Citadel

The exhaustive program of bonus-packed re-issues by Australia’s favourite pop-punk shit-stirrers the Hard-Ons continues unabated with 1990’s “Yummy” getting the treatment.

Pig City author ANDREW STAFFORD speaks to former Screaming Tribesman and I-94 Bar Records signing MICK MEDEW about all the old, all the new, and "All Your Love". Cartoon by Rick Chesshire.

The big three are money, drugs and women – the three things that invariably fuck male bands up. For the Screaming Tribesmen, it was women, or a woman, though the whole thing was probably the bass player’s fault, really. It’s the best story of its type I’ve ever heard.

Miss out on the Radio Birdman box set? After unveiling vinyl versions of the re-issues, Citadel has now announced individual double-CD packs, including one for the killer and highly sought-after “Live at Paddington Town Hall” album.

Each package is loaded with the extras that came in the box set. Go to Citadel Mail Order and get clicking in time for Xmas. 

Reviewing the new Radio Birdman box set is an absolute poisoned chalice. You know I’m going to give it five bottles, right? It contains most of the great recordings by the greatest band to have sprung from these shores. Bar none.

I include everyone in that statement from the Easybeats through AC/DC and onto whatever crap that is currently passing itself off as popular music. Forget your Hoodoo Gurus and your Sunnyboys, your Birthday Party and your assorted Johnny Come Latelys. This band was Ground Zero and Year Zero. Accept no substitutes.

"Radio Birdman. Box Set. Seven CDs. One DVD. One hundred Aussie bucks. Five Bottles. Yay. It’s great."

And that has been the extent of the reviews of this thing. Nobody has wanted to prod it with a stick and turn it on its side. And with several good reasons. Radio Birdman have always put the fanatic into fans. No more surly beast has ever walked the earth than a Radio Birdman fan.

Even if Radio Birdman were the sum of its parts, the solo output of its members surely deserves more than the cursory consideration many have been prepared to give. Case in point is this album. Deniz Tek has built a formidable body-of-work outside the framework of 

Neil told us that rust never sleeps. On his fourth solo band studio album, Deniz Tek acknowledges as much, examining the oxidation that’s all around him in clinical detail. Relationships and places go under the microscope and are dissected - like a scalpel through a heart - with keen precision.

Fessin' up first: I didn't much like "Dickcheese" when it originally came out in 1988. You didn't need liner notes to hear the overt heavy metal influences. The album swung from catchy punk-pop with buried melodies to bottom-heavy stoner riffing. There was no lack of energy but the mix sounded muddy and bore little resemblance to the sound of the Hard-Ons live. Many years down the track and all that stylistic bouncing around makes much more sense.

Legendary guitar-pop trio DM3 are set to tour Australia in April following a renewed interest in the band on iTunes and on vinyl.

DM3’s “Monsters of Jangle” Tour will be a rare chance for fans of the WA-based, internationally revered power-pop outfit too see them perform live in limited venues around Perth, Melbourne and Sydney ahead of a trip to Japan.

“Monsters of Jangle” will showcase DM3’s ‘Best of’ vinyl release “One Time Two Times Three Times More”, a collection of explosive highlights from their five albums released on the respected Sydney based independent label Citadel Records from 1993-2002.

Formed in 1992 by The Stems’ founder songwriter Dom Mariani, the original line-up of DM3 includes Summer Suns’ drummer Pascal Barlolone and Someloves’ bassist Toni Italiano.  Together they are revered worldwide for an explosive sound that fuses melodic pop hooks, cool vocals and high energy rock’n’roll guitar.

DM3’s first two albums “One Time Two Times Three Times Red Light” (1993) and “Road to Rome” (1996) were produced by the legendary Mitch Easter (REM, Pavement, Velvet Crush) and lauded by critics and fans alike as two of the world’s best in power pop genre.

Album number-three “Rippled Soul” (1998) put Mariani’s unrivalled skill as a songwriter front and centre and won legions more fans at home and in Europe and the USA.

Good things and small packages: Only seven tracks long, this debut from the Perth band led by Dom Mariani (DM3, ex-Stems and ex-Some Loves) and Nick Sheppard (a "Cut The Crap" Clash member) is a killer-no-filler collection of soulful rock and roll.

A couple of listens in and it’s evident why Paul Collins recruited the core of this band to back him on his Australian tours. The On and Ons play classic guitar pop in the mould of The Plimsouls, the Flamin’ Groovies in their Beatles-besotted era and Collins’ own The Beat.

This is a band that walks down the pop side of the street. If lineage counts, The On and Ons start with a considerable advantage over many others. The members’ rap sheets include the early Hoodoo Gurus, the latter-day Screaming Tribesmen, Kings of the Sun, The Barbarellas and The Stems. To paraphrase Lou: Their powerpop day beats your year.

It was in the days when we'd seemingly lost The Stems to posterity, the studio flash that was the Someloves had flared and expired and the DomNicks were a still yet-to-be realised glimmer in some ex-latter day Clash member's eyes. But we still had DM3.

It’s hard to imagine Deniz Tek fans being disappointed by his latest release. Radio Birdman fans, maybe not so much.

While Deniz’s last album, “Detroit”, was a brooding, introspective and dark reflection on urban and personal relationship decay, “Mean Old Twister” paints with a broader aural palette. Sax, harmonica and keys are woven into the sound at strategic points, to enhance Tek’s trademark guitar and guitar player’s vocal.

His nearest and dearest might know him as Peter but you'll most likely recognise him as Blackie from the Hard-Ons. Not that this, his second solo album, bears much relation to that esteemed band's fast and furious output. "No Dangerous Gods…" is off-the-wall, whip-smart and often lush acoustic rock that suggests Syd Barrett more than Sid Vicious.

The odds were stacked against Leadfinger delivering two killer albums in a row but only a fool would have laid down their readies against him. Here's 11 songs of blues-rock swagger with classic influences, all processed through Stew Cunningham's personal musical blender.

It’s their fifth studio album and it’s tempting to say the lines have become blurred between Nunchukka Superfly and the Hard-Ons, from which two of its three members are drawn. That’d be convenient but also wrong.

It’s hard to work out when Hard-Ons ceased being just another band and evolved into an unstoppable force of nature. Thirty-four years after publicly emerging into the dim lights of an inner Sydney pub stage, this indefatigable trio keep punching out albums when most of their contemporaries have long put their own cues in the rack.

Ask any record tragic. There’s a tried and tested rule for albums. Most long-lasting bands deliver one or two gems at their high point and the rest are shit or on a plateau. “Peel Me Like A Egg” easily stacks up against most of the Hard-Ons’ 10 previous studio efforts. It’s not so much because the band has stayed true its composite punk, metal, speedcore and pop roots (it’s always good to know what you’re going to get) as much as they’ve managed to make each release sound fresh.

Life’s tough at the top and Pismo Beach’s finest exponents of rock and roll wrestling, the Psychotic Turnbuckles, can’t just lie around on Southern Californian beaches sipping champagne all year.

They’re escaping the Northern Hemisphere summer and heading back to Sydney in June for a brief taste of how the other half lives.

Singer-songwriter Louis Tillett has died in a Sydney hospital after lengthy health struggles, aged 63. The announcement was made online today, a week after his passing, by partner Rachael Slattery:

I am very sorry to have to pass on the news. One week ago Louis Tillett passed away. Jack and I were with him to the end. We thank Royal Prince Alfred and Concord Hospitals for allowing Jack and I to stay for days and weeks at a time leading up to his passing. 

Please remember him as he was, in the words of Hellen Rose, a Cheeky Druid. He brought joy to our pain, light to our darkness, and a good dose of mischief. I have gone to great lengths to make his Music available everywhere possible. I will leave links in the comments for you to find them. Louis has donated his body to Science. There will be no funeral as such. But please stay tuned for news about his Memorial.

Louis Tillett will be remembered as one of the most talented songwriters of the Australian underground scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. 

Tillett released nine studio albums and a live recording in a career that started in Sydney in 1977 with an experimental version of the Wet Taxis. That band finally coalesced as a more conventional ‘60s punk-influenced outfit in the mid-1980s and supported an Australian tour by Nico. 

Grong Grong, Lubricated Goat and King Snake Roost guitarist Charlie Tolnay has passed away in Adelaide after a brief and unexpected illness. The news was posted on the Grong Grong Facebook page last night.

Tolnay was an original member of the band, formed by his half brother Michael Farkas in 1983. The band expired with the near death of Farkas in 1984 and reformed in 2009. More details when they come to hand.

The Rosemary Beads are a band that sound completely original yet wear their influences as a badge of honour. 

Emerging out of the West Australian indie rock music scene during the ‘90s, they released three exceptionally good EPs that ranked as some of the best pop from that side of the country. It was music that was highly ignored and startlingly brilliant

“From 3 EPs” is a compilation of their output ("Breath", "Dog" and "I'll Come When I'm Good And Ready" - two of them on Citadel) from the band’s original run that ended in 1995. “Shine” is their first full album and ther comeback recording (they disbanded after the death of their drummer, Cam Munachen) and arrives after 20 years of silence.

“The Diving Song” opens “Shine” with a huge splash of classic alternative rock. It is melodic and there was a time this would have been on high rotation all around the country with a good chance of crossing over to the mainstream. Of course that was back when there was a glimmer of hope for new and exciting bands to be given airplay.