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By Bob Short

Bob Short

26 February 2015

Hits: 12070

• radio
• wayne kramer
• new christs
• newcastle
• the fools

Let’s get the clichés out of the way; the show business myths that promise that the cream rises. That living fast and dying young will ensure immortality. It’s all bullshit. Too many artists fall through a crack in the Earth whilst laurels crown the insipid and the banal.

How many great albums and films have vanished to land fill? How many books are lost because libraries can’t afford the storage on their back catalogues? How much blood, sweat and tears has evaporated into the ether? Forgotten whilst the over culture lets us eat dog food. Here is your chance to right that wrong.

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By Robert Brokenmouth

Robert Brokenmouth

22 February 2015

Hits: 6908

• the pop group
• citizen zombie
• post-punk
• gareth sager
• mark stewart

Well, I know several people who loved The Pop Group when they first bent my head in 1979, and they and the band all went on to other things fairly swiftly, it seems now, and the age of the UK music weeklies waned, and not being in UK, I confess I rather lost track of the ex-members.

So, an in-depth analytic comparison with ‘past hallowed punk rock glories’ ain’t on the cards here. Most of my readers weren’t attuned to this band … but that may be about to change.

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By The Barman

The Barman

18 February 2015

Hits: 7207

• johnny
• thunders
• sex pistols
• disconnects
• wake up dead
• dead boys

The spirit of New York City’s Lower East Side (circa 1979) is alive and well and living under the nom de plume The Disconnects in Neptune City, New Jersey. 

In many respects that’s good to know because in these horrifyingly gentrified times, it couldn’t exist any longer in safe and antiseptically clean Manhattan. Even its neighbour, Brooklyn, has become respectable. New York Punk (the Heartbreakers variant) was swept under the carpet years ago - so good on The Disconnects for flying that ragged flag.

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By The Barman

The Barman

17 February 2015

Hits: 7622

• 3 headed dog
• holy curse
• dimi dero
• Hits
• new christs
• three headed dog

Forget the clichés about French rock and roll bands being full of pale and inspid breadstick-chewers who can barely rock and are lamentably unable to roll. This Paris trio can do both as well as almost anyone you can name, and might just be the best band you’ve never heard. 

3 Headed Dog are Brenko (guitar), Vinz (bass) and Manga (drums.) All have been members of anarchic noisemeisters, Dimi Dero Inc, and the late Holy Curse, who for mine were the best rock and roll outfit in 20 years to have crawled from under the lid the establishment keeps firmly on France’s underground music scene.

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By The Barman

The Barman

11 February 2015

Hits: 7896

• Citadel
• hard-ons
• blackie
• ray ahn
• peel me like a egg
• keish

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.

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By The Barman

The Barman

10 February 2015

Hits: 7314

• sports
• stephen cummings
• martin armiger
• andrew pendlebury
• reckless
• don't throw stones

There’s too much here to consume in one sitting or even two. Reanimator To The Stars (by Royal Appointment), Sir David Laing, has packed these deluxe editions of The Sports’ first two albums with enough bonus material to weigh down a Melbourne Cup certainty

For the uninitiated or the downright forgetful, The Sports sprang out of Melbourne’s fertile Carlton Scene in 1976 and petered out in 1981, but only after a run of four albums that spawned a slew of catchy Australian chart singles.

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