Tales from 1986, when I was nineteen and just embarking on making my youth suitably dissolute.
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Category: Indie
Sulky Belgian art students in basements dying of TB.
Imaad Wasif: So Long Mr. Fear (2022).
Eventually indie folk rockers make it clear which Beatle they modeled their approach on.
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Flower Face: The Shark in Your Water (2022).
Something to listen to while tending your greenhouse full of carnivorous and/or poisonous plants.
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Missed Connections: Happy Mondays.
I had an epic musical missed connection when I confused the Happy Flowers with the Happy Mondays, and didn’t realize what had happened until thirty-odd years later.
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Mixtape: Songs for 2022
Some of these are old. Some of them are new(ish). They are all songs I listened to, with varying levels of obsessiveness, at various times during 2022.
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Ride, The Forum, Melbourne, November 30
In times past your author would have expressed a positive indifference to most of the bands of these broad British genres of the early 90s, and that opinion largely still holds.
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Pop Will Eat Itself, Sept 10 Corner Hotel
It made perfect sense of course, that a thirtieth-anniversary tour would perform.
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Father John Misty: Chloe and the Next 20th Century (2022).
Some of you may remember his aggressively caustic approach to, well, everything, but I think maybe the man has … mellowed? Perhaps?
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B-Side #14, early 1986: Wet Taxis, Porcelain Bus, Feedtime, Ups & Downs, Mick Harvey/Bad Seeds, John Kennedy’s Love Gone Wrong.
This is the last of the B-Side for the moment. I have a few scraps of other stuff to put up …
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B-Side #13, December 1985: Deniz Tek, Ku Klux Frankenstein, Ed Kuepper/Laughing Clowns, Huxton Creepers, X, Happy Hate Me Nots, Beach Nuts, Louis Tillett, Itchy Rat
And a four-page cartoon in the middle.
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B-Side #12, late 1985: Scientists, The Eastern Dark, The Stems, Deniz Tek, Behind The Magnolia Curtain, Mark Ferrie, Reactor Records.
More procrastination on other things!
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B-Side #11, June 1985: Tex Perkins, The Shindiggers, Decline of the Reptiles, Eugene Chadbourne, 21 Faces, The Celibate Rifles, Harem Scarem.
I basically commend all of this coverage.
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21 Faces: Red Hearts (1985).
Well, this is an obscurity I never expected to hear online.
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B-Side #10, April 1985: James Baker Experience, Triffids, Lipstick Killers, Saints, Tactics, New York garage psych roundup.
Remember when you could get this sort of goodness for a dollar?
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B-Side 4½, June–July 1984: Celibate Rifles, True West, J.F.K. and the Cuban Crisis, Clinton Walker on The Next Thing
B-Side was the Australian indie rock fanzine of the time. Just slabs of text about good bands and records. I straight-up lifted its format for Party Fears.
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Vortex #6, Dec 1987–Jan 1988: Kryptonics, Kim Salmon, Stems, Stolen Picassos, Errol H. Tout, Bacen Asagai, Cremator, Scarlets, Die Monster Die, And An A, 10,000 Maniacs, White Cross, The Cult
And that about wraps it up for Vortex!
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Vortex #5, August 1987: Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, Go-Betweens, Stolen Picassos, Gay Marvins, Martha’s Vineyard, Weddings Parties Anything, Chad’s Tree, Concrete Blonde
I’m on a roll here, or I’m procrastinating like hell on other things.
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Vortex #4, May–June 1987: Palisades, Scientists, The Cult, Sparklers, Reels, New Order, Matt Johnson/The The, Errol H. Tout, The Clash.
I said previously I’d have the rest of Vortex up by the end of 2020, no worries. This proved incorrect.
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Various Artists: From the River to the Sea (2021).
Jamie Halliday had stopped doing Audio Antihero, but has revived the label for this compilation.
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Records: Slow Down Molasses (2021), Shriekback (1989).
Also: the Terminator comedy dick puppet remix technique.
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The Hummingbirds: loveBUZZ (1989).
loveBUZZ is classic indie pop, and few are disappointed. But the story behind rooArt is a great saga.
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Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage: “LPs.” I feel seen.
If the year was from the ’80s it was guaranteed to totally suck.
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Vale Damien Lovelock, 1954-2019 — the last Celibate Rifles show, 19 May 2018.
The Celibate Rifles’ official Facebook posted a link to what turned out to be their last gig — Corner Hotel, Melbourne, 19 May 2018. Here’s the complete video.
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Record non-reviews: Cloud, Even As We Speak, Frog (2017, 2019).
Trying to write sensible things to describe music is way too much like work. Here are things from the pile that I’ve been enjoying. Press the play buttons and make up some adjectives yourself.
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Records: Nora Roy, Laibach (2018).
An indie singer-songwriter and the return of an old favourite with a slab of excellence.
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Records: Frog, Keen On Keys, Metal Disco (2018).
Metal Disco is today’s pleasant surprise winner.
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Records: Dew, Irk, Transmaniacon featuring Lydia Lunch and Maya Berlin (2018).
Dew and Irk are both remarkable finds and produce the correct horrible racket, though the loved one compared Irk to a sack of hammers falling down stairs.
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Links: BitTorrent “web” client, the women of Rolling Stone, Deerful how-to, “Despacito” on kazoo.
I can kazoo this on my own.
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I ran the Perth indie record charts, from 1989 to 1991. Corruption! Manipulation! Propaganda!
An excuse to get Perth bands into a published record chart, so they’d get some publicity and could use it in their marketing. And to propagandise Australian indie to the masses. Includes THE HITS OF 1989!
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Records: The Rolling Stones, Deerful, Benjamin Shaw (2016, 2018).
A party that everyone’s been looking forward to for weeks. They seem to be having a wonderful time.
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