No Night Sweats N o  N i g h t  S w e a t s No Night Sweats
Sydney's Post-Punk Bands
I Like Music
Slapp Happy are Terrific
A List of CDs
Text is What I Write
Crime Fiction is Silly
[ Voigt/465 ]
Lindsay ecstatic, Phil enigmatic
 

During 1976 a group of school friends coalesced from the remnants of those wonderful 'not garage more lounge room' bands "Guudz Bak" and "Wally and the Shepherds".

There was a lot of free-form psychedelic/Krautrock experimentation interspersed with art rock cover versions and, eventually, some actual songs with melodies and choruses and such (this disparate approach to influences and style continued until the end). We played sporadically throughout 1977-78 and, spurred on by the DIY attitudes of British punk and post-punk and many sweaty Friday nights in front of Radio Birdman at 'The Fun House', recorded 4 songs at Axent Studios in Kogarah, near where we lived.

We hawked the tapes around venues and, finally, got a 'proper' gig at French's in Oxford Street, Darlinghurst where our sub-psychedelic light show and garb garnered us a 'hippy' tag that we never really shook off.

Underneath the pylons at Darling Harbour

Bruce couldn't take the violent reaction we received and left the band. He, eventually, pursued a successful career as a joke writer for commercial radio, last I heard. On a more positive note Birdman's singer Rob Younger, seemed to enjoy, not only the music, but the heckling as well.

We released 2 of the 4 songs as a double sided single in late '78 : "State" - a psyched up, accelerated, pop, love song and "A Secret West" - a 3/4 droney riff with a great cod-German ending. It was one of the first totally self financed releases in Australia at this time.

Whereas Bruce was straight ahead, 4 on the floor drummer, our new acquisition, Mark (originally a friend of Lindsay's from Wollongong) was trippy, all over the place and startling. His playing seemed to fit in well with the rest of us but, to some small extent, we lost that backbone which we sometimes needed.

Sydney Uni supporting The Radiators - thanx Ken!

During the next few months, we played almost every Wednesday night at the Sussex Hotel plus various other venues around Sydney and even went to Melbourne for a short tour that was weird, even by our standards. We got tighter, slightly more professional and, predictably, less friendly with one another during this creative time although the song writing continued unabated.

We were highlighted as the 'band of 1979' in Clinton Walker's "Inner City Sounds".

Eventually, for one reason or another, the band broke up but we decided to record all of the songs before Lindsay left to join Crime and the City Solution in Melbourne. We again recorded this at Axent with long faces, inexpert engineering and desultory ears but it got done and we released a limited edition of the LP "Slights Unspoken" in late '79.

Wollongong Uni - probably during The Great Pretender

This LP showed the unsettling mixture of song driven rock elements and free-noise experimentation that made an encounter with us so intriguing and, sometimes, exhilarating.

There are some great performances : Rod's blistering guitar solo on "Imprint", the whole band, tight and efficient, on "P" and the energy displayed at the end sections of "Is New Is" and "Winchsoul". There are some hairy moments as well : Rae's excoriating vocal screeches mirrored by Lindsay and Rod's electronics on "F1". And there's some awful bits where we made songs that sounded so good live into somewhat dull and lifeless entities. However, it pretty much documents how the band was at the time.

The first small pressing sold out almost immediately (obviously to all of those people who used to go to the Sussex) but we got a bigger run done for the second pressing. Unfortunately these failed to sell at all, really!

Lindsay moved to Melbourne but disliked playing in Crime and so came back to Sydney and, later, joined Pel Mel. Mark went south as well to, eventually, be married and raise Pip : I'm not sure where he is now. Rod and Rae tried to start something else together but drummers were always hard to find. I went on to Wild West as did Rae, a bit later.

This site has been visited  times