brisbane

Last night, Jim Dickson (of the New Christs et al) feigned fear of my venomous penmanship. As if I’d write a bad word about Jim! The trouble began when the Barman sent me a pile of his old rubbish over to review. It’s not my fault he needed someone to put the boot in. Besides, I just called it as I saw it. Now everyone thinks I’m out to do them in. Here’s a review to prove that you only need fear me if you produce crap. I will give you every chance to prove me wrong and I’ll admit it when you do.

Being a punk rock institution in Brisbane and six bucks might buy you a banana thickshake in Brunswick Street Mall. Reality is that you’re as likely to lock ears with the harsh blare of techno as dirty rock ’n’ roll in today’s Fortitude Valley. 

That’s why you have to admire the underground rock and roll scene in the capital of Australia’s sub-tropical north, for its quality as much as its resilience.

Which nicely segues to The Dangermen, whose 17-year existence must qualify them for rock and roll’s version of seniors cards. Which, along with their Brisbane Institution status, should at least get them that thickshake at a discount.

Liver than an exposed power line and crackling like a a pocket full of cheap Chinese fireworks after someone threw in a lit match, "Main Street Brats" is the self-released debut album for the Brisbane 'burbs band that goes by the same name - and it's a revelation.

Harder Yakka – Shandy (Bovver Boogie Records)

If there’s a higher energy rock and roll band in Greater Brisbane, weight-for-age, you know our email address. Only Dr Bombay comes close. So why wouldn’t you be onto this collection of pre and post-pandemic recordings faster than a Moreton Bay seagull on a chip? 

Remember sharpie rock? Shandy covers that base but with less overt boogie and more of the sort of rock rhythm that rolls. 

Recall Oi? The shout-out choruses are still here but the kicking is more to do with excising jams than taking off rival soccer fans’ heads. “Harder Yakka” has a larrikin charm that’s Australian-made, due in no small part to the distinctly Antipodean crunch in the guitars.

Brisbane institution Screamin' Stevie announces the opening title track of his fourth album in as many years with a trademark "Heeyyyy." There's a blues-rock vibe running through this album that'll hit the spot with old fans and pique the interest of the curious potential new ones.

ManArays - ManArays (Swashbuckling Hobo)

Considering they've been around since the start of last decade, Brisbane’s Manarays have a minuscule online footprint. Consider this a Public Service Announcement to alert you to their presence, as well as an album review. 

The ManArays - vocalist Chris Fletcher, guitarist Adrian Carroll (aka Killer Guitar Carroll) and drummer Micky Scott - come from turn-of-the’80s Sydneysiders The Splatterheads, so it’s no surprise to hear them tackle these 13 songs with a similar attack. 

I-94 Bar Records is proud to announce the impending arrival of “Psychopharmacologist”, Brisbane musician Mick Medew’s first true solo album and his most surprising musical adventure yet.

It will be out on CD and digital on October 2 and pre-orders here will receive an early release track, "When The Wood Is Brown (Full Return)", via download. 

Medew has shown with his current band, Mick Medew and the Mesmerisers, and past units, the Screaming Tribesmen and Mick Medew and the Rumours, that he's a master of guitar pop-rock. “Psychopharmacologist” puts him in a different place with nine songs that make optimum use of the studio and bring wildly varied influences to bear.

Wrong Train Home b/w Quicksand – DangerMen (Swashbuckling Hobo)

Lovely and raw. You do know those two words go together? This return 45 by Brisbane’s DangerMen after a five-year absence is as ragged as Grandpa’s undies after an unfortunate late night accident on the way home from the pub, with a sound that’s more than a little Stooge-efied, thanks to some single-note piano and Dr Rock and Dover’s“Raw Power” guitars.

“Wrong Train Home” is about an ill-fated train trip while tripping, and sounds like what health professionals these days call “a lived experience”. Zoltane the Maniac’swail is both wrong and just right. Flip him, Danno, and you’ll sing along to “Quicksand” which, it must be said, is more of the same. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Buy it as a download if you must but drop some cash on the seven-inch here and you’ll get something that’ll last almost as long as herpes.

While his band The Mesmerisers are preparing for a run of Melbourne shows to promote their brand spankin' new album, Mick Medew is playing a rare solo electric show at Brisbane's Junk Bar on August 13.

Tickets are on sale via Oztix. Support is Defo Mofo and expect a run through the bulging Medew back cataolgue, with some surprise covers. 

Three things you need to know before we start: This is the sound of miscreants making mischief. Stylistically speaking, it's all over the shop like a mad woman's breakfast. And lyrically, "Nuder Than Nuder Than Nude" sounds like a public exhibition of schizophrenia.

The Nudists were reputedly around in Brisbane for a handful of shows in the mid-2000s and were lured into the studio by Swashbuckling Hobo Records over two days to lay down their first “proper” record. The immediate take after a few listens was that they sound like Lubricated Goat on bongs.

Taking a Ride - The Chordites (Swashbuckling Hobo)

This ride’s got a lot of everything. Pop-punk, power pop and grimy garage rock spring from the 10-song vinyl LP like water from a leaky radiator. 

It’s a self-assured effort from a crew of Brisbane players who - to milk the travelling metaphor - have a bit of mileage on their clocks, doing duty in bands such as the Dolls-meet-the-Groovies Subsonic Barflies,Half a Cow popsters Daisygrinder and '80s punks Death of a Nun.

That’s a diverse background, so It may have been tempting to make a record with a side of pop and another of the rougher stuff. I have a feeling that such a contrived approach would have been too predictable for The Chordites.

It started at a Some Jerks gig at the late, lamented Beetle Bar in Brisbane. Journalist Andrew Stafford, author of Brisbane rock history "Pig City", approached his friend Sean Clift, of Red Dust Music Management and drummer with local thug-rockers Lords of Wong.

“Listen,” he said. “This band is great. Everyone here loves ’em. If we can’t sell a few hundred of their records we’re dumber than I thought. Maybe we’ll lose a bit of money but fuck it, let’s do it anyway.”

Several months later, Some Jerks asked Staffo if he’d write them a bio for their new record. “Well, yeah,” he said, “But, funny you should mention it. Would you like to be on this new record label Sean and I are putting together? Then I’ll have to do it!”

And so, after a fair bit of planning and a couple of false starts, Pig City Records was born – a vinyl/digital only model, with Some Jerks’ second album, "Strange Ways", to be the first official release in October, with the vinyl limited to a special hand-numbered run of 300 copies.

Brisbane music stalwart Rod McLeod died last week after a short and aggressive bout of lung and liver cancer which went to his brain. LCMR Records head, Queensland underground music archivist and friend Donat Tahiraj has penned this remembrance. 

* * * * * 

I first met Rod McLeod sometime in the 1990s when record fairs in Brisbane happened only quarterly. It was a time when vinyl records weren’t exactly in the front of many music listener’s minds.

The occasion was in the sheds of the Mt Gravatt showgrounds. My fellow record-collecting friend Mick Bakerand I had noticed a man wearing a seemingly homemade t-shirt with a white iron-on transfer among a sea of people.

Upon closer inspection, he was holding a small handful of 7” singles which, prior to the explosion of eBay, were only obtainable by chance or through want lists. Facing towards our line of sight was one by the Bodysnatchers – a Brisbane punk band that played one show in 1979 and happened to release a record that same year. Its cover with the band’s name done in spray paint in white on a black background was in fact inspired by the “Neu! ’75” shirt that Rod had thrown on that Saturday morning.

Mad Macka's history should need no recounting but, fuck it, let's assume you're entirely clueless or you live outside his native Brisbane.

From the slamming punk of The Onyas to the fast and loose jams of The Egos and back to his recruitment into Cosmic Psychos, he's been a fixture on various levels of the Australian underground for years.

"Seminal Robots" finds him and his Brisbane band Panh Andler in gutter blues territory but don't slip it on and think you're going to hear "Fuckwit City". It's mostly music stripped back to its basic elements. The Big Fella is naked, more or less. 

But "Panh Andler"? Mad Macka's far from uneducated - the man's been a lawyer as well as a pizza deliverer - so you can assume the name is an ironic reference to bluesmen. One of those many online dictionaries describes a "panhandler" as "an urban beggar who typically stands on a street with an outstretched container in hand, begging for loose change". "Buddy can you spare me a recording session?"

A few people have a problem with Screamin' Stevie's brand of idiosyncratic garage-soul - and that's fine. You can't please all of the people all of the time and Stevie ain't no choirboy. But it's the fact that sometimes (vocally) this Brisbane veteran can't carry a melody to save his life that's at the heart of his artfulness. Putting this quirkiness to one side, most of "She Just Likes To Dance" is poppy garage prime-time.

Monster Hits – Square Tugs (self released)

If variety is the spice of life, Brisbane’s Square Tugs are the celebrity chefs of Australian punk rock. The trio’s debut album “Monster Hits” is a curry with enough popping flavours in it to set off your tongue, and lyrics to get your brain into gear at the same time.

They’re not of pensionable age but they’re not spring chickens either, so the odds are short that a glimpse into the Square Tugs’ record collections would throw up some interesting and familiar selections. 

Did you know Square Tugs originally formed as a Circle Jerks tribute band?

A lot of water’s passed under the Story Bridge since Brisbane’s Dr Bombay released their debut album “Dose” three years ago. Amicable line-up changes mean that just two original members, singer Gary Slater and guitarist Stewart De Lacy, remain.

What hasn’t altered is Slater’s grasp of what makes great songwriting. The ex-Voodoo Lust and latter-day Trilobites frontman came up with all 13 of the tracks on “Spit Your Out Like Revenue” - and there are some pearlers in the ranks. 

It’s OK to like pop. Real pop, that is. You won’t hear it on mainstream radio. What they play is a watered-down variant that’s polished and homogenised within a centimetre of its life. So go straight to the source, go online or (gasp) experience it at a gig, cherry-pick what sounds good and forget the rest. That’s where a band like Some Jerks comes in.

Recommending music is such a personal thing that we behind the bar are often criticised for going over-the-top in some of our evangelistic rants. Well, fuck you: No, there won’t be an apology for that, because we (mostly) review the shit that we like. Speaking of evangelism…

Even if writing about music really is like dancing about architecture, applying descriptors is still a necessary evil. You could probably tag Brisbane’s Prog Psych. Americans would probably call them a Jam Band. Both would be correct.

Dreamtime hails from the depths of Brisbane’s underground scene and its music is as exploratory as it gets these days. Both feet are planted firmly in the late-‘60s scene of the US West Coast with a bit of Syd’s Floyd thrown in for good measure. These are meandering, weighty jams built on guitars and a nimble but minimalist engine room. “Sun” pulls in influences like Eastern ragas and percussive touches like chimes.  

The Far Outs! – The Far Outs (Ripple Music/Rebel Waves Records)
There’s a readily-identifiable rock and roll lineage that goes back through the 1980s and ‘80s and it effortlessly connects to the ‘60s. Lenny Kaye’s “Nuggets” album and the tireless Greg Shaw from Bomp Records are owed a huge debt for provoking the so-called Garage Revival, and The Far Outs are living proof that it hasn’t died just yet.

The Far Outs are a duo of Brisbaneites, guitarist-vocalist Phil Usher and drummer Jonny Pickvance,and if you’ve never heard a song by The Sonics or The Kinksyou need to track them down and ask for a look at their record collection. The Far Outs have raided the mid-‘60s sounds cupboard, padded out their own spin on it with organ, and have delivered an album that drips with swampy garage goodness.