Roadies have amassed a treasure trove of live recordings spanning more than 40 years and made ARCA their custodian. These tapes document the cultural significance of the Australian live music scene and serve as important historical records, requiring a release to ensure they may never be lost.
Each release acknowledges the importance and value that roadies have contributed to making our live performance industry such an outstanding success. They offer recognition to the engineers who documented this wealth of genuine Australian music history.
The Desk Tape Series is available through Amazon, Anghami, Apple Music / iTunes, Black Box Records, Boomplay, Deezer, MGM, Pandora, Shazam, Spotify, TenCent, Tidal, TikTok and YouTube Music.
DESK TAPE SERIES: THE POACHERS & IDLE DIDDLIES LIVE AT MALDON FOLK FESTIVAL, 2001
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The long-running Maldon Folk Festival is located in Central Victoria goldfields, each November offering three days of anglo-celtic folk, bluegrass, blues, world, exotic instruments, dance, theatre and workshops.
The first one, in 1974, was on a football oval with a makeshift stage made from hay bales and attended by 180 people.
By 2001, it was drawing 5,000 to 6,000 over a number of venues in town. Simon Glozier and his long-time associate Stuart Hassell, who did stage, worked for nine consecutive years at the festival.
“The festival was fun, and we always looked forward to them,” relates Glozier.
“We’d go in a day early, we had a system and I ran delays throughout, and made sure none of the cabling was on the ground.
“You hoped it wouldn’t rain, one year it just pissed down and the grounds became
a bog!
“There was no security, so I’d sleep at the sound desk. If it was really cold I’d be mixing while inside my sleeping bag.”
Poachers formed in Brisbane. Cathy Bell and Andrew Heath played around the folk clubs, and were good friends. They met trained and evocative singer Penny Boys after she put an ad in The Folk Rag. They played their first show in Lismore NSW in October 1998, and went on to play 60 shows in the three years they were together in round one.
Among the 30+ cracker players that have travelled through the ranks of The Bushwackers were Anthony O’Neill (fiddle, mandolin, banjo) and Dan Bourke (voice, guitar, fiddle).
Bourke joined in 1982 around the time Tommy Emmanuel and Freddie Strauks came in, and O’Neill about 12 months later. The two displayed great skill on their instruments. There are workshop videos online of O’Neill and his mandolin. The two put The Idle Diddlies together with Steve Simmonds whose array of instruments included bouzouki, banjo, guitar, mandolin and fiddle.
DESK TAPE SERIES: THE SPORTS LIVE AT BILLBOARD, 1981
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There are critics who argue that if The Sports had kept going, they would have become as a major force and founder Stephen Cummings rated a significant international rock identity.
Sports guitarist Andrew Pendlebury agrees. “Stephen was such a fantastic frontman, lyricist and singer, he had the whole package.
“Had we carried on, The Sports would have been huge in America. We just got homesick and wanted to come back to Australia.
“Stephen wasn’t influenced by any English groups, it was all his invention, and he’d have been a major figure in America.”
Michael Gudinski, who signed them to his Mushroom Records and managed them, stated, “Stephen can be frustrating to deal with, but he has always been brilliant.”
What The Sports had was a strong collection of songs and songwriters.
Stephen Cummings: “I was lucky because we had three prolific songwriters so it didn’t just rest on me.
“Martin Armiger wrote a lot of great songs like ‘Strangers On A Train’. “Andrew Pendlebury who wrote ‘Perhaps’ and a lot of other songs liked country music too and prog groups like Yes and Genesis.”
The Sports aroused international interest from the start. The debut recording was a four-track EP Fair Game (early 1977) and put through the small Zac Records.
A friend sent a copy to England’s New Musical Express (NME) which made it Record of the Week.
The Sports record coincided with the new wave-pop trend in the UK and Europe, and Stiff Records (home of Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe) quickly signed them up.
In Australia, the band moved to Mushroom for the Australian market and their first
album (May 1978) Reckless was produced by Joe Camilleri.
ARCA – BILL ARMSTRONG DONATES JAZZ ROYALTIES TO ARCA AND CREW
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Legendary audio pioneer Bill Armstrong AM has made a game-changing contribution to the Australian road crew community.
He has green-lighted the Australian Road Crew Association (ARCA) to release 42 albums from his jazz labels Bilarm Music and Swaggie Records to raise funds for crews in crisis. These are to be reissued (on CD and physical formats only) on ARCA’s own Black Box Records, through MGM Distribution.
“Crews and roadies regard Bill as an absolute legend, a truly unsung hero of the music industry,” says ARCA co-founder Ian “Piggy” Peel.
“We’re all aware how Bill pioneered recording music in Australia from the 1940s, whether it be
live or studio and against all odds, and we tend to put him up on a pedestal.”
Born in Melbourne in 1929, Bill Armstrong’s involvement in jazz began in his teens as a fan and as a recording engineer.
“It was a time of great excitement in the Melbourne jazz scene” Bill recalls.
“There were jazz clubs, offering a lot of work, and after World War II, a number of great local
bands emerged.”
From the mid-1950s Armstrong was engineer at radio station 3UZ, manager at W&G Records (he set up its recording studio), supervised Phillips Bell’s sound system at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, managed 3B’s Custom Recording department overseeing jingles, and managed Telefil Sound Recording and Film Studios.
On December 1, 1965, Bill set up Armstrong Studios in a terrace house on Albert Rd. in South
Melbourne.
In 1972 Armstrong Studios moved to a new five-studio complex at 180 Bank St in South Melbourne, the site of old butter factory, and was responsible for 80% of locally recorded hits for labels as EMI, RCA, Mushroom and Fable.
In 1986, Armstrong sold the studio to The Age “get back into my love of recording jazz”.
He set up Bilarm Music and took ownership in 2015 of Swaggie Records, which Graeme Bell
had founded in 1949.
“Everything I’ve ever done in my career has been around music,” he states.
DESK TAPE SERIES: GONDWANALAND LIVE AT THE GREEK THEATRE, 1989
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Gondwanaland Live at the Greek Theatre 1989 captures the sound of Australian nature, through
didjeridoo, synth and percussion with great imagination and gorgeous melodies.
Leader Charlie McMahon explains to his audience what the songs are about, the endurance in “Emu”, the toxic bite of “Bullant”, and the multi rhythms of “Log Dance” and “Rainforest”.
What Gondwanaland did was to put the didjeridoo at the centre of the music and put it in a contemporary frame setting the mood and driving the rhythm.
Adding to the appeal were McMahon’s inventions, like the didjeribone (1981), a sliding didge made from two lengths of plastic tubing and played like a trombone. He also came up with the didj horns in 1996 and the Face Bass in 1997.
Gondwanaland got signed to a major label (Warner Music), won an ARIA award and developed a huge following. In Australia they set a record for one of the largest live shows at the Tomita Sound Cloud in Sydney Cove. They drew 120,000 to Hymn to Mankind, a $3 million light
and sound, opera spectacular.
The band spent time together in the outback, and got inspired by “Ephemeral Lakes” which McMahon describes as about “never ending space, the great quiet, with beautiful waterfalls.
“Makes you realise how large the world is. People have told me they use it as a soundtrack for birthing, for its deep steady breathing. I recently did a video where I played the didg upside down in the yoga position. People freaked out about it (laughs).”
DESK TAPE SERIES: THE TOUR OF DUTY XMAS CONCERT FOR THE TROOPS, LIVE IN DILI, EAST TIMOR, 1999
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The Tour of Duty Xmas Concert for the Troops, LIVE in Dili, East Timor, 1999 is the 40th release of the Australian Road Crew Association’s Desk Tape Series.
For the Tour of Duty release, ARCA worked closely with Luke Gosling OAM, who served in
East Timor and is MP for Solomon in the Northern Territory.
The Tour of Duty audio was supplied by Rev. Darren Hewitt, a chaplain with returned veterans
in South Australia, spiritually dealing with their depression and anxiety.
The show, to 4,000 troops and local civilians, featured John Farnham, Doc Neeson, Kylie
Minogue, Gina Jeffreys and her record producer husband Rod McCormack, James Blundell,
The Living End, Dili Allstars and the RMC Band, and hosted by Roy Slaven and H. G. Nelson
(John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver).
John Farnham said shortly after arriving in Dili: “I’ll never be able to explain to my family and
friends how I felt being transported in a green truck accompanied by a soldier brandishing
arms, and looking at children and women on the streets in what’s been a horrendous
situation.”
Added Kylie Minogue: “Even if it takes people’s minds off this situation, even for an hour, I’m
fully honoured to be part of it.”
As to be expected, it was an emotional show, both for the performers and for the audience.
John Farnham stole the show, in top voice throughout, causing tears during “You’re The Voice”
and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
Chris Cheney: “When John hit that really high note at the end, it was spine-tingling. Twenty-
five years later, I am still transported back to that moment.”
DESK TAPE SERIES: ARIEL LIVE AT MARTINIS, 1976
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Ariel live at Martinis, 1976 is the 39th release of Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) Desk Tape Series.
Ariel played many shows at the iconic Carlton venue, Martinis, which was the launching pad for names such as Ariel, Skyhooks, The Dingoes and Little River Band.
This night they set a new attendance record, with more than 400 people crammed in. Singer and guitarist from the band Mike Rudd recalled “Martinis was one of Ariel’s favourite venues and we were one of their favourite bands. It was the last day of school exams, and there
were a lot more younger people in the audience than usual.
“It was very, very cramped. I don’t think the roadies could have made from front to back of the room, which was only metres.”
The sound engineer for the night Michael Wickow mentioned “It was incredibly hot, the instruments were going out of tune, the band were complaining about how they were sweating, and
the air was thick with cigarette smoke.
“The show had such an incredible energy to it. I’d never seen a crowd so packed in a club. Ariel not only broke the attendance record, but probably also broke the law several times!
“You literally couldn’t move, you were stuck where you were. I was in the back of the room, and I couldn’t see the band unless I stood on a box. It was a low stage, probably one or two feet high.
“Ariel were a hard working band, getting up there and doing a pretty tough gig. They’d do that, five or six times a week. A real working band. Piggy (lighting) and I were working our arses off every week but we enjoyed being part of the band. Piggy did a great light show.”
DESK TAPE SERIES: JON ENGLISH & THE FOSTER BROTHERS LIVE AT BILLBOARD 1981
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Jon English & The Foster Brothers live at Billboard 1981 is the 38th release of the Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) Desk Tape Series.
The Foster Brothers’ rhythm guitarist Keith ‘Stretch’ Kerwin mentioned “Jon was an incredible front-man, he knew his craft to a tee. He could be spellbinding. He knew how to reach an audience. Sometimes it would take him 20 minutes to introduce a song like ‘The Shining’ or ‘She Was Real’ because they had a story behind them which he wanted his fans to be involved in.”
“The lighting and the sound at the shows were stunning, and people would be really spellbound.”
Jon English was a household name since he was 22, but the Foster Brothers came into being in 1981 at a time when his career was exploding globally.
As LIVE at Billboard 1981 shows, the band’s interplay is superb, as shown on “Words Are Not Enough”, “I’ve Been In Love Before”, “Handbags And Gladrags”, a Rod Stewart album track, and English’s first hit “Turn The Page”.
English’s attraction to a good story came from his love for theatre and the English Literature course he did at college.
The global hit “Six Ribbons” was written by Jon English for the 1978 miniseries Against The Wind. Jon and childhood friend, guitarist Mario Millo of Sebastian Hardie, shared writing credits for the miniseries Against The Wind which English starred in. “Initially the producers were going to use music from a production library but I talked them out of it. They paid me $600 an episode for the music so I kept costs down by playing the instruments I knew.”
The Foster Brothers, though, are in fine rock-out form on “You Might Need Somebody”, “Straight From The Heart” and “Stranger In A Strange Land”, capturing everything that is exhilarating about rock and makes both audience and band swell up under the spotlight, building up until the finale cover of The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” tears the room apart.
DESK TAPE SERIES: ANNE KIRKPATRICK AND ALAN BOWLES FEATURING HOTSPUR LIVE AT PIER HOTEL FRANKSTON 1987
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The Anne Kirkpatrick and Alan Bowles featuring HOTSPUR live recording is the 37th release of the Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) Desk Tape Series.
It was a full house of country music fans in the main room of the Pier Hotel in Frankston. HOTSPUR backed country hitmaker Johnny Chester, when he was off, Alan Bowles did front man duties. Bowles invited Anne Kirkpatrick, daughter of Slim Dusty and Joy McKean to perform three shows, during the success of her Come Back Again album.
The sound engineer for night Simon Glozier recalls, “What I remember about that gig was the audience was so appreciative of what they were doing.”
At the time of the Pier Hotel show, Anne’s son Jim Arneman was two years old, who later formed the band Small Town Romance and became a filmmaker who was behind the 2020 doco Slim & I.
During this time also, Alan Bowles had made a name for himself as a multi award-winning harmonica player. Alan Bowles wrote songs with the Bass player Ken Firth, one of which was used as the title track of Ian “Molly” Meldrum’s anti-heroin doco On A Slide Going Down.
Alan performed the song on Countdown with Joanna Kamorin who was touring with the Lou Reed band and agreed to sing the song.
DESK TAKE SERIES: ZYDECO JUMP LIVE AT THE NORTH MELBOURNE TOWN HALL 1990
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Melbourne band Zydeco Jump are the latest act to get behind Support Act’s Roadies Fund through the Australian Road Crew Association (ARCA)’s Desk Tape Series.
Like other ARCA releases, Zydeco Jump At The North Melbourne Town Hall 1990, also works as a historical document. This tape captures the move in the Melbourne scene from the late 1980’s to fuse the traditional roots sound of zydeco with contemporary rock guitar, and to also make the accordion sound cool.
The North Melbourne show was a benefit for Friend Of The Earth. George Butrumlis, accordion player and band founder recalls, “It was an early evening show, about 6 because we had a second gig, at the Prince Patrick, at 9.30.”
“But we started an hour late, and I thought we were anxious as a result and played a bit rough.
“But when I heard Simon’s tape from 33 years back, I realised we had played really well!”
Zydeco music came from southwest Louisiana and is an upbeat syncopated rhythmic music which often incorporates elements of blues, 50’s rock and roll, soul, R&B, Afro-Caribbean, Cajun and early Creole music. Its main instrument was the piano accordion.
One thing stands out about this recording, it shows Zydeco Jump not only brought Australianness into the zydeco sound but a variety of sounds.
DESK TAPE SERIES: PANTHA LIVE AT THE SYDNEY SHOWGROUNDS AND TAMWORTH WORKERS CLUB 1976
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Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) 34th edition of its Desk Tapes Series features PANTHA live at the Sydney Showgrounds and Tamworth Workers Club, 1976. This iconic Desk Tape is also available to purchase on CD.
PANTHA are a progressive band from the mid-70’s that were formed in Melbourne who later moved to Sydney as their workload increased, and were at odds with the dominant pub-rock sound.
As favourites at music festivals, PANTHA would commonly sing about topics of community love and peace, and a quest for the spiritual path.
“We were trying to find an Australian voice,” says Roger Pell who wrote the songs, played guitar and handled their business affairs with manager Graeme McKee.
Many funk and psychedelic musicians said at the time “May the music set you free.” Pell agrees, “There was a sense of adventure and pioneering, being progressive was very interesting.”
An interesting aspect of many PANTHA song titles is that they were in a made-up language to fit in with the song’s rhythms. “Doway do Doway Do”, one of their best known songs, was one, derived from a chord sequence.
The Sydney Showground show on the ARCA tape was opening for the Doobie Brothers, before an estimated 15,000. PANTHA did the entire national tour with them, which boosted their following.
Pell: “We got on really well with them, they’d come to our club shows and play with us…At the Showgrounds show, at the end of the tour, they got us up onstage with them for a song.”
DESK TAKE SERIES: DEPRESSION LIVE AT THE SEAVIEW BALLROOM 1987
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Melbourne punk metal thrash band Depression are the latest act to get behind Support Act’s Roadies Fund through the Australian Road Crew Association (ARCA)’s Desk Tape Series.
Like other ARCA releases, DEPRESSION LIVE At The Seaview Ballroom 1987 also works as a historical document. In this case, the gig at the Seaview Ballroom – one of Melbourne’s original punk meccas – was Depression’s first gig in two years. They went off the road as they couldn’t find the right drummer, but guitarist Smeer and bassist Liddy spent the time writing their best songs.
All but one of the songs on the tape are played for the first time, Smeer is singing for the first time, and new drummer Dakka (16 or 17 at the time) displays his Slayer love by being the hardest hitting skinsman Depression ever had.
Mark Woods, the gig’s sound tech, recalls Smeer’s amp being exceedingly loud. Woods’ encounter with Depression came via the production deal their record label Musicland Records had with Trees Music, the studio which he co-ran with Men At Work bassist John Rees.
The Seaview Ballroom show was a preview of the new songs that Trees Music would produce that year on an album called Thrash Til Death. As a result, the Seaview Ballroom show was recorded on Trees’ eight-track 1/2” tape recorder with decent live production.
Mark Woods did FOH sound with Tracker (lights) and Phantom (monitors), both from Men At Work’s crew were also on board. Depression friend Paul Waste ran the stage.
DEPRESSION Live At The Seaview Ballroom 1987 sets off like a firecracker from the get-go. “Welcome to our first gig for two years”, Smeer calls out, impatient feedback almost drowning him out.
Depression spend no time thundering into their world of darkness, evil and alternate culture. Opening song “Pagan Rites”, about when the guitarist and his girlfriend would attend pagan camps, is followed by the crowd favourite “Eternal Genocide”, about humankind’s creating their own mess with lines as “Is there no way out, is there no escape, we suffer the consequences of our greed”. “Kill For Christ” allows him to rip off another guitar solo.
Strong newcomer “Money” was written by Smeer before Depression about the evil influence of the green stuff – “You never get anywhere until you have money/ You never put your foot in the door unless you know somebody” – in which the young musician is adamant that every life and musical decision he makes is for passion only.
Whiplash-inducing change of pace “Big Brother” laments lack of privacy, “Endless Armies” is about human beings’ capacity to find excuses to start wars, and the stand-out “Out Of Touch” sneers at how middle class politicians have no relevance to people living on the street.
“Filthy Trash” is about his life as an outlaw, “Have A Look” is how things never change for vulnerable people, “Du-Pre-Sion” is a singalong, the vicious and vein-bursting “Riots Of Death” and “Civilisation Of Destruction” are in the frantic race-up to “Fifty Bucks”, a woe to how many in the punk scene were getting into smack.
Smeer says the Seaview Ballroom tape evokes the same adrenalin rush as the gigs.
DESK TAPE SERIES: HIRED HANDS LIVE AT THE TAMWORTH LEAGUES CLUB 1987
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Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) 33rd edition of its Desk Tapes Series features country music supergroup Hired Hands, live at the West Tamworth Leagues Club, 1987.
The Hired Hands band had broken up in October 1984 with the members moving on to other projects, however the next three decades saw the band do a reunion show each year at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
Co-founder, singer and guitarist of the band Lawrie Minson recalled that the 1987 show started at midnight and finished at 6am.
Simon Glozier, who was in town at the time as a PA clinician for Yamaha, stated that: “They were all friends, bantering with each other and playing stuff they liked and which I really liked, and the crowd was responsive as well.”
Minson described Paul Green, another player on the live tape: “He was a way better guitarist than anyone else on the block, we’d stand and watch him play with our jaws on the ground, and he was a really good singer too.”
Live at the West Tamworth Leagues Club 1987, shows that the band went from an up-tempo Boogie Woogie Country Girl and Long Haired Country Boy, to exceptional Got Me Talkin with Steel’s brooding playing and Cate McCarthy’s vocals, and the gospel Wayfaring Stranger. During the set, Minson asks for applause for the crew: “They’ve been working night and day, this is the best sound we’ve ever had for Hired Hands.”
DESK TAPE SERIES: BRIAN CADD BAND LIVE AT THE SUNDOWNER 1982
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The 32nd edition of Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) Desk Tapes Series features Aussie legend Brian Cadd and his band live at the Sundowner, Geelong 1982.
Cadd returned from his home base in America for a four-week tour in Australia, packed with sold-out dates including the Sundowner.
The atmosphere at the Sundowner was memorable for Cadd, “The band was incredible. Pub rock was at the epicentre, and people of that generation knew one thing – go to a pub and rock!”
Brett Allen toured with Cadd around Australia doing the stage, he noted how phenomenal the band was, and continued to improve as the tour progressed.
Allen highlighted how world-class the Australian crew were, “Through that Cadd tour people were telling me how great the band sounded, and that’s because I count Andy Rayson as among the best sound guys in the world.”
Many songs on this edition of Desk Tape Series came from Cadd’s latest album, No Stone Unturned. This guitar-heavy record, accompanied by some inventive playing from Little River Band’s Steve Housden and Cadd’s use of sequencing for the first time, made for memorable live shows on this Australian run, “My live show then was a pretty wondrous time for me. So many new musical things were happening in my life.”
Cadd’s work is now being covered by global music stars such as Joe Cocker, The Pointer Sisters, Ringo Starr, Bonnie Tyler and Little River Band just to name a few.
In 1997 he moved back to Australia where he continued his career with not only just sell-out shows, Cadd was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame both in 2007. Additionally, he was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) in 2018 which he defined as an “amazingly different kind of honour”.
DESK TAPE SERIES: MIDNIGHT OIL LIVE AT OLD LION 1982
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LIVE At The Old Lion Adelaide 1982 is the latest initiative by the Oils to support roadies and crews in crisis.
Rob Hirst readily admits that the members relied heavily on their crew, “we had the best sound and lighting guys in the business”. It is the crew that helps with any bands success.
The tape was recorded Friday March 26, 1982 and was part of a two-week run through Victoria and South Australia.
At that stage, the band were doing 180 shows a year, and firing on all eight cylinders.
Rob Hirst admits: “I’m exhausted listening back to the tape, it’s relentless! We were, excuse the pun, a well-oiled machine, angry young men against the world.”
Mark Woods, who filled in as sound engineer on the run, called it the Speed and Dust Tour. It was hot and the tour moved at a frantic pace.
“It wasn’t that they were loud, it was the power. They weren’t ‘screamy’ or harsh listening, they just had a very full solid big fat sound.”
They were all red hot players, Woods recalls, citing how Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey’s guitars intertwined, and how the Peter Gifford/ Rob Hirst rhythm section locked in.
Hirst’s drum kit had to be nailed down. Not only did he attack them with exuberance, breaking pedals and sticks, but he’d also jump into the air off his stool for greater power when he landed.
The Old Lion tape shows how the Oils were starting to musically move around at that time and captures how some of Postcard songs should have sounded.
The creativity and the song writing was getting stronger. But the band were frustrated with the sound on the albums so far.
“They didn’t grab you by the throat and wrestle you to the ground.”
It was only working with Nick Launay and disassembling the Midnight Oil live sound in the studio and starting again that they started to understand studio craft.
LIVE At The Old Lion Adelaide 1982 also highlights how dedicated the fans were. Oils fans have done everything from tattooing Garrett’s face to their backs to spending tens of thousands of dollars following them around.
The craziest were at the Oils On The Water triple j show in 1985 on Goat Island in the middle of Sydney Harbour.
It was for 150 competition winners only, which peeved the hardcore fans. “So they swam across, avoiding big tankers, fire tugs, ferries and yachts who were moored there listening to the music, and dragged themselves up on the rocks.
“They were allowed to stay. It was risky but such commitment!” – Rob Hirst
DESK TAPE SERIES: ZARSOFF BROTHERS LIVE AT YELLA ROCK 1991
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The ZARSOFF Brothers live at Yella Rock 1991 is the 31st release of the Australian Road Crew Association’s (ARCA) Desk Tape Series.
The Zarsoffs were a great band, who continued to break attendance records with lowbrow toilet humour and highlights like the Dance Of The Flaming Arsehole.
Bassist/singer Peter Knox, keyboard player Greg Deane and drummer Tony Verhoeven met in singer Robin Lee Sinclair’s backing band & changed their names to Izzy Foreal, Bernie Zarsoff and Terry Zarsoff.
While going through numerous line-ups, each member took on the Zarsoff name. Road crews too had to adopt the name too.
The official story was that they were the children of a Russian minstrel. Russia’s president saw them at a show and considered them so ugly they were such an embarrassment to all Russians he banished them to Australia.
The humour was never aggressive. As a result there were very few, if any, fights at their shows. Cops called because of venue over-crowding and noise complaints, would stay on and chuckle over the onstage antics.
Releases included the Bumsweat And Other Popular Filth and Nose Pickin’ Boogie EPs and albums such as Rude Awakening.
“What we are about”, Izzy once explained, “is being the catalyst for a good time, with an irreverent approach to the whole idea of rock & roll as an industry.
“To the punters, we are just a bunch of looneys who happen to be able to play music, and who would be just as comfortable beside them at the bar.”
While Izzy was boisterous, crude, offensive and drunk-rowdy, Knox was quiet, kind, gentle, highly intelligent and neither drank nor smoked.
Know studied English Literature and poetry, completed a Master of Arts with Honours, wrote and published The Errant Apostrophe, and penned science fiction short stories for magazines.
Peter Knox was conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War but being a pacifist there was no way he would have picked up a gun. So he changed his name to Peter Wilson and dodged the draft.
After his death, his family had his ashes registered with US space travel agency to join Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and actor James Doohan in the first mission to send human remains into deep space.
DESK TAPE SERIES: BUFFALO LIVE (REVISITED) AT THE BRIDGE HOTEL 2013
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BUFFALO Revisited LIVE at the Bridge Hotel, December 2013 captures what made Buffalo so great– loud, tight, powerful and totally uncompromising.
Guitarist John Baxter was one of the first in Sydney to get a 100watt amp. Singer Dave Tice emphasises Buffalo Revisited is not a Buffalo reunion, but a tribute to its songs. He already had the Dave Tice Trio, in which he writes new songs, plays instruments, and new styles, “to keep moving forward as a musician.”
But festival promoters and venue bookers urged him to form Revisited as younger generations of music fans were discovering their music. “There was much interest generated worldwide and here, in the music that came out of Australia in that era,” says Tice, a driving force in Buffalo alongside bassist Peter Wells who later formed Rose Tattoo. Not only are Buffalo, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs and Blackfeather recognised as pioneers of pub-rock, but overseas sites such as Heavy Planet cited Buffalo as early doom metal and stoner rock.
BUFFALO Revisited LIVE at the Bridge Hotel 2013 captures that greatness, their own songs complemented with covers of Ten Years After’s “I’m Coming On” and Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie”. They received no radio airplay, but the size of their live following saw their albums go gold.
Part of their appeal was their shock-rock image. They exuded evil, smashed up motel rooms, got banned from Countdown and record stores refused to stock them because of their cover art. The cover of Dead Forever was a blood-soaked face peering through the eye sockets of a skull. Volcanic Rock depicted a female form menstruating volcano lava. On “Only Want You For Your Body” a fat screaming woman was tied to a torture rack with shackles. Their publicist got them headlines with tales of sexual appetites and plans to give away a vibrator with each copy of Mother’s Choice.
Many Buffalo lyrics came from Tice’s love for reading books – “Dune Messiah” from Frank Herman’s sci fi series Dune, “The Prophet” from religious texts and “Shylock” from Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice. However, the title of “Dead Forever” came from the reply of a spirit whom they asked during a séance what life was like in the underworld.
The one new song on the tape, “The Dark Side Of Eden” –“Don’t try to talk back, Jack, because your brother is living in a one-room shack. While you are driving around in a brand-new Cadillac” is his anger at how humans are selfishly destroying the paradise that is Planet Earth.
The tape starts midway through opener “Dune Messiah” with the band already in full wah-wah blast, giving the impression to the listener of coming late into the venue. What really happened was that the band was to start off on a jam and Tice was to run onto the stage from a side door for dramatic effect. Alas, the door was unexpectedly locked, so Tice had to run around to the front door. In the chaos, Dracoulis forgot to press Record until later.
The power on BUFFALO Revisited LIVE at the Bridge Hotel is what you get from a sound engineer with a broad audio knowledge. Phil Dracoulis has the reputation of being among the best in the business, and being able to get a thick concert sound even in a small room.
He started out working in a recording studio in Melbourne, then did sound for Pantha for three-and-a-half years, moving to Sydney with them. Aside from doing sound for the likes of Billy Thorpe, Marcia Hines and Richard Clapton, he worked in production houses Jands and Sounds, and did live feeds for TV’s The Today Show, The Midday Show, Spin and Ground Zero. Drac is currently recording two young Sydney
DESK TAPE SERIES: PHIL MANNING BAND LIVE AROUND OZ IN 1975.
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Phil Manning Band LIVE Around Oz 1975 was recorded by Phil’s sound engineer, the late Dave “Nightowl” Ridoutt (02/01/1950 to 19/12/2021, who originally was the inspiration for ARCA to put the Desk Tape Series together. Dave also was the sound engineer for Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons live desk tape from 1976, which was released by ARCA in June 2020)
Dave, like many other roadies, were the glue that kept the Aussie live music industry together at the very start. Consequently, if the bands did not sound or look good in a live environment, generally, they never went very far. Roadies, like Dave, were and many still are the backbone of the Australian music industry.
Live Around Oz 1975 is a master lesson on the many shades of blues guitar. This line-up with Paul Wheeler and Trevor Courtney only lasted a year. But as the performances show, they knew how to come together at just the right time. (Paul Wheeler is now with Icehouse and Trevor Courtney is an organic hops farmer in his native New Zealand).
The impression of the live recording is that there’s a lot of improvisation during the show. But in reality, everything is kept tight and focussed – something Phil Manning learned when he toured with his idol Muddy Waters and his band.
Many of the songs were written just after his first marriage, so Manning’s skill at catchy melodies work well with lyrical heart-on-the-sleeves love songs as “Angel Surrender”, “Sunset Song” and “Lay A Little Lovin’ On Me”. The band take Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and the George Harrison-penned Beatles album track “Tax Man” and put their stamp on it.
In the psychedelic ‘60s, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton saw a generation of Australian guitar shredders rush out to get wah-wah pedals to add to their arsenal of tones.
Phil Manning was no exception. Live Around Oz, 1975 is sprayed throughout with wah-wah sounds, demonstrating his perfect pitch whether using the sound to drive “Lover Baby”, “I’m Free” and “Taking Your Chances” or using it as a sound effect at the beginning of “Train To Ride”.
Phil Manning moved to Melbourne in late 1966 and joined Tony Worsley and The Blue Jays. He played with a series of bands including Bay City Union, where he met singer Matt Taylor. The pair later worked closely on Chain, one of the best blues bands to come out of Australia.
Their January 1971 single, “Black and Blue”, which Manning helped write, reached the top 20. They had a second top 40 hit with “Judgement” issued in July. That year Phil Manning was voted third best guitarist in Australia by the readers of Go-Set magazine. Chain’s debut album Towards The Blues went Top 10 and certified gold.
Touring American bluesmen like Albert Collins were astounded by the Australian-ness of Chain’s music. “I know it’s blues but it ain’t anything like the blues I’ve heard!” he said famously.
Phil would go off to do solo projects but would return to Chain to record and perform. His debut solo album I Wish There Was A Way came out at the end of 1974, after which he formed the Phil Manning Band with an ever-changing line-up.
DESK TAPE SERIES: ARCHIE ROACH LIVE WITH RUBY HUNTER AT KEY LARGO 1992 AND DARWIN 1993
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Archie Roach LIVE in Key Largo ’92 and Darwin ’93 shows the healing continues each time he plays a concert – both for himself and the audience. “It’s a two-way thing,” the Gunditjmara / Bundjalung man said. “The audience gives me so much back – it’s hard to explain. But that’s actually what I do this for … to get that interaction with the audience.”
Paul Kelly, who co-produced Archie’s first album Charcoal Lane, said, “Everything we do is political. No one bears that out better than Archie. All his songs are love songs – love songs to country and clan – and at the same time they cry out for a better world. He refuses to despair. Although many of the stolen children never came back, and although many of the children of the stolen have never known the way, Archie still keeps singing them home.”
Kelly helped kickstart Archie Roach’s career in 1990 by putting him on as a support at a gig with The Messengers at Melbourne Concert Hall (now Hamer Hall). Messengers guitarist Steve Connolly had seen him perform ‘Took The Children Away’ on ABC TV show Blackout and told Paul: “I’ve just seen the most amazing singer on TV. We should get him.” Archie’s first song that night was ‘Beautiful Child’. Total silence from the sold-out crowd. Then came ‘Took The Children Away’. Again total silence. Just the sound of crickets outside. Feeling he’d bombed, he began walking off the stage, promising himself, “I won’t do this again.” Realising he’d finished, the 2,466 people in the audience began clapping.
Greeting him side-stage, Paul Kelly told him it was the most powerful thing he’d ever seen. He and Connolly chased him up and offered to produce an album and get him a record deal. Archie was reluctant. He just wanted to remain playing gigs to his people and having community radio stations play live versions of his music. He ran it past his wife and muse, Ruby Hunter. She looked down at her feet and then, hands on hips, looked straight at him. “It’s not all about you, Archie Roach.” Archie knew immediately what she meant. “Because when one Aborigine person shines, we all shine.”
Archie Roach LIVE in Key Largo ’92 and Darwin ’93 captures the early part of their careers. The US and Canadian tour was the first time they had been on a plane, much less been out of Australia, so much of it was a culture shock. The three-month trip consisted of a six-week headliner run of small folk clubs, and another six weeks opening for Joan Armatrading. Canada and the US took to the Australians immediately because of the emotion and reality of the shows.
At the end of the tour, they got a letter from an American folk legend. She explained her record company had sent her a copy of his album. “They thought I’d like your music. I love it!” The letter was dated August 13, 1992. It was signed Joan Baez, who in the ‘60s was Queen of Folk to Bob Dylan’s King of Folk.
The Darwin Casino show, to a few hundred fans, showed Archie becoming more confident. It was recorded by Andy Rayson, who was based in Darwin from the beginning of 1992 to the end of 1995, working with local and islander First Nation bands, touring southern acts along the Top End, serving as technical director of the Pacific School Games and the Barranga festival.
What he remembers about the show was how the audience lapped up Roach and Hunter. The standout on the ARCA live tape, of course, is ‘Took the Children Away’ which brought to attention the plight of the Stolen Generation. Initially when he started writing songs, they were country music themes.
During a visit to Framlingham Aborigine Mission on Gunditjmara country in south-western Victoria – where he grew up as a toddler until he and his siblings were seized by authorities – an elder, Uncle Banjo Clarke, told him
DESK TAPE SERIES: THE DEAD LIVERS LIVE AT THE ESPY 1986
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It’s totally appropriate that The Dead Livers LIVE at “The Espy” 1986 should be recorded at the Esplanade Hotel in Melbourne’s St. Kilda. They had a Friday night residency there. It was a wild room, with crazy people singing and dancing and where the sight of bikies and drag queens dancing together was not uncommon.
Bassist Michael Schack said: “We played mainly inner-city hotels. So it was people of our age, late 20s to 30s, looking for a good time.” He recalls doing the Prince of Wales in St. Kilda for a live PBS broadcast, and the publican approaching them after, inviting them back. “Our jazz nights have three times as many people as you had tonight but your crowd drank three times as much.”
The “outlaw” image drew bikies. At a show for the Motorcycle Riders Association, a couple got married with a chapter chief officiating.
The foundations for The Dead Livers were laid in country Victoria, when Schack and singer Marty Atchison were at school together. They did shows together and in 1978 officially formed the band. Simon Glozier knew them through good friend Craig Reeves, of Spot The Aussie, another Espy regular act whose line-up intertwined socially and musically with the Dead Livers. He did sound for them at their larger shows and occasionally played with them at parties.
The Dead Livers’ inspiration came from the U.S. West Coast and Austin, Texas “redneck rock” sounds, sourcing recordings in import stores and exchanging cassettes with American friends. Members dug original country rock Melbourne bands, catching Saltbush and Hit And Run at their residencies at the Polaris Inn in Carlton, and the Dingoes at the Station Hotel in Prahran.
The Station Hotel’s weekly flyer advertising the next week’s acts would have a caption inviting patrons to come and drink heartily,” Come to the Station where dead livers live!” Hence the name.
LIVE at “The Espy” 1986 features hard boogies such as “One More Shot”, “The Bottle Let Me Down” and “We Can’t Send Them Out To Play” to singles like “Grandpa” and “A Stud Like Me”, and originals like Atchison’s ambitious “Rosemary” and Russell Smith’s “The End Is Not In Sight”. Covers included Al Green (a high riffing rendition of “Take Me To The River”, Bob Dylan (“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” underlined by swirling Hammond organ).
One of the Dead Livers’ most ardent fans was prominent journalist David Dawson, a champion of outlaw country music, and promoted the Melbourne band through his Nu-Country platform and the High In The Saddle country column in Juke magazine.
Dawson was also responsible for one of the band’s most mainstream moments. He convinced the band to record a spoof of Slim Dusty’s “I’d Love To Have A Beer With Duncan” and called it “I’d Love To Have A Joint With Willie” just before a Willie Nelson tour in 1981. Nelson loved it, adopting it as the tour’s unofficial anthem, and playing it on the PA system before each show. The band were invited to meet him backstage, and Nelson fans scooped on it when it was sold in the car park from the back of a station wagon.
Dead Livers aroused the attention of music executives, including Keith Urban’s future manager and an early AC/DC manager, who offered to record but the planets never aligned. They made it to the finals of band competitions, opened for Leon Russell and the Amazing Rhythm Aces, played to 20,000 at country music festivals, and were nominated for best group at the Tamworth Country Music Festival awards.
But, Michael says, “We were the band that never quite made it (to the big time). Maybe we weren’t ambitious or confident enough. Looking back maybe we should have tried a bit harder. But we were having too much
DESK TAPE SERIES: THE BUSHWACKERS LIVE AT THE DAN O’CONNELL HOTEL 1978
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The Bushwackers are one of the great live folk-rock bands to emerge in the global folk renaissance of the early ‘70s. They used fiddles, accordions, guitars, harmonicas, concertinas, lagerphones, tin whistles, 5-string banjos, bodhráns, bones, spoons, electric bass and drums.
Formed at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971, with guitarist Dave Isom, tea-chest bass player Jan ‘Yarn’ Wositzky and lagerphonist Bert Kahanoff, they were joined by Mick Slocum on accordion and Davey Kidd on fiddle in 1972. It became a serious full-time concern when Dobe Newton joined in 1973.
Dobe Newton was playing drums in a soul-blues band in Sydney when he met his future wife Sally at a New Year’s Eve party and followed her to Perth. While training to be a teacher, he joined an Irish folk group playing tin whistle and lagerphone.
On a trip to the East Coast, the engine in their panel van blew up, so they set up benefit shows to raise money for a new one. Among the acts playing were The Bushwackers. They hit it off, and offered Dobe a gig. He insisted on returning to Perth to finish his Uni course before joining them, a few months before the first of their four UK/European tours.
They initially couldn’t get a gig in an Australian folk club. They were run by UK expats who only wanted to recreate music from ye olde country. It’s only apt that this Desk Tape was recorded at the Dan O’Connell in Carlton, Melbourne. It was one of their spiritual homes, where they played wild shows to a fervent crowd where sweat poured down walls. Three to five encores a night was the norm, but the record amount of encores, eight, was at the Embankment club near Dublin when the publican had to turn the lights off for ten minutes before the crowd stopped braying for even more.
The Bushwackers early setlist of Australian folk songs, some which drew back 100 years, pricked up the ears of audiences who identified. They were about anti-authority larrikins like “The Ryebuck Shearer”, “Flash Jack from Gundagai” from 1905, Banjo Patterson’s 1892 poem The Man from Ironbark, “The Wild Colonial Boy” and “Lachlan Tigers” about sheep shearers from a specific part of NSW.
There were dreams about a new life (“The Shores of Botany Bay”, “Ten Thousand Miles Away”, “Bound for South Australia”) and places like “Augathella Station”, a town in Queensland where cattle drovers headed, “The Road To Gundagai”, and life on the road (“Billy The Tea”). The Bushwackers’ rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” is actually the Queensland version which varies tune-wise, and not the better known original tune Banjo Patterson composed the music to.
After the arrival of Roger Corbett in 1980, he and Newton became a strong songwriting team, with socially conscious songs as “Beneath The Southern Cross” and “When Britannia Ruled The Waves” fitting in between the traditional material. Newton wrote “I Am Australian” with The Seekers’ Bruce Woodley, regarded as the unofficial national anthem and which won The Bushwackers a Golden Guitar country award.
Musically The Bushwackers had always been far more imaginative than their peers, with more complicated multi-tempo instrumental passages. This was partly for the benefit of their rock audiences, and partly because they themselves were excited by what British folk-rock bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span were doing on the albums they found in Melbourne import record stores.
They were eager to get to the British Isles to be part of this movement, so headed to London. They starved for the first three months. Clubs and festival gigs began to roll in through the UK and Europe, and they stayed for almost a year. When they returned to Australia with a more electric sound, purist crowds at folk festivals were outraged. A show at the Melbourne
DESK TAPE SERIES: VINCE JONES LIVE AT THE THEATRE ROYAL CASTLEMAINE IN 2016
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Vince Jones played two shows over a weekend at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine. He speaks lovingly of playing in the vintage venue, built during the 1850s gold rush and still features hanging lamps and vintage tiling.
The shows were not by Jones’ regular band. But he’d played frequently individually with each of the players. Their performance throughout is superb, each giving the other their space and never overplay.
Castlemaine is a town in country Victoria with a large contingent of creative people. Vince Jones’ crowds were respectful and musical. There was great expectation for the concert. He tells the crowd their town is a “beautiful place, I love the psyche. I’m an organic gardener, I live on an acreage a lot like you cats and breathe a lot of fresh air.”
Before a version of folk singer Iris De Ment’s “Our Town” he drawls, “I love these old towns, like this one, which the powers-that-be didn’t demolish and put up Westfields (shopping centres).” “The Parting Glass” is an ancient UK folk song, which was sung on New Years Eve, before it was superseded by “Auld Lang Syne”. The songs on the tape are there because they struck a chord, not just for their beauty but because they say something about his brand of environmentalism and politics. Before “Don’t Jettison Everything”, he makes the wry observation, “We’d definitely struggle to get our bond back from our landlord Mother Earth.”
He first heard Gil Scott-Heron’s “Winter In America” when he visited New York for the first time in 1982 and saw the US musician and social activist perform at Central Park. “No other song says more about America today even though it was written in the 1970s,” Jones tells ARCA.
On a flight, the singer and trumpeter was seated behind two businessmen. One was reading The Australian, the other The Daily Telegraph. Lamenting on how Murdoch media has such a stranglehold on the way we think, he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote “Wonderworld”.
“The Rainbow Cake”, about a sister who nursed her brother after his return from war, leads to his observation that bravery medals be given by the government to their families “because they’re the ones who have to pick up the pieces when the soldiers come home.”
Vince was born near Glasgow in Scotland. His parents John and Mary were in a folk duo, she singing and he playing piano accordion. John also played jazz. Only jazz was allowed in the house. Sinatra was an exception, there were 20 of his albums at home. This is how “Just In Time” is on the tape.
But Elvis Presley and The Beatles were banned. Vince had to go to friends’ houses to hear them. John Lennon’s “All My Love”, written for The Beatles’ White Album in 1968 but emerged on his second solo album Imagine three years later. “John was a beautiful soul, tortured at times, and I’m drawn most to his songs in The Beatles. I love the way he was seeing things ahead.“Oh My Love” was a preface to “Give People A Chance” and all the bed-ins. As we get older we get to see life clearer.
The Jones family arrived in Wollongong from Scotland on April 19, 1963. His father had tossed up between Australia, Canada and Africa. Would Vince music have been different if the family had gone to the other two places?
DESK TAPE SERIES: PAUL MARKS LIVE AT THE CHRISTCHURCH FOLK CLUB 1968
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The Bushwackers are one of the great live folk-rock bands to emerge in the global folk renaissance of the early ‘70s. They used fiddles, accordions, guitars, harmonicas, concertinas, lagerphones, tin whistles, 5-string banjos, bodhráns, bones, spoons, electric bass and drums.
Formed at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971, with guitarist Dave Isom, tea-chest bass player Jan ‘Yarn’ Wositzky and lagerphonist Bert Kahanoff, they were joined by Mick Slocum on accordion and Davey Kidd on fiddle in 1972. It became a serious full-time concern when Dobe Newton joined in 1973.
Dobe Newton was playing drums in a soul-blues band in Sydney when he met his future wife Sally at a New Year’s Eve party and followed her to Perth. While training to be a teacher, he joined an Irish folk group playing tin whistle and lagerphone.
On a trip to the East Coast, the engine in their panel van blew up, so they set up benefit shows to raise money for a new one. Among the acts playing were The Bushwackers. They hit it off, and offered Dobe a gig. He insisted on returning to Perth to finish his Uni course before joining them, a few months before the first of their four UK/European tours.
They initially couldn’t get a gig in an Australian folk club. They were run by UK expats who only wanted to recreate music from ye olde country. It’s only apt that this Desk Tape was recorded at the Dan O’Connell in Carlton, Melbourne. It was one of their spiritual homes, where they played wild shows to a fervent crowd where sweat poured down walls. Three to five encores a night was the norm, but the record amount of encores, eight, was at the Embankment club near Dublin when the publican had to turn the lights off for ten minutes before the crowd stopped braying for even more.
The Bushwackers early setlist of Australian folk songs, some which drew back 100 years, pricked up the ears of audiences who identified. They were about anti-authority larrikins like “The Ryebuck Shearer”, “Flash Jack from Gundagai” from 1905, Banjo Patterson’s 1892 poem The Man from Ironbark, “The Wild Colonial Boy” and “Lachlan Tigers” about sheep shearers from a specific part of NSW.
There were dreams about a new life (“The Shores of Botany Bay”, “Ten Thousand Miles Away”, “Bound for South Australia”) and places like “Augathella Station”, a town in Queensland where cattle drovers headed, “The Road To Gundagai”, and life on the road (“Billy The Tea”). The Bushwackers’ rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” is actually the Queensland version which varies tune-wise, and not the better known original tune Banjo Patterson composed the music to.
After the arrival of Roger Corbett in 1980, he and Newton became a strong songwriting team, with socially conscious songs as “Beneath The Southern Cross” and “When Britannia Ruled The Waves” fitting in between the traditional material. Newton wrote “I Am Australian” with The Seekers’ Bruce Woodley, regarded as the unofficial national anthem and which won The Bushwackers a Golden Guitar country award.
Musically The Bushwackers had always been far more imaginative than their peers, with more complicated multi-tempo instrumental passages. This was partly for the benefit of their rock audiences, and partly because they themselves were excited by what British folk-rock bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span were doing on the albums they found in Melbourne import record stores.
They were eager to get to the British Isles to be part of this movement, so headed to London. They starved for the first three months. Clubs and festival gigs began to roll in through the UK and Europe, and they stayed for almost a year. When they returned to Australia with a more electric sound, purist crowds at folk festivals were outraged. A show at the Melbourne
DESK TAPE SERIES: TIM FINN LIVE AT THE VENUE ST KILDA 1983
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After hectic global touring in support of their hit albums, Split Enz took a break.
Tim coalesced his new found freedom with a group of talented musicians and friends in Sydney at a mansion owned by ex Beach Boys/Bonnie Raitt drummer Ricky Fataar and his wife Fashion model elite, Penelope Tree. What eventuated was an ongoing relationship that produced Escapade with guitarist Mark Moffatt.
No-one thought it would do as well as it did. But it had too many great songs as “Fraction Too Much Friction”, “Made My Day”, “Through The Years”, “Staring At the Embers” and “In A Minor Key” which resonated with fans.
Released on Mushroom Records, Escapade went to #1 in New Zealand #8 in Australia. At the 1983 Countdown Awards it took home Best Australian Album and “Fraction Too Much Friction” won Best Video.
Tim Finn and The Escapade Band Live At The Venue, St. Kilda 1983, came from two shows at the Melbourne music venue. The only other dates on the tour were two in Sydney. All four sold out instantly.
For Finn, the album was about making music with a whole bunch of new people. He used some of those musicians on the album. In the core studio band were Ricky Fataar who also played drums, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals; one time Stylus member Sam McNally on synthesizers, and US born singer Venetta Fields (Boz Scaggs, Tina Turner, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Humble Pie) on backing vocals.
Wilbur Wilde and Joe Camilleri of Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons had also made guest appearances. The rest of the band included guitarist Mark Punch (Peter Blakeley, Mother Earth), bassist Joe Creighton (Billy T, The Revelators), Alan Mansfield (Dragon) on keyboards and guitar, Mark Williams (Dragon) on congas and backup vocals, and Sunil Da Silva (Marcia Hines, Renee Geyer) on percussion.
Richard Bilinski, John Farrelly and stage tech Colin Skals had worked with Split Enz on their True Colours run.
After playing bass at high school and helping mates set up amps for their bands, Richard worked with Melbourne bands Dove and Stylus, before landing a job with Ron Blackmore’s Artist Concert Tours working on Australian and NZ tours with local and international artists.
On the live tape, “Fraction Too Much Friction” and “Grand Adventure” display burnished beats and piano, while they work in the spaces of the experimental song structures of “I Only Want to Know”, “Staring At The Embers”, “Through The Years” and the vaudevillian “Growing Pains”.
They nail the gospel “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Made My Day” and embroider Tim’s instinct for a gorgeous pop hook on “Livin’ In A Minor Key”, “Below The Belt” and “Wait And See”.
Finn does a song he’s always wanted to do – Otis Redding’s “Dock Of The Bay” as a duet with Mark Williams, lets Joe Camilleri sing his “Shape I’m In” while Venetta Fields does a breathtaking acapella gospel “Good News”.
Both audience and band have a ball, but for the road crew the Venue shows had their problems.
The Venue was on the second floor, which meant carrying the gear up flights of stairs. The stage was around five feet high with the PA placed on the wings, the venue floor developed a bit of a bounce along with the PA system so we had to keep an eye on that as the crowd jumped up and down.
Venetta Field had a costume malfunction, and had to run to the side of the stage for Bear to hastily fix the issue. Tim inadvertently forgot to mention Alan Mansfield’s name when thanking the band. He was so angry with
DESK TAPE SERIES: MODELS LIVE AT OVERLANDER HOTEL 1980
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Models LIVE At The Overlander Hotel 1980 was recorded two years after the band formed in Melbourne.
Audiences insist there have been two totally different Models through the years. There was the early art-rock industrial line-up which was miles ahead of US bands like Nine Inch Nails, and the later chart busting version with “Barbados” and “Out Of Mind Out Of Sight”, but Models have always insisted their approach to their music has remained the same.
By the time of The Overlander Hotel tape, the “quirky” version was drawing big crowds to inner city venues in Melbourne and Sydney. Record companies were already circling but the band wanted to release its first album independently to keep creative control.
Models were formed in August 1978 by singer and guitarist Sean Kelly, who’d emerged in the punk era in Spred and Teenage Radio Stars with school mate James Freud. With Models, Sean Kelly expanded his musical palette to include David Bowie, Lou Reed, Eno and Roxy Music, thus augmenting his earlier influences, Top 40, classical music, show tunes and the theatre record collection of his parents.
Sean started playing piano and drums but switched to guitar. Original drummer Johnny Crash (aka Janis Friedenfelds), who died in on January 24 2014, came from Adelaide’s electro-industrial scene and proved himself a dynamic addition. Mark Ferrie replaced Peter Sutcliffe (aka Pierre Voltaire) who later won $503,000 in May 2014, on TV quiz show Million Dollar Minute.
Ferrie grew up in the western suburbs (“with an accent to match”) before studies at Melbourne University opened him up to the new sounds from the Carlton scene and later the St. Kilda movement when he moved to live there. By the time of The Overlander Hotel tape, original keyboard player, the gifted and experimental Ash Wednesday, had been replaced by the innovative Andrew Duffield.
Andrew studied electronic music and emerged with electro-pioneers Whirlywirld with his school friend Ollie Olsen. Aside from being a pioneer in synthesiser music, Andrew was also a fan of left-of-centre names such as Captain Beefheart.
Models’ spiky mix of new wave, glam, dub, pre-industrial and pop struck a chord with a new generation of punters looking for their own heroes rather than adopting those of older siblings.
Mark Woods recalls much of the audience were college and post-college students. Some of their biggest fans were The EMUs (Ex Melbourne University Students), a drinking club mainly but they booked a few Models gigs.
Models LIVE At The Overlander Hotel 1980 captures the way the band would switch from hard hitting (‘The Other People Incident’, ‘Holiday House’, ‘Golden Arches’) to synth-driven new world epics (‘Atlantic Romantic’, ‘Happy Birthday IBM’, ‘Keep It A Secret’ and ‘Early Morning Brain’) to left of centre dance pop (‘Brave New World’, ‘Strategic Air Command’).
They played five sets in that one day – three in the afternoon and two at night – at the country hotel in Shepparton in central Victoria. It had a 50’s style ballroom with a large dancefloor.
DESK TAPE SERIES: V. SPY V. SPY LIVE AT PRINCE OF WALES 1984
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In 1984, Sydney trio v. Spy v. Spy were on a high. They’d almost broken up but signed to Midnight Oil’s management and label, and the mainstream was opening up to them.
Around the time of the Prince of Wales gig in Melbourne, they were playing powerful shows around the country.
The songs often had pop melodies but the lyrics addressed issues as homelessness, racism, irresponsible consumerism, destruction of heritage landmarks and corrupt cops.
The last song on the tape is the cataclysmic version of the theme song to late night ‘60s TV spy series Danger Man, which they watched every night at 3am in the squat, and “Mugshot” was inspired by the spy thriller novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet.
What stands out about them on Live At The Prince of Wales 1984 tape was how tight they were, whether on the frantic “Injustice”, “Where Are We Going”, “Slow F***” and “Mugshot” or the more ethereal “Out And Dreaming”, “One Of A Kind” and “Good For Business”.
In 1984, Mark Woods was living in Los Angeles. After long stints as a sound engineer with The Models and Men At Work, he was working with US band The Call when he got the call to join Tina Turner on a three-month US tour. It ended in October and was to resume in Australia a month later. Woods returned early to Melbourne to catch up with family and friends to await her arrival.
During this time he got a call from the Oils office to do a v. Spy v. Spy’s show. He hadn’t worked with them before, but loved what he heard of them on community radio.
Craig Bloxom remembers the show for another reason. Some young girls joined them in their rooms at the hotel after, and collapsed from excess partying.
The v. Spy v. Spy story began when California-born Bloxom met English-born guitarist Michael Weiley at Nelson Bay High School in 1976.
They started playing around in bands on the north shore and were introduced to drummer Cliff Grigg, who was living in a squat (72 Darling Street) in the inner Sydney suburb of Glebe.
Naming themselves after the Spy. Vs. Spy strip in US Mad Magazine (the V in front was to prevent being sued), the two moved into the squat (which at the time had no roof or heating) and practiced. Others living there were illegal refugees, drug dealers and bohemians, and they could make as much noise as they wanted to.
There was a lot of drugs and alcohol around, and Bloxom admits v. Spy v. Spy music was as inspired by chemicals as the squat mentality.
By 1982 they were releasing singles and opening for the likes of U2 and The Clash.
The pub audiences responded to their rowdy showmanship, sense of community and the issues they were singing about which came from observing in Australian society.
Around the time of the Prince of Wales show, they’d released the Meet Us Inside EP and the single “One Of A Kind” which got them on Countdown.