well, that’s quite a compliment!” “ I don’t like handles or drawers or labels but I think our music’s falling into singing little songs about what’s happening now. About corner shops and what’s going on and I don’t know. Just like four roaming minstrals or something. It’s getting that quality back again.”

‘Senses Working Overtime’ is “a joy of life song . . .

Whether you’re guilty or innocent you get a good night’s sleep out of it.” Andy’s no thug, “ I was a very wimpy child who got more of his own way with tantrums.” ‘No Thugs in Our House’ is about “ parents who will never admit that their children can be the most awful children in the world and how they’ll do anything to protect them, even if they’re literally murdering people.”

‘Melt The Guns’ seems to have a direct reference to the American gun licencing laws, or lack of them. “ I read a comic when I was an early teenager and there was a little three page story in it about somebody who had the plague. And the police were chasing him all round the city putting out warnings—don’t get in contact with this person, he’s got the plague. Don’t go anywhere near him—they finally cornered this plague carrier and the medics went up to him and removed the plague . from him, from inside his pocket and it was a gun.”

With this talk of weapons, how do you feel about the Falklands/Malvinas situation? “ It’s exciting because I’ve never lived through this sort of nationalism before going on in Britain. Now that’s exciting but as I say, it would be much healthier if it was a sporting fixture. No, come to think of it there’d probably be more people killed if it were a football match. Ah, it is exciting on a basic animal level. But it is a shame that people do have to be killed . . . it’s just that we feel that we’ve been attacked by robbers which I know is a yety basic kind of th o u g h t. . . People in Britain are taking it quite calmly, because that’s our national character, but evidently they’re getting very knife between the teeth about the whole thing.”

The Union Jack is folded away. Onto another song.

‘Leisure’. “Go on, you fire away . . . I wish people would get it into their heads and stop moaning about unemployment and get on and be positive . . . if anything the hard work has to be put in now, not to finding a job, but to enjoying leisure time and making it constructive . . . People are just absolutely blind to the fact that we’re living through an industrial revolution.”

‘It’s Nearly Africa’ was written in 1975, “ I found it in a book recently and thought, yes I like that’ and sort of pulled it together and finished it off. Originally it was called ‘It’s Primitive Man’ . . . People should slow down and realise their humaness a bit more because if they let machines wind them up or let gadgets or technology depress them then disaster is on its way . .

It’s a song exulting humaness really.”

‘Down in the cockpit’? “ Everyone keeps asking me about this” laughs Partridge. “ . . . There’s a lot of pushing and pulling and being up and being down— and the word play . . . it’s not an anti-man or an anti­ woman song. It’s just kind of a see-saw of the sexes . ; One of the lines from ‘Knuckle Down’ is ‘one bright morning the world might end with a big bang’. A chapter, according to Mr Partridge of “How I learnt to stop worrying about the bomb . . . Well I’m not prepared for it but I’m not ruling out the fact that it could happen. If it does happen little Andy from Swindon is not going to change it. Why worry? . . . But if it does all go bang and there is a hereafter. I’d hate people to sit around thinking, ‘hell, we missed our chance’.”

S vA*"

THE SENSATIONAL ALBUM FROM

LEAGUE FEATURES THEIR NEW SINGLE

O PEN YO U R H EAR T

O o m e critics believe the release of ‘English Settlement’ has made XTC more accessible. “We never built it to be commercially successful. We just did it and it came out like that. If people are saying that they are finding it easier to play than any other record then that’s just general public tastes changing . . . We haven’t said ‘alright lads let’s chuck away the electric guitars and make it all sort of nice and tinkly so that people can appreciate it and get into it more.”

“We tried acoustic guitars, twelve strings, more electronic drums, saxophones, keyboards. We just wanted to side-step away from all the things we’d used constantly, you know, up till ‘Black Sea’. We wanted a change of underwear, if you see what I mean.”

“We used ambience a lot, of the particular live variety which you get from stone rooms and things. We might have to move away from that because it’s becoming a very copied sound. Especially you know, the drum sound. So it’s time we pulled up and walked away.”

Frustrated by the fact that XTC has not been as widely recognised as perhaps it should have been over the past seven years, Andy Partridge concedes, “ I like to think of us as being more influenctial to other people.

More a sideline of what other people can be given permission to try.”

“Yeah, more in terms of other musicians being influenced. I know it’s been said that we’re more a musician’s group which is ludicrous because none of us are really musically talented! We’re all pretty basic, I can assure you, as far as musical education goes. But yes, I would have liked the music to be more accepted by the public, but then again like we said earlier on in the chat, that it was different to start with. You know you can’t expect people to swallow something that’s oddly shaped easily, it’s going to stick as it goes down and they’re going to want to know what the hell they’re taking down. But tastes do change and I often think we’re going to be one of those bands that when we do eventually split up or whatever in time to come, people are going to look back and say, ‘God, weren’t they good! If only they’d stayed together’ and all this kind of thing. So I’m not too sure where we lie in terms of public appreciation. I know we do have very ardent fans who would give anything for us, but I do feel frustrated at times that we’re not number one for always and forever. Amen.”

AUSTRALIAN TOUR MAY 1982 1 8 - B R IS B A N E -F E S T IV A L HALL 2 0 & 2 1 -M E L B O U R N E -P A L A IS THEATRE 2 3 -A D E L A ID E -T H E B A R T O N TO W N HALL 2 5 -S Y D N E Y -C A P IT O L THEATRE 2 6 -S Y D N E Y -H O R D E R N PAVILION .

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Roadrunner 5 ■ ii

J

The Last Trance And Dance Band Craig N. Pearce goes gaga over the Go-Betweens One beautiful, sun soaked, thought shocked afternoon in between the coffee and the cinnamon scrolls and the giggling reminiscences of the previous evening, the bliss-full tones of the Go Betweens are ringing endlessly in my ears. Their songs roll delicately around some sinister rhythm motifs — stopping, starting, capturing a moment then moving on armed with some indefinable essence and a warm, glowing smile.

The Go Betweens are a serious, rollicking goodtime, an endless escapist education. They eat Italian sponge, drink Bisleri mineral water and insist on using red and white checked table cloths.

Between the daily bread and butter of what constitutes our daily radio diet the Go Betweens come across as croissants or, to get away with this pedagogic infatuation with food, real stars that deserve some infantile but still arousing adulation to give them recognition for their floss-spun pop.

Melody is a way of life, an indication of life’s somnabulent beauty to this three, this taut and wholesome trio, Rob, Lindy and Grant.

Give me my life, my heart and my Go Betweens record — surely enough to give momentary satisfaction to the most sententious of 9 to 5 clones this colony is populated with. Go Betweens, Slim Dusty and Dave Mason — MY Australia.

MY INTERVIEW WITH THE GO BETWEENS began in Grant’s flat just around the corner from my like minded single fellow’s apartment and from there it carried over into a jovial dinner of pizza, beer and wine followed by Coffee, port and some other hallucinogenic device. Rather a good time was had by all during which I think we all learnt something. Hopefully you’ll all learn something too. The only slur on the evening was having to put up with that monster of a girl Kirstie Grant, on Nightmoves, doing one of her ridiculously inane one woman revues with assorted celebs which mind numbingly masquerades as an interview.

All three of the band are warm and willing to communicate even the tenderest thoughts of their hearts and their music; though it is funny to see Lindy, the most giving of the three, trying to pull Grant, the one who finds it the most difficult to speak personally, out of his uncomfortable barrier of self-protection and speak unhindered about his desires and motivations.

The Go Betweens totally engrossed me with their candor and well reasoned sense of spirit and honesty.

They believe in themselves and offer acutely touching explanations of their viewpoints. Go Betweens’ music isn’t a perfect manifestation of their ideals but it runs closely behind this.

Go Betweens in the last year have gone through extensive growth. Such a strong growth, in fact, that it could easily be construed as a change in direction or altering of ideals. Firstly there was the dewy-sweet and fizzy stage, then came the anarchic but humble and more ghostly collages of rhythm and barely present jazz feels into the music, which finally led to their present sound — one of a more rock sure and steady basis, ‘brighter and tougher’ as Grant put it, “ but I don’t think the songs are losing out as a result of that. I still think fragility is there, its just more assertively put”.

Lindy: “When the band takes more chances is when we become more fragile, when we play a little differently — spontaneously”.

Robert; “ I really think we’re at the end of a particular era in the band. Since we’ve come to Melbourne we’ve been predominantly a live band, and it shows”.

It seems there’s always been a strong acoustic feel to their songs.

Grant: “We don’t try and incorporate acoustic sounds into the songs. Earlier on we did. Robert plays semi — acoustic on stage which is fleshier, but he and I work out the songs on acoustic guitar together. Then we go to rehearsals with almost the finished thing. We try and keep the finished version as close as possible to the birth of it.” .

Lindy: “ I try and talk them into, and they do, practise when I’m around so I can be building an idea up for the rhythm.”

Grant’s bass, in contrast to a lot of modern day bass playing, is one which works on melody rather than rhythm, leaving that to Lindy and, to a limited extent, Robert to work upon . . .

Grant: “Yeah, that just came about from not knowing anything about, when I first learnt, the right way to play bass. It just came naturally to play the melody.” A result of never having a permanent drummer with which to form a reliable rhythm section, as well. Answering the question why has Lindy stayed whereas all the others have left simply raises the cry, “ Because SHE’S a Go Between!”. (They have this habit of dividing people into two categories. Go Betweens and non — Go Betweens.

Where I fall I’m not sure — they never told me — but I know in which category I’d rather be seen.)

Robert: “ I don’t think we’re a terribly rhythmic band.

There’s a skirting melodic feel going on all the time.

You can get bogged down in rhythm really easily — which is based a lot on repetition and I like things that only happen once in a song.”

Just like the Go Betweens are a band that only happen once in a lifetime.

Lindy: “ I think the strength of our songs lies in the melody and in the words”.

Robert: “ I think it lies in the fact that they’re songs, in the sense that there are people writing songs which are just a collection of ideas. I think our songs have a classical sense”.

Do their songs make them happy?

Grant; “No, I don’t like listening to us. I know I’m very happy and proud of them but the further away a record that I’ve made is the more I like it”.

Lindy: “Last night I played the album and danced and sang and really enjoyed it — I danced myself silly.

Some of the songs on it are happy and some of them are horribly sad”.

PHOTO — JEREMY BANNISTER

6 Roadainner

1 What about points of reference? Influence?

Inspiration?

Robert: “New York 1975-77 is really important for me.

‘Little Johnny Jewel’ by television, ‘Piss Factory’ by Patti Smith and ‘Love Goes to Building On Fire’ by the Talking Heads. The whole New York scene in fact, it just came out of nowhere, that whole time era and the fact that it was a scene which I think is important. And the Go Betweens to an extent came out of that period”.

Grant: “Those songs Robert mentioned, and I was surprised he didn’t mention Bob Dylan, which was a strong connecting point between the both of us. We had sentiments with bands like The Byrds and The Band but when it came to doing songs that we had it just didn’t come down to that. We felt closer to Television, Talking Heads and Modern Lovers”.

Lindy: “Anarchy in The UK”, Sex Pistols and the 77 thing meant a whole lot to me. The Slits, Gang of Four and drummers. As the years have gone by so have the drummers that have influenced me; from Robert Gotobed from Wire then to Jeffery Wegener from the Clowns now”.

Incorporated into the style of the Go Betweens are the boys’ fascination with building images and Lindy’s unalterable intuition. These two factors clash and comfort each other — giving a sound both brash and subtle. The boys like Lindy.

Robert: “As far as Lindy playing in the group is concerned for me, I never saw the group as all-male because we’re not a masculine group; although its very obvious to feel that way it’s better to have a woman in the group. I still think the best group of people is a threesome, a trio, either two men and a woman or vice versa. I think that’s the perfect combination. Not only musically for us to explore but also personally — the chemistry of three people is very important.

“I think its really important, especially in Australia, that we’re seen as feminine in opposition to the right across the boards masculinity of Australian bands. But you see, I see the Birthday Party as feminine too . . .”

That’ll be news to the masses. But to be fair, Robert admits that’s only because he knows them. Still it’s there if you look for it even if you aren’t Nick Cave’s friend.

Robert: “As a band I don’t think we’re wholly musicians, more peop/ewho play instruments that have certain ideas and enjoy playing. We are a combination of intuition and planned, set ideas whereas I think most rock ‘n’ roll bands worry about little technicalities to do with their instruments that don’t warrant worrying about because they’re not doing anything anyway”.

Anyway, how often do they revaluate their music?

Robert: “ Personally, between ourselves, all the time”.

Do they ever doubt its worth?

“Never”.

Lindy: “ No. Never. I’ve had doubts about myself but not the music”.

Grant: “ I have doubts. But I don’t think its music that will go under — like most of the rock music made in the last 25 years will”.

Is it inherently valuable?

“Yes, because I don’t think we’re disposable. I think

there’s a spirit there that can’t be denied. We don’t play easy music, that’s easily connectable to others’ experiences. It makes people think; there’s that sense of amazement in our songs”.

Lindy: “ I would hope it would make it worthwhile for people to see the strength of our relationships and therefore the strength of our music, which I think is synonomous. Its something . . . rare today, that there is such trust”.

Robert: “There’s eight or ten of our songs that are just great and wherever I go or wherever I walk its like having little jewels . . . I just know they’re fantastic and its a possession of worth that I can carry with me”.

It must be good to know that they’ve got that worth and can offer it to people?

Robert: “Yeah!”.

Grant: “ It’s thrilling! You just listen to every other band and they’ve just got one song and I know it must sound incredibly arrogant but Robert’s right”.

Robert: “That’s why we’re going overseas — to play and display” . . . and to Share!

What do their songs discuss?

Lindy: “ Personal relationships, but I’m not the songw riter. . .” eyes are averted. “ I never know what’s happening in their (referring to the two boys to her right) lives but I’ve got my own ideas and its just about how people can relate and trust each other when everything is so against that”.

Robert: “ I enjoy piecing things together, and I think and hope they’re a succession of good lines. Like a comedian, just a laugh every line, every line’s a winner — in terms of quality not topicality”.

Grant meanwhile, at the gentle insistence of Lindy, is attempting, out of some internally convoluted of expressing the things one finds hard to do, is trying to touch on his songs without giving light to himself too much.

Are they out to achieve anything as the Go Betweens?

Robert: “Only immortality”.

Only? Well . . . OK, speaking of which . . .

Grant: “ . . . for everything we do to move people and if in doing that we can travel, which is important to the band and not have to grovel for food as well as keeping relatively warm then that’s all . . . for the time being.”

Apart from agreeing with Grant, Lindy has one ambition . . . “ I really, DESPERATELY, want to see girls play rock and roll. Its the only way it will survive. I don’t mean girl bands, but boys and girls. I think its disgusting that for 25 years now men have held such positions of prestige in the community”.

Why is the continuance of rock and roll important? “ Because its the only way youth can communicate and in that communication rebel against the mainstream. Rock and roll is the only form of art youth connects with”. Onwards and into an argument between the four of us on the subject of rock as an ostensible vehicle of change and a medium for relaying what the youth of this world has to say. Basically we agreed it is the most available form to the young to effect that change and transmit and transform that communication but, as it stands and as Grant said.

Music from the soon to be released motion picture starr

“The idea of Rock’n’roll as rebellion is virtually spent. If it was going to happen someone would’ve done it by now”.

Do they ever think being in a pop band is frivolous?

Grant: “Occasionally, when I see injustice. But it isn’t, because of certain notions people can get from our music . . . notions like cruelty is terrible, concern for other people and passion and emotions are in the music and if people listen to the lyrics and the music and see us it can be therapeutic in way or it may be a little bit inspiring. It may make them think in a different frame work to the one they came along with. I don’t know . . . it sounds incredibly pious but I think in small way we can do things to redress the terrible things that I see in this world”.

Do they think romance is involved in their songs?

Lindy: “Yeah, I think they’re incredibly romantic. (In the background of the tape I can hear Grant sniggering to Robert — “Craig must have a strange love life” which is something only those who know can bear witness and raucous laughter to.)

“When I first started playing with them I used to think they were incredibly naive, romantic young boys. In the last year and a half they’ve toughened up quite considerably but they’re still desperately looking for anything beautiful”.

Well, what are they personally looking for? “ I just want to be a great drummer”.

Robert: “We just want to travel while we can with the band . . . and love each other because it (the band) is so temporary. I mean, we’ll be life long friends . . . always”.

Lindy: “And we’ll keep playing until we become bored musically, because we won’t ever stop liking each other. That just doesn’t happen, though I can’t entertain the possibility of being in a band where we didn’t like one another”.

They’re such an hilarious, scintillating trio, nearly happy go lucky but too earnest, too determined to display themselves in the best light to be totally like that.

On the surface, at times, one might think the involvement that they personally have in their own art isn’t that strong yet it IS always there, dwelling in the background and waiting to scream out. Like later in the night after the interview I suggested that they might be a little intense about the band.

“WHAT!” screamed Lindy as she jumped from the floor and simultaneously rolled her eyes in despair, “ INTENSE!!? Are you kidding! I’m going to hit you — what do you think. The band is all we have. It’s what we are!” Cue death by flailing fists at the hands of my second favourite drummer.

Does their music protest against anything?

Grant: “Yes. We don’t play passive music at all that can be digested as entertainment. I really think out of most of the bands I’ve heard we’re a very violent band”.

An east coast tour during April and the release of an album, both titled ‘Send Me A Lullaby’, will come into effect before the band’s departure to England — to newer pastures where they will lay their blessed seeds of integrity. Both tour and album, I assure you, will be the silver lining to every cloud.

Hazeihurst & Colin Friels

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Roadrunner

7

Rdadrunner 9

FALKLANDS MANOUEVRES THE DARK

STANLEY

FALKLAND ISLANDS

Andy McClusky gets all internationalist about Britain’s Finest Hour. Donald Robertson suggests bombing Argentina back into the Stone Age. ANDY McCLUSKY AND PAUL HUMPHRIES

“ I’m something of an internationalist. In the States I was paying more than a passing interest to the flight of the Space Shuttle and I was really sickened to see that fucking idiot of an astronaut, when they landed, saying how wonderful it was that America had flown the flag around. How wonderful it was that America was leading the world again. I just hate any kind of nationalism”.

McClusky readily admits that his attitudes are in part derived from the travelling he’s done with OMITD. The band are very popular throughout Europe and McClusky moans that their most recent tour of America was ‘successful enough to make us go back there again’. He doesn’t sound totally enamoured with the idea.

‘Well, I’m not a particular fan of American culture. It does drive me rather crazy when I’m there.

I don’t think we’re ever going to get to the people who just sit at home and w a itio be hit over the head by the radio and the TV. We don’t get any media coverage at all”.

OMITD are still based in the Wirral, a strip of land across the Mersey from Liverpool and close to the Welsh border.

McClusky describes it as nice and semi-ruraf, near the sea, very relaxed and boring.

They’ve got their own studio, rehearsal room, office, ‘a right little cottage industry’ in fact.’

One interview I do recall with McClusky and, oops haven’t I mentioned .him yet?, co-founder Paul Humphries, soon after they had their first taste of major success, gave an overriding impression of shock at their rapid and far reaching rise to popularity. Was that accurate, I asked?

Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark are still pretty much a cult phenomenon in this country, although in their British homeland their last album, ‘A rchitecture and Morality’ has been in the charts for nearly six months and has steadily and stealthily kept pace with fellow Virgin stablemates Human League’s block­ busting ‘Dare’.

‘We’re not terribly flamboyant people’ laughs OMITD’s Andy McClusky over the phone from London. ‘We don’t want to be personalities. We don’t want to be stars; we don’t want to be famous for being famous.

Unfortunately this element of the star syndrome is happening all over again. And it’s a real shame, ’cos we could all live without them. Just because I’ve been on TV doesn’t mean that 1 •cfc)fl’t have to go to the toilet’.

^ DcMKinifiner

I

Because of OMITD’s insistence on a low media profile, and the difficulty of tagging their music as other than intelligent, electronic and vaguely moody, I was at a bit of a loss in thinking up questions before the interview. I decided to let happen what would and ask MoClusky what he’d like to talk about.

‘OK, what’s the Australian interpretation of this Falklands thing?’

Well, my personal feeling is that you should bomb them back into the Stone Agp. ‘That’s very patriotic!’ laughs McClusky. I attempt to explain that Australia is still very much colonial in attitude and people still identify with the Crown, and Governor Generals and Motherland, etc. etc. What about your view from over there?

‘We have difficulty in that we’ve just returned from the States— the day before Argentina invaded. The thing I find most upsetting is all the patriotism. I mean as long as the Argentinians respect and look after the people there, I don’t think it matters whose bloody flag is flying over the island.

That’s my personal angle. I’m anti-patriotism, I absolutely despise countries with silly little boundaries. I’m upset about people who are going around saying its a ‘blow to our national pride’. As long as noone’s getting shot, murdered and killed or having their lifestyle badly fucked around . . .”

I should perhaps point out that my conversation with McClusky occurred iq mid April before the British bon|bers went in.

Pray continue Andy, this is quite interesting.

‘Absolutely’, replies McClusky.

‘Being a commercial success couldn’t have been further from our minds when we started. If we’d been interested in being a commercial band the last thing we’d have done would be to start a two piece band with a tape recorder playing synthesizer songs. With the ridiculous name of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark it seemed like the ultimate no hope idea.

‘It certainly was quite amazing to us when hundreds of thousands of people started buying our recors. In less than two years from when we started.’

Outwardly, and from what you’ve been saying, such massive and unexpected success doesn’t really seem to have affected you too much though. “ It’s been a bit strange, but I think the fact that we have maintained in the back of our minds this feeling that, it’s f nothing we've done, its just the ^ c h a n o ^ jn ^ t^ ^

has helped us cope. And basically we don’t take it seriously.

“OK—people want to buy our records. It doesn’t mean that the record is any better than any other. It allows us to continue to do what we want to do, expand our ideas and things. But thafb as far as it goes.

“We never aimed ourselves at the Rolls Royces and those horrible mansions. Now that we have some money, that’s not what we’re rushing out to buy.

We’d rather invest our money in our studio”.

OMITD’s music is intelligently constructed atmospheres, moody melodies, sweeping sounds. Music that wafts through you rather than hits you between the eyes. I ask McClusky if he feels OMITD’s music functions purely on an entertainment level.

“Well, to this point, in a sense, it has been self-indulgent, in that its been us learning things and doing things for ourselves.

We’re beginning to be aware . . . we feel an element of responsibility because we have the potential to communicate with a lot of people. Then again would it be responsible of us to start voicing our personal opinions on people? I don’t know. It’s something we’re putting a lot of thought into at the moment. “ It’s amazing having the facility to go to the States and to go round Europe and see things and meet people. There’s a large element of learning involved. We’re really very fortunate”.

There have been rumours floating around that you’ll be gracing our shores later this year. Any truth in them?

“Unfortunately I don’t think so.

We’ve spent the last 6 months touring, and to be perfectly honest, we don’t want to for quite awhile. We’ve become a little unhappy with our methods of presenting ourselves on stage. The trouble is, that you start out with a good idea, but 6 months later, you’ve done it.

And I think it would be a bit harrowing for us to try and come to Australia playing the same songs and using the same stage methods, that we’ve just exhausted ourselves doing over the last 6 months. We’ve got better things to do than to play any more gigs just at the moment. Its a shame, cos we’ve never been to Australia before, so we’d like to get out there. If only briefly. Get to see the place. But unfortunately, it does seem that we might not get there for awhile.

Oh well. I’m sure it will still be here whfm you do decide to come.

"I suppose so, unless Brazil invades”, cracks McClusky.

Or Chile, I think.

It’s as if they have just crept up on everybody, and waited for the right moment to unleash themselves onto the world.

The band has just completed filming in Sri Lanka for their new album “Rio”.

Although their first self-titled album has proved particularly popular, Simon reckons “Rio knocks spots off it”. John was responsible for choosing the name.

Why Rio? Well, for a start he likes the name. And in his own words, “there's something cosmopolitan, something international about it.” The cover of the album was done by an artist who does a lot of illustrations for Playboy magazine — and — he’s their favourite artist. While in Sri Lanka, two video’s were completed.

One of the highlights of the trip was, undoubtedly, when they were being filmed riding elephants. Roger’s elephant (male) suddenly got an obviously deep emotional feeling for another elephant (female), and, without warning, charged towards its companion, (Roger on it’s back), and took up it’s business, much to the surprise of everyone watching.

didn’t expect fame really, but I wanted it, and I thought I ’d be more changed by it.

Sort of like a rock star.” — Simon LeBon. “/

The setting — seventh floor of Adelaide’s Oberoi Hotel. The occasion — Duran Duran’s press conference.

The view — admirable.

One by one, the band emerged from the lift. First, a smiling Andy Taylor, closely followed by Roger Taylor and Nick ‘Pretty Boy’ Rhodes. Every head turned for Singer Simon LeBon’s entrance, before he was whisked off to a corner for an exclusive chat. Last to arrive was bass heart throb, John Taylor, looking tired. Despite lingering jet lag, all five mingled with the assembled press easily and proved more than friendly.

“Other bands have just fell by the wayside, and we’re still happening. Ifs quite pleasureable to see them just killing away.” — Andy Taylor.

D u r a n Duran are currently enjoying the fruits of success. They arrived in Australia last month for a sell-out tour, and for a band that has only been together since 1980, that’s not a bad feat in itself. They had been around before, mainly doing pub gigs, but the line up that now stands was only completed when Simon LeBon joined in June of that year.

I’m inclined to think that their popularity is due mainly to the fact that they look good, in person, and on stage, but they say that people like them for their music. One thing has to be said for them though — they have certainly outlived a lot of other bands from around their time. According to Andy, “Other bands have just fell by the wayside, and we’re still,happening. Getting bigger all the time — and better. So it’s really quite funny, cause we’ve just watched them blow it. It’s quite pleasurable to see them just falling away.”

Maybe a little harsh, or so the other members thought, but, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.

Duran Duran attribute their survival to the fact that they have never been number 1 anywhere — ttiey’ve always had to play second fiddle to somebody else. So, there wasn’t a great deal expected of them. One of the few times I got a serious answer from Simon LeBon, was when I asked him if he ever expected the fame that Duran Duran have received. Pausing for a moment, Simon explained, “ I didn’t expect this really, but I wanted it, and I thought I’d be more changed by it. That I’d be arrogant and a bit nasty. Sort of like a rock star.” John Taylor joined in to say that he did expect it, but not as quickly.

“If you can’t be yourself, then Its not worth it.” w o h n Taylor was very pleased with the outcome of the video’s that they completed. Duran Duran have managed to come up with striking filmclips, right from their first hit single, “ Planet Earth”.

Although according to John, “the band couldn’t relate to that clip at all, because it wasn’t natural — and if you can’t be yourself, then it’s not worth it”. Since Planet Earth, there has been ‘Careless Memories’, ‘Girls on Film’, and most recently ‘My Own Way’. ‘Girls on Film’ was a successful single, but the filmclip was banned from T.V. everywhere. For those who managed to catch a glimpse of the extended version of the video, it’s quite easy to understand why. I asked Simon if he thought the film clip was in “good taste”. “ I don’t think it’s tastefully done, it’s very out of taste”. As he was saying this, I began to wonder why they had ever bothered to make the clip at all, when he continued, “we knew that there were things in it that people weren’t going to like, but it’s what we wanted to do. I mean — it’s not a blue movie”. It certainly got them more recognised than they already are, if that’s what they set out to achieve.

Or maybe it was just their way of trying to expand on the group as a whole. We’ll never know.

Jodi Hoffmann finds Duran Duran to be five nice Birmingham boys who hate Spandau Ballet. Read on for further surprises.

John — It’s very difficult to judge it naturally, because when you go somewhere and you’re popular, you get taken to places and treated well. It’s difficult to judge it, because you don’t see the real, down to earth side of what it’s all about. All that has surprised me so far is the people. I didn’t know how to expect them to be. Overall, everything about Australia has been terribly different to what I thought. It’s a lot more sophisticated and a lot more progressed.

That’s what I think. If I were a normal sort of tourist, I’d probably find the same sort of thing.

“Australia — Its a lot more sophisticated and a lot more progressed. If I were a normal sort of tourist, I’d probably find the same thing.”

A delaide was the first Australian

concert for Duran Duran. Sitting opposite John and Simon, I couldn’t help but ask the commonly asked question. “ Before you came here, what did you expect Australia to be like?” Simon — Well, of course we expect kangaroos. We wanted to see some, but I think we’ve got to the point now where we do so much travelling, that your learn not to expect anything. Because you’re always surprised. It’s the places that you have the least expectations of. that turn.out the best.

“Fashion isn’t part o f our jobs, its part of our lives, and always has been.” » ou only have to look at Duran Duran to realize that fashion seems to play a large part in what they do.

Discussing fashion, Simon said that they have their own clothes designer. But he went on to assure me “fashion isn’t part of our job — it’s part of our lives and always has been. We don’t hand someone 200 quid and say, — design me something.

Fashion is for the people who have got a lot of money and no time. They need to be told.” Hearing this brought to mind bands such as Spandau Ballet, and the very short-lived Adam And The Ants. I asked Simon what he thought about people comparing Duran Duran with Spandau Ballet. The reaction wasn’t quite what I expected. “People started comparing us about a year ago, and we’re nothing like them. They are a bunch of creeps!” Well, I was certainly interested now, and asked Simon to continue. “ I don’t hate anything about them. I’m just very disappointed, because.around the time when “Chant Number 1” came out, it

was one of the best songs of it’s own time. And ever since then, they have just gone downhill. And they started coming up with comments like “We-think style and fashion are more important than music.

Actually there has always been a running battle between ourselves and Spandau Ballet. In fact, we’ve never really met them.”

Before parting, I had one last question.

“What does the future hold for Duran Duran. Do you see yourself going on for another ten years?” After a long significant pause, Simon began by saying “ I think we have a long way to go. I’m not a prophet and I don’t believe in fate, I believe in chance. I think that if we are sensible, and if we are strong, we have got a very long road ahead of us.” John cut in. “ I think people will be very surprised at how big the band can be. I’m not the most over-confident or egotistical person in the world, but I do think that the band can make it. But it’s not just gonna happen, ’ we have to make it happen. You’ve got to keep up to people’s expectations, and also up to your own expectations.”

Well, they’ve certainly done all of the right things up to now, and I don’t see Duran Duran suddenly vanishing off of the side of the Earth, — not for awhile anyway.

The five-piece band certainly put on a good show for their young crowd later that night at Thebarton Town Hall. They were backed up by Australian band. The Numbers, who did an excellent set. Duran Duran hit an Australian stage at last, and it was a show worth waiting for. All the favourites were there, and the boys were obviously having a fun time up on stage.

In parts, they perhaps lacked professionalism, but they made up for it with energy and enthusiasm. Simon seemed genuinely moved by the crowd’s response, both guitarists gave their all, Roger’s drumming was something not to be missed and Nick on keyboards completed a great night’s entertainment.

PHOTOS —

Roadrunner 9

CHIC TREAT When the dust finally settles on disco and music fans take a close look at the phenomenon more dispassionately, having finally shaken off the “disco sucks” and “death to disco” slogans, they just might find themselves reappraising this particular type of music. For black Americans who “invented” the form, no stigma was ever attached to disco because it was merely one more step in the development of their music which, from its earliest days as rural blues, gospel and ragtime, has constantly mutated. Black music has provided the basis for most jazz as well as what we now call rock and roll — a rich musical pool frequently plundered by whites and turned into a lucrative business that rarely includes those who had the initial inspiration. Disco was no exception, but by the seventies, the black population in the U.S. was large enough (and wealthy enough) to support its own music financially, and some of it was just so good that even whites had started to buy it. (This is not to overlook previous “cross-over” successes like Chuck Berry and the whole Motown stable.)

In Australia, where one would expect that neither the white population nor the tiny, poverty stricken black population would identify strongly with black, urban, American music, sales of all but the most popular disco acts have been small. Donna Summer is far and away the most successful with Chic and Sister Sledge having had a handful of hits between them. Outfits like the Jacksons and Labelle, although not strictly disco acts, have been big sellers. Most consistent of the white disco acts, has to be the Bee Gees. The problem is, as with all musical forms, the music is only one element (and often not the most

10 Roadmnner

important one) in any listener’s response. Music is like a haircut or a pair of trousers. What you chose says a lot about who you are. So many Aussie music fans, regarding themselves as rock fans, did not see beyond the successful, glossy veneer of disco before they joined the chorus of death to disco-ers. In contrast with such supposedly “street” movements as punk, disco was just too slick, it made too much money. Who wanted to identify with a prat like Freddie Mercury when you could have Johnny Rotten as your role model? Or even Robert Plant?

So, blinded by cliches, lifestyle considerations and (certainly in the grossest sense) racism, disco was dismissed. Often by the same people who would talk with warmth about Otis Redding or the Motown roster of stars — precursors of disco. Thus they passed up the chance to dance — an option presented by disco’s emphasis on the rhythmic possibilities of music — in favour of yet another round of excrutiating guitar solos.

These people had to wait until black music was again passed through the white filter, bleached this time by the British. I guess it must say something about the good taste of the British (or their cultural imperialism) that they have often been the ones to take black American forms and, having whitewashed them, sold them back to the white Americans who remain ignorant or afraid of the musical richness lurking beyond the colour bar. This time around it’s Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, Heaven 17 and the Human League who are peddling disco rhythms, often tarted up with electronic effects.

Needless to say, the days of “disco” as a saleable commodity are long over, not at all because of the shrill cries of “disco sucks”, but because, as a fashion, it had been milked of all it could give by the businessmen, and, as a part of the continuum of black music in this country, it had mutated, moved on. Many of those associated with it have fallen by the wayside, not, however, the smartest and most brilliant outfit to have come from New York. I refer, of

course, to Chic, and more specifically to Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards who wrote, produced, and played on the series of number one hits that kicked off in 1977 with Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah). These two guys, graduates of Taft High School in the Bronx, started off gigging around the small clubs of New York city. Surprisingly, their strongest influences came from white mainstream rock and roll (which did, at least, include one black guitar superstar — Jimi Hendrix) and their first musical intentions were to form a black band that played rock (then, as now, the exception ratherthan the rule). Few blacks manage to “cross over” and find a large white audience by playing rock. Recent contenders. Prince and Rick James, still have a way to go before they reach the heights scaled by Hendrix.

Chic’s debut album went gold, yielding yet another hit single. Everybody Dance. What had started as basically a studio operation then had to take to the road. Vocalists Luci Martin and Alfa Anderson, and drummer Tony Thompson joined Edwards and Rodgers to become the nucleus of the band, and Chic built quite a reputation as a hot live act. The next single, in late ’78, Le Freak, broke the band world wide and sold over four million copies, making it the biggest selling single in the history of the WEA record organisation. C’Est Chic, the album that featured Le Freak, sold two million copies in the U.S. alone and was followed by yet another platinum album, Risque, which contained the single Good Times, as well as a couple of others which chased it up the charts.

It seemed the Rodgers/Edwards combo could do no wrong and other acts clamoured for collaboration, hoping some of that magical touch would rub off on their own work. The Chicmeisters worked with Sister Sledge, Sheila B. and Devotion, and wrote and produced Diana Ross’ biggest selling album, Diana, which contained the monster hit singles Upside Down and I'm Coming Out. Chic also found time to put out another LP of their own. Real People, and then started work with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on Koo Koo, an idea which looked great on paper, but which turned out to be a regular stiff when it hit the streets.

Seems to have confused fans of both parties.

Then, in late ’81, came Take It Off, a new Chic offering in which they made a good case for the existence of life after disco. Although Edwards’ distinctive, meaty bass lines and Thompson’s authoritative drumming still kept the whole thing together, Rodgers’ guitar got a bigger share of the mix, the sweet, exhilarating strings were replaced by snappy brass and there is more emphasis on solo singing.

In short, it is terrific, retaining all the finely tuned funk of their former hits, but putting it in a leaner, modern framework.

After almost two years of other people’s projects, with little time for touring. Take It Off was just different enough from earlier Chic stuff to throw all but hard-core Chic fans.

And it very quickly became obvious to Rodgers and Edwards that a little live work was needed to grease this one up the charts. So it happened that one very wet New York night (you know it’s very wet when there is enough water to overload the city’s idiosyncratic drainage system to such an extent that each street corner becomes a black and swirling lake, almost impossible to skirt and dangerous to enter), I found myself at the notorious Palladium, an ancient hall that makes Sydney’s Capitol look chi chi. Here, I was assured, the men’s toilet was ankle deep in water and people all around expressed fears of the leaking roof connecting the deluge with electrical equipment. The worst we had to endure, however, was the rising damp and the icy concrete floor. It was rather like waiting on the subway in winter. Unfortunately the passing parade was no more edifying. Two moderately entertaining funk bands, T Connection and D Train (the D train in New York is also known as The Beast, and is generally considered to be the most dangerous of all subway lines), heated the place up by a few degrees, but the warmth dissipated through lengthy set changes. By the time Chic came on at 11.30, we had been fighting off incipient pneumonia for the best part of three hours.

I guess it must have taken about five minutes to get the hall back up to body heat, and about ten to get the steam rising. They started off with the Qhic Cheer, then into Stage Fright from Take It Off. This set the musical boundaries for the evening — a mixture of Chic’s Greatest Hits (as seen on their hits package Les Plus Grands Succes de Chic) with a selection from the new album (which Nile Rodgers plugged at every available opportunity, as well as some unavailable ones). As befits one of the truly GREAT black acts, the show was indeed a show — no reticent, street cred. stuff for them. Sing it loud, I’m black and I’m proud. They played, danced and sang their way through this forest of mighty music. And even had the cheek to do a medley of all the great stuff they’ve given away to everyone else — We Are Family from the Sister Sledge album of the same name, the Diana Ross tunes. The finale was an absolutely over the top version of Good Times, which incorporated some of the many rap numbers that have, in homage, used the Good Times bass line (reminding us how, in much less generous spirit.

Queen had ripped it off for Another One Bites The Dust) — just in case we’d forgotten just how influential these two musicians are. It was an inspirational performance, one where both players and audience gave generously and where Chic established with glamour and class the supreme position that black Americans can rightfully claim when it comes to pop music with or without that dancing beat.

B-52^s STILL DANCING The B-52’s are, as everybody knows, a bunch of hippie vegos from the southern American university town of Athens, Georgia. And, as everybody also knows, their name has nothing to do with the B-52 bomberthat made its mark in Vietnam, but rather refers to the bouffant hair­ styles (wigs, actually, in this case:. . . and we used to call

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them bee-hives) sported by the two women in the group.

Their first musical offering was a modest little disc called Rock Lobster, destined for obscurity on an independent label. Thanks to, some might say, over-vigorous air-play on (then) 2 JJ, the B-52’s became, in Sydney, at least, a household name. JJ, of course, did not hold strata title to discerning taste and the B-52’s were picked up by a big label and a big following. In the summer of 7 9/’80, it was impossible to be anywhere in Sydney, except for perhaps a mile off Bondi Beach, without hearing something from their first, wildly successful album. Along with Mental As Anything’s Get Wet, it was the party album of the year. And listening to it, you got the feeling that there would be just so many times this jolly bunch of lightweights would be able to get away with rewriting bloody Rock Lobster. Like Mental As Anything, the B-52’s were faced with the task of turning a good joke into a musical career. With the second Mental’s album it looked like they’d never make it.

Fortunately, with Cats and Dogs, undoubtedly one of the best albums of last year, the critics’ gloomy predictions can be banished, although God knows how anyone outside Australia can ever properly appreciate the true wit of Mental As Anything. But back to the B-52’s and their first tour of Australia, which revealed, to me at least, the slimness of their grasp on any kind of future and the fact that without the two girls, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, the B-52’s would still be playing parties in Athens.

The second B-52’s LP was really more of the same, although it did contain at least one gem in Give Me Back My Man. Then came word that to produce their third album, the bargain-basement popsters had chosen ; Talking Head David Byrne, not a man noted for his sense of humour. Although Mesopotamia, the result of this odd mating, is being touted as a new marketing concept for the record industry — the mini-album — other interpretations are possible. The Byrne/B-52’s sessions may not actually have been all that great — the six tracks that were released may have been all that was salvageable. I don’t have any inside info, on all this, so we’ll just have to make do with the rumours I’ve made up, but I did have a chance to see the B52’s in action here in New York and I must confess to being surprised by their vital and lively set. This band is definitely not down for the count.

I guess such surprises are one of the rewards of having low expectations. They appeared at Roseland — an old ball room in mid-town Manhattan which has the worn dancing shoes of people like Adele Astair (Fred’s sister) and Ray Bolger (the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz) in a glass case near the front door — and is possibly one of the world’s worst venues for rock. There’s a stage and a dance­ floor, lined on two sides by a carpeted area with tablesand chairs. Great for a sedate fox trot or tango, but a hell-hole when they stuff it with over-anxious rock fans. The B-52’s played their whole song-book, it seemed. I was happy.

They played my two faves — Give Me Back My Man and Dance This Mess Around. I think they played everyone else’s favourites, too. People danced and sang along. They knew every word and every back-up vocal whoop. The B52’s proved (with a bit of help from a brace of brass players) that they are one of the best (white) party groups around. And also that Kate and Cindy have the best collection of fifties tat outside the Salvation Army. Fred Schneider still can’t sing, but he sure can dance.

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RoadiUilner 11

That’s competition. And that’s money.

“But that’s only one example.

There is too much negative feeling in the country. Bands putting shit on other bands, and that’s what I’m saying about Steve Kilbey. He’s a very talented songwriter and they’re a very good group, but he puts rubbish on his own group! I just don’t see the point”.

“There was Angry and myself, after the awards, and we ended up in some dressing rooms, they were all having a party, and we just ended up ‘myself. Angry, Squeak and Darryl and we were talking for about an hour about Steve Kilbey and things like that. But Angry is marvellous cos he really does care about the industry.”

Talking with Molly Meldrum is quite an experience.

‘And I was talking to Stevie Wright afterwards, I’ve always meant to ask Stevie this question, they went over to England and became big with ‘Friday On My Mind’, they went out to gigs and became influenced. They never had another hit, because they were taking away their own originality.”

A bit like talking to a pinball machine.

“One group that’s got me confused is Mentals. I think they’re great. And I still believe that if the American record company promoted it, ‘If You Leave Me’ and started literally in Nashville and starting trying to centre it away from LA or New York and got that country thing going I’m sure that record would be huge.”

A tired, hoarse, slightly pissed pinball machine with heavily lidded eyes and a cowboy hat.

‘The one thing I do like about Australian bands now though is that you can’t say INXS sound like Church and you can’t say Mentals sound like either. Nor Moving Pictures. Moving Pictures would be a good example. ‘What About Me’ is a great song. Not so much in England, but in America, I’m sure it will go through the roof.

It should anyway.”

Molly Meldrum is Australia’s No. One With A Bullet Rock Star.

Every week three million Australians tune into the ABC to watch the world’s No. One Rock Show, Countdown and the unconsciously side-splitting antics of its Talent Co-ordinator, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum. He loses the plot continuously, never uses cue cards or notes, conducts the most superficial and facile interviews possible, and is never less than superb entertainment. In fifteens years in the music industry, he’s seen stars come and go, trends by the bucketload, has seen more gigs and listened to more albums than you or I have had hot dinners, and yet still maintains his involvement and enthusiasm for the music he loves. The Advance Australia organisation, who are involved in promoting the double album ‘Molly’s Aus. Evolution’ have just awarded him the title of Ambassador of Australian Music, and if you think about it, who else could seriously lay claim to the title?

As part of the promotional merry go round for ‘Molly’s Aus. Evolution’ the Man himself made a flying visit to Adelaide last month, and arpidst the opulence and free drinks at Regine’s nightspot, I managed to corner the no. one enemy of Australia’s English teachers.

Whether it was the lack of sleep, his self imposed furious pace, the alcohol or whatever, the discussion proved remarkably wide ranging. First topic off the black, in deference to our hosts, was ‘Molly’s Aus. Evolution’.

‘I organised getting most of the tracks. I was not interested in putting out just a selection of songs of say Cold Chisel. And this concept was that I could have the free run of everybody.

And I was not gomg to do it unless everyone was interested.

Much to my surprise, everyone was. To the point where I was just blown out to get Men At Work’s ‘Who Can It Be Now’ and Chisel’s ‘Cheap Wine’ and Icehouse’s ‘We Can Get Together’.”

And how much did personal taste come into the selection of tracks?

“We had to bring i t down to 32 tracks for a double album and

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t ■»*

Meldrum confided before the tape recorder went on that he was rather upset by a comment of Steve Kilbey’s in RAM, that Kilbey only got to compere Countdown because ‘Molly fancied him’. Molly was advised to take legal action but refused.

“When I heard the Church, they blew me out, right? and the automatic thing is for them to go on Countdown and get behind something that is good.

And also, its been like that from the very start, you use the lead singer as compere, because I don’t like compering the show.”

You, personally, do receive quite a few slaggings. How do you react to that?

IAN MELDRUM, HO-HUM

the list I had was just huge. The only way I could really do it was to work out what it meant to me and to the groups or artists. For instance, I didn’t pick ‘Stares and Whispers’ which was a far bigger hit for Renee than ‘Heading In The Right Direction’. But I still think ‘Heading In The Right Direction’ is a track that I liked and she liked, because it was part of establishing her name as a singer. And its the same thing with John Farnham. Someone said to me before, why did you pick ‘One’, why not ‘Sadie’? And I safd, because ‘One’ changed John’s life a bit, and on a personal level, I was in on the production of that one.”

In the first of many diversions from the topic at hand, Molly explains that John Farrar (of Olivia/’Grease’ fame) did the guitar freakout at the end of ‘One’, which led onto Farrar doing the string arrangement on Russell Morris ‘The Girl That I Love’ and then co-writing (with Molly and Johnny Young) the ‘Smiley’ hit for Ronnie Burns . .

Moving right along now. “ ‘Turn Up. Your Radio’, I still think that’s a classic song. The same as ‘Eagle Rock’ is my favourite out of ali of it. The moment I heard it I could not stop playing it. ‘I’ll Be Gone’ was the first song I saw of Spectrum . . . at the Myponga Festival here. That song blew me out that night. You know when you hear songs sometimes and you think, I wish I could hear it again. Those are the reasons you know. ‘Spicks and Specks’ with the BeeGees .

“With Peter, ‘I Go To Rio’, I thought I’d take that off and put

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Mentals on or something, and then I thought, no, it would be unfair, because Peter Allen, it was a big hit here, he’s always been a great Australian artist as far as always believing he was Australian. And yet he’s lived in America for so long.

“And so many tracks (that didn’t make it) like ‘Minnie The Moocher’ by the Cherokees and ‘My Old Man’s A Dirty Old Man’ with Bon and Vince and the list starts going on. ‘Bony Marony’

by Hush was good . .

OK. Do yourself a favour etc., because Molly won’t be plugging this one on Countdown, and it is a pretty nifty double album if you need a crash course in Aus. rock over the past fifteen years.

Now Molly. You know how you keep pushing Olivia and Air Supply and LRB and the BeeGees? Are you pushing them because you like the music or because they’re spearheading Australia in America? “ I do think Air Supply are very important in spearheading Australia. They say they’re Australian. I mean a lot of people out here like Air Supply and they’re nice songs. But in America there’s a lot of Middle America, right? And when I say MOR, I mean they can be kids of 16 that like that music.”

But what about the musical content? Because to me all those five Air Supply singles sound the same.

“Yeah, but Americans are like that. We aren’t big enough in our population for that type of middle of the road music.

You’ve got to remember that the whole Motown thing, Diana Ross and the Supremes, those songs sounded very similar. I

— JODI HOFFMAN

mean I love the ‘Dare’ album. I argue with people cos people say that the ‘Dare’ album sounds all the same.”

So you see these acts as a bridgehead?

“Most definitely. Record companies panic over Australia now. They’re frightened they’ll miss out on something. They see Air Supply and they see AC/DC, so they listen very carefully to an^hing that comes across from Australia now.”

I’ve had my gripe. Your turn Molly. “ I think in this country there’s a slight epidemic, that’s its fashionable not to get behind your product and perhaps not appear on Countdown. I mean, the Midnight Oil thing, quite frankly, its a joke. The gimmick of Midnight Oil Is that they don’t appear on Countdown.

They sent a letter to us, because they were nominated in the best live performance award, on the score that if they were to win, the letter had to be read out by the presenter and no-one was to accept the award. Which we were quite willing to do, but the letter, you can’t directly quote me on this cos I can just give you the gist of it. It was in essence that they didn’t believe in competition and they weren’t gonna accept this award and they didn’t believe in award shows because of the competition, music is an art form, and they were gonna relax and enjoy it as much as they could.

“However they were signed to Powderworks and Seven Records and now to CBS, who paid a lot of money for them.

They do charge an amazing fee to appear. So what is that?

It’s your fault, M olly!

Ian Meldrum does a special Humdrum fo r Roadrunner. Donald Robertson £ets into the free drinks. Jodi Hoffmann points the camera.

“No-one asked me to take this job on. So therefore I have to cop the flak. With Countdown we get heaps of letters but I always insist on getting the critical ones. Because you live and learn each day. If it’s criticism and its well thought out, then I will take notice of it.

If its rubbish then I won’t take any notice at all.”

Do many bands come to you for advice?

“Every day. I get demo tapes all the time. And I listen to them and I assess them. And I keep saying that it is my opinion, and you must remember it is my opinion and only my opinion, so please go and take notes and absorb whatever and throw away whatever you think is irrelevant. I mean what can you say if you think its not crash hot? 1 mean it can destroy some people.

“I’m lucky and this business has been good to me. I’ve been given the chance from the GoSet days. I’ve been taught how to become a record producer. I mean you can’t teach a record producer the sounds in his head. But I’ve been taught the basics of record production.

And the opportunity to do Countdown, — I was there at the right time. And then the luck of the Beatles and all of that. And I feel obligated. And it’s not being condescending and it’s not being . . . It’s something that I owe back to the musicians. So if I can help them In that way, then I must. Someone said to me, don’t you get sick of people coming around all the time and listening to tapes, and I said, no. It is a fesponsibility. And I fear that if someone has written a great song, it could be completely and utterly overlooked. Cos he wasn’t there at the right time. The only real major talent I’ve got is the ability to pick out— I mean I can hear an album before its even released overseas and I can just say, that will be the first single, that’ll be the second.”

Our hosts are trying to drag Molly out for some dinner. But really there’s no stopping this man.

“But if you take the INXS’s and . . . INXS to me, that album is great, and it is like, and oddly enough, the’re like an XTC. In the sense that where, I think that XTC double album is a superb album in essence, in a lot of fields. But in England they go so far with it, but then, they’re one of the big groups.

And so are INXS for some reason. Cos the INXS album is great as well. But its not happening for them as it should. As like a Church, specially a Men At Work or like a Moving Pictures situation. So look at all that talent. And, once it starts making it in its own field, then it does frustrate me if its not making it in America.”

Good on ya Molly. Your heart’s in the right place even if your tongue gets a bit outta control

GILLIAN ARMSTRONG WITH JOHN PLEFFAR ARRIVING AT THE STARSTRUCK WORLD PREMIERE

STARSTRUCK: A COINVERSATION TV lTH G im A N ARMSTRONG hy Adrian Ryan “Starstruck” is a notable event in the long, thin history ot Australian cinema. It’s the first ever proper musical, complete with singing, dancing, heartbreak and a happy ending: it’s also the first local feature to explore pop in more than a marginal ifashion, and one of the most effective Australian comedies of the last few decades.

The plot is one that’s hardly worth describing. You’ve seen it all before in a thousand

14 Roadrunner

American musical comedies: young singer and her 14-year old cousin/manager strike out for the big time despite adult disparagement. Along the way they manage to save the family pub where they live (a setting for some effectively managed local colour), outsmart a reptilian pop-show compere (fine cameo by John O’May) and keep us amused with their wacky antics.

The soundtrack is surprisingly, even though it suffers slightly from being processed down to the latest

common denominator of the current Mushroom Records house style, which means you get lots of loud but inoffensive beat and squeaky clean synthesisers. Most of the songs were written by Phil Judd and the unkown but obviously talented Denis James Nattrass.

Judd’s contributions, particularly Temper Temper and Tough (the latter accompanying the film’s outstanding moment, a parodic water-ballet sequence staged in a penthouse swimming pool) outshine most of the songs on the Swinger’s

album, and the Kiwi trio feature unobstrusively in a couple of numbers that are a witty satire on the Countdown style of pop — TV glitter.

“Starstruck” has a script by one-time rock journo Stephen McLean, and he uses his inside knowledge to strike a few subtle blows at rock ‘n’ roll greed and pretence, but thankfully keeps seriousness at bay. Director Gillian Athrstrong does her already high reputation all kinds of good with her handling of the comedy, a field in which Australian directors are notoriously tentative, and she handles her two young lead actors, Jo Kennedy and Ross O’Donovan, with commendable care. Jo Kennedy, one time singer with obscure Melbourne neu-wave combo Crashing Planes, shines in her role; anyone who’s suffered the lugubrious pretensions of Australia’s current crop of female screen stars will enjoy her energy and her reedy but excellent singing.

“Starstruck” is, by far, the most expensive film Armstrong has been involved with. Even though many of the blockbusting scenes are dressed up artfully from meagre resources in a manner which Hollywood has long forgotten to achieve, it has the aura of a major project. There’s a lot of ambition and money riding on its success, including a very large investment from the Australian Film Corporation and major input from Mushroom Records, and it’s at Mushroom’s Melbourne headquarters she’s explaining some of the background to what must have seemed, at its inception, an unlikely project for a director most famous for the acclaimed feminist nostalgia piece “My Brilliant Careei^’.

“Stephen McLean had been writing the script for about three years, and he knew the producer David Elfick because they’d worked on Go-Set together, in the beginning he didn’t even want me to see it.

He thought I was a person who directed boring period films.

And because I wanted to get away from that I very much wanted to do ‘Starstruck’.

Eventually I met him at a party and we got on really well from the start.”

Not that Armstrong was suffering from any shortage of offers following the international impact of “My Brilliant Career”.

That film’s success brought with it a flood of scripts from various points of the globe. “Most of them were about young girls who wanted to find themselves.

Also, a number of overseas actresses approached me. A lot of serious actresses would love to work with a women director, and there aren’t many women directors in the world.”

The critical/commercial success of “Brilliant Career” was beyond all expectation, and Armstrong admits that it caught her by surprise, though by now, she’s formulated some theories as to why such an ostensibly modest project made such an impact in America in particular.

“The success of a film is so much to do with timing, and we fluked that. At tbe time it came out in America there was a great interest in women in film, and that was part of it. And there was already a critical interest in Australian films. And all those critics felt so guilty about being sexist for all those years that they overpraised it, I feel.”

Whether “Starstruck” will make similar waves is a question still to be answered, but Armstrong remains optimistic about its reception in America. “ It’s not like any Australian films which have gone before, which have all been very serious. America’s the home of the musical, and for a long time it was the home of rock’n’roll.”

“Once upon a time if you’d gone to America with an Australian musical they’d have laughed. It would have been as if you’d come from Botswana or somewhere. But at least,they’ll be interested, because they’ve got some respect for Australian films and culture. For instance, one American script writer

came over here to see me, and he was instructed by his 17 year old daughter to bring over Australian rock records, Australian surfing magazines, and Australian fashion magazines. Which is a very interesting perception of Australia for a 17 year-old. I know they’ll be really suprised by “Starstruck”, seeing as they know so little about modern Australia. They think we’re really cut off from the world.”

Whether “Starstruck” gives much insight ‘modern’ Australia is a moot point; it’s very definitely a fantasy, with most of the social realism on hand being directed to a loving recreation of the mores of w orking-cla^ Sydney life and its archaic traditions, but the Australian flavour does come through strongly, particularly in the superb acting of the older members of the supporting cast who play the roles of the stars’ family. There’s a sense of detail here which Armstrong sees as important. “You’ve got to make something with its roots in a real place. Then if the essential message is coming through, then that’s the thing that is the international message.”

“The more original you are, the more unique, the more you’re likely to be appreciated world wide. That applies to film, or music, or any other art.”

Gillian Armstrong has firm views on indigenous culture and her place in it. After “ Brilliant Career”, she received the full blandishment treatment from various Hollywood studios, but resisted the temptation to make a film in America. “ I’d be crazy to do that at this stage. Films are teamwork, and I’m only good as the people around me.

I couldn’t hope to walk into a strange situation and do as well, I’m still learning . . .”

I’ve talked to a lot of American film makers and we have much more creative freedom over here. Over there, you’re dealing with a battery of lawyers and accountants who are telling you what they think ' your film should be. There are film makers who have been working on a project for years and have it ready to shoot and then some accountant decides it’s not a commercial subject.”

She describes the fate of Australian Phillip Mora (of “Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?” fame). “He’s made a film about the sixties on the same lines, but they’re not going to reldase because they think a documentary can never be a real financial success.

Hollywood’s certainly not the greatest place to be working Meanwhile, she more than enough to occupy her in this country. At the moment she’s working on several projects, including a script with playwright Stephen Sewell (author of Traitors, a thorny drama about Bolshevik dreams and disillusion) which is political and “set ten years in the future”. Another tentative project is a collaboration with Stephen McLean based on American film star Ann Baxter’s memoir “ Intermission”, which describes her life on a remote Australian sheep station with a chauvinistic husband. “ I don’t want to do action pictures, or experiment with genres just to show off.

Although I may someday get a wonderful script that’s a western. But after “Starstruck” I want to get back to serious drama!”

Which does not imply that “Starstruck” is not in its own way, a serious film. It’s well crafted, highly enjoyable, and no one should be deterred from seeing it by the glitzy, if rather confused, promotion it’s being subjected to. For gillian Armstrong, who’s not yet thirty but can be ranked with Lina Wertmuller (an admitted Armstrong admirer) as one of the world’s most prominent women directors, it’s another step in a career she sees as still being in its beginnings. “After all, George Cukor did 43 films, and the first two were nothing.

Maybe when I’m as experienced as him I might start to have a style of my own . . . ”

MAUREEN AND COLLEEN NOLAN

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— JODI HOFFMAN

A NATTER WITH THE NOUUIS A sunny day.

Beneath the trees out the back of Kim Bonython’s North Adelaide Art Gallery there’s a small gathering of people, an exotic spread of pate, cheese, sglad and wine, and, gulp, two of the Nolan sisters.

There’s a definite aura of anachronism around the Nolans, a whiff of greasepaint and vaudeville. Kim Wilde may be a family act, with brother Ricky and daddy Marty contribu­ ting the songs, but Kim is a Face and she performs Eighties Pop. The Nolans have a timelessness about them, a sense of showbiz that puts them outside the parameters of rock culture. Colleen and Maureen, for it is they who have graced Adelaide with their perfect smiles, tell me that in England they have fans from six to sixty. The Nolans are entertainment, pure and simple, a flight into fantasy, a soft cushion for an aching mind.

The Nolans have visited Australia twice, but are yet to perform here. Both visits have been tacked on the end of strenuous Japanese tours. The Nolans are very big in Japan.

“At times we didn’t have time to change out of our stage costumes cos it got a bit wild,” giggles Maureen in a slightly husky brogue. “ It’s amazing! because during the concert they sit there very quiet, but at the end they go berserk. The first concert tour we did we got chased round the shops and that doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

Maureen is the older of the two at twenty eight, and despite an early flight from Melbourne after the Countdown Awards the previous night, she’s

immaculately turned out in a smooth wool top and matching slacks. Colleen, the “baby” of the quartet at seventeen, seemed very much a normal schoolgirl, in contrast to the pulse racing image contained in the Sister’s film clips.

The Nolans are performers first and foremost; they don’t as a rule write their songs; another link with preBeatles showbiz days.

Their record company sends them a tape of songs, Maureen tells me, and actually have a lot of say in what the Sisters record. “ In actual fact they can — if they really want to — release what they want.

We can discuss it with them, but they can still release it. B u t. . . they’re willing to give a little. And take a little. That’s all right. That’s the way it should be. And we do get on well. We have big arguments when we think, right, this is the end, like everything else. They’re a good company. They work really hard.”

Lead singer Bernadette has actually written two songs for the new album, and Colleen is hoping that a couple of lyrics that she and Maureen have written will make it on to the next L.P. “They’re sad lyrics”, says Colleen.

Why is that? I ask innocently.

“Sadness is a stronger emotion,” she says firmly.

“You can be happy and think, oh great! But I wouldn’t know how to start writing. But when you’re sad — getting over a love affair or something — things come. We like sad songs. Everyone can relate to a broken romance or feeling depressed.”

Bernadette sings a song, ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ ori the new B.E.F. album, ‘Music of Quality and Distinction’.

How did that come about? “ I think she just got a phone call,” says

Maureen. “She was really excited about it. It^was something different. There was a lot of negotiation with the record companies” (something confirmed by father/ manager Tommy in slightly stronger terms)” and they said she could do it. She really enjoyed doing it, but she’s upset now, because she thinks she could have done it a lot better. “ I think it relieves the tension in the group if you get out on your own for awhile. We’d all like to do a solo album.”

One can get a glimpse of the pressure involved in keeping up a sweet and innocent image that the Nolans put over. One very successful attempt to turn that image around occurred a couple of years ago when the girls did a publicity photo in with Motorhead, the world’s ugliest and hairiest Heavy Metal band.’

Colleen giggles as she recalls the meeting.

“They were swigging down a bottle of vodka straight. But they were really nice to us — it was amazing, cos they’re quite frightening to look at, besides the hair and the warts. We did this picture where we wore their jackets and they wore ours. Ours with the sequins and we had their leather ones on and looked really rough. They say to you, ‘would you like a drink?’ and they hand you this bottle of vodka. No thank you.”

And next time you come, you’ll actually be performing?

“Yes,” says Maureen.

“Probably around next March. We’re thinking of coming back in your summer, but I think it’d be too hot.” “ Especially for me,” signs Colleen, “cos I go like a lobster, all pink, then it all goes away again. She goes brown and I go like a lobster and all my freckles come out.”

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Publi^b^d by April Music 1 r»t »5 Roadrunner 15

“Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form the correct ideas of leadership."

Mao Tse-Tung, June 1, 1943.

“If it was up to me Donald, I wouldn’t release another single from the album. We’ve already got new material in the can which is fantastic. But which can’t come out, cause we have to, its in some rulebook somewhere, that when you release an album, you have to release two singles off it, in Australia. So if I could get out of that I would.”

Steve Kilbey, March 1982.

^ xeewd8888dlMlA66

“Pop is the perfect religious vehicle. It’s as if God had come down to Earth and seen all the ugliness that was being created and chosen pop to be the great force for Love and Beauty. ” __________________ Donovan, ‘Queen’ magazine (1966).

“Like we recorded the album and then we were thinking God, what are we gonna release as a single. And Chris Gilbey called us in one day and said, “We’ve gotta get a single, boys,” and we went aaagrrrgghhh. He said, “Well the most representative track is ‘Almost With You’, although its obviously not going to be a hit.” We agreed Steve Kilbey.

“ True poets will agree that poetry is spiritual illumination delivered by a poet to his equals, not an ingenious technique of swaying a popular audience or enlivening a sottish dinner party. ’’ Robert Graves, ‘The White Goddess’ (1946)

“Normally I would never write anything like that you see.

But, I really wanted to write that song (‘To Be In Your Eyes’). I really wanted to write a song like that, and I thought, damn it, you know, about the songs I feel that I’m supposed to write, that I’m obligated to write. I wanna write this. It’s a very liberating experience. Cos I’ve gone on and written a few more like that. But for a while, I was a bit shy about showing the song to anyone. I don’t know why. It just seemed a bit, kind of ... when I was back in high school and first started writing songs, I used to write sort of embarrassing lyrics. Protest lyrics or something, and naturally I was pretty shy about showing them to my friends. Cos they’d go, ‘Oh God, listen to his lyrics’. And now I feel more confident cos I’ve got the lyrics that are masked in a web of I don’t know what.” ______________________________ Steve Kilbey.

“Good rock stars take drugs, put their penises in plaster of pans, collectivize their sex, molest policemen, promote self curiosity, unlock myriad spirits, epitomise fun, freedom and bullshit. ” _________ Richard Neville, ‘Playpower’ 1970.

“I write mainly about things that happen at night. It’s the grand old tradition of being romantic and poetic, isn’t it?”

Steve Kilbey.

“ There was the shared enthusiasm for sado-masochistic spy thrillers — ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’, ‘The Avengers', the James Bond series, in all of which affectlessness is cultivated as a means to dignity,Jo be cool.”

Jeff Nuttall, ‘Bomb Culture’ (1968)

“This is a really silly thing to say, but I think the faster the song, the less good the band. My favourite bands have always been really slow bands. I’d go to a rock concert to be moved and somebody else goes to a rock concert to move themselves. That doesn’t interest me at all. If they’re coming along to see the Church and dance to a beat, I think they’re missing the whole point. There’s a good one.

You can put that in big black letters across the whole thing, Donald.” _____________________________________ Sfeve Kilbey.

16 Roadrunner

“How can a supreme being inhabiting eternity have a purpose? The absolute, the all, cannot change; how then could it wish to change? It is essentially illusion; and the deeper one enters into ones self the less one is influenced by such illusions. ” Aleister Crowley, ‘Diary Of A Drug Fiend’ (1922)

“The Melody Maker review is really over the top. It said we were — imagine the excitement of Pete Townsend and Keith Moon, plus the excitement of George Harrison playing guitar and Roger McGuinn playing ‘Eight Miles High’, and he said all of these things are gloriously reactivated on the Church’s first album. It was a real rave, but like a funny rave, because it said, you’ll love their posey paranoia and their TV tricks but it was kind of written in a nice way. And it said, but this album will sell, or this group will sell millions of records. I wonder if its gonna come true? Cos the album, I don’t think its selling that well in England. It’s not selling as well as everyone would have hoped.”

Steve Kilbey.

“About half way through last year it dawned on me, that we’ve got a good shot overseas. But before that, no. When we started the group, my whole aim was to make a single, and get thrown out of the business after we’d done that. Ail I want to do is one day I can sit my grandkid down and say, here’s a record I made. And when I got the test pressing of that first single, that was as far as I’d looked. And I thought, well. I’ve achieved my ambition. Then it started to dawn on me last year, when we did the double single and when we were making the album, ‘Blurred Crusade’, I thought, ‘this music could happen overseas.’ I didn’t really think ‘Of Skins and Heart’ would be successful over there, so I discounted that. And my faith has been growing steadily from that point on. And now I have every confidence we can do it. At least in some countries overseas.”

Steve Kilbey.

“ Then Its time to go downtown Where the agent man won’t let you down Sell your soul to the company Who are there To sell plastic ware And in a week or two If you make the charts The girls will tear you apart" The Byrds, ‘So You Wanna Be A Rock‘n’Roll Star’.

(1966)

“The other three members are very image conscious of what the Church should be. And they’re, Peter and Martin especially, and Richard now, have formulated how the Church sounds. Probably more than I have. I’ve written songs and those three guys have made it sound the way it does. So I have to write with them in mind all the time. I mean if you write a song that’s in any way corny, then Richard just goes berserk. Richard’s very, very, being the youngest member of the band, he’s very conscious of what will be hip to play, you know. And so they prevent a lot of things from being played. Which is a good thing, but sometimes I think its a bad thing.”

Steve Kilbe\

“At that point Geoff became aware of the smeil of incense, of the slow, soft beat of a tom tom outside.. . ‘It is time’, said the Master. ‘Acolytes, prepare the visitor.'

Attila Zohar. “Kings Cross Black Magic”, (1965).

“When we were doing the animation for Tear it All Away’, Paul Patty was in on that, and he’s sort of like an enigmatic genius. And he said, ‘Whafs the new album called?” and I said, ‘The Blurred Crusade’. And he said I’ve got some pictures of some knights holding up a bird.’ I could imagine what it was like, so I said, great, we’ll use it.

As soon as the band saw the actual drawing everyone said, “That’s it. This will have to be the cover.”

Steve Kilbey.

“ ‘DamoseT, said Arthur ‘What sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? I would that it were mine, for I have no sword.'

‘Sir Arthur, king,' said the damosel. ‘that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you. ye shall have It.’ ‘By my faith, ’ said Arthur, 7 will give you what gift ye will Sir Thomas Malory, ‘Le Morte D ’Arthur’ (1485)

[RMAN ;o the press at the n was really cut up at iving docum ent arrived in Lck seat o f a m ushroom w ering note.

“I’m very proud of it (‘The Blurred Crusade'). I don’t think I could have done anything better at the time. ” _________ ________ Steve Kilbey.

“I think there’s only one love song on the album. And that’s T o Be In Your Eyes’. That’s the only love song really.

What other ones are love songs? ‘When You Were Mine’?

That’s more about reincarnation. Most of the album is about reincarnation.”

Steve Kilbey.

“What pop does is make me very rich. As a result I have big dream s. . . And painters and musicians and everyone can come from all over the world with their dreams. And we will say: ‘yes, you can do that dream. Here’s so much, do it. ” ’ Donovan (1967) in Tony Palnuer’s ‘All You Need Is Love

“He started a three hour rap about energy, electronics, drugs, politics, the nature of God and man's place In the divine system. Laughing at his own brilliance, turning himself on, turning us on. Einsteinian physics and Buddhist philosophy translated into the fast, right, straight rhythm of acid-rock hip. ’’ Timothy Leary, ‘The Politics of Ecstasy’ (1966)

“I’m getting a bit tired of the sort of people who talk to you and don’t care.”

Sfeve Kilbey.

Roadrunner 17

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Lindsay Kemp has taught Bowie and Kate Bush, is a good friend of Bette Midler and Mick Jagger and has just finished an Australian tour with his production of ‘The Dream\ Jenny Bather describes the night Kemp took over 5-MMM-FM in Adelaide The greatest challenge that Adelaide can offer on a Tuesday night after a hard day at 5MMM is going home and getting the chops thawed out before midnight.

Dazed by the thought of this monumental domestic responsibility I tripped over a rather well-rounded man beaming salutations from behind an empty Coopers Ale bottle. His yellow T-shirt, velvet patchwork shoulder 18 Roadrunner

bag and black crocheted hat pulled half-way down his nose didn’t give too much away, but he obviously wasn’t just another old hippy who’d wandered in off the street. Hot-footing it down the corridor to discover the identity of the romping elf in the front office, a gentleman I’d met in very bizarre circumstances a week or so earlier bellowed, “Can you interview Lindsay Kemp?”

Regular programming gave way to utter pandamonium. Kemp wanted publicity and he wanted it NOW! He’d grabbed his lover, a friend, free tickets to “The Dream” and a taxi. The beer he’d salvaged from an unknown source and a near crisis developed when it looked as if there wouldn’t be enough to go around. The tickets, he stipulated, were to be given to single people in case they were lonely, because they’d find lots of friends at the theatre.

Couples are so bdring anyway.

he added, and everyone agreed.

Delicately unravelling a worn leaftlet of poetry he used to jot ideas on, Kemp launched his scheme of transmitted aural assault on 5MMM-FM’s unsuspecting audience. “ I thought in the cab we should start with Lou’s “Waiting For The Man”, but then there’s Bette and that chant. Oh do you have any David Bowie? We MUST play Bowie—“Let’s Spend The Night Together”, ooooo I love that! The Rolling

Stones too, “ I followed her to the station”, what’s that one?

We should really keep it up though, shouldn’t we? But DO you have any Sinatra?The Beatles, Presley, Dylan. And we can’t forget Kate. What about some modern stuff. I love the new music. I know, you choose the music and I’ll just c h a t. . . etc. etc.” If it had been anyone else, I think I would have punched them out.

But Mr. Kemp is a wizard whose real magic lies not only in conjuring a myriad of

fantasies, images and feelings with staged frolics, but within himself. He is indeed maybe Merlin. His larger-tha-life antics, at times a little mystifying, embrace and inspire all who fall in his path. After ten minutes with Lindsay Kemp, I’m trampoling on the clouds.

Studio shuttle in operation. The Man throws off his hat and lunges into the arms of his lover. “God, I’m so nervous!’’, he wails and is subsequently barraged with comforting condolences, reassuring cuddles and another bottle of beer.

Bette Midler’s “ Keep on Rocking” fades, mic’s on and Lindsay’s more than in control.

He oozes through each perfectly articulated, calculated, timed phrase, pausing to sigh wistfully or practice a meloncholy stare at a pile of newspapers in the corner of the studio, then plunges into a pacy over the top rave (usually on an almost unrelated subject) that’s punctuated by mischievous, and at times wicked, impish grins.

Arms fly weightlessly, erratically, always miraculously missing an overhead microphone. Kemp smiles as he acknowledges the crowd gathering outside the window.

It’s all bang, so boom! Here’s Lindsay Kemp-ad lib, ad nauseum and despite my efforts to maintain some form of continuity, virtually unprompted.

“Hello. It’s nice to be here ahd now you know how I do it. As Miss Midler says. Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll. Without the Big Three non of what I do would be possible . . . when I talk about Drugs, of course I mean anything that will get you high. It can be Love of Wine or Poetry or Virtue, in the old days. But of course there’s no such thing as ART without Intoxication—in fact, there’s no such thing as LIFE without intoxication, is there? In other words Love is the only thing . . .”

\ ^

“. . . Well, A Mid Summer Night’s Dream is OF COURSE my best. It’s my latest piece.

Our Latest Piece—it grew from the company and it is ah essentially a Celebration of Life, of Love, of Nature. We all reach a point, don’t we?, in our lives when we approach how old am I now? . . . 000 about 29 or something—when we all get fed up with BLOOD, you know. For a very long time my productions, Salome, Flowers, have had a KISS that had a taste of Blood like the symbolists’ kisses. Now my kisses taste of ah Honey . . . got that? . . . “ I’m one of the Big, Silent Rock and Rollers. Rock’n’Roll has always been an essential part of my life. I’ve always been a rock’n’roller and what I’ve always endeavoured to do with my theatre is to restore the Sensuality, Sexuality, Theatri­ cality of rock’n’roll. And of course David Bowie! And they’re always asking me, aren’t

tney? About David Bowie. It wasn’t Maggie Smith, was it? It was the other one, Kate, Kate . . . Bush and my pal Micky.”

“Ah, Micky dagger! Not only were they, WAS I a bit of an influence on them, but they were enormous influences on me. dagger and Bowie are amongst The Great Dancers. I don’t mean just the way that they Move, but the way they Live. The way that they Celebrate with their music. And what is even more important is the way they encourage Everyone with their music in the same way that Dylan does and that danis doplin did and dimi Henrix did—to encourage Everyone Else TO LIVE TO BE TO CELEBRATE. . . TO MAKE LOVE! Life is terribly s h o rt. . . isn’t it?

“Twist and Shout” goes to air.

Kemp bellows along with it, “Shake it up baby/Twist and S hout/C om e on, come on, GOME ON BABY”.

The switchboard almost jams in response to the ticket giveaways. Kemp looks genuinely shocked. “ I’m delighted, I thought no one would want them”.

“We don’t have much time for the perversions but the overdoses, unfortunately there are too many of. But that’s something we always risk, don’t we? I don’t mean the overdose of Drug, I mean the overdose of Life. When one puts oneself out to celebrate, to live, the chances are we might do it too much.

But that’s what living is, isn’t it? . . . ” “. . . I’d like to dedicate that last record incidentally to everyone at The Majestic Hotel and to everyone at The Opera Theatre which is just across the road. I Love It, of course, when THE PUB IS THAT CLOSE TO THE THEATRE, because it’s the same thing isn’t it? or should be—I’ve always endeavoured to break down the barriers.

Theatre of The Actor/Theatre of Life. To me it’s all the theatre, all a place of entertainment, all a place to woo . . . to be in love, to enchant”.

It has to come — Bowie?

“Yes . . . What do you meanwooing? loving? . . . Oh, yes I did. That was a FABULOUS mmrnmutual relationship. We inspired, influenced each other immensely. He always talks

about how much I inspired him, influenced him. But it was A Love Affair. And the moment we met we began creating WORKS . . . I’d always been mad about him and hearing him on the radio I thought—aughh, THAT’S somebody I’d like to meet, you know. It seemed to me that he was singing the kind of songs that I was very familiar with.

The kind of songs that I was singing, not with my Voice but with my . . . HEART. And of course I prepared myself for a pimply faced youth to come to my door one day when the meeting was arranged, and There was an Angel! Not only a man with a Voice tike an angel, but ah arrr LOOKS of an angel.

He worked with my company.

Obviously the songs reminded me of me because he’d already seen me and he’d written a lot of them about me, early songs and later ones too. You know, then years later—after of course falling out the way we do—he became a Rock and Roll Star!”

“They always say to me about Kate Bush, didn’t you know, did you never suspect that she would become a rock and roll star one day? It’s not the kind of thing I ever suspect but it’s the kind of thing I always hope for. 1 always hope that everyone, all my pals will become rock stars one day.” “. . . Bowie of course invited me to London to direct this show.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’ which I suppose was the first, oh what did THEY call it?—gay rock, glam rock—ah kind of Spectacle. I WANTED, 1 ENDEAVOURED to make him Look as Wonderful as he Sounded. Which is why one day I picked up this can of red spray paint that I was spraying the kitchen furniture with and sprayed his hair. I wanted everyone to notice him. You know, like everyone likes everyone to say, ‘Hey, Who’s that lady’, I mean, ‘Who’s that MAN I saw you with last night?’

And they didn’t, so I sprayed his hair that fabulous red AND THEN BUGGER! they all began to say it! We should play this track from Ziggy Stardust, shouldn’t we? . . .”

“Yes, well I am lucky because here like everywhere else in the world I’m surrounded by friends . . . mmm we ought to play Bette Midler’s Friends’ but we’ve got something else fired up, maybe we could play ‘Friends’

to finish, cause friends are the most important things, aren’t they? I’m very, very lucky that here in Adelaide I have a lot of friends alia round me. Look, here, now. It’s fabulous, isn’t it? which is always hwy I’m always on top. They say to me ‘well where do you get this phenomenol energy from? and of course it’s handed to me by my friends”. “. . . We (the company) actually left London a long time ago and actually I’m a bit scared to go back there at the moment. We have to go back to London on Good Friday and I’m a bit afraid that I might be conscripted to the army to go and fight the Argentinians. I was a NURSE— would you believe that?—in the army a few years ago and I’m sure I’d be one of the first to be nabbed though I’d offer my services as an entertainer to the troops instead.

“The Company is based in Rome—Obviously Rome. The Latin countries have much more appeal to me than the English speaking ones. That’s not to say Australia because you don’t speak English here terribly well, do you? It’s rather like my English. I mean it’s Fabulous being here and the public are fabulously demonstrative, but I rather miss the clatter of the queens at the back of the gallery in Madrid and in Barcelona and I rather miss the rattle of tambourines in Italy.

These are the countries where the company is most at home.”

or black or white, what I’ve always tried to do by my example is to encourage people to ABANDON ALL BARRIERS and simply to be what we are in our HEARTS—which is BLACK and SCARLET—isn’t it? . . .

Singing and Dancing like the paintings of Chagal. C was probably one of my greatest teachers. Everyone expects me to say that Marcel Marceau was and of course Marcel was ONE of my very important teachers, but Chagal SHOWED me the way to be what you feel. In other words, TO BE the Angel on the canvas or in a room, or TO BE a Demon, if you like.

Demons are frequently more attractive, as I’ve already proved.” “. . . OF COURSE (it comes from within). To Dance is simple To Be. To release the spirit. Life without the spirit on display is not a life at all. We touch each other with our spirits, with our eyes. I’m doing my best at the moment to speak with my eyes. I know no one can see me but what 1 mean is not to see with one’s eyes but to see with one’s imagination.

It’s only seeing with one’s imagination that we can see things the way they could be. In other words, the artist’s purpose, as you know, is to change the world for the better which has always been my endeavour. ., ‘Do You Want To Dance?’ is what I ask everyone.

Do you want to live? Do you want to love, baby?”

“. . . Ah, The Kookaburra. WE HAVEN’T HEARD ANY, HAVE WE? The sound of the Kookaburra and The Beautiful Sounds of Nature have been DROWNED, haven’t they?, by motor cars, washing machines and consumer’s gadgets. That’s a pity. It's the one thing I regret about Australia as it is a thing I regret about a lot of places in the world—that nature has been stifled by Horrible Consumer Society. What I’m endeavouring to do, especially with ‘The Dream’ is to bring BACK the Glory to the Beauty of Nature— to the SOUNDS of the Kookaburra, the MOVEMENTS of the lyrebirds, the MYSTICISM o flh e Rain Forests, the GLORY of the Sky, the COOLNESS, the ECSTASY of soft rain falling on naked flesh .. .”

It’s too much for Kemp as he waltzes with a stubbie and cigarette out of the studio and down the hall. Instructions are to liven it up after Bette and The Man requests ‘Honky Tonk Women’.

“God! Naked Flesh! Got me into a hell of a lot of trouble in Australia, didn’t it? Not anywhere else, except for the occasional Saturday night when my mother caught me . . . yeah . . . THAT was especially in BRIS-BANE where they were all on about this bloody old nudity stuff and Everything In Nature Is Naked. Truth is Naked. And truth to me is so much more attractive than falseness.”

“Wearing clothes— I LOVE wearing clothes of course. I love ball gowns and powdered wigs and everything I do on stage and off. Like I said earlier, to me there is no barrier between the theatre and the street or the bar. As there is no barrier between male or female.

“Micky? My old pal? I have two favourite Mickeys. Mickey Mouse and Micky dagger. Mick dagger is of course one of the best dancers, isn’t he? One of the best examples on how life should be lived. When I came to Australia the last time, six years ago, my entrepeneur Eric Dare—I should be dedicating all of this to Eric Dare because he brought me here the first time and it was because of him I came back again — he’d heard that Mick dagger sent me five hundred lilies. I’d exaggerated that, of course, as I always do, and he sent me one thousand lilies . . . and of course, when I’d first announced in England that I was coming to Australia they said, ‘Hey, what about the beer cans?’, you know, ‘and what about the pies?’ In other words I thought that the missiles that were hitting me on the first night were the famous pies—which of course I love and I’m mad about your b e e rturned out to be lilies . . .

Australia has always been that to me, ever since the first timelilies.’’

Time for au revoirs, Lindsay.

“Ah Kate, my little girl. Who encourages everyone as I do, to be ‘Moving’. I’ve enjoyed dancing here. Thank you .. .”

Puck peeks up, “awful song really, isn’t it?”

Roadrunner 19

NEW FROM NIPPON Hanae Komachi in Tokyo oreviews albums oy Yukihiro Takahashi (of YMO) and the Sunsetz

Hello, this is Hanae speaking from Tokyo. Today we have a heavy sky, it’s really lowering. Such a dark day makes me feel blue, but now it’s quite different. Great news has flown from Roadrunner to me. In April some Nipponese rock albums will be released in your country.. Among those albums I’d like to offer you these two: “Neuromantic” by Yukihiro Takahashi and “Heatscale” by Sunsetz.

^ A*

“Neuromantic" Yukihiro Takahashi is the drummer of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the fashion designer of Boutique “Bricks”. Last year you’ve got “ BGM” by Y.M.O. “ BGM” has caught my fancy more than other Y.M.O.’s albums, but it was the fact that this album hasn’t sold as well as others in Japan.

Yukihiro had already realised that, before recording of “ BGM”, nevertheless Y.M.O. needed such a period. They never wanted to be among weak-kneed, patterned and brand ones. Yukihiro’s “ neuromantic” is based on Y.M.O. “BGM” concept. A part of “BGM” is expanded in this album. Still technological music is hanging about him.

Since “ BGM”s recording the title “ROMAN SHINKEISHO” was fixed in his mind.

Multiplied “neurotic man” by “ romantic” is “ neuromantic”. He turned over the English title in his mind.

What is Yukihiro’s romantic neurosis?

Yukihiro has noticed that there has been a strong longing for Romantic in himself.

This longing is rather a serious illness for him. Day after day this illness has grown up in him. He felt nervous, depressed and this tendency became stronger. What was Yukihiro longing for? The things around him are too peaceful to create something artistic. This peacefulness has become complex and refracted. He was taken with (or attracted to) the artists who exiled themselves in Berlin or Paris in protest against the Russian Revolution, for instance. He thought why couldn’t he join fortunes with those artists. Such a romantic fantasy caught him. He feels very often something to be called “fate”, he’s begun to believe and be interested in fatalism what Haruomi Hosono has told him sometimes. Abstract romantic is his “something in the air”. Before he flew to London he had expected that this album would be very melancholic and gloomy.

However in London his feeling changed.

Yukihiro could be general, liberal or openminded. He could enjoy the dark.

After he came back to Japan, he complained about Tokyo. “Tokyo could be the most interesting city all over the world.

If we are in the rhood to do so. Everything is speedy, automatic, convenient, the amount of information is awful. It could be a festival itself, not thinking ill of Tokyo.

But on the streets there is no such atmosphere at all. Why? Yes, crystal coterie think themselves belonging to bourgeoisie. These brand uniformers make Tokyo dull, idle and boring. Anyway they never want to get decadant. They seem to be diseased robots. They listen to A.O.R. or one-patterned American westcoast music. There is no exciting movement here.” (I must explain the word “crystal”. This is used to express the young people who wear only famous brand clothes and go to famous disco or shops in Aoyama, Roppongi).

Yes, IVe almost forgotten to tell you when, where and with whom Yukihiro produced this “ neuromantic” sound. It was last April, in London and Haruomi Hosono of Y.M.O. (kyd. b), Kenji Omura (g. vo) Hideki Matsutake (computer programmer), Peter Barakan (lyrics). Phil and Andy of Roxy Music (g, oboe, sax) and Tony

20 Roadiunner

YUKIHIRO TAKAHASHI

SUNSETZ

Mansfield of New Musik (vo, kyd) have joined in his recording. It’s easy to find the reason why Yukihiro recorded not in Tokyo but in London, at the Air Studio on the Oxford Street, where Riuichi Sakamoto had mixed his solo album “BZ Unit” in 1980. The sound is far better than in Tokyo. Studios in Tokyo were built up in American style. They can get only dead sound. It’s almost impossible to get wild live sound. Besides engineers are great in London.

This album’s jacket was painted by Mr. Okumura who also did “BGM”. It’s based on a photo which was taken by Sheila Rock from the magazine “FACE”. The back jacket was done by Mr. Sukita who had taken Bowie’s “Heroes”.

Now lefs listen to “Neuromantic".

“ Glass:" Backing vocal by Tony, Guitar solo by Kenji. The second half guitar by Phil and sax by Andy. “ Grand Espoir": words and music by Haruomi. Whistling

by Steve, the engineer. The name of a girl whispering sweet French words is a secret! “ Connection": Vocal by Tony. This is a story of a poor fellow. “New-redroses”: Instrumental and very danceable.

At first this was called “Funky Russia".

“Extra-ordinary" featured Phil and Andy. “ Curtains": music by Riuichi Sakamoto of Y.M.O. It’s a sad love song. The meaning of this title brings up the sound and images. “ Charge” Instrumental. Cheerful but sad but gayly. “Something in the ait'’.

This was cut as a single in England. He felt sohnie speciarstrong power ih‘ h is ' unintentional daily life. What Is this

power? What in the world can I do?

It’s up to you, if Yukihiro’s romantic is only a foolish act in a fantastic world or very severe real world’s voice. Well, there were some lovely funny short stories. On the 29th March, 1981 they arrived at the airport in London. But the official wouldn’t stamp O.K. on their passport. Trouble!

Then Haruomi shouted “We love London!”

The official said “O.K.” to them. M (Robin Scott) invited Yukihiro to play drums for his album, but at first Robin didn’t know that Yukihiro could play drums. M asked him, “who is playing this Y.M.O. drum?

Riuichi?” M only knew Yuki was a designer so that M wanted him to make his own costume on his first concert in the last Summer.

“Heat Scale” Sunsetz For ages Sunsetz had played and progressed New Orlean sound, Hawaiian sound or chunky sound by the name of “Makoto Kubota & Yuyakegakudan” (i.e.

Sunsetsorchestra). Since 1977 they have been under influence of new wave movement in London, New York and also Y.M.O. They’ve got their hair cut and changed playing style. They’ve begun to find their own new way. New Orleans + New Wave + New Techno = Sunsetz Techno of unknown nationality.

In last January Makoto Kubota and Haruomi Hosono decided to go to Ibiza for recording. Haruomi produced this album and Sunsetz invited Sandii in as a vocalist. Her debut album “Eating Pleasure" is released in April, too. You know the Boomtown Rats used this Ibiza Sound Studio. In ’60s all hippies gathered from Europe. Now Ibiza is a famous resort place for Europeans.

The title number “Heat Scale" was called, while recording, “Samurai Funk No. 1". One-chord melody, v e ^ oriental, especially Okinawatic. Okinawa is the most southern island of Japan and their folk music has original melody and instruments. When David Bowie came to Japan, he said in a interview “Words are the most obscure media of communication.” Sunsetz express the image of unformed feelings to which we cannot give any words. We can say in our hearts but we cannot find the very words.

Words are fearful. This song makes me feel like burning incense. “ The Great WalF bears no relation to the disco “The Great Wall” in London. The Great Wall has no ending, everlasting.

This is the wall of our minds, in a word, “doubt”. This melody is a little bit Chinese and will attract you at once. Chris Mosdell created this title “Bongazuna". When we are under one beat, that congregative image get into one new creature. Enjoy yourself with cosmic cord. “ TOHMEI NINGEN", in Tokyo there are too many people. We have to ignore each other to live this monster city. Rythm and sounds of “El Puzzio” are in the mood of spying. A girl goes into hysterics because her relations have been broken off. The more the things are investigated, the more they become mysterious. “ The Eve of Adam” expresses just before and after the birth of humanbeings in our history. “An Antenna”, if a city has no more energy (electricity), it may be jungle. Their playing is jungly, too. Haruomi composed “ Gong Loop” while amusing himself by playing in the studio. “Dhyana Pura" is best of Haruomi. It is based on his experience on Bali Island, not in India or Japan. Haruomi visits sometimes Dhyana Pura. The vocal style is anyway close to Vietnamese folk music.

All songs are highly sophisticated and •Sunsetz try to make them as simple as possible.

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'Starstruck” In a few words: Ginger Meggs meets Martin Sharp and they go shopping for primary colours at Flamingto Park. The actual plot is so simple that the treatment must have take up a full paragraph . Bright boy wants to get above the human herd, sells his cousin to a gay tv rock show producer through razzle dazzle hustling: cousin meets boy, together girl and boy kill them at the Opera House and save the family pub from the debt collectors. The rest is bright colours, luviy Sydney fashion, beautiful people and a few half developed sub plots.

The highlights are the superb use of colour, the delightfully crafted views of Sydney — in places the film feels more like the rock video clip with post card views than a feature film — and Gillian Armstrong’s ability to direct large numbers of people successfully. Ross O’Donovan is excellent as the eighties dope smoking Meggs; Jo Kennedy is adequate as the cousin who never stops smiling, never gets out of tights. Co-producer David Elphick has attempted to follow up the schlock horror of silver guns and a radioactive outback with a cash-in Busby B. film about kids who believe that they can do anything. The film is reprehensible in this

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way, as, like the American choreographed monstrosities of the thirties, it tries to tell the unemployed that all they have to do is try, give, and they’ll succeed. The no-hope kids of Australia, Mr Elphick, Ms Armstrong may have not noticed, wear old clothes and don’t have a different set of tights for every social occasion. They also seemed, at the session I attended, to be voting with their feet against being targeted by slick, rich film & rock producers as a possible market. Recently, in Adelaide, Gill Armstrong said she was remaining in Australia because of her Australian-ness. She can’t relate to making Diane Keaton film s about neurotic Catholics. There is an Australian feel to this that is good; but it is also a Busby film, American in its politics and Hollywood in intent. In many ways, surprisingly enough, it’s a fitting follow up to her pretty, Hollywood “womens” film. The faces in this one are just as adorable. Watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder when she will really start to use her obviously rich store of talent.

This is basically lightweight tripe, to a forgettable soundtrack; a shabby attempt to cash in on the film boom, and the needs and emotions of a generation left in the wilderness. . ^ ^

Larry Buttrose

was left wondering whether there were grounds for prosecution under the false and misleading advertising laws.

The only vaguely redeeming feature of the whole evening The Warehouse is a folksy was the music, written and with the Large Dog Syndicate, little venue in Adelaide’s performed by minor cult inner Eastern suburbs that celebrity Ash Wednesday (exhas for the past couple of Models). But the fact that Ash years (excluding Festival of got involved in this turkey in the Arts abberations) been the first place probably cancels out focus of Adelaide’s any redemption at all. As a alternative caberet scene. In vehicle for the show’s lyrics the music was quite adequate but fact, to be honest, it has the lyrics were in the main so been Adelaide’s alternative awkward, laboured and heavy caberet scene. handed that the music tended It’s dim, cosy, intimate and to collapse beneath even has a bar. The staging them. facilities are more than In retrospect I think what adequate, acoustics are good and the room is the right shape. annoys me most about this production is that the idea is What I’m trying to say is that the shockingly bad performance really very good. The rise and fall of a teenage pop idol would of ‘Savage Love’ that I witnessed at the Warehouse can lend itself very readily to the qualities extooled in the in no way be attributed to the publicity release. The use of venue itself. two slide projectors and the According to the publicity incorporation of a video clip are handout, ‘Savage Love’ is good technical ideas and Eddie supposed to contain “Witty Savage hasn’t got a bad voice. lyrics, hard edged modern rock If the material weren’t so and gutsy satire on the rock mediocre, ‘Savage Love’ might industry.” After sitting through have been quite enjoyable. over an hour of banal lyrics, As it was I felt as if I should totally directionless plot, spurious swearing, high pitched have stayed at home and watched tele. female screeching and subDonald Robertson.

Dave Warner soul searching I

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(IMPORT) SINGLES 8. ALBUMS FROM EVERYWHERE WE STOCK REAL SEE VIDEOS . .

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LARRY BUTTROSE IS A BRILLIANT WRITER, A SOMETIMES LETHAL C R IT IC ,-A N D A POET I ADVISE YOU XO READ ” DO NALD ROBERTSON, “Roadrunner”.

“Larry Buttrose is very conscious of contemporary Australia life, and gifted at the definition of i t . . . undeniably strong poems.’

John Griffin, “The Advertiser”. u

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Savage Love (M ushroom Caberet T roupe) The Warehouse, Adelaide

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HEATER JO)URNE*Y

“The Leichhardt Heater Journey” — poems by Larry Buttrose.

Poems about sex, love and death; poems about the Australia we live in.

Copies $5 available through Roadrunner. Write to PO Box 90, Eastwood, SA 5063.

Cheques or postal orders to be made out to “Friendly Street Poets”. ;; I

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through all the favourites, ‘Nightclubbing’, ‘Walking In The Rain’, ‘Breakdown’, ‘Demolition Man’ and others.

Grace Jones Thebarton Town Hall, Adelaide

Feels like a wom an, looks like a man.

Sardine V Models Chasers, Melbourne Chasers is a gaping arsehole of a gig. Once it was a reasonably hip disco where all the spoilt little rich kids used to strut their wares and snort their coke. Now its an innocuous pastel pink dive where potted palms choke on chain-smoked cigarettes and the bouncers have become so sickeningly obvious it takes all your gall to sneak in for free. When

The crowd, awestruck at first by the massive impact of synthesized sound and eye­ scrambling imagery, ended up like a pack of demented werewolves baying at the noon.

The barrier between performer and audience gradually crumbled to nothing over the course of the evening. The last few numbers and the encores were peppered with stage invasions and invasions of the audience by the amazing Grace.

If you missed her, start kicking yourself now. Grace Jones was entertainment at its spectacular best. For once in a concert the music was a mere jumping off point for a dazzling display of lighting, theatrics and vocal prowess; not an end in itself but an integral part of a show.

Starting off masterful, cold and controlled ending up hot, sweaty and involved, the performance was nothing less than an expanded orgasm.

A black stick insect in a male military grey suit with a voice like sandpapered coffee, she strutted and posed her way

once, after dropping jagged dance structures to The Ears at The Exford or The Jetsonnes at the Market one used to speed along Chapel Street and, amyled off one’s dial, scream into the early morning hours funkin’ to the Pointer Sisters or Sister Sledge, you now have to smear the smudge of boredom across your face and become belittled by all the agency rock bands that so conveniently assist the declining fortunes of the place.

Much to my delight, tonight was

And how she loved it! Recipient of a hundred kisses, bunches of flowers and rapturous acclaim, at the end Grace could only gasp, ‘thank you, thank you’.

This wasn’t a musical performance so much as a succession of striking images.

a little different than most and both art and the Chaser’s management made a relatively successful deal out of an imagined duff double. Models, headliners (by right of commercial and sexual superiority) for the night are going right out on a limb, and with a sound as overbearingly thick as theirs was tonight, it seems a rather dangerous exercise for them to undertake.

I genially (for me) assume, they were unaware of the ear splitting volume level at which they were playing. A very loud sound at Chasers is simply not feasible: the acoustics are abominable. Last year even The Reels’ normally immaculate sound was reduced to quacky garbling and indistinguishable levels of noice.

Models, tonight, were a paltry blast of shit. This is a shame since I know that this new hybrid of Kellycharisma, Freudfingering and Rowelravaging has a lot to offer. Their bronzed, boisterous images are shifted around by particularly heavy lashings of sound aimed either at the gut or the back of the head. 1 refuse to acknowledge tonight as a typical Models gig, but facts are facts and they were a failure: accidently obtuse for no apparent reasori means little to

22 Roadrunner L

a man seeking reasoned reflection and startling reactions in Modeltones.

Sardine V, on the other hand, were H— E—A—V—Y. No joke, ‘this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around’.

Their tragic forms of tortured funk aren’t easy to swallow, their design and dress sense aren’t easy to assimilate, and their crummy make-up (all except for bass player Johanna Piggot’s—yes, that one) is an affront to all decent minded Australians. Yet for all its impressive and articulate standoffishness. Sardine’s can is uncannily attractive. Everything is sure footed and convincing in its attitude.

When they move up to something and survey its worth there isn’t any tomfoolery apparent. The essence is either stripped and implemented or crushed and discarded. Sardine V are FRIGHTENING. I’ve never encountered what they have to offer before in music, merely isolated it in Kafka’s books or Peckinpah’s films — Sardine V add and broaden to this loose tradition of sly horror.

Often Piggot’s fibrous bass lines are the axis of the group.

Beaming, stark and handsomely gawkish, she is the visual axis

brilliantly executed, with musical backing. Tapes were used throughout the performance (with occasional live bass and congos) but rather than leading thoughts of cheating or foul play, the lack of a ‘band’ just mean that one’s attention was totally focussed on the main event.

Highlights are impossible to remember, such as the constant barrage of stunning routines.

And it all came from Grace—the whole production revolved around her surreally thin body and its actions. Very few props were in evidence—a piano accordian, a set of cymbals which she kicked over, a couple of costume changes.

A powerful potion of sex and fear and warmth and cold. A real man and machine. That’s Grace. Incredible.

Donald Robertson

of the group as well, which can’t be too much to Rilen’s liking. A splendid slide show is implemented with an astute grasp of visual grammar that is surprising, but eagerly welcomed.

In Sardine V various items are contained: vulgar honesty, implicit/explicit danger, a recklessness in their tenderness and a tenderness in their raucousness (beats me! But that’s what it felt like). They are still suffering fragmentary realizations of their ambitions and I’m glad because it gives me time to see them change, grow up in the flash glare of demanding critique.

Sardine V have an awful lot of strengths and hide their weaknesses behind mild bluff; to see them build upon their present intensity looks like being one of my pastimes for ’82.

All hail to the fisherman’s catch.

All hail to the four kooks who contained the catch and canned the capricious little scoundrels.

All hail to the Sardine Four who go carelessly under the guise of a Secret Five.

Craig N. Pearce

SPLIT ENZ BOMBAY ROCK In the wake of Time and Tide’, Split Enz’s saga of the high seas, and their accompanying national tour, it was no surprise that the Bombay was somewhat like the black hole of Calcutta when the Enz finally took the stage. It was the second occasion that brought me to this rather chintzy establishment, replete with wall to wall shattered beer glasses and a bizzare array of Split Enz fans. However, what the dodgy venue lacked, the main act more than made up for in sheer showmanship and rivetting playing. This show is a total package that successfully showcases the new album’s themes and instrumental excellence. The stage is festooned with an intriguing assortment of nautical and maritime props all tied up with a symetrical display of reef knotting.

The most noticeable thing about the Enz these days is the toned down sound allowing the audience to hear the band’s actual fidelity as opposed to being bludgeoned by inordinate aural onslaughts. In fact in quite a few places in their set you could hear the crowd chattering away while poor Mr. Finn was deeply involved in relating his own tale in ‘Haul Away’. The set continued with most of the new album’s tunes which are superb replicas of the studio sound.

That perhaps demonstrates the Enz’s maturity and skillful rendering that has always had them one step ahead of their contemporaries. Like their albums the set is diverse and while the Enz go ‘heavy mental’ as in ‘Hello Sand Allen’ or music hall — vaudville in ‘Six months in a leaky boat’ they never lose track of their inherent humour and old world chivalry. They can be both flippant and profound in the same song as in ‘Dirty Creature!’

Ever the gracious M.C., Tim treated the crowd to some of his witticisms and led the band through older material such as a psychotic rendition of ‘I See

TIM FINN

Red’ featuring the perfectly out of tune heavy mental histrionics of Neil’s turgid and lurid guitar.

More from True Colours ‘I got you’, ‘What’s the Matter with you?’ and Corroboree’s bombastic and epic ‘History Never Repeats’. The effect upon the audience was akin to a convivial Bavarian beer hall send off. In fact the night was not without surprise; to wit Noel Crombie’s surprise on stage birthday party which I’m sure caught Split Enz’s chief cook and bottle washer off guard.

Balloons and streamers appeared whilst the entire throng joined with the band in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Noel who looked a bit overwhelmed at this spontaneous sing along. He even took us down memory lane by doing his legendary spoonerisms which never ceases to amaze me. It is remarkable how easily Noel has taken over the helm from his predecessor.

Whilst Tim and Neil Finn are the front men the others are all integrated in what appears to be a very democratic band. Eddie Rayner’s virtuosic playing and composition are periodically highlighted when he takes a spirited sole, for instance the bridge in ‘Take a walk’, a piece Liberace would be proud of.

Neil of course is a deft and economic player who doubles up with the mandolin. Neil continues his fascination with anthemic songs delivered in his boyish and ebullient fashion adding a second focus in vocals and writing. The brothers Finn certainly have a chemistry all of their own.

Having finished their performance they bade the audience goodbye with four encores, it could have been more than it was off to a party backstage for Noel. Tim and Eddie posed for these photo’s and glossed through a book about Popeye and his pals which I thought they might enjoy and what did I see Tim wearing on Nightmoves last week? Yep, a cute little sailors cap and giving the camera that unmistakeable wink not to mention that other trademark, the bicep salute! Bon Voyage, the odyssey to the Enz of the earth has just begun. Edit DNA Emit!

Brecen Walsh

PHOTO — MARK GREEN

InXs, Beargarden Jump Club, Melbourne

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Prince Of Wales Hotel, Melbourne ALIVE to the air — a 3PBS Radio live to the air to move from the abstract to the physical if you so desire. And I see no reason why not, considering that’s exactly what Teen Beat do — move from air to effort, grace to panic, soul to contraction.

Veins shown and severed in public; removing obstacles and in their place building new arteries of artistic sources to artistic suppositions. An employment of bone structure with little or no artifice, including the recently returned bare breasted synth of Jo Brady.

‘Spotted Chicken', ‘Donkey’, ‘Sand In Your Eyes’ — have a beat removed, distanced and looking disconsalately on; a series of moments joined by heart seizure and fickle strokes of genius. Moments of ripe construction abound in spare clatterings and evil whisperings of noise, of gutteral groans and nervy epistles to a forlorn and hoping airwave audience.

Teen Beat eschew padding, avoid movement where it won’t benefit the cause or the committment. They can sing and they can play but they can cater only for themselves and their uncertain ideals of meltdown-start from scratchrhythm it up and let’s get the riff rolling.

“We embrace and rejoice in Chaos’’ — Henry Vinyl.

Iconoclasts all they illuminate by the purveying of a feeling that even they are not permanent, merely a portion of the worn bush track, a moment of crushing despair displaying some fragment of an answer beneath their rampant urban/media dominated/sensually transient world. Teen Beat have a metal prick with a heart of gold — steaming, gleaming BUT both melt with dissatisfaction at the hopelessness of their protracted conclusions, directions and f (r) actionary answers. They are an inconclusive piece of themselves, bearing their gracelessness for all to see and sneer at, they are damned mystification that even they can’t, and DON’t, hope to see through.

Amongst the debris it becomes a lot easier for us to uncover some stream of anti­ negating assertions, most notably these come in the absurd pop epithalamiums of Peter Hall. These illustrate some upfullness for those watching, but it’s obvious they’re old songs and do not bear the progression Teen Beat have gone through since being doodling minor jokesters to their present form of urban/ethnic authenticity.

One simple structure emerges from Teen Beat, one glimmer of the glow we used to hear ottered by their mouths and instruments every time they were sounded — there is no structure or definitive rhyme or reason on which to build ourselves, just an endless collage of cause/effect/ response/repeat varying increasingly in depth or texture or whatever each time the chook lays the egg . . . or was that ‘the egg hatches into the chook’?

I’m sure one of them comes first, but which? “ It will be over Bobby and I’ll see you when I die”: Farewell Bobby, farewell Teen Beat.

Craig N. Pearce

InXs have never had a cult or a style to call their own, and this night at the Jump Club finds them trapped in a situation where remoteness is inevitable. The audience is a torpid mix of costume wearers, stunned subur­ banites and young girls who’ve come to stare at Michael Hutchence; and despite a performance that kicks and thrusts, utilising perfect playing and a crystalline sound, the band never once make the kind of connection that would involve some real sweat and danger.

The absence of that connection is made even more puzzling by the real fierceness of the InXs attack. From the moment the lights go up and the lithe sextet sweep into the heady choruses and greasy beat of In Vain and Bus Driver, it’s hard to resist that sweep of melody and rhythm, the well-drilled persuasiveness that have taken this band up to safe B-grade status in two short years.

The groove that InXs enjoy most these days is the smooth brand of funk that dominates “Underneath The Colours”. That record suffered from its production; under some kind of delusion concerning a “modern” sound, 1he band and Richard Clapton placed the rhythm section so far forward in the mix it became the hollowest of decorations for the often under­ written songs. Live, the energy of the playing lights up the arrangements. The manner in which Jon Farris and Gary Beers make their drums and bass moves is immaculate, pointing up the deficiencies of every other band in the country (the last version of the Reels excepted) who have attempted a black-influenced basis for their sound.

Moments of variety come with a pair of punk-pop numbers from the first album, and the still­ born resurrection of The Loved One, but it’s interesting that these atypical songs are the

MICHAEL H

only ones that threaten to penetrate the invisible curtain between band and audience.

Despite the showmanship, the rhythms, the stuttering guitars and the occasional attempts to be eccentric (usually signalled by tentative avante-gardisms on the keyboards). InXs are trapped in a comfortable prison of their own making.

The new songs—the best of which is the hammering Black and White show no departure from pattern, and the band’s dilemma remains one of trying to keep the demands of chart ambition, danceability and integrity in balance. It’s a familiar problem for Australian mainstream musicians, and one that’s been solved with total flair and arrogance only by Dragon in recent times. InXs’ tunes and frontman just aren’t striking enough to measure up to that standard, and they obviously need either foreign stimulation or a complete restructuring of their sound to avoid stagnation.

If they fractured their funk, put some hard graft into their songwriting, and stopped touting themselves as a quirky showband for all seasons, this outfit would have an interesting future.

Beargarden have been playing fashionable Melbourne dives for a few months and are fronted

by Sam Sevjaka, formerly frontman for notorious laughing-stock the Ears.

Rubber-limbed and endearingly uncool, he looks and moves like a styleless David Johansen and has a distinctive whine of a voice. The band have a good rhythm section, very few memorable songs—only Crying and No Cigars stood out from the imitation-Magazine-meetsClassix Nouveau clatter, and suffer from an over-equipped, uninspired keyboardist and a guitarist who looks and plays as if he’d rather be working in an all-night service station. Still, the Ears made one good LP and an excellent Missing Link single from even less promising material, so future recorded product (apparently being produced by Michael Hutchence) shouldn’t be dismissed.

Adrian Ryan

PHOTO — ERIC ALGRA

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THE B ST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF ^(Atlantic-WEA)

BOOKER T. AND THE MGs SAM AND DAVE ^^ OTIS REDDING V^ILSON PICKETT *7 PERCY SLEDGE ^ ARETHA FRANKLIN H

This country’s ro c k ‘n’ roll has always been an unwitting victim of the White Australia policy. Ever since .-the rebel beat took root here, it’s , i always had a certain bleached 7 imbalance that’s a result of a physical and metaphysical distance from black culture.

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In Britain, things have been different.

There, a crucially different outlook on : ". rhythm and dance possibilities has evolved; It’s an outlook that comes not only from the presence of a Jamaican : * population (and Jamaican styles have : .been played by white English artists since I Spencer Davis and Georgia Fame discovered blue beat in the mid-sixties) - ■ but also because of the British disco culture. In England, teenagers have been ^ experiencing music in discos rather than I on the radio for over fifteen years, and landless sub-cultures have sprung up ;!using various black musics as identifying;; ^points.;,' I These cults have provided the climate in I which the entire British new wave has ' iflourished, and it’s the failure to , understand the background that makes : Australian imitations of ska, i romanticism and funk variations sound so ' awkward. Australian rock audiences have : never understood black music and its implications: outside hard-core big city discos, there’s simply no demand fo ra ; ; darker beat. Radio avoids black music, except when an occasional piece of v in ylsneaks from the dance floor to the charts;j Earth, Wind and Fire and Kool And The I Gang sure ain’t no superstars in Australia. jAnd musicians who’ve inserted some funk rtwist in their music (Dragon, Ross Wilson, .the Reels, Hunters and Collectors) have ; never made it simply because they’ve ; included some rhythm in their stance.

Australia could never produce a Rolling Stones, a Madness, a King Creole _ i and The Coconuts; the lines of . communication with the blues, with ; Jamaica, with Africa and the Caribbean ,are too thinly, stretched, the Anglo-Irish and European dominance of our culture too great. What we’re left with is a white noise, a mutation of those backgrounds that results in a harsh rock or pop variations, occasionally with an injection of middle class views of blackness (thus : the whole Daddy Cool--; cool funk — . derived school of Melbourne rock). . ; And what has all this sociology have to with reviews of six albums that provide an overview of sixties,soul at its blackest and best? Nothing very much, except that the ^ music here represents a high point of black music’s impact on Australian pop. In the late sixties, under the influence of Stax/Atlantic;Motown peak achievements, soul charted regularly. Melbourne Mods (the only genuine example of the breed outside Britain?) danced to this music,, . and a worthy selection of bands centred■ their act around soul style. They included the Vibrants — who hit big with their ^ cover of the Fourtops Something About You Baby backed with a desperate version of Pickett’s Danger Zone, Jeff St. John ; and the Id, Ray Hoff And The Off Beats, and Levi Smith’s Clefs, while a late injection of support was provided by . American GIs crowding Kings Cross on Vietnam leave. Best of all were Max Merrit and the Meteors, who on recorded evidence alone, cut such British soulsters: as Geno Washington to shreds with a ■ wailing replication of Memphis grit.

Memphis, of course, was the spiritual, home of late sixties soul, even though that city wasn’t wholly responsible for the decade’s black pop revolution. Alien Toussaint and his cohorts were profitably twisting New Orleans rhythms at the same time, and James Brown was also working on a new beat, peaking m ;65 with his epic singles / Got You and Papa's Got A Brand New Bag while Motow-n., afways.careful not to ottend white ta.stes. was vt-ntunng into rawer territory as the PoiirToos became the corporation s oomina.nt ;

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The riverside melting-pot town that gave you Elvis, Sun Records and B.B. King was, however, the place where communal feeling of classic soul evolved. Around .

1962, a new generation of studio musicians and producers assembled in Memphis, indulging themselves with . harder, more complex rhythms than those that had previously powered black r and b. Those musicians coalesced into Booker T. and the MGs.

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Booker T. Jones, the guitarist’s Steve Cropper and that brilliant drummer Al Jackson worked relentlessly for the next seven years at players, producers and writers at the Stax studios, meanwhile finding time to churn out a stream of . dance hits. Much of Booker T.’s music was fairly insubstantial, after-hours jamming that served the purpose of providing funky wallpaper, much as the.

Crusaders or Grover Washington Jr. do today. But when they really sweated, the result was a timeless definition of soul groove, and the best early moments are all here: Green Onions, Tic Tac Toe, Red' Beans And Rice. The band’s biggest Australian hit, that immortal mood piece Time Is Tight isn’t here — it was recorded after Stax broke off their distribution deal with Atlantic, and thus WEA doh’t have definitive, but that shouldn’t deter anyone who wants to investigate the basic mechanics of soul. , .

S M ifl 1^ U M y i: — iN iiix l And if you want both ,the instrumental mechanics and a vocal icing of barely controlled emotion, the Sam and Dave i compilation is essential. These twelve tracks are the definitive sound of Memphis and of sixties disco; hammering, rhythms interwoven with deadly horns and guitars and the prime ingredient: the'voices of : ■ Sam and Dave weaving their gospel non­ harmonies to prove that two average ■ . singers can create something wonderful when they substitute intuition for techniques. All of these spngs have been reworked ad nauseam over the last fifteen years, but the originals have never been surpassed. This is the most coherent of all the “Best of . . albums, freezing the duo’s career in aspic and including all the essential tracks such as Soul Man, Hold On I’m Coming, the great ballad Wheri. ^ Something Is Wrong With My Baby and a couple of funky minor hits from 1969-70 for contrast. The only notable omission is You Got Me Hummin. ’ (cove red i n Australia by Jeff St. John): This is an essential album, its time capsule status assured simply because Sam and Dave are the perfect definition of the kind of ; minor artists whose pop fame can define an era in a manner that’s denied to more problematic major artists.

OTIS - INTELLIGENCE AND _.^Otis,Redding was nothing, if not a major artist, and the instalment of this reissue series devoted to him raises a few ; questions precisely for that reason^: Otis’ best work has been scattered around the market place on various scrappy . - - tV compilations for years but the world needs a definitive double album set'vi/ith annotations for. his career to be; piaced in. perspective; What we have here is a rewarding but far from perfect collection' that does at least resurrect some . overlooked masterpieces. There are four tracks (The Happy Song. Amen the playful Hard To Handle and the agonised Dreams To Remember) from the brilliant posthumous album "The Immortal Otis Redding", a.long-deleted collector's item which has been plundered for materials by artists mngmg from Dutch street rocker Herman Brood :o +he Grateful Deao: theGe songs are pristme and wonderful.. iecorde-u not long bcL:?e Redding's'death arc cal'. ^'iino hm- a~ the ime when tie was

breaking into rhythmic and melodic fields later exploited by Al Green, his.only true heir and pupil. .

From the same period, inevitably. Dock Of The Bay is included, and filling out the set are a clutch of typical mid-sixties . tracks such as Try A Little Tenderness, Day Tripper and Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa, the last being a personal nostalgic favourite. It was the first soul song I ever noticed on the radio back in the golden years and it’s a near-perfect summary of Otis’ mode of operation with haunted vocals weaving over the studied, primitive backing.

There’s also the definitive interpretation of Smokey Robinson’s My Girl and a blazing version of / Can't Turn You Loose, taken from the “Live In Europe” set and a memory of the way Redding could inflame an audience. / Otis, largely due to his Monterey Pop: appearance, became the first soul singer ; to be accepted into American rock culture (in Europe and Britain’s less racist milieu, he was already a superstar) but he was never as successful during his life as ' James Brown, Aretha or Wilson Pickett. ; Nevertheless, his reputation survives, . albeit as a pop auteur, writing, arranging and producing his own music and ,; : drawing on an astonishing variety of.; influences. He had a voracious interest in white rock ‘n’ roll developments, and he covered everything from straight blues to show tunes and James Brown, always working with Booker T. & the MGs in the studio and bending their skills to his requirements. His failures when he sank into cliche were always failures due to enthusiasm, but everything he recorded bore the mark of enormous intelligence a: well as passion. You can hear him at his best on the “ Dictionary of Soul” and “Otis Blue” albums, two of the greatest : moments of American music (and still available as Japanese imports) but this compilation is still totally rewarding. , M iliU r ii^ - L t n

I — d b n t J iiY l

Wilson Pickett was the epitome of the kind of sixties black cool that Otis could never quite achieve. He had film star looks, macho energy by the truck load and a scream that was the aural e q u i v a l e n t of a ■ we l l - a i me d flamethrower. Even more than James Brown, he was a perfect example of the scream-and-holler soul man, never more than a step away from caricature at any moment, and unlike Redding or Brown, he never had much control over his career. , Pickett started out as rhythm and blues singer, drenched in gospel righteousness, and this album gives you the peak song of those early years, / Found A Love. With Lonnie Mack providing stately guitar, it stands the test of time, even better than such James Brown epics of the genre as Please Please Please. \n the mid-sixties, Atlantic sensed big profits could be made from his talent and sent to Memphis, where he collaborated with Steve Cropper to cut Midnight Hour, his entry in the all-time jukebox stakes. He made his best album in Memphis (though not with the Stax musicians) and from that set “ I’m In Love”- — this : compilation includes -an absolutely explosive version of the old standard Staggerlee, the mythical black badman of the lyrics surely being a direct ancestor of Pickett himself. Wilson kept hold of that fierce Memphis groove when . be moved onto the Muscle Shoals studios, and “The Best O f..” includes his ridiculous but sublime version of Hey Jude, featuring blood curdling yells coupled with tour de force guitar from Duane Allman>; / ^ V This album is a patchy showcase for Pickett, including several tiresome late sixties cuts and excluding Don't Fight It, a Memphis song much beloved by white boys, but it’s worth the price of admission for its best tracks. If you ever need a succint summation of what soul was all about, listen to the moment \n Land of 1000 Dances when drums. King Gurtis’ sax and the Wicked "Pickett’s scream arrive in a fervent collision, and all; should be revealed. :

PERCY SLEDGE BALLADEERING

tortured

A n d if y o u , n eed relief a n d ro m a n c e , P ercy S le d g e is at han d . I'd never rated this m a n very hig h ly, having . o n ly ; b een ^ e x p o s e d : to :■his im m o rta l When A Man A Loves A Woman and o th e r e a rly b a lla d ; m ateria! but "T h e Best O f : P erc y S le d g e ' o ffers, s o m e surprising 'variety.

T h e re s s o m e fm e, subtle funK . g rind here on Baby Help /We . (w ritten by B o b b y W o m a c k , a m a jo r b a c k g ro u n d fig u re jn th e soul explosion;; a n d True Love' Travels On A Gravel Road.

Othen.vise, its to rtu re d b a lla d e e rin g aJI.the wa>, but e ’ hri.'C m usic of a high o rd e r- ve'y so u th ern , v e fy c o i;n i:y , e m a n a tin g a sultry atrno.sphere in ' S le d g e's th .ck a n g u is h e d tones a n a tne num -d f-fijscie S 'lo a is be.nt

MHii. I r i A L

mii I

SOUL "

And so to the last, and most problematic t of these compilations,':introduced ;;by another; loud, precise fVluscle ; Shoals rhythm. The song is Respect, the singer is Aretha Franklin, and the year is 1967. That ■ was the year; Lady Soul arrived withtsix American ■top ten h its" w ithin’; twelve ' months. It was art arrival (to quote American writer Peter; Guralnick) that marked the end of the soul era,-when the music’s achievements ; were “suddenly shattered by the entrance of someone so uniquely gifted, so transcendent in her art th a t all o the rs w ere; dw arfed Jn comparison.” It’s a .portentous statement but a true one; what we have here are ten songs from one of the greatest singers Of the twentieth century during her foray info the southern soul style, plus a couple of later explorations.

In her years at Atlantic, Aretha recorded enough brilliant material to fill a triple­ album anthology, but faced with the labyrinthine variety of styles and emotions, triumphs; and failures of her career, any selection would have to be subjective in the extreme. This album follows sketchily the outline; of the:y1969;;“ Aretha ; Gold” anthology which is still available, but missing are such definitive tracks as Do Right Woman, You Send Me, and Ain’t No Way, a ballad where Aretha’s voice climbs to a stratosphere of chill desperation which you’ll never find in white rock.

“The Best Of Aretha Franklin”,does give you the best dance soags from Aretha’s grab at the main chance in 1967-9. On' Think, Since You’ve Been Gone and Respect that magnificent voice flows like nectar; and burns like fire over the relentless rhythms, and you also get for your money such pop masterpieces as Natural Woman and I Say A Little Prayer, as well the defiantly sensuous Dr. Feelgood. The best moment is still the first Atlantic 45, f Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, three minutes of swamp-tinged Muscle Shoals mastery and gliding, sexual vocal, and for a bonus there’s the speedy big city funk-and-pop of 1971’s Spanish Harlem, out of place in it’s surroundings but still one of the greatest singles of all time. You could make another anthology of album tracks from the same period of Franklin’s career, and still come up with sufficient proof of her greatness, but limited as “The Best Of Aretha Franklin” is, it’s still probably the most essential of all these six compilations. __________

TSi SOUL MYTH B;Listening to these records, after beinrg transported again by Aretha’s other word ly genius,;;Otis’ craft and power, the dance magic; of ;Sam and Dave, one inevitably ■ reflects on the potency of the soul myth. As individuals, none of these artists (franklin, perhaps, excepted) had the stature of a Presley, Berry Or Beatles, but their influence.on the way we hear pop is as strong. The southern soul movement, an intensely communal music refined by the j American : entertainment establishment, f was the last major input of folk influence E (as in gospel and blues variations) into the I pop mainstream until the more remote rise = of reggae. , . f The concepts of “tightness” in playing r and “emotion” in singing these artists I defined are still with us. Rhythm sections ; and vocalists; are still judged by how 'i closely they adhere to the punch of Booker | T. and the MGs, the rasp of Redding and p Franklin. For white rockers, these records I still point back to a lost eden of righteous | black community: a Bob Seger or a Rod | Stewart .using: Atlantic/Muscle Shoals | methods and musicians, a Talking Heads | learning rhythm moves from Stax originals | are two sides of the same coin. Black | mainstream pop, has of course, moved on | relentlessly, consigning classic sou! style | to history, but for a white audience whe>'e | the history ot dance can be a luxury, these ' | songs and stances are infinitely teUseable | Reuseabie. hut no^ be surpassed Beyond | the theory, this is great, pop. grnat rock; | simply, soul rnusic. It's there t..-) bn enioyod, | .'and vou car iear r v.-hatev^r you *ik'-> f»nm' it. |

26

Roadrunner

meaning in it/The dead don’t ask way".

The material on the casette unfortunately deteriorates from side one to side two.

Side one showcases everything the band has to offer in this instance, while side two stands out as the second hand section . . . worn out. A couple of instrumental work­ outs appear on side one, quite pleasant numbers but reminiscent enough to be immediately forgettable. One of the most complete songs of the collection would have to be ‘Non Stop Funky African Jungle Party’, the title is suggestive of what it exactly sounds like, a bright up tempo chant with strong rhythm and plenty of drumming. However, like many of the songs presented here, something sinister lurks beneath the carefree sound . . . “This is where malnutrition is/Everywhere Mercedes Benz”. The evils associated with progress and the daily battle of the sexes in the office environment, are themes associated with other songs of note here.

Aural Indifference The Sound of Indifference (M Squared)

The Beatles Down Under

by Glen A. Baker (Wild and Woolley) Glenn A. Baker rang me up the other night. ‘Look, I was in Adelaide the other day’, he said, ‘but it was so rushed I didn’t have the chance to call in and have a chat about this Beatles book I’ve just done. Is there anything you’d like to ask me about it?’

I though. ‘Well, actually Glenn, no. I think you’ve covered the topic pretty well.’

And of course he has.

Glenn A. Baker is the undisputed King of Australian Rock History with countless scrupulously researched compilations of

Australia’s rock heritage behind him. His collections of Monkees (‘Monkeemania’) and Marc Bolan (‘20th Century Boy’) tracks have been acclaimed as state of the art repackaging.

All the industry and attention to detail that one has come to expect of the man has been brought to bear on this account of the Beatles tour of Australasia in 1964.

As Baker notes in his foreword, most accounts of the Beatles career dismiss the Australian tour in a couple of sentences — only noting that Jimmy Nicol replaced Ringo for the first part of it. With true nationalistic purpose, Baker sets the record, straight.

A must for Beatles fans everywhere.

Charm, fun and cross references to keep the brain alert, recorded on a Teac 144 Portastudio for future generations to marvel over.

Amateurish it certainly is, but do meagre resources really effect the essence of the work? Talent is talent, with or without the paraphernalia of presentation and promotion, ask any blinkered A&R man who but only saw it pass him by. Aural Indifference have all the pureness of pots and pans on their side, and a keenness to spit the fat around, though gently.

Synthesizer is the backbone to their pop amalgam, which, with the help of guitar, occasionally slips into some bastard country. To which is attached understated lyrics of a bleak or serious nature, though that doesn’t prevent you one jot from breaking into a hearty laugh at times.

Death seems to be a subject they have a particular affinity with, or a particular anxiety to see twisted by the unassuming way of pop. The listener is most vulnerable . . . “Death will cure you slowly/Death will make you die/There’s no

Aural Indifference are working with a sound they can vaguely call their own, even though that sound is far from cohesive in any way. Even at this inchoate stage, where capabilities are sensed but the material is essentially incomplete, a listen is thoroughly recommended.

Toby Cluechaz

PRINTING & BACKDROPS BANDS! Get your gig across to the public. Posters printed any or many coloured. Perfect for the great AUSSIE LAMPPOST”, or Billboard. And to complete your advertising ask for a price on our CANVAS QUALITY BACKDBOPS. Pro. Job on the cheap. Phone (02)8076989.

Details and samples, ask for JIM.

Donald Robertson

Could you strip this M 60 . Blindfolded?

A re You The M indless Cretin We Need?

REAR SIGHT CARRY HANDLE — thank God they didn't call it Hind* — for m obile killers. Snipers need sight. not worry.

FORE SIGHT — som ething the Army lacks,

FEED COVER — ammunition 7.62mm ball or tracer with 100 round disintegrating link belt. U seful for w iping ont w hole tribes with a single blast.

RECOIL BUFFER — so the poor killer doesn’t get hurt.

Join the Army Reserve and be a part of a great team. A team that maims, Idlls and has a generally great time, Have/un as your sergeant tells yon to wash the latrine floor for the 5th

TRIGGER — som ething all good Army Reserv­ ists value more than human lives. tim e ’’All I said w as. the food is lousy.” Frolic in such exotic places as Khe Sanh. San Salvador and Pnckapunyal. Get to strain every muscle in your body as you try to

FLASH SUPPRESSOR — so som eone doesn’t get yo u with theirM60. steer a 10 ton n e truck through a b attlefield . And watch your b est friend collapse after you’ve shot him through trying to clean your M60 blindfolded;.

M y Dad says it’s a bloody miracle, but I think it’s a f.

pity.

iiQ iiiD Q iililQ iQ iD Q iQ i ARMISTICE DAY- B/W STAND IN UNE

LIMITED EDITION 12" SINGLE WITH COMPILATION T-SHIRT

RELEASED ON ANZAC DAY AVAILABLE ON Roadrunner 27

fa

Japan ‘Tin Drum’ (Virgin)

Van Morrison ‘Beautiful Vision’ (Polygram)

“ Lack of originality has from time immemorial been regarded throughout the world as the chief characteristic and best recommendation of a sensible, business-like, and practical man, and at least ninety nine percent of men (and that’s putting it at the lowest) always were of that opinion, and perhaps only one man in a hundred looks and has always looked on it differently”. {‘The Idiot’ by

Real easy listening this. You need neither leather armchairs nor Mogodon to relax with Van and friends. It’s an almost instantly familiar sound, just meandering along, not too fast, not too slow. Van Morrison for one won’t be waking the dead and boiling the neighbours with any of this pagan rhythym/searing guitar thing. No, he just keeps up the good times.

Dostoyevsky).

And so begins the sorry story of one Made in Japan tin drum. Good old Fyodor’s words ring true and tangible in regards to Japan’s last little effort. It’s an encouragingly refined and more clearly expressed record than the handfull of bores that have preceded it, with the band realizing how to weld influences into a more concise and logical bundle. Thus, by way of complementing more inputs with a more refined, mature sense of taste and decorum they have produced an album of surer originality but still lacking in inspiration or any really provocitive aspiration.

Japan have developed most certainly from their ignominious beginnings but the length to which they have done so is hardly what one would call epochal. This record only just manages to elude being stilted and stuck in the mire of their other lackadaisical outings because, for once', the band has worked within their capabilities and not stretched out too far.

Incorporated in the album are plasticised atmospheres of the East dulled enough not to offend the mildly natured AM radio playlists but evocative enough to garner the approval of the more snotty nosed critics^ Very smartly done.

This record is like bad television, or Soma — an ample sedative but not really necessary. It is as immaculately groomed and never for a moment strained as David Sylvain’s dress sense. There is knowledge here, but it’s a rather too revolting or precious knowledge for it to be really convincing.

Occasionally the friendliness of the record is interrupted by Van’s explorations into religion, ‘Dweller on the Threshold’, for instance. While it’s no Paul McCartney timeless melody, the track is classic 1980s easy listening, perfectly produced for the adult rock stations with its delightful little sax solo from Pee Wee Ellis.

But things get a bit deep when you read the cover note, telling you that the lyrics to the song were ‘inspired by GLAMOUR — A WORLD PROBLEM by Alice Bailey and the Tibetan’. On side two, ‘Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell’ is more like a hymn, so gospel-like is the flute and backing vocal. Fortunately though, on the instrumental ‘Scandinavia’, Morrison manages to blend the meaningful with the relaxing: images of mountains and high green pastures, in fact it could almost rate a spot on a tape of ‘relaxing sounds’.

Morrison’s voice is unusual, it’s so thick that often you can’t pick the words. Is it ‘close you eyes, it feels a wonder’ he’s trying to say in ‘Across the Bridge’ or ‘hold your eyes in fields of wonder?’

To my mind, the voice is better suited to the rollicking numbers like my favourite ‘Cleaning Windows’. Here, sounding a bit like early Ross Wilson, he lays down the blues in splendid style. Mark Knopfler’s unmistakable guitar provides the punchy opening and continues the push throughout the rest of the track. By geez, it’d make a lovely movie theme. ‘I’m a working man in my prime’ sings Van, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, who rate a mention in the lyrics, would be proud of him.

Ben Cheshire

Craig N. Pearce

Laughing Clowns ‘Mr Uddich Scmuddich Goes To Town’ (Prince Melon’) I want a heading, a notice of conviction, a claim of fame for this record, some gratification or appreciation to be publicized — pragmatize it if you like, even better as point in fact. For no matter from what angle or in what spiritual condition you look at Mr Uddich Scmuddich and his in-tow soundtrack they are an all too painfully coupling of extraordinary grace, guts, innuendo and pulverizing reason in motion reaching a responsible conclusion.

Coming from the dark of our nonculture’s sub-culture it conquers all earth and mystery, evaporates fear and gives us a rare unity in its place: a unity impassioned, whole, and, most importantly, not dependent on violence. It just HAPPENS to demand a freeing of all mental and physical constraints. This is a blossom borne out of five minds realizing precisely at the same time a common intent and achieving it via subjective intuition. This is a baring of the Clowns’ souls, an anthem to the apocalypse.

I want this band AND I WANT THEM NOW! Those who have heard the Clowns live know what they’re on about. Those who have seen them at their peak have felt what they’re about. Well, here, on this record, are the Clowns better, more precisely and insisely effective than I’ve ever heard them before. Some boast. It’s a full throttle surge through the gamut of sound that has preceded them from scratch to now, encompassing all the ambition and frustration they’ve ever touched on whilst still forming newer structures and formulized clutches of soul, sly jazz pointers from the odd inflection to the fully blown doses of it and, of course, the cathartic variations of rock and roll they utilize to, alternately, sublime and impassioned effect.

There is no trace of bitterness on this album; Kuepper’s voice is again more fully coloured and expressive than ever before as well as being further back in the mix where it should be. The songs are better for it and, with the special half speed mastering/cutting process utilized for the record, Kuepper’s vocals are more audible than ever.

This sort of record demands that rare committment of a whole lifetime; the energies involved here are shown in a manner not transient but timeless.. .They. , ,

28 Roadrunner

t-* n w auiU fllier

have paid their dues to modern relevence ever since beginning, now this is the disc that does all any artist could hope of achieving — it scores maximum effect now and has the inherent artistic capability to continue doing so for many a year. A more invaluable release I’ve not come across since ‘Bollocks’ or ‘Prayers’.

The hup-2-3-4 funk totin’ beat intro courtesy of Jeff Wegener’s consistently amazing-surprising-subtle highlighting drumming for ‘Theme From Mad Flies Mad Flies’ is a war torn piece of dote-onthe-action that the Clowns revel in.

Laughing Clowns are the centre, the powerhouse of a storm; black, bleak, but terrifyingly uplifting, an energizer for existence.

This song, like those on the first side, is a complete and full piece of sound. Each part suitably complimentary to the other.

There is no fat on this record, only sinew, blood and bone save for the silly grin of genius slapped on a face here and there.

In a couple of places on side two the force is replaced by an energy to divide, break down and relocate axis points; kinetic instead of active. Inevitably these sections, too, are convincing and approachable and rich in form, fact and innovation. On one side these songs touch on the avante garde, on the other headaches of the heart and tales of the insane. Enthralling, captivating — containing meaning and explanation, whilst drawing sharp delineations between depth and depth of dimension, the admirable from the activist, the obtuse from the acute. Roll on — roll those painted Clown eyes skywards.

This record is a BLOW from whoa to stowaway, birth to death, breath to exhaustion. The Clowns are laughing louder and more maturely and more excitedly than anyone around right now.

Join the party and shake some action with them. Put a horn in your hand and a note of joy down the mouthpiece — this record calls for a celebration, and answers its own call.

A rousing fitfull climax comes in the radiant form of ‘When What You See’—* an epilogue that pulls the various strains of the Clowns into hard, punitive focus.

Doyle’s seismologically shocking trumpet fluting. Miller’s heart sucking bass, Kuepper’s insistent disco guitar, Elliot’s heaven touching and chorus circumventing sax and the wonderful drumming crescendos, cascades and catechisms of Wegener all fall into line to form a beat debilitating, a song untouchable, a verse of time and torture undeniably CRITICAL.

Craig N-.Pearce

How did we miss these?

Equal Local ‘Madagascar’ (Missing Link) Jah Wobble, Holger Czukay^ Jaki Leibezet E.P.

( ? )

Hunters and Collectors E.P. (White Label) Equal Local’s 'Madagascar is . . . an image of bliss. It’s . . . skittish circles of transfixed delectibility and sussed out touch initiation rites are spun aglow with a coupling of modern emotion with modern analysis: neither the heart nor the head rules, but both are tampered with, altered a little, moved off their axis a touch. Enough, at least, to make three tracks, three very nimbly good tracks; spouting enough new sense to be termed innovative but holding on to enough preconceptions and structures to remain reasonably commercially viable and remain suitably tres chic for discerning consumption.

SO! — what option do you have but . . . CONSUME! The most ravagingly exciting of this lot is the “12” EP of wire-spun industrometal created by ex-Piler Jah Wobble and two ex-Can compatriots, Czukay and Leibezet. This record dabbles with very bare percussion, hard electronic scrapes and burbles interspliced with sections of sound equivalent to a Teutonic ‘Bush of Ghosts’. I mention this as reference, not comparison so much, as this is a lot more evil and mundanely structured and perceptively dry-witted than Byrne and Eno could ever manage — in their closeted partnership anyway.

Brass is used sparingly and to a coarse, disorientating effect, shattering the vibrant urban warmth of the rippling Sly ‘n’ Robbie type beats that go on underneath all the environmentally descriptive/ destructive noise.

This disc has a lot of sides to it. As well as the sound already mentioned it wanders around to form some of the best modern psychedelically moody music — coupling all the things like darkness, fading rhythms, odd (almost imperceptible) flourishes of organs and synth stabs aimed at the core of the unconscious — I’ve heard in years.

Just GREAT acid music.

- ’ DorVt-ask-me-how much this sign of the

industro-times is worth in dollars (it’s worth a lot in sense) cos’ I taped it off mynearly-as-hip-as-me brother at Christmas.

The others are three or four dollars, ‘Madagascar" being the more necessary purchase; though of course it’s not much good to you at Inflation every Monday night. Trouble is, both the once happening trouncing bounce of the Blitz and the vaguely idealistic tones of Hunters and Collectors are really both quite old hat. Besides, Hunters and Collectors are yet to put forward their candidate for . underground sex symbol. Unless of course you c o u n t. . . oh, but that’s another story.

HEY! But hold on a tick. I wrote that section on H and C’s from what I remembered of their record when I first heard it ages ago. This, of course, is the way the guys have been generally treated of late: they, or what critics would like to think the band are, are being reviewed and not the music. So let me say this: on hearing this record its very obvious that it IS A GOOD RECORD for the effort put into it and considering the length of time the band had been an entity from their first live appearance to the time of recording. As Greg Perano said to me, “ For any other band it would’ve been a demo”.

So although ‘Madagascar’ is cooly wonderful don’t ignore this other disc.

Just listen to the pipes and whistles, chords and rhythms, screams and recalcitrant trances they exude and you can feel the conviction of DANCE cut into the vinyl’s face.

A living leaping legend . . . a too fast to cope with jitterbugging phenomena . crashing (never creeping) crashing through the winsome pop wilds: they’re good boys, I like them. Their groove is a little too tight — / want it to widen. But do they? Well, I say they MUST or very soon suffer the consequences. Their presently ‘rock band’ live-wise notion of sound is sounding dangerously close to a dearth of ideas, to me, and I can see them coming a cropper real soon if something isn’t done about it. I mean, if they went to England like they’re performing live at the moment and with the same songs they’d get laughed off the stage, which IS what’s beginning to happen now, in Australia, albeit for the wrong reasons.

So which to buy out of all those mentioned? Sorry, I’m simply not thrifty so I say gather ALL of them into your parlour and present them to your loved one. After all, what’s money when confronted with the devotion of love?

-

O aig N, Pearcfe

p

Bauhaus IN THE FLAT FIELD (4AD/Powderworks) Bauhaus are to be numbered among the new social climbers (CryptoClassicalists) of the English musical hierarchy, bound no doubt, to genuflect across the television Pop Shows sooner or later. Theatrics deem even greater theatrics, and so the circle become contagious and contrite.

Their music is a palatable form of heavy metal, mixed in with (or better still camouflaged) by tinkerings one would expect to learn from a crash course by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Against such a crescendo the lyrics offer some respite, even if the sanctuary offered by such cloak and dagger musings have been liberally used and abused. To go further, you could say a jutting line of tin heroics prevail for the better part of the album . . . “Go and look for the dejected once proud/ldol remembered in stone aloud/Then on coins his face was mirrored/Take a look it soon slithered”.

Surely harks back to a more pompous age circa 1972, and begs the question has the Emperor but threadbare lurex in his closet?

Either way, the game is all about impressing the Long Player Record Literate (names are familiar but never the story), a task that Bauhaus justifiably carries out. There is unmistakeable substance keep in the work, which more often than not bares itself on those brief moments when things become less ornate. A wit that everyone (no less a merit) can appreciate comes to the fore on ‘Small Talk Stinks’ .. . “You whisper sweet nothings chit-chat backchat/There’s no idle gossip in braille” .

The real stumbling blocks within Bauhaus are their overabundant use of imagery, together with the most blatant of Black Sabbath motifs that pop up now and again. Otherwise the only smell left around Bauhaus is that of the greasy lamp, and the easily accepted image of them walking up the hill at Bayreuth.

P.S. I still can’t break my fondness for last year’s single ‘Passion Of Lovers’.

Toby Cluechaz

Recorded Live and lifeless at The Venue last November in London. In England one review said the gig was good whilst another said the record was bad. You already know, one hesitantly assumes. The Birthday Party. Lydia Lunch was boss of 8 Eyed Spy and some other hip New York band. She’s underground, if you can dig it BABEEE.

The Birthday Party Drunk On The Pope’s Blood Lydia Lunch The Agony Is The Ecstacy (Missing Link) A 12", approximately 16 minute each side (one side a piece), affair.

Her single song side is a drawn out, dried out, sloppy gummed gnawing at nothing. Its a coy clap-trap of nothing as invigorating as noise or the timid testicle tickling I was hoping she’d be into.

Painted black eyes and forlorn pre-fab horror. A groaning, moaning bolt of bravado that shits out cliches of my dreams and yawns of my past. Dubious to the point of teeth taken out every night this girl has a slight gall to call herself lunch when she’d be flat out making the grade at morning tea.

Piss her off back to New York I’d say, but quick before she kills everyone with her putrid languid rash of poses and prostrated claims of S and M kids stuff.

Get a job, ya hippyl Flipping over we have a rather pasty offering, as much in the pretty lack-lustre

and depthless recording as in the performance. There is no sense of danger via instrumental clashing going on, no semblance of havoc being wrought, no visibly painful action going on. In other words, by the band’s own standards this hand full of songs if a plumpish waste of effort on the production team’s behalf and a waste of money on yours.

If you’re a die hard fan I can’t see much reason for its purchase and if you’re not I can see only reasons for avoidance.

Funny as it is, there are enough rough edges smoothed out by the mix to attract those that probably wouldn’t like the band normally because of the unacceptable rigour in their strip-the-rock-and-fuck-ittill-it-bleeds mentality. Good luck to them.

I’m only glad the band didn’t waste Ed Roth on this disc.

Of course if you like your rock hard ‘n’ heavy and devoid of the glib theatrics and know-it-all pleasure The Birthday Party, when at their most potent, coat their noisy nursery rhymes with, then this record is for you. Me? I demand more than a slow slide backward which is all I can see the Party doing here. As for the other side, she’s well and truly out to lunch.

Craig N. Pearce

Roadrunner 29

f

Cheetah Rock’n’Roll Women (Alberts)

23 Skidoo ‘Seven Songs’ (Fetish Import) From back beyond Fripp’s ‘Exposure’, to where cavemen used granite phalluses for dildos and drumsticks, we move to today, or tomorrow. In doing so ‘Seven Songs’ becomes our anthem. This is very humorous. So is this record’s implacably deity smashing implicatoins; its also invariably penumbral, y’know, the glint of soul between unkept dance riffs and Frankenstein body bleeding.

Here are Beckett-like minds working wantonly wicked explanations into tense diagrams of awkward shapes, tones and textures: a reel of coiled language spiteful and caustic in its sensibility, tenuously drastic in its ambitions and, hence, imperfections. This is an attempt at something that fails, but still grasps enough of the rudiments of its history/ future to come out on top — stimulating, exacerbating, so wearying.

23 Skidoo’s sound, here in diapers wiil, by the time of this record’s release, probably have been forfeited by the band for at least tank tops underneath pale pink pairs of bib ‘n’ brace jeans. Obscure? Wait till you hear the record, gunko!

Mood, essence, amplification of ideas; all are achieved so easily by rudimentary clashing and baring of instruments that when voice is instituted into a song the band seems to be almost nervous about its use. The overdubbed use of radio on ‘Porno Base’ is a stroke of (albeit unoriginal) genius. Stark, violent bass strings are hit with deliberately alienating though intensely absorbing force.

Elsewhere they use ‘found’ voice/sound to dissonant, obtuse and disturbing effect, creating a milieu of gasping emotion over which 23 Skidoo cast spells of angst, opportunism and intellectuaiiy inspired paring down of the songs’ constituents’ substances.

Constant in all of the songs is a cleverly deliberate desire to underplay their intentions, not set themselves up too highly and, inadvertently, advertise their own obsolescence. Well, this is a tonic for the troops and a wise move. Too bad some ‘rock’ bands can’t take head of their more creative competition. For implicitly stated in this band’s music is a forgoing of traditional rock attitude, style and structural history. These instruments have been stripped of their cultural enamel and polished anew to suit the minds operating them.

Bare, scintillating, garrulous. I groove across the avante-garde board to land, in a fit of repressed condescension, in ‘Seven Songs’. This is good news for MODERN man.

Craig N. Pearce

In a nutshell, this'is a great rock’n’roll album. Lyndsay and Chrissie Hammond have great voices, but up to the release of this album have been more in demand as back­ up singers. ‘Rock’n’Roll Women’ sees them take their rightful spot out front of of hard cooking rock’n’roll band, singing a brace of fine Vanda and Young melodic stompers.

In a lot of ways this is a Vanda and Young aibum. They’ve written all the songs, in their classic rock mould (Melody meets Power) and produced the whole shebang too. But you can’t take anything away from the Hammond sisters. Their voices are strong, distinctive and at times superbly gritty.

There’s very little quality female hard rock that’s come out of Australia in the past. This album has already created a lot of interest overseas, particularly in Europe.

It would be ironic if Cheetah were only recognised in their homeland because people elsewhere has taken the trouble to listen.

Ever since Jon first made a name for himself in the Australian music market, he has proved himself a fine artist, and this album is proof of that. One of the highlights is the powerful ballad, “Hollywood Seven”. Jon’s vocals never falter and the song is sung with emotion and he puts all he’s got into this track.

Other tunes on the album include title track “Beating The Boards”, the old but ever popular “Turn The Page”, “The Shining”, “Words Are Not Enough” and “Every Time I Sing A Love Song”. The list goes on. Some of the songs can be heard on previous Jon English albums, but most of them don’t sound the same anyway, so what’s the harm in having both the live and studio versions.

No solo artist is any good without the back up that they need. Jon’s backing is provided by the Foster Brothers, who, along with English, give out good listening and a great sound.

Jodi Hoffmann

Donald Robertson

THE FALL ‘Hex Enduction Hour’ (Kamera Import)

Various Artists Storm Riders (EM.I.) They may as well have called this Australian music at it’s best, because that’s exactly what it is. I don’t know what the film is like, but the album certainly deserves high praise, featuring artists such as The Church, Sunnyboys, Australian Crawl, Moving Pictures and Split Enz. To name a few.

Consisting of thirteen track’s, it’s obvious that it must have been a hard decision to choose the artists and songs, that were to finally appear on the album. If you support Australian talent, then this album is for you. Even if you don’t. I’m sure that after a few listens to this — you will.

Track’s include ‘Hard Act To Follow’, ‘Hit And Run’, ‘Asian Paradise’, ‘Summer Of’81’, ‘Unpublished Critics’ and ‘Bustin’ Loose’. Not bad for a movie soundtrack.

My only criticism of the album is that the front cover shows no indication of what the album contains. Had I been flicking through it in a record shop, I would have just passed it up for another surf-movie soundtrack.

Jodi Hoffmann

Jon English Beating The Boards (Mercury) Jon English has done it yet again with his new double album, “Beating The Boards”. Not much can be said about English that hasn’t already been said. This album, recorded live at

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various Australian venue’s is a must for all fans of the talented performer.

Perhaps a little monotonous after all four sides have been played through for just the curious listener, but — the goods are there.

The Fall are an unashamed rock band They know rock’s limitations but are also aware of its intrinsic, traditional and reactionary worth. They attempt to force it into a state of value and contemporary realization. This they achieve to an extent, but that extent leaves one of my taste dissatisfied though appreciative of their stance and ambition. The Fall are a very worthwhile band; its a shame that people who deserve to hear this music probably won’t because of its pure honesty.

Their source of inspiration is alien to Australians but, with modifications, the music has plenty to say to a local audience. The music, after all, is only good rock, which even our pub rock fans should have little trouble in digesting.

Lyrics are another kettle of fish. Even though I have a vague idea of their content, (barely illuminated by Mark E. Smith’s mainly indecipherable singing) I’m hardly knowledgeable enough to devote space to them here.

Suffice to say they come from, and refuse to betray their origins (typical English working classes). They say things that are so taken for granted that nobody thinks of them or the point of their being there anymore.

As for sound likenesses, even though I fear the loathing this wHI instigate, I can hear Iggy as well as the Velvets hollering out down there in the corridors of The Fall’s sound with the occasional leanings towards an early Ubu. They’ll probably cop Birthday Party comparisons as well but this seems a trifle stretched. Some of the two bands’ ideas and objectives are probably similar but The Fall are much more at ease with the fact that they are a rock band through and through than those paranoid little spring chickens, the Birthday party, ever could be.

In June The Fall are presumably conducting a tour of this country. One hopes they’ll get a more conservative crowd than they probably will, but wherever they play there will certainly be some honesty on display in the most explicit terms in Australia since The Saints where shitted out of Brisbane’s spotlessly wiped arse. Never mind, if this record is any indication of their live sound they’ll have a show well worth catching.

Critchinson. Highlight is their jazzy reworking of the Stevie Wonder master ‘Do like you’.

Ben Cheshire

The Stranglers ‘La Folie’ (United Artists) What on earth happened. I’d dearly like to know, to those four scabrous, angry, frustrated old men of Rattus Norvegicus? I’d say they either discovered the allure of money, the scent of softness, or their true musical selves. This album is safe and easy and nice and warm and graceful and genial and either a welcome seat to slip into or a midly captivating dance floor enameler. Now this may come as an unwelcome shock to some of you black clothed and spirited public nuisances out there, but it comes over as a well adjusted commercial enterprise to me. Let them have their money, because I like the record. And this shocks me as much as you, no doubt.

I feel like a ridiculous Ram Writer saying the Sunnyboys are good—or something hilariously similar—when I—sort of— recommend this album. With all the subtle touches imbued on this record you can almost waft off for a while in your own little dream. On tracks such as ‘Let Me Introduce You To The Family’, ‘Ain’t Nothin’ To It’, and ‘The Man They Love To Hate’, though, if you regard how they’d sound in a live context (and to an extent how they sound here) the raunch of The Stranglers is still a feature not totally foregone by the band. This record, produced by the band themselves (though, and this should provide a clue to all you rockophiles, it was mixed by Tony Visconti), has cut any jagged edges off the sound that may have previously frightened away radio programmers.

Witness the not totally throwaway single, ‘Golden Brown’, and you’ll know what I mean.

‘Golden Brown’, itself included here, is as soft and gracefully moody as the songs go, retaining a keen sense of wispish dynamics beneath its Georgian facade—at least I prefer it to the contrived Viennese decadence of Ultravox. Comparing the two bands. I’ve no hesitation in naming The Stranglers as owning the more worthwhile sound, because they seem to have moved honestly to their present style without employing a great deal of theatrics and lavish lashings of make up to get their point across. The Stranglers are relaxed whilst Ultravox are too busy deciding what to wear for the next film clip.

‘Pin Up’, if anything at all, seems an obvious tongue in cheek swipe at all those critics who describe the band as sexist. ‘It Only Takes Two To Tango’ is the record’s worst track, succumbing to lolly watered down Beach Boy harmonies of all things.

My favourites are ‘How To Find Love and Happiness In The Present Day’, ‘Non Stop’, ‘Tramp’, and ‘Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead’—possibly the peppiest, most nutritiously sweet numbers on the album.

The album’s finale, ‘La Folie’ itself, is a cool, sauve soiree of a piece, stretching the band’s cabaret abilities to their capable limits. ‘La Folie’, the album, covers a wide spectrum of feels and objectives, sounds stretching from the moody punk teeth gnashing we used to know and love, to sections not dissimilar from Godley and Creme. God knows how it manages to attract me with cross references like that but, curiously enough, it does . . . mostly.

Craig N. Pearce

Craig N. Pearce

Various Artists Life in the European Theatre (WEA) Morrissey Mullen

‘Badness’ (Powderworks) Dick Morrissey, you may remember, was the saxaphone player in the late 60s jazzrock band Colosseum, and ‘Badness’ is very much his record. Seven tracks of impressive solos on tenor and alto sax, leaving guitarist Jim Mullen, most of the time, as the guts of the rhythm section.

And man, what rhythm—the toe-tapping never pauses for more than a few seconds on the whole album. It strikes me as a sort of cross between Herbie Mann and Galapagos Duck. Chords don’t hang around longer than a few bars, complimenting the funky beat and cool background keyboards of John

A compilation album drawing attention to, and raising much needed funds for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. British bands of the more thoughtful manner have donated a song each: The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, XTC, Echo & The Bunnymen, etc.

Eminent historian, E. P. Thompson, writes on the record’s cover a very direct but no less elegant argument for a nuclear free Europe, and for that matter a nuclear free world . . . “You can blame the bureaucrats, the ‘defence experts’, the military lobbies, if you like. These are the people who pap-feed us with ‘official information’, put the gag on honest information as ‘official secrets’, stop viewers from seeing ‘The War Games’.”

Toby Cluechaz

Daf ‘Gold Und Leibe’ (Virgin)

EDITOR & PUBLISHER Donald Robertson

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For me, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft are more d u ff than DAF. they seen closer to Farrah FawcettMajors than Marilyn Monroe. Still, their gasping and occasionally testy synthesised brand of body music is at least vivacious, if not totally convincing.

Credit seems to have been given lightly if one remembers to the plaudits DAF have received from an obviously sexually off-key rock press. Instead of the sweat and grime they aspire to, the cover shot of glossed up leather boys sort of sums them up. At least their sex is short and sharp — a pleasant reversal of the Prince/Rod Stewart state of confused and drawn out ‘state of fuck’. DAF music is successful in portraying the thin transiency of sex and trivial romantic bed manoeuvring but it is hardly profound in its grasp of the deeper motions stirring beneath the hump and thump of sexual transmission/fission.

Divided into a ‘dark’ and ‘light’ side, the former gathers more drive and desire in its grooves simply because it recognizes there’s more to fuck than friction. Both sides have a succinct poignancy due to the virtuous lack of overblown pretension.

‘Gold Und Leibe’ is a curiously enigmatic record, engaging the listener more and more by its estranged, though implied, silences.

There is more than meets the eye to DAF. Not so much depth as scope of vision. In the dark it makes more sense because it brightens things up.

I’ve yet to have sex with DAF as the soundtrack, but the more I listen to it the more alluring the prospect becomes. But, then, come to think of it. if DAF music is a vital form of body music, then I think any premeditation of action would be totally out of place.

Try testing it out for yourself and let me know the results (including pictures, of course).

Craig N. Pearce

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SYDNEY EDITOR: Giles Barrow MELBOURNE EDITOR: Adrian Ryan (03) 347 3991 BRISBANE: David Pestorius PERTH: M ichael Muliane LONDON: Chris S alew icz

Dear Roadrunner, Just writing to tell you what a hole Sydney is for Rock’n’Roll (Auz style). JJJ’s is up somewhere playing pretty poofs with headbands music, SM and UW are so wrapped up in their damn-shitless commercials format that they rely on Yankee junk (e.g. ‘Harden my Heart’, ‘I Love Rock’n’RoN’), and MMM makes life a bit more bearable. The concert scene up here is hopeless. Hardly any free concerts, while lucky Melbourne gets the Mushroom Evolution, and seems like 3XY is having a great concert every week. Rotten radio programmers seem to think Sydney people are a bunch of Pommie and Yankee listening wankers. Help! No-one plays groups like Machinations, Sunnyboys, No Fixed Address, Outline, Pink Flamingo’s, Reels, Boys Turnaround, Little Heroes, Swannee, Mi-sex, Flaming Hands, All niters. Dynamic Heprotics and Hitmen. Please answer my plea. Station managers . . .

I would love, a couple of pen-friends who love Auz music too. Tell me what’s happening around your place, y’know, and what you think.

Saidie Mir 59 Gnarbo Ave., Blakehurst, N.S.W. 2221 Dear Ms Linda Campbell, and eds; Reference Vol. 5 No. 3 April 81 page 19 and your review of Tablewaiters, Sardine Laughing Clowns caught this lads eye for two reasons Allright, outta sight and fab.

It’s bias (sic) about what they review.

Seriously — too many for too few for too long have become psuedo reviewers overnight and been nice to everything and sort of dirogatory er sort of. To cite an isolated case — The (then) Flowers were pampered by the music press here but once in the U.K. out came the bias and constructive, distruction by various commentators with their poisoned pens and not to clicheish condemnation i.e. good writing. Your article had inklings of a potentially good writer in the making. No bullshit — but you blew it in the 6th paragraph. It’s apparent you never saw Sardine that night. Your not wrong — Laughing Clowns were mighty fine but Sardine blew them off the stage. Now I base this on several factors (1) I was there for both bands (2) I’m a die hard fan of both bands (seen both at least 25 times and own all vinyls put out by all acts) and (3) I too am a reviewer of some humble note. Stuart Coupe is not as (in) famous as he is by not turning up at gigs and asking friends what to write! Good god girl — if you don’t like them say so, bluntly! but don’t try to cover it up with that painfully corny note worth quoting line.or two. We, the reading public are a bit more urn er, for lack of a better word, aware! Drunk, stoned or straight.

Al Lefebvre Photographer and music writer Tharunka, Gleve, NSW I tried to contact Linda for comment, but couldn’t get in touch before press time.

Maybe she just didn’t like them Al?

NEW YORK Keri Phillips CONTRIBUTORS: Stuart Coupe, Toby Cluechaz, Jenny Eather, Earl Grey, Tyrone Flex, Span Hanna, David Langsam, Adrian M iller, Ruthven M artinus, Craig N. Pearce, Brecon Walsh DESIGN & LAYOUT: And Productions — Richard Turner HEAD OFFICE:

92 Rundle Street KENT TOWN S.A. 5067.

Ph.: (08) 42 3040.

DISTRIBUTION: Gordon & Gotch for Australia and New Zealand PRINTER: Bridge Press, Seventh St., M urray Bridge, S.A. 5253 Ph: (085) 32 1744.

ROADRUNNER is registered for posting as Publication No. SBF 1813 Recom m ended re ta il price $ 1.

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