Back On Broadway EP – Handsome Dick Manitoba (Heavy Medication/Ghost Highway/Take The City)

He’s back and as bombastic and brash as ever. Handsome Dick Manitoba and the band he made his name with, The Dictators, are irrevocably divorced, but The King of Men punches on with this four-song vinyl EP, comprising two new studio tracks and a brace recorded on the road.

In case you didn’t know, Manitoba’s been doing a bit of touring in the USA and Europe with his own bands after the big split and something of a slow motion fall from grace away from the stage. If you’re not familiar with the story, the title track “Back On Broadway” spells it all out:

Revenge – Plastic Section (Chaputa Records)

If you ask us, “refinement” and “Rock and Roll” make strange bedfellows and Melbourne’s Plastic Section is a case in point. This retro trio is so out of kilter with 99.999 percent of the straight musical world that it hurts. And in a time where music is an ever debased commodity, that is very much a good thing.

Plastic Section take their lead from rockabilly, rough-edged R&B and ‘50s rock and roll. “Revenge” is their album nomenclature, but reverb is their religion and they worship at the altar of Link Wray.

It should be no surprise. The band’s lineage is in outfits like The Exotics, Wrong Turn, The Wraylettes, Wet Ones and Girl Monstar. They probably wouldn’t have existed over the course of a couple of albums and an EP in any Australian city other than Melbourne.    

He’s lamenting the chronic shortage of real guitar rock and roll afflicting this ever fracturing planet, so ex-Radio Birdman, Hitmen, New Christs and Screaming Tribesmen guitarist Chris Masuak is returning to Australia to do something about it. Chris Masuak’s Dog Soldier will play shows in New South Wales, Queensland and Canberra in November on the back of a new album.

It’s been more than two years since Masuak left his adopted home of Spain and came back to his longtime old stamping ground of Australia but he hasn’t been idle. As well as gigging through Europe, he’s released an EP with his main Spanish band, Los Revelators, and a swansong single with his other Spanish band, The Viveiro Wave Riders (on US label Savage Magic).

LightHeavyWeight 3 - Jack Howard (self released)

If you don't know who Jack Howard is, I can only assume you are a newcomer to Australian music, and probably a newcomer to this website. For the benefit of the uninitiated, he played trumpet with Hunters & Collectors, toured the world with Midnight Oil as their multi-instrumentalist and has played with the likes of Rodriguez, The Violent Femmes, The Living End, You Am I, Tex Perkins and Kate Ceberano. 

So let's move straight away to the nitty-gritty. It's the music, it's the beat, it's the soul. Those are the only things that matter.

Night Comes Down
By Bob Short
(Earth Island Books)

Who could trust time when reason was lost?

I got pretty lucky. I did all the dumb things and I'm still here.

First, it's such a delight to read that I've snorked coffee over it several times in my usual cafe, as well as other unpleasant substances on the bus. So, if it's a horror story, it's one where you spray coffee over it, your table, pants and some lady's nice white frock. 

Perhaps you could instead think of “Night Comes Down” as an amusing memoir with layers of horror? No, that won't work, there's just too much real horror. 

Even the unreal can still feel like it is real. That hunk of meat in our heads is a totally unreliable narrator. We make excuses for things and pretend things never happened and yet weirdness is always nipping at our heels. Is anything true?

Perhaps you'll read it and think it's all made up. Strangely enough, Bob Short is (as usual) one step ahead of us.

The Revenge of Alice Cooper - Alice Cooper (earMUSIC)

Goddamn. It's been over 50 years. I loved the original Alice Cooper Band. That live album they recently did of old songs was fucking cool. Surely this will be great. My anticipation, like pride, comes before a fall.

The Revenge of Alice Cooper? That might be too strongly stated. It's not even really the return of Alice Cooper. Maybe it's the retirement plan of Alice Cooper. Christ. The boys in the original band definitely deserve something. They were royally shafted.

We've had a few of these reunion albums over recent years. The Stooges did "The Weirdness" which was pretty much loathed but I rather liked. "Ready to Die" followed to a better reaction. I loved it but others weren't so keen.

After The Flood -   Ed Kuepper and Jim White (Remote Control)

“We took what Jim and I had been doing live and brought it into the studio. It was important that we capture the immediacy of what we had been doing and everything was not laboured. Everything was laid down.”

Ed Kuepper spells it all out in his media release announcing this album.  Anyone who has witnessed the powerful, atmospheric and unforgettable performances of Ed Kuepper and Jim White live will testify that they’re something not to be missed.

_{The 2025 Coral Snakes.  Meredith O'Shea photo.}

If you were alive to Australian music and culture in the mid-1990s, you couldn't avoid Dave Graney. It wasn't so much that his band dominated the charts - but 'The Soft 'n' Sexy Sound” was unavoidable.

Having been nominated in the Best Male Artist at the 1996 ARIA Music Awards, he wore a hot pink crushed velvet suit (beneath a toe-curling wig) to the award. To the evident astonishment of presenter Chrissy Amphlett, Graney had beaten John Farnham, Paul Kelly, and Tex Perkins to the top spot. Dave began his unrehearsed acceptance speech by declaring himself, with deep irony, to be “King of Pop'” 

Such TV moments are pivotal, iconic, magnificent (and easily locatable on YouTube). Right up there, in my view, with Iggy Pop bouncing up and down on a chair in the “Countdown” studio calling Molly Meldrum “dogface”, and innumerable Norman Gunston interviews. The difference is that Graney possesses an immutable grace, style and a vein of rich, droll humour.