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rod mcleod

  • rod guitar white pantsBrisbane 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. 

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    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.