2025 Top Tens: Ex-Lime Spiders and Grooveyard member, and solo artist Richard Lawson
- Details
- By Richard Lawson
- Hits: 736
Top Ten Filthy Rock and Roll Songs
1. "Blitzkreig Bop" - Ramones
2. "Shake Appeal" - Iggy and the Stooges
3. "Dirty Robber "- The Sonics
4. "New Rose" - The Damned
5. "Communication Breakdown" - Led Zeppelin
6. "Oh Carol" - Rolling Stones
7. "Revolution" - The Beatles
8. "Lucille" - Little Richard
9. "Eruption" - Van Halen
10. "Let There Be Roc" - AC/DC
Find Richard Lawson here.
The VeeBees take their place on a porcelain throne
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 709
Third In Line For The Throne b/w Yeah Orright – The VeeBees (Evil Twin)
Twenty-five years of The VeeBees? Hard to believe but here’s the proof that they still excel at excess. The A side is a stringing sub two-minute trip of raging guitars and fun. The VeeBees’ engine room has never sounded more powerful.
And the lyrics? They’re about lining up when you really need to lay a cable and (thankfully) have nothing about the succession plans of entitled and terminally boring Royals.
At a tick over three minutes “Yeah Orright” is an odyssey in comparison. The band eases off the throttle and while Its lyrical journey doesn’t go much further than the chorus, the chugging guitars stick like shit to a blanket. That term could apply equally to "Third In Line".
The VeeBees don’t own Yob Rock but they’ve carved out their own little corner, spanning Canberra and Wollongong. More power to their (drinking) arm. As the boys themselves say: "Four blokes, 3 chords, 2 brain cells, 1 carton of beer." 
1/2
A Sydney slamdown for the ages to mark the Festive Season's start
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 209
We're in the home straight in ther run towards the I-94 Bar-promoted annual Xmas show by Pismo Beach's Psychotic Turnbuckles at Marrickville Bowling Club in Sydney this Saturday. Tickets are moving briskly for the Kings of The Combat Zones' match-up against heavyweight hard-rockers The Dark Clouds and fuzzily effervescent The Sugar Beats.
Turnbuckles frontman Jesse The Intruder says he has some special moves in store for the challengers but the headliners seem to be in an unchracteristically magmanious mood, promising all advance ticket buyers a present. We'll believe that when we see it but you can secure your ringside spot right here.
2025 Top Tens: Garry Gray of the Sacred Cowboys
- Details
- By Garry Gray
- Hits: 755
Julian Wu photo
The Barman has sent out the call for Top Tens. I have ditched my Imperial Wardrobe to deliver a stripped-down Metallic KO Top 10. Lean on words and mean on content – old, new, stolen, and blue – five live and five vinyl – here we go for the tip of the iceberg of my musical stuff of 2025. Time won’t permit my top 500.
2025 Top Tens: Peter "Blackie" Black of Hard-Ons and Nunchukka Superfly
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- By Peter Black
- Hits: 1077
This is seriously in no order - just random awesome things in a pretty bloody awesome year
1. Davey Lane - Finally, A Party Record
Excellent pop! Not scared to touch Yacht and Soft rock either
2. Rubber Necker - Bad Behavior album and one of their gigs at the Duke in Enmore
The show as wild "somehow held together" post rock. Whoooo!
3. Cammy Cautious and the Wrestlers
Only saw em once and CAN NOT FORGET IT!! Took me head clean off
4. Some awesome aussie books Radio Birdman - "Retaliate First" by Murray Englehart and "Orstralia A Punk History" by Tristan Clark. Loved 'em .. got John Foy's book next up.
2025 Top Tens: King of Pop Dave Graney
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- By Dave Graney
- Hits: 1506
"The stars, baby, the stars": Tex Perkins with Dave Graney at The Beasts' "Black Milk" show in Melbourne. Amber Schmidt photo
Dave Graney Top 12 for 2025
1. Dave Graney and the Soft n Sexy Sound 30th Anniversary Sound tour.
This was so enjoyable for me. So great to play the music and crack the codes to the album. Extremely challenging to perform it and to present it to people. Very tense to start it each time we did it on the 21 date tour. It had peaks and it flowed. It started from silence and ended on a long fadeout.
Do you like FÄHM? Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 834
A – FÄHM (Hiss and Crackle Records)
The Blues never goes out of style, it just gets bent out of shape. This quintet from Wallsend, a suburb of Australia steel city Newcastle, applies its own stylistic panel beating and the result is a satisfyingly swampy pastiche.
Assembling members from local bands Howlin’ Rats, The Not Nots, The Outliers and Paper Thin, FÄHM (pronounced “Fam”), mixes up the medicine in some weird and wonderful ways. The bio cites influences like feedtime, Scientists, X and Beasts of Bourbon. The latter is obvious but for mine it’s the “Safe As Milk” era Captain Beefheart whose shadow looms largest.
Triple treat as Sonny Vincent returns to stages in Europe
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 507
Fans of Real Rock Action rejoice: New York punk survivor Sonny Vincent is continuing his return to stages with a triple whammy of shows in Germany in February.
After a one-off gig in Europe and an art show in Los Angeles last month, the indefatigable Vincent will play Stuttgart (February 20), Cologne (February 21) and Hildesheim (February 22). The shows will be filmed by Danny Garcia ("Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC", "Sad Vacation: The Last Days of Sid and Nancy", "Looking for Johnny", "Stiv") for a full-length documentary.
Sonny Vincent is a veteran of the Max's and CBGB scenes whose band Testors were a cult item in the NYC underground in the late '70s. His long and storied career has included collaborations with Scott and Ron Asheton, Wayne Kramer, Bob Stinson, Cheetah Chrome, Mo Tucker, Spencer P Jones, Sterling Morrison and Captain Sensible.
Trust us on this: Another Tunless Racket 4 is music to your ears
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 810
All Another Tuneless Racket. Punk and New Wave In the Seventies Volume Four: The American Beat East
By Stven M Gardner
(Noise For Heroes)
The intention was to read this cover-to-cover before penning a review, but time got the upper hand. As it does. You need to know about it before the onset of the Festive Season proper so you can put it on your Xmas shopping/wish list.
I’ve been dipping into and out of this “Another Tuneless Racket 4” over the past three months. It’s a punk rock “War and Peace” at nearly 690 pages but not a hard slog. It’s neatly compartmented into various regional musical scenes, so “ATR Volume Four” is ideal fodder, if your attention span is short or you want to dip in and out.
Notwithstanding it weighs a lot more than a mobile phone, you might find it essential Toilet Reading (or “Bathroom Reading” for sensitive Americans who think a bathing facility is co-located with what we Australians call The Dunny.)
Reading on the loo is probably a Bloke Thing but certainly not exclusively the domain of men or Australians. The bog is one place most people know they won’t be disturbed.
There’s a bonus if you’re getting on a bit and are not, er, as regular as you used to be, in that you can spend a long time combing these pages. The hefty size of “ATR4” (it’s nearly as heavy as one of those extinct things called phone books) means that if you lift your copy past shouilder height a few times, you can skip the gym.
There’s a lot to be said for Toilet Books. A good one takes your mind off the government bowel testing kit that arrived in the mail and is sitting on your sink, unopened. If you’re a Westerner visiting Japan, reading is less taxing than working out what all those controls on the side of the cistern do.
Unlike Jinglish instructions or medical self-diagnostics, however, “ATR” is a labour of love that comes from Steve Gardcner, the same rock and roll obsessive who spawned the American zine “Noise For Heroes” in the 1990s, and the record label of the same name.
- Red Kross return for Oz tour with Hard-Ons
- The Big D gets his Soft 'n' Sexy Sound on at The Gov
- Good Golly, Miss Molly! Adelaide duo plans to short-circuit Sydney
- Masuak's Dog Soldier charts its own course on new album
- Danny Handley and The Animal inside
- Sneaky launches for Ash while The Church isn't in session
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Town Hall Hotel, Newtown, NSW
- Dec 20
Cosmic Psychos
"I Really Like Beer Tour"
JAN
1 — Edge Hill Tavern, Cairns, QLD
2 — Dalrymple Hotel, Townsville, QLD
3 — Magnums, Airlie Beach, QLD
4 — Metropolitan Hotel, Mackay, QLD
7 — Harvey Road Tavern, Gladstone, QLD
8 — Grand Hotel, Childers, QLD
9 — Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast, QLD
10 — Seaview Tavern, Woolgoolga, NSW
11 — Bellingen Brewery, Bellingen, NSW
14 — Moonshiners Honky Tonk Bar, Tamworth, NSW
15 — Finnian's Tavern, Port Macquarie, NSW
16 — Avalon RSL, Avalon, NSW
17 — The Marlin, Ulladulla, NSW
18 — Beer Deluxe, Albury NSW
22 — Tanswells Hotel, Beechworth, VIC
23 — Sooki Lounge, Belgrave, VIC
24 — Westonport Hotel, San Remo, VIC
25 — Social Club, Balnarring, VIC
26 — Volta, Ballarat, VIC
29 — Whalers Hotel, Warrnambool, VIC
30 — Torquay Hotel, Torquay, VIC
31 — Riverview Hotel, Tarwin Lower, VIC
FEB
12 — Royal Oak, Launceston, TAS
13 — Forth Pub, Devonport, TAS
14 — Altar, Hobart, TAS
Send us stuff to review
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2223 Australia
Get in touch: barman@i94bar.com
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