the fiction

Little Murders EP - Little Murders (Off The Hip)
Sweetness Brings The Light EP - The Fiction (Off the Hip)

It’s a crazy, mixed-up world where music-lovers buy things in every available format. This four-track vinyl EP comes direct from the “Dromana-Rama” CD album which is not available as an LP, so if you’re both a Little Murders fan and a vinyl fetishist, this is the only way to satisfy your habit.

“Memory Sky” is a superb opener but there’s also not a dud among the selections here. Which are: “Wait”, “Train” and “52 Bands”. The “Dromana-Rama” album has a lot of depth and grows with each listen, but something has to be said for assembling four of its best songs on a slice of black vinyl. If you don’t walk away from a listen thinking that power-pop-rock can't get any better, you have industrial deafness or your tastebuds have relocated to your back passage. 

Demolition – Rob Griffiths (Swerve Records)
The Girl Belongs To Yesterday Rob Griffiths (digital single through Swerve Records)

As long as I've been a music fan, I've regularly become obsessed with particular songs. At age 10, it was “Devil Gate Drive” by Suzie Quatro. It was “Department of Youth” by Alice Cooper at 12. It would be “London Calling” by The Clashand “Another Girl, Another Planet” by The Only Onesin my late teens.

I'd buy a single and replay a song again and again. The tune would stay my head for weeks and I would wear out that seven- inch single until it was a crackling mess.

I came across “The Girl Belongs To Yesterday“ by Rob Griffiths a few weeks ago on Facebook and like all the classic three-minute singles, I replayed it again and again. Just like that kid bringing home a seven-inch vinyl by Suzi Quatro or Alice Cooper. Except this one’s a download.

One of Australia's finest power-pop bands, Melbourne's Little Murders, are the subject of a forthcoming documentary but the project needs an injection of fan funds to push it over the finishing line.

Director-producer Matt Wilson has been documenting the history of Little Murders and its founding and sole continual member Rob Griffiths. "Little Murders - 40 years on the smell of an oily rag" has a funding target of $6000 and is 40 percent of the way to the goal.

"In our ageist society it's rare that a musician in his 60's can maintain what is essentially a pop band and bring it to a level allowing a tour in Japan in 2019," Wilson writes.

Almost Dead In Hollywood b/w La Dolce Vita – The Fiction (Off The Hip)

The glam-punk “Almost Dead In Hollywood” has a momentum that belies a reality that The Fiction are superannuants who originally convened as a band in Meloburne way back in 1978. Rob Griffiths spits out a word salad about a huge and hazy night before leading us it into a gold-plated singalong chorus. High tension guitars from Rusty Teluk and Rob Wellington are barbs on the end of the hook. Bait taken.

The B side is an ode to a neighbourhood sexpot and if they remake the movie of the same name, it should be on the soundtrack. A nagging guitar line and a bubbling bass-line propel “La Dolce Vita” forward with a relentless but melodic punk urgency. The throaty guitar solo that punctuates the song towards the end of its two-minute lifespan is a cool touch.

Snap it up without hesitation here.

    3/4

Hollywood – The Fiction (Off The Hip)

Much water has passed under the bridge since 1978 when The Fiction was one of a handful of struggling punk rock bands in the womb of a nascent Melbourne underground music scene.

Like a spark, The Fiction came and went. Some of their songs made it into the setlist of mod-flavoured pop-rockers Little Murders, which has become as much a brand as a band for vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Rob Griffiths, its only constant member.

Griffiths (vocals) and Rob Wellington (guitar) remain from the original band and although the passage of time may have buffed off the sharper edges, the reconstituted Fiction still trades in high-energy pop punk.

_{The Powerline Sneakers at The Day By The Green. Noni Dowling photo.} 

Well hello fellow I-94 Bar abusers! I took my skinny white bum down to Melbourne on the Friday morning – a 5am bus from the Farmhouse here in Dimboola, only a lazy 1000ks there and back - but folks, if they rock, I will travel. And A Day by the Green, the next day, was well worth it. Some call this long-running mini-festival “a day on the green”…well, it is held in St Kilda, after all.

They had a fabulous line-up, led by Melbourne rock royalty in John Nolan (ex- Powder Monkeys), in his most awesome band, The Powerline Sneakers. Also on the bill: River of Snakes, The Pro Tools, Seedy Jeezus , Cold Harbour, The Fiction, Me Graines and a couple of other bands that I missed (my bad.) I’ll be early next time.

SO FUCK DID IT RAIN. LET’S JUST GET THAT OUT OF THE WAY. Inside the dry setting of The St Kilda Sports Club, there were about 150 punters there when I made my grand entrance. No-one noticed, of course, because The Me Graines were pumping out a fine set of tunes, with a new drummer and a couple of well-chosen covers. They were right on the money - a $20 entry fee – and I got my money’s worth right there. And it’s only gonna get better.

Ramona - The Fiction (Off The Hip)

Simple songs simply done is a time-honoured formula often born out of necessity rather than choice. So it was in the beginning for The Fiction, a Melbourne punk band that sprang up 40 years ago, burned briefly and fell apart before spawning International Exiles and Little Murders. 

Only around for a year, The Fiction was fuelled by the nascent songwriting talents of frontman and expat Englishman, Rob Griffiths, and guitarist Rob Wellington.

Their influences were what was coming out of the UK punk scene in the ‘70s, as much as Melbourne visitors Radio Birdman and the Saints. The important point-of-difference between the UK and Australia back then was that the local standard of living made it hard to get too angry at anything much, relatively speaking. 

Don’t Let Go. A Memoir – Rob Griffiths (Swerve/Off The Hip)

He readily confesses to not being a household name but if fervent enthusiasm for rock and roll and a back catalogue of should-have-been-hits counts, Rob Griffiths should be. 

Best-known as frontman for onetime Melbourne mod torchbearers Little Murders, Griffiths is one of the most underrated songwriters in the country, and now adds author to his c.v.

The autobiographical “Don’t Let Go” is a ripping ride that cranks up in Melbourne music’s underground of the mid’70s and continues well beyond - as told by an immigrant Pommy kid who jumped in at the deep end. 

Griffiths’ first band The Fiction shared stages with Boys Next Door/Birthday Party, News and JAB in a short but noisy existence. Punk was only a starting point: the did wear suits (briefly, at the end) and it was a hint of things to come. Griffiths makes the point well that the lines between genres in Melbourne are, and always were, heavily blurred.

His ‘60s influenced Little Murders rose from The Fiction’s ashes, soaring in popularity on the back of the burgeoning mod movement of the early ‘80s. When both band and the “Quadrophenia” trend foundered, Griffiths became a club DJ, a small-time record label chief and band manager, often in tandem with a day-time career as a schoolteacher.

It could have been called “Short Lives Of The Poor and Obscure”. 

Like Reals, Negatives, Young Charlatans and News/Babeez, The Fiction is but a footnote in Melbourne punk’s earliest days, briefly existing from 1978-79. They released a posthumous EP under the name Little Murders, kickstarting that enduring brand and the career of its leader, Rob Griffiths.  They also enjoyed the patronage of the rightly-lauded Melbourne punk mover and shaker Bruce Milne and Pulp, the zine he ran with Clinton Walker. 

The Fiction had a loose affiliation with those glam-sheep- in-punk-wolves clothing, La Femme, sharing a practice space and a manager. Musically, The Fiction seems to have been drawing more from bands like The Who and the Small Faces, although there’s undoubtedly a bit of Bowie in there, too.

1- Ed Kuepper at the National, world class all the way.

2- Handgrenade Hearts at the Town Hall Hotel. Punk/powerpop teenagers, and my new favourite band.

3- Munster Zine, approaching issue 40, keep it up young man.

4- The Victims + Chimers at the Brunswick Ballroom, Chimers BOG, great to see the legendary James Baker on the tubs one last time.

5- Civic “Brute Force”, hints of Birdman and Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

6- Those Pretty Wrongs + Alexander Harvey at the Brunswick Ballroom, heartfelt, sublime, AH I need to revisit.

7- The Prize “Wrong Side Of Town”,  If Amyl and The Sniffers had a song this good they’d be as big as Blondie, if……..

8- Civic live at 3RRR.

9- The Fiction at the Northcote Social Club supporting Chris Masuak and Dog Soldier. Best I’ve seen them play.

10- Ballarat Gallery: Walker, Luke, Counihan, more; love the revamp, can’t wait to return over the summer.