Chapter Two*
By the time I started primary school, my taste had been set
on its course by my father but lots of other forces were conspiring to thwart
its progress. Radio was fairly
conservative. At one stage there was
even a ban on playing British and Australian music due to a dispute, I believe,
on airplay royalty payments. Television
was even worse; as video clips had yet to be invented many hits from overseas
artists were performed by local acts.
There was some great
innovative stuff on TV such as GTK (an acronym for Get To Know) a weeknightly
10 minute show on the Government run ABC that focused on local acts (there’s
lots of clips from it on YouTube) but this was a station we never watched. In
any case it clashed with the nightly news bulletin on the commercial
stations.
I started to get a hint of the riches that lay beyond that
dictated by my family existence in my last year at primary school. One of my classmates had an older brother
with an album collection and he started to secretly borrow items to bring to
school to play on the classroom record player usually at lunchtime. It was there that I heard for the first time
a lot of the glam merchants including T-Rex, The Sweet and Gary Glitter. I preferred all of these acts to David Bowie who’s
Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust albums failed to make any real impression. The early Alice Cooper albums were a
revelation, but the record that really excited me was Lou Reed’s live album
Rock And Roll Animal, especially the duelling guitars intro to Sweet Jane. Simultaneously I started playing tennis
against a classmate who I shall call Dave.
He too had an older brother but, more importantly, had access to the
family’s magnificent stereo system. Even
today I still remember his demonstrations of some of the more sonically
interesting items in his brother’s collection. Dave was fond of the early Santana albums,
especially Abraxas and Caravenserai, but the album I always begged him to play
was Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon and, in particular, the track Time.
It was through Dave’s influence that I began to realise I
needed a record player of my own. My
parents eventually purchased one which I had to share with one of my sisters. Her musical taste – The Bay City Rollers,
David Essex and others of that ilk - was never going to influence me much other
than in solidifying my own instincts.
But I did need items to play. The
Sweet Singles Album was the first record I purchased, followed I think, by Ol’
55’s Take It Greasy and, possibly, The Eagles Hotel California. Albums were expensive but fortunately the
cassette player had been invented and tapes were cheaper. The following Christmas I received my own
cassette player which I started to use to record tracks off the radio or
television. The tape that included my
copy of The Saints (I’m) Stranded I recorded off a Countdown repeat was to be
made on this device. I also started to
use the few albums I had to obtain more material; I’d tape, say, The Sweet
Singles Album, for someone who would tape something from their collection for
me in return. This is how I obtained my
first couple of AC/DC albums, The Beatles Blue Album (i.e the 1967-1970
compilation) and, of course, The Dark Side Of The Moon.
Secondary school opened my eyes even further. It was here that I met my long time friends
and comrades in music, Mickey, Mulder and Derek. Musically speaking I bonded with Mickey first
via our love of Skyhooks. In my mind
Skyhooks were, and still are, the single most important local music influence. They played original quirky songs on local
themes, had lyrics that meant something (especially when not goofing off into
deliberately lyrically silly territory) and via their original main guitarist
Red Symonds skirted with some exotic musical genres such as jazz. Today, I know that my love of artists as
disparate as Frank Zappa, Fountains Of Wayne, Squeeze or jazz influenced rock
originated from this one source.
It was with Mickey that I went to see what I think was my
first gig - Skyhooks at The Princess Theatre.
(The other candidate was an AC/DC school holiday show with Bon Scott at my local Town Hall.) I remember aspects of the day clearly; one of our fathers drove us into
the city and the other was waiting afterwards to take us home. The show itself was a blur, the audience of
teeny boppers probably made more noise than the band, but then again we were
towards the back of the theatre. Beforehand we
were entertained by support band Stars, a local rock band with country
leanings. As it was an odd choice, the
audience made far less noise and I was able to listen. I was reasonably impressed (after all I was
Johnny Cash fan so I was an “expert” on country) and felt that I’d made my
first personal discovery. As an aside,
last year I was thrilled to finally buy a CD copy of their debut album Paradise
which I promptly transferred onto my iPod; that first personal discovery is now
always within reach.
The rise of Skyhooks was important for two reasons. First it seemingly set off a real explosion
in high profile high selling Australian acts among them hard rockers AC/DC, The
Angels and Rose Tattoo, Melbourne’s r&b merchants Jo Jo Zep And The Falcons
and The Sports, 50’s revivalists ‘Ol 55, Brisbane punks The Saints, Adelaide’s
gutsy Cold Chisel and the country influenced Stars and The Dingoes. Acts from New Zealand also started to gain my
attention including the weird looking and sounding Split Enz, the futuristic
sounds of Mi-Sex and the pop smarts of Dragon. Australian music lovers started to think in
terms of an Australian scene that could take its place on the world stage.
But, with the benefit of hindsight, I now think this was
largely a mirage generated largely through the efforts of Ian “Molly” Meldrum,
who came to be the face and host of Countdown. It was introduced in 1974 by the
ABC just in time for the introduction of colour TV. Placed in the plumb position of 6pm Sunday
evenings, it held the nation captive until 1987. Bands with personality, spunk and colour,
like Skyhooks, were embraced wholeheartedly first by the show and eventually
the Australian public. Meldrum played
the role of the pied piper to perfection, urging the audience to get behind the
local industry, citing any sort of impact made on the world stage as evidence
of an emergent musical force that was destined to take over the world. Despite his undoubted sincerity, Meldrum had
no alternative but to spruik the local industry. If he couldn’t get the local industry onside
he would have failed to find enough material to full out the program’s 55
minute running time. Video clips had yet to make their mark and
most Australian acts did not generate enough income to produce their own. This meant that during the 70s, a typical
Countdown episode would comprise those overseas acts that had released videos,
local acts appearing live in the Countdown studios and an occasional appearance
by whatever overseas act happened to be touring the country. (It was via Countdown that I first saw Iggy
Pop, miming to I’m Bored in the studio and conducting a hilarious “interview”
with Meldrum. This is also on YouTube.) Strangely, it was through Countdown and its reliance on video clips that I obtained my first exposure of anything smacking of alternative music and simultaneously to the most commercial material ever recorded. The Saints were one of the few Australian acts that had produced a video and had refused to appear on the show. It was for their first single (I’m) Stranded and as I wrote previously, it’s impact on me was electrifying but I didn’t know how to access this raw sound from any other source and it remained a form of one hit wonder. Video clips also led Countdown to “discover” ABBA and, like most of the country, I fell under their spell, even purchasing their Arrival album.
But there was an alternative program that I started watching from 1977. Nightmoves was, like Countdown, produced in Melbourne but was on the commercial Channel 7 on a Friday night and aimed directly at the serious music fan. It was hosted by disc jockey Lee Simon who didn’t hype acts or talk down to his audience. My first exposure to a whole range of acts started with that program starting with Steely Dan, whose Parker’s Band (from the album Pretzel Logic) provided the program’s musical intro. I used to stay up until its starting time, roughly anywhere between 11pm and Midnight to hear Simon list the acts on the program during that intro. Each episode contained a “special feature” which was usually about 30 minutes of music by the one artist, recorded live and probably sourced from British programs such as The Old Grey Whistle Test. Often the choice of artist for the special feature would determine whether I would watch the entire program.
Augmenting that was the album show on radio station 3XY overseen by the wonderful Billy Pinnell. This went to air at 9pm on Sunday’s and Billy would simply play his favourite tracks from albums that had just been released. For me it was the only forum on commercial radio where I could hear anything that was different but its late hour prevented me from taping tracks and I usually listened to it on a transistor under the blankets turned low so as not to interfere with anyone’s sleep. By then, owing to a range of summer jobs, I had accumulated enough funds to purchase my first, and to date, only stereo. An Akai system, I bought it at a shopping centre for about $500. My mother argued against it but I knew I was investing in something that would last a lifetime. The only component I’ve had to replace has been the cassette player as the heads were completely destroyed by years of taping and recording.
Whilst this was a welcome development, my musical development was stagnating. By the end of 1980, despite the efforts of Nightmoves and Billy Pinnell and my own instincts, Countdown was prevailing and the jolts I’d received courtesy of The Saints and a wild American called Springsteen hadn’t provided me with sufficient confidence to buy or collect any of the new music to which I’d been exposed. My idea of a rock band was The Eagles and that of a band pushing musical boundaries was the Electric Light Orchestra. I went through a brief heavy metal phase but concluded so much of it sounded the same. Another classmate who was into reggae loaned me his copy of Bob Marley’s Kaya, but I didn’t get it. Unbeknownst to me, I was a prisoner of corporate music interests, intrigued by what was on the fringes, somehow willing only to purchase what was deemed to be popular. I was, musically speaking, in dire straits, owning a copy of Sultans Of Swing, and mourning the death of John Lennon.
Equally unbeknownst to me things were about to change.
* Chapter One forms part of my posting for 19 January.
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