We’re living in the Seventies again

REISSUE

RADIO BIRDMAN

Box Set (Citadel)

****

ROCK ’n’ roll at its greatest is usually raw, lived out in the moment before small audiences, usually on sweaty inner-city stages. It’s too loud, too dangerous, too nasty, too brutal even for wider consumption.

Sometimes this music sticks its head up into the popular radar for a brief moment in the sun. Blink, or be living in the outer suburbs or the bush, and you might miss it. The Stooges from Detroit. The Saints in Brisbane. Radio Birdman from Sydney.

Careers that played out, the first time around, in a few short years. But the records and the attitude live on, and anyone who cares about this kind of music has been able to hear the intensity, the beauty, the friction, the indefinable thing that all great rock ’n’ roll has, on the three LPs that Radio Birdman left behind from those early years.

Here they are in one box set: the black-covered Radios Appear, the Trafalgar studios version released in Australia; the white-covered Radios Appear released when they signed to the Sire label overseas (with five different tracks), and Living Eyes, recorded in Britain in 1978 with the band about to implode and not released until 1981.

Strange how memory plays tricks: I had always imagined that the Trafalgar Radios Appear was superior to its successor, and Living Eyes not quite at the level of either. Silly me.

The second Radios Appear is just as good as the first, with the addition of undeniably strong new originals like What Gives?, the Hawaii Five-O-referencing Aloha Steve and Danno and a take on the 13th Floor Elevators’ You’re Gonna Miss Me.

Here those three albums come with bonus discs of rare and unreleased material.

Yes, I know, you never listen to the bonus material, but in this case there is plenty of interest, including the four tracks from the band’s 1976 debut EP Burn My Eye and a cover of the MC5’s Shakin’ Street.

The box set comes in a beautiful package with gatefold sleeves for the albums and booklet with an insightful essay from Toby Creswell, who first saw the band in 1975.

Guitarist Deniz Tek came from Detroit and the Detroit influences are usually given prominence in reviews, but like most bands worth their salt it was a broad range of influences helping create something distinctive.

When Creswell first saw them play they covered Tommy James and the Shondells’ Hanky Panky, at a time when most musicians were more intent on sounding like Deep Purple, Jethro Tull or The Eagles.

Living Eyes is a wonderful rock ’n’ roll jukebox reflecting those foundations, from the pop-meets-surf band of More Fun to the rollicking rock ’n’ roll piano of t.p.b.r Combo and Iskender Time, the ’60s organ on Crying Sun and just flat-out great tunes like Breaks My Heart and Hanging On.

There was plenty of sniffing going on by those outside the tent, that punk music or whatever you wanted to name it — this band certainly didn’t want to call it that — somehow didn’t require finesse or skill.

Here’s the evidence to the contrary, that Ron Keeley and Warwick Gilbert were a mighty force as rhythm section, the foundation for the razor-sharp guitars of Deniz Tek and Chris Masuak, Pip Hoyle’s piano and Rob Younger’s powerful vocals.

The band’s power as a live force is legendary. You can hear why on the fourth CD here, recorded live at Sydney’s Paddington Town Hall in December 1977, which lifts the tempos from the studio versions and rocks so hard that it feels like the amps are about to bounce off the stage. Which would take some doing when you see the size of the amps in the photo!

Radio Birdman play The Hi-Fi, Brisbane, on Friday.

Noel Mengel

METAL

OZZY OSBOURNE

Memoirs of a Madman (Epic/Sony)

***1/2

“ALL aboarrrrrd, hahahahaha!” Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne screams at the start of Crazy Train, his first solo single from 1980 and the opening track on this greatest hits compilation. And the ensuing 80-minute trek through the Prince of Darkness’ 30-year-plus solo career is as wild a ride as you would expect. It is fascinating to hear the evolution of his sound, from primal and primitive beginnings to highly polished and produced “motorised” metal. Highlights include Bark at the Moon and The Ultimate Sin (each the sole representative from the album of the same name) and power ballad Mama, I’m Coming Home.
Miracle Man has twisted vocal effects, while all three feature guitar solos that might have inspired Europe. The band, that is. And while this is all about Osbourne’s non-Sabbath work, there are nods to the band that made him famous with reimagining of Changes (featuring reality TV co-star daughter Kelly) and a live version of Paranoid. A companion DVD contains music videos and rare live performances.

John O’Brien

ALT COUNTRY

BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY

Singer’s Grave/A Sea of Tongues (Spunk)

****

YOU would think that the well must start to run dry for someone who releases as much material as Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince’’ Billy. This album actually revises some songs which first appeared on his 2011 album Wolfroy Comes To Town yet the treatments are different enough to warrant these alternate takes. At times this is a more spirited affair than its predecessor, with the spare setting of the Wolfroy version of Quail and Dumplings given a robust treatment, with eerie fiddle and female backing vocals.
We’re Unhappy actually sounds quite uplifting with its clunking banjo and gospel-type choir. Night Noises features pedal steel guitar and more of Oldham’s typically cryptic commentary as he recalls a mentor figure who disappears to Bogota, but not before advising “Weakness we should palliate and not let others foster blindness.’’ Which is why you won’t be hearing it on the commercial country sinkhole of CMC, more’s the pity. An enduring career built through quality songs, not party tricks.

Noel Mengel

CLASSICAL

AURORA ORCHESTRA

Road Trip (Warner Classics)

****1/2

MANY may find the mixed categories in this United States music collection off-putting, but its daring multi-layered and strangely compelling mix of narrative and music crossing cultural boundaries, classical and folk, conventional and quirky cacophony, will reward the curious tripper. Sam Amidon starts the journey by narrating Herman Melville’s Cock-a-doodle-doo! to Max Baillie’s rippling music riff. Melville, plus shades of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 9, also sparked composer John Adams in his Chamber Symphony, its moods suggested in titles of the three movements, Mongrel Airs (because a critic complained his music lacked breeding), Aria with Walking Bass and Roadrunner. Conductor Nicholas Collon weaves Aurora Orchestra through these soundscapes with elegant definition, plus Charles Ives’ mystically edgy The Housatonic at Stockbridge, Passing Places (Baillie again) and soothing familiarity of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in its original 13-instrument version.

Patricia Kelly

POP

ANTHONY ATKINSON AND THE RUNNING MATES

Broken Folks (Lost & Lonesome Recording Co)

****

THE Australian indie label Candle, which closed in 2007, was a guarantee of quality from pop-rock artists like The Lucksmiths and The Mabels, led by songwriter Anthony Atkinson. New band, new album, same kind of sweet melancholia and wry observations of everyday life. But this collection of 10 tunes ranks as one of Atkinson’s best, with irresistible melodies complemented by touches of pedal steel, banjo, baritone guitar and the sensitive foundations from his band. “Please believe me when I say I’m calm and collected,’’ he sings, and you know from the band rising up behind him all the usual human hurts bubble away. It Radiates (“like a flame through sugar cane’’) jangles and glows. It’s almost happy, but something in Atkinson’s voice always hints that sorrow can’t be far away. Like the relationship on the slide in The Lake, or the plans of escape on Into Night Again, where “the sentimental melodies which once brought you to your knees haven’t really worked this time’’. This time around though, those melodies still seem to be doing the trick.

Noel Mengel

COMPILATION

VARIOUS ARTISTS

(When the Sun Sets Over) Carlton (Warner)

****

MELBOURNE was pumping in the ’70s when bands like Skyhooks, Daddy Cool and Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons broke out with national hits and the place was awash with future stars. The action centred around inner-suburban Carlton, now gentrified but then with cheap-as-chips rent and plentiful venues. This two-CD set features some of the best-known examples of the scene, starting with the song that gives the album its name, Skyhooks’ Carlton (Lygon Street Limbo) and The Sports’ Who Listens To The Radio, as well as rare tracks like Daddy Cool’s live
Boy Are You Paranoid. Ross Wilson’s post DC band Mighty Kong are represented with the super Hard Drugs. But it’s the many hard-to-find gems that make the album a history lesson and party record, with Paul Kelly as a young rocker on a mission in The Dots and High Rise Bombers and Cummings out front of the R & B-fired Pelaco Brothers. Martin Armiger was in The Bleeding Hearts and imagining his future in Hit Single, a year before he joined The Sports. Ahhh, worry-free student days; for those of a certain age, here’s the soundtrack.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

RANCID

… Honor is All We Know (Epitath)

****

ALMOST 20 years since the release of their commercial breakthrough … And Out Come the Wolves, Californian punk stalwarts Rancid are back with their first studio album in five years. You don’t have to dig too deep to discover the pervasive theme of the album is unity and brotherhood, with opening number Back Where I Belong (“I’ve been gone away too long and now I’m back where I belong”) a none-too-subtle celebration of the band’s durability. Musically, little has changed in two decades, with the 1977-inspired punk rock, alternating vocals of singers/ guitarists Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen, lightning-fast bass playing of Matt Freeman and frenetic drumming — now provided by Branden Steineckert. Besides the ska-tinged Evil’s My Friend and Everybody’s Sufferin’, Honor Is All We Know is an unabashed meat-and-two-veg punk rock record, with the title track, Already Dead, Diabolical and Now We’re Through With You among the highlights. It might not pack quite the same wallop as some earlier offerings, but it’s proof Rancid are still one of the genre’s torchbearers.

Daniel Johnson

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