mad macka

Resurgent Ausitralian label Dog Meat Records is thrilled and proud to release a new album by a resurgent rock 'n' roller and an old friend Pat Todd and his band The Rankoutsiders.

“Sons Of The City Ditch” is the seventh album by LA's finest rock'n'roll band and comes some 36 years after Dog Meat’s first dalliances with Pat, back when he fronted the legendary Lazy Cowgirls. 

The new album shows that Pat’s voice and songwriting have only gotten stronger, and that he's got another killer band behind him, one that mixes classic '70s punk rock roots with country, blues and rock'n'roll in a manner that sits somewhere between “Exile on Main Street” and “LAMF”.

Pat Todd will be touring Australia solo, in a double-bill with Mad Macka from The Cosmic Psychos and The Onyas in late 2023. Stay tuned for details.

The new album is highlighted, as usual, by Todd's fantastic songs. A prolific writer with an eye on life in the margins - whether they be in small towns or the big sprawling city he has called home for 40 years - Todd routinely hits the mark where youth and the advancement of age find common ground in alienation and wilfulness. 

Pat Todd
+ Mad Macka
Golden Barley Hotel, Enmore, NSW
Saturday, 25 November 2023 

Australian music legend and label owner Sebastian Chase once said to me: “Punk rock is folk music with volume - street music, if done right”. And with local bands like Cosmic Psychos and X, a case can certainly be prosecuted that street music and its stories can be  found in bars and pubs across the land.

Mad Macka has played his fair share of pubs and bars for almost 40 years, originally with The Onyas and lately with Cosmic Psychos. Macka’s music mirrors what you’ll still see and hear in drinking establishments across the land: cynical yarns by blokes on the punt and into their sixth schooner.

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?"

Another year of almost zero fun in Sin City (if not the rest of Oz/the rest of this mortal coil/earth) for most of us/those in the lower/working class, some relief could be found through the following Top 10...

Margo Price - "Strays" album

Lucinda Williams - "Stories from a Rock-n-Roll Heart" album

Eilen Jewell - "Get Behind The Wheel" album

Lydia Loveless - "Nothing's Gonna Stand In My Way Again" album

Cable Ties - "All Her Plans" album

Leah Senior - "The Music That I Make" album

Pat Todd / Mad Macka @ Golden Barley Hotel, Sydney 

The Mezcaltones (CD launch) @ Marrickville Bowling Club, Sydney

I have been making lists and, damn, it has been a huge year of music for me; so many records and so many gigs.  I cannot think of a year so jam-packed.  I could have made a Top Ten list by August this year. Best that I don’t count these off or it could be limiting.

1. Loud Hailers at the Hollywood Hotel, Surry Hills, NSW
Ben Fink is one of the most tasteful and sonically powerful guitarists in town, evoking Blind Lemon Jeffersonand Jimmy Page. Then there’s drummer Jordon. And vocalist Christa Hughes,who mixes it up, referencing everyone from Nina Simone to Lydia Lunch to a deranged Lisa Minnelli. Confrontational and soulful. Their gigs at the Hollywood set the place on fire. The Sydney inner city band to catch in 2024.

2. Fabels at the Hollywood
Ben Alyward and Hiske Weijers have been making music together for 13 years and have developed a cult following both in the inner city and Europe.  It’s a creative, surreal form of shoegaze with a huge palette of influences. They sit in their own space and avoid the pub rock tradition, forging their own identity and sound.

_{The Barman on tour in Japan at Mr Death's Crampstore with The Grand Wizard of the Psychotic Turnbuckles.}  

Top Ten Albums and Other Things In No Particular Order (with a qualifier that I never review gigs promted by the Bar but, fuck that, it’s my Top Ten.)

Ten Albums
1. Dark Country – Sonic Garage (self released)
This turned up on the eve of an overseas trip so a full review from yours truly isn’t among the glowing tributes already posted. A step up on the debut (which was pretty good in its own right) with lots of weaving guitars and classy keyboard textures. Sydney Old Man Rock and Roll. Just buy it.

2. Hackney Diamonds – The Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones Records)
You might have wanted to hate it. Lead “single” “Angry” was so-so but turned out to be one of the parts of a sum that’s much better than it could have been. There's a formula here but it's not a negative when it's in the hands of its inventors. Trust your own ears: It sounds contemporary but this is still The Stones being the Stones, even without Charlie.

There’s always something to recommend Unbelievably Bad even if their tastes extend to the extreme end of the cultural scale (black metal, splatter movies, hardcore) compared to your average, probably older, I-94 Bar reader.

There’s not much in the ranting of Cannibal Corpse’s ex-frontman Chris Barnes or the chick from the so pretentious Circle Pit to trouble me, but on the other hand a lengthy chat with Ian Cunningham from Birdman fans The Chosen Few is alway going to be a worthy read. Issue 16 is a cracker with the other stand-out an interview with Ian “Bobsy” Millar, the last surviving link to Lobby Loyde and the Coloured Balls. It’s also timely with the “When Sharpies Ruled” compilation recently dropping.

Nearly six years after it came out on vinyl, French label Pitshark has re-issued this unpolished gem from deepest, darkest Brisbane on CD in a fold-out seven-inch single pack.

Back then we opined that "Why?" was "equal parts wrecking ball guitar, sledgehammer bass and drums and can't-give-a-fuck punk slop" and there's no reason to resile from that.

We also said that "Ich Bin Ein Esel ("I Am An Ass") will sit you on your arse quicker than a six-pack of Coopers Pale Ale drunk through a straw on a stinking hot day", so if the rest of this lazy review reads like you've heard it all before, then you have...

Australia's Cosmic Psychos have racked up 40 years and will play three very special shows in rural Castlemaine, Victoria - a short stagger from mainman Ross Knight’s farm.

The main shindig takes place at the Theatre Royal on December 1-3 with Cosmic Psychos rounding up all their favourite bands (and some very impressive surprise guests) for a wild weekend down at Knighty’s local. 

In addition to the big bash, there will be more events and parties around town so grab some mates, load the esky and fang it to Victoria’s goldfield country for a big ol’ bender.And, because it’s their anniversary, Cosmic Psychos also want to kick back and enjoy the festivities, so they’ve roped in some very special bands to headline each show.