Australian Music, Pt. 1: Stranded On My Own

January 26th is Australia Day, commemorating the first colonization of Australia by the British in 1788. Since I’m half Australian, I felt this would be as good a time as any to write a bit about Australian music, which gets very little American press about beyond AC/DC, INXS and Kylie Minogue. Everyday this week, I’ll be updating the blog with two albums that I feel say something interesting about Australian music history. Enjoy reading!

Artist: Radio Birdman
Album: Radios Appear

Year: 1977

When you start this album, the primal, paint-peeling cover of the Stooges’ “TV Eye” that punches you right in the gut should give you a clue as to what kind of music you’ll be listening to for the next 36 minutes. Managing to somehow one-up the original in terms of sheer lunatic abandon, “TV Eye” also shows just who Radio Birdman’s musical heroes were: the skuzzy, high-energy Detroit rock of the Stooges and the MC5. Released in 1977, the same year the U.K. realized that the Sex Pistols were trying to tear music apart from the inside, Radios Appear is Ground Zero for Australian punk. Skipping the Ramones altogether, Radio Birdman looked back further to the music of Detroit-born guitarist Deniz Tek. Singer Rob Younger doesn’t try any nasal Johnny Rotten sneering, instead aiming straight between Iggy’s howling lunacy and the sort of military bark that would eventually be perfected by Henry Rollins in Black Flag. Add all these various pieces together and…somehow the songs are catchy? What? Crazy as it may seem, songs like “Anglo Girl Desire” and “Do The Pop” bounce right along, like the nastiest pop songs ever. And if that doesn’t work for you, there’s always “Descent Into The Maelstrom”, a song that’s one part Stooges, two parts surf guitar and fifteen parts awesome.

Artist: The Saints

Album: (I'm) Stranded

Year: 1977

Depending on your opinion, the Saints sound like either an unusually positive and life-affirming version of the Stooges or a Rolling Stones cover band playing really-really-fast. Hailing from Brisbane, (I’m) Stranded captured the life, times and frustrations of living in the Australian suburbs. The legendary title track particularly evoked the teen angst of feeling trapped in a dull, residential suburb when all you wanted to do was rock & roll in the city. In this, the Saints are most like the Ramones, a sort of positive, teen-drama filled punk band, far removed from the class politics and iconoclasm of the Sex Pistols. However, instead of the bubblegum-as-rock of the Ramones, guitarist Ed Kuepper buries the Saints’ songs in a wall of sludge guitar and Keith Richard’s riffs, played at lightning speed. Chris Bailey’s vocals are just sarcastic enough to sell the (teen) drama, particularly on “Kissin’ Cousins”, two minutes of pure snark (as in, “she’s a distant cousin, but she ain’t too distant for me”). Then the whole thing ends with the destructive “Night In Venice”, probably the only punk song in the entire class of 1977 that exceeds five minutes without becoming insufferably boring. The Saints, along with Radio Birdman, proved that Australian teenagers were just as angry as their American and English counterparts, but had a distinct and unique way of expressing it.