Aussie Love

Geezerjohn

Fractal Fanatic
Heard "Friday On My Mind" by The Easybeats the other day. One of my all-time favorite pop songs. O man, those smokin' 5th intervals. Yea baby.

It got me thinking about all the great music from the land down under. Such great songs from The BeeGees (pre-disco of course). NY Mining Disaster, Massachusetts, I Started a Joke, etc. Certainly not great guitar songs, but such great pop music. Stellar harmonies, great melodies, and hooks that just sink in. The aforementioned Easybeats. Friday On My Mind is arguably one of the best pop songs ever. On to Men Working, Frank Gambale, ACDC, just so many great musicians. And now that awesome heritage is being carried on by Leon @2112, @pauly, and so many others. So I'm feelin' some Aussi love today.:)
 
*Men at work..

Also worth checking:
The Zoot - fantastic ( best...:) ) version of Eleanor Rigby
Anything by The Loved Ones .. "Ever loving man" is best known, the singer Gerey Humpheys has a wild man voice, formed Gerry and the joy band when loved ones folded, check Ongo Bongo Man.
Daddy Cool-"Eagle Rock" was their best known, the guitarist Ross Hannaford was still regularly gigging Melbourne till he passed last year.
70's... Try Billy Thorpe..
Etc

The easy beats, the masters apprentices, great bands. You know one of the founding members of the easy beats was george young, Angus and Malcoms older brother. Also one half of the hit making machine Vanda and Young, one of those behind the scenes blokes whose had a huge influence on rock/pop.
Oz Rock ROX!!
 
Friday on my Mind always gives me chills when I hear it. Australia had a really strong pub rock and new wave/punk scene all the way up to the mid 90's with some really distinctive bands.

I need to shoutout @cataclysm and both his bands, Chaos Divine and Opia, as I bought my Ultra from him when he bought an AX8. Great player and both excellent bands. Plus they recorded this ripper of a Toto cover.

 
Yeah - I remember travelling from pub to pub with a PA in a truck..... Load in.... find the stage, the 3 phase, setup the lights and the sound... Play party fun fun.....Then...over a few years .... no three phase.. then smaller stages... Then no stages.... suddenly.... we're doing duos in a 'sports bar', and the manager rushes over & asks us to turn down 'because the patrons can't hear the gambling machines'.. That was the end for pub music (as I saw it). Now all the pubs are almost identical 'family friendly' almost restaurants - with lots of gambling space full of those shitty pokies. Sheesh.

Pauly




Friday on my Mind always gives me chills when I hear it. Australia had a really strong pub rock and new wave/punk scene all the way up to the mid 90's with some really distinctive bands.

I need to shoutout @cataclysm and both his bands, Chaos Divine and Opia, as I bought my Ultra from him when he bought an AX8. Great player and both excellent bands. Plus they recorded this ripper of a Toto cover.

 
Yeah - I remember travelling from pub to pub with a PA in a truck..... Load in.... find the stage, the 3 phase, setup the lights and the sound... Play party fun fun.....Then...over a few years .... no three phase.. then smaller stages... Then no stages.... suddenly.... we're doing duos in a 'sports bar', and the manager rushes over & asks us to turn down 'because the patrons can't hear the gambling machines'.. That was the end for pub music (as I saw it). Now all the pubs are almost identical 'family friendly' almost restaurants - with lots of gambling space full of those shitty pokies. Sheesh.

Pauly
Bang on my experience as well, and the money dried up for live bands. I am mainly corporate and function these days. Some of the guys I know doing the pub thing aren't making bugger all.

Cheers
Ant
 
Bang on my experience as well, and the money dried up for live bands. I am mainly corporate and function these days. Some of the guys I know doing the pub thing aren't making bugger all.

Cheers
Ant

I think much of the US has had the same change.

Back in the early '80s there were 10 to 12 bars/pubs in my medium-sized (~500,000 population) city that had music 3 to 6 nights per week. The local circuit we played back then were 6-day gigs. Set up Monday afternoon, play 9:00 pm to 1:30 am Monday through Saturday, and pack everything up and out Saturday night after the gig. Sunday was a day off and the next day we'd be at another bar a few miles away repeating the cycle. Nowadays, only 3 or 4 bars have regular live rock music, and it's generally just one night per week. (And the pay for a single night now is less than one night's worth of what we'd make 35 years ago.)

Back then, we could make a semi-decent living, with maybe a part-time job on the side. (I taught guitar lessons at a local store, other guys in the band did floral deliveries in the afternoon.) Now, most of the old guys like me work a full-time real job to make the house payments and only play on the occasional weekend gig, mostly for the fun of it and to add a few bucks to the gear fund. But very few of the young guys are out playing to live audiences, and when they do, it's usually "showcase" gigs for little or no money. (We play for free too, but we charge to move our equipment, lol.)

There are still a few guys around town who hustle up enough gigs to play 4-5 times per week, but it's generally with multiple bands in multiple styles, and almost always involving some solo or duo acoustic stuff to some degree. And none of those guys are getting rich from the music biz.
 
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