Albert Productions turns 50

Australian Independent record label Albert Productions is celebrating their 50th Anniversary currently, with a lavishly produced 5 CD boxed set and a reissue program of sorts to follow.

Albert Productions was the brainchild of 4th generation music publisher Ted Albert, of music publishing firm J. Albert and Sons. Their stock in trade was largely sheet music sales but Ted saw a future in recordings, and so put pressure on his father to let him start a label in the family name in 1964.



What followed was a legacy rich in great (and some not so great) records that have made more than their fair share of impact on music both locally in Australia and around the world. As such Albert Productions is rightly regarded as one of Australia's most seminal record labels.



Their first signing was the fledgling Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, who had just had a number one single, "Poison Ivy" on a tiny indie label "Linda Lee" in early 1964. From there, Ted signed a group who started in the Villawood migrant hostel who went by the name of the Easybeats.

They also handled some hardcore R&B and Beat groups that other labels wouldn't touch, like the Missing Links and the Throb. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the label churned out records of heavy boogie and rock by the likes of the Ted Mulry Gang, Dallimore, and Newcastle band The Heroes (the band playing on stage the night of the Star Hotel Riot in 1979). However, the label's biggest success were in a few bands whom, as per tradition, no-one else would touch: Rose Tattoo, The Angels, and a little band whom no-one thought would do any good...AC/DC.

They also gave a start to the Choirboys and Dallas Crane, and issued later career albums for Knievel and The Cruel Sea.

From 1970 onwards, former Easybeats George Young and Harry Vanda had a major role in shaping the label's catalog. They wrote many songs for the label's young solo artists and, from 1973, started producing artists on the label, including the two comeback albums for former Easybeats singer Stevie Wright.

Alberts were a canny label, inasmuch as they were clever enough to keep one foot in the heavy rock camp, while keeping one firmly in the teen pop/top 40 camp with artists like Alison McCallum and William Shakespeare. During the 1970s, one of the label's major successes was a big seller to teenage girls: one John Paul Young, whose 1978 single "Love Is In The Air" (written by Vanda and Young) is well known around the world thanks to its inclusion in a Baz Luhrmann movie.

By the 1980s most of the stalwarts of the label had jumped ship or split up. AC/DC being the only major constant. Aside from them, the labels releases hardly troubled the charts during the 1990s, with a couple of pop releases from the likes of soapie star Daniel Amalm towards the end of the decade making any real waves. The label hit back in a big way with Knievel and Dallas Crane in the 2000s.



It is interesting to chart the ups and downs of the label and the new 5 CD box does that nicely. It is effectively a replacement article for the 1988 release "Good Times: 25 Years of Australian Hits", including all but two of the 34 tracks on that release. Some of the mastering sounds to me like it has some in-built digital distortion to it, as is the case with most modern album releases. The digital remastering still leaves behind a lot of the tape hiss and certain tracks do sound a little bit digitally over-processed, leaving a few strange artifacts. However, it is great to see not only the label's most well known tracks, but plenty of rare tracks on CDs 4 and 5, with certain EP tracks and B-sides making their first appearance on CD. For $40, you really can't go wrong with this.

Happy 50th Albert Productions. May you stay around for another 50, and then some.

100 LPs Shortlist #40: Something for Kate - "Elsewhere for 8 Minutes"

February 1998. I'm in Surfer's Paradise with a couple of mates. The penultimate day of the trip and I'm waiting for the bus to a local theme park. I've had a bad night, with little sleep, after a dodgy feed at a Mongolian barbeque place in Mermaid Beach. Fatigued, and on the verge of throwing up, an unwelcome earworm is slowly consuming my sanity. One short fragment of music and lyrics playing over and over...

"...at a million miles an hour..."

At that point, I hate that song. The band has a stupid name, the music doesn't make much sense. I just don't get it.

And yet, at that point, I would rather have been sent to build a colony on the planet Pluto* than I would have being on the Corkscrew at Dreamworld. In hindsight, the earworm was wholly appropriate.

Upon returning home, I went and purchased "Elsewhere for 8 Minutes", the first album by Something for Kate on double vinyl. Maybe the earworm was a sign...

Within the sleeve was an album of music that was colourful, tuneful, intense, passionate, literate, poetic, depressing and compelling all at once. With such a limited palette of just one guitar, bass and drums, Paul Dempsey and his bandmates weave intricate musical tapestries that are beguiling and confusing on first listen, but slowly unravel as they are consumed further.

The aforementioned earworm was the album's centrepiece and lead single "Captain (Million Miles an Hour)". After a couple of listens the all-consuming passion of the song is unavoidable. And, if you have musicologist tendencies, the song construction is extremely clever. Where English teachers teach you to write poetry with a meter and with evenly spaced lines, Dempsey dispenses with traditional lyrical form but rather weaves lyrics as he feels they need their emotional directness. To wit, the uneven and un-rhyming couplets in the opening verse:

"...Built an aeroplane,
It was just like the real ones that I saw when I was younger,
But it was too small for me,
To crawl inside the cockpit and fly away...
At a million miles an hour."

The song is pure escapism; a child's mechanism for escaping the ills of his little world, using elements of his environment to inform his more comforting imaginary scenario. The plane a symbol of his desire one day to get the hell out of where he is.

"...and it's just a model,
built with plastic and with glue.
But every day I go down to the airport,
and I'll fly away from you."

The emotion is real. For the listener it is gripping.

Paul spends his time ruminating on Love in many forms: lost love, unrequited love, relationship breakups, turbulence in relationships, all done with earnestness and passion. On stage, he stands up with his guitar, eyes closed, playing complex guitar lines all over the fretboard while these emotionally-wrought, almost stream-of-consciousness lyrics leave his mouth with a dream-like fancy to them. In terms of the great Australian music cannon, it is truly unique.

Paul's lyrics are at once deep, profound and mystifying. He has such a literate way of describing the cracks appearing in a relationship heading for the rocks: "Not much time has passed, but already she likes concrete better than grass". On the other hand, fans have spent hours trying to work out what the hell he is on about. One lyric that has kept fans guessing is from the song "Pinstripes": "You're the last day of April every year...". What? Huh? But it is delivered with such conviction that, whatever it means, Paul is absolutely, dead set certain of its meaning and its placement within the song.

From the darkness of "The Last Minute", the swooping beauty of "Paintbrushes", the joyous melancholy of "Roll Credit", slamming rock of "Working Against Me", the longing sadness of "Strategy" and the intense guitar onslaught of "Prick" this is a truly remarkable record and one that is outstanding in a catalog of outstanding albums, if only because this is the one album where Paul has his whole heart on his sleeve, delivered in purity without cluttered production. The band's playing is tight and complex. To this day I have no idea how Paul plays the guitar part on "Prick" - it is truly a force of nature, only to then sing over the top of such a intricate piece at the same time. It's breathtaking.

Be warned, for most people this will not be a one listen album. It wasn't for me at first. This is worth a good few listens. It is worth the effort.

Take a listen below. The version below is the 2014 20th Anniversary reissue with the original 12 tracks plus all the b-sides taken from each of the singles. Enjoy!

Vale Jay Curley

Jay Curley, bassist for Wollongong rockers Tumbleweed has been found dead in his home. He was 42.

It's truly sad to hear this news. From all accounts the party never ended for him, whatever that means....

Tumbleweed were a crushingly loud band, anchored in Jay's rich, sonorous bass. He was the lynch pin on which pivoted a very tight, very heavy band.

In a live setting, the band's high volume riffage was cathartic. The band's two finest records, 1995's "Galactaphonic" and 1997's "Return to Earth" are probably the best examples of the band's work, with Curley's deep pulsating bass runs vibrating through your rib cage - there's nothing finer.

Jay, you will be missed. Vale.

100 LPs Shortlist #39: Richard Clapton - "Goodbye Tiger"

It seems to be the season for anniversaries within Australian music circles right now. Something for Kate celebrating their 20th anniversary, Albert Productions celebrating their 50th, and Richard Clapton celebrating 40 years.

Despite being influenced by the Rolling Stones initially, Richard Clapton (a stage name created as a nod to Keith Richards and Eric Clapton) fashioned himself as a narrative story teller and songwriter, in the mold of Jackson Browne or Neil Young. With arrangements lush with delicate and intricately woven guitar lines and deep, image-heavy lyrics, Clapton seems at once out of place in the context of the classic Pub-rock era, and yet so inextricably part of the same scene that it's hard to imagine it without him.

Album number four for Richard (not counting the surf movie soundtrack "Highway One" to which he contributed 6 songs in 1976), "Goodbye Tiger" was issued in 1977 and was his first to go platinum (selling over 70,000 copies domestically). Being a seasoned European traveler, many of his experiences abroad inform the lyrics of this album. From debauched nights stranded in Holland ("Wintertime In Amsterdam") to general madness elsewhere on the continent ("Out on the Edge Again"). One of the songs "I Can Talk To You" was worked up in the studio on a bet.

Most of these songs were written while snowed in at a resort in Denmark. Fueled by beer and isolation, the songs just poured out of him. Probably having respectful distance from Australia at that point, it makes songs like "Deeper Water" and "Down In The Lucky Country" sound nostalgic and longing as opposed to jingoistic.

Despite the fact the songs originated from afar, the album was recorded at Festival Studios in Sydney. As per the aforementioned description, the guitars are lushly arranged and copiously applied throughout this album. The production still sounds fresh and the sound on the original vinyl sounds warm and inviting. It rewards repeated playing because of the fact that there is so much tastefully going on in these songs, both in the music and in the lyrics.

Songs like "Deep Water" are so embedded in my psyche that I can't help but recalling the last half of the song whenever I'm in Palm Beach, looking out to sea, even though I'm inevitably sober and my car is in good working order...

"...Sitting out on the Palm Beach Road,
I'm so drunk and the car won't go,
My crazy eyes still looking out to sea..."

Take a listen to the album below:

The Dave Miller Set - "Mr Guy Fawkes"

In the history of Australian Music there is always going to be someone who is all but forgotten about amid the rush to celebrate anniversaries and define legacies. It's hard to remember every musician who ever released a single, but the history of popular music created in this country is so deep and rich that inevitably someone is going to miss out.

The Dave Miller Set released a number of singles for Festival sub-label Spin between 1967 and 1970, pushing the barrow locally for Psychedelic music. They largely performed elongated covers of overseas hits, like "Get Together" by the Youngbloods and Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?". However, their biggest success was taking an obscure album track by an odd British act and turning it into one of the defining psychedelic singles this country has ever seen.

The band took a track by a now-forgotten band called Eire Apparent (who apparently were championed initially by Jimi Hendrix). The song "Mr Guy Fawkes" was a strange experience in the hands of its original creators, the vocalist having a rather odd timbre to his voice. In the hands of Dave Miller and pop producer du jour Pat Aulton, it is a masterpiece.

Taking a slight left turn away from the typical sunshine-y psych pop, this song takes a melancholic, almost sinister edge to it, making for some compelling listening. As such, it is highly regarded as a classic freak-beat single in high demand for collectors (with the inseparable high prices that go along with it).

It sounds as though house producer Aulton threw every resource they had available at the time into the production of this track, almost as if to compete with Russell Morris' hit "The Real Thing" which was also released in 1969. Bomb blast sound effects, strings, phasing and flanging, you name it - its all on here, crammed into 4 and a half short minutes. Considering the very limited, 4-track mono recording equipment Festival Studios had to content with, the richness of the production is truly a marvel of audio engineering.

It is a strong arrangement, with plenty of instruments hogging the limelight, but the runaway star of the record is the bass player, who is running all over the fretboard for the entire record, creating counter-melody after counter-melody. The use of the strings is chilling, giving an extra dimension for added goosebump effect.

I discovered this song in 1991 in the resources of the music department at my high school. It completely fried my little teenage mind and it still sounds fresh today.

Take a listen below.

Nickelback...?

Yesterday I was asked why I hate Nickelback so much. It must be said that what followed was purely my viewpoint and not a definitive article on the merit of the band.

The roots of this start around 1999-2000 when I worked in a Sydney office where the radio was always on, with the dial welded on Triple M - the station for all things rock. At the time Post-Grunge was a "thing". Bands mining this sound were a dime-a-dozen. 3 Doors Down, Stonesour, Staind, Matchbox 20, Live, and a bloody awful but thankfully short-lived band called Default were all given gracious amounts of airtime. Nickelback were also part of this esteemed group.

The problem with these bands is that, after a while, if you shut your eyes and listen you'd think they were all the same band. Such was the lack of personality they all shared. Add into the mix the constant repetition that commercial radio have turned into an art form and you have a recipe for disaster with me. If familiarity breeds contempt, what does ubiquity breed? Pure hatred?

All these years later, a new Nickelback record sounds like an old Nickelback record. As I think their sound was contrived to start with the fact that they haven't evolved their sound in 15 years leads me to think that they have designed and calculated their sound for maximum sales potential. You might think there is nothing wrong with that, and maybe there isn’t. Personally I just don’t think there is any integrity in it, and that is not what I look for in music.

I'm looking for bands and artists who create music as the purest expression of their souls and emotions. I want to hear musicians playing at the peak of their powers, as opposed to creating something that adds up to less of the sum of all the parts. The counter argument is that the players in Nickelback are very talented. I agree, but they don't demonstrate it on their albums. If they're that talented, they are capable of far more than the mediocrity they've shown us already.

Still, Nickelback are resilient enough to ignore the haters. They're rightfully not going to care what I think. And more power to 'em for that.

Again, this is one writers view and not a definitive statement. Like everything else on these pages, it is the start of a discussion. Counter arguments welcome as long as they are tastefully supplied.

Vale Robin Williams

Well, didn't this one just take the wind out of everyone's sails?

I'm not going to say much, because there have been plenty of other people who have said it more eloquently than I am able to. 

But I will say this: as a creative whirlwind, an inventive comic and a genius performer, this is a massive loss to the world.

And I'm really feeling this loss deeply. I mean, we all expect to die at some point. It's one thing to die from old age, or illness, or even an accident. I just find that when someone dies by their own hand to be particularly tragic. I don't find it to be very romantic, either.

Most stereotypes fall way short of the mark, but they do ring true to a degree. The overarching thing that struck me is the idea of "Tears of a Clown". The idea that the funniest people amongst us, the ones we think are always funny, always there for our amusement (or so we'd like), are the ones with the darkest demons - they often just don't let on that they're in pain. This isn't the case for every comedian, but there is an overwhelming number of comedians that you could name to support the theory...



In light of this sad event, what was undeniable was the man's talent. Here is a live performance of his work as a Stand-up comic, on stage in New York in 2002.

Vale Robin, you will be sorely missed, my man.

In Defense of Radio

Image courtesy of Reunion Radio

Despite the concept looking a little anachronistic in 2014, I still love Radio.

No really, I do. I just think that, in Australia, its content is poorly executed. Mindless bullying pro-conservative talkback presenters, vacuous imported pop music, machismo-driven rock stations are all an issue for me. However there's still a lot of fun to be had in the medium. For example, exciting things are happening in the digital spectrum, with Triple J Unearthed being an amazing station, showing the majors that there's plenty of room for a station playing all Australian unsigned music. And community stations around the place like FBi and East Side Radio in Sydney, and 4ZZZ-FM in Brisbane are doing interesting things in their respective areas.

And if they don't float your boat, look online to a whole range of overseas terrestrial stations that stream online, or dig your way through the massive directory of amateur stations on Live365 or Shoutcast.com.

Radio gets a bad wrap, however, in both the independent media and, occasionally, in these here pages as well. I've been thinking about the criticisms that people have been throwing around, especially towards stations like Triple J and the BBC's Radio 1 to try and see if they have any merit.

Both of these stations have recently been in the news because of the fact that the music is too "teeny-bopper", or playing to an audience much younger than that of the listener making the criticism.

The criticism would carry more weight if the target audience of those stations wasn't aged between 12 and 25. If you were born in the early part of the 1980s, chances are they're not playing anything you like for that very reason.

The selection process for new additions to the station has also come under fire of late, with Radio 1 using all kinds of other-worldly metrics to measure the quality of a band and their work.

There is some merit to the criticism. If you're looking at the number of YouTube views or Twitter followers a band has, before you've even listened to the record, you have to ask what's the point? The BBC is not supposed to be a commercial broadcaster, where I'd imagine these statistics would carry more sway.

But I'd like to ask, whatever happened to listening to a record and determining its value based on whether it is a good song or not? Then again, that in itself is problematic, because in whose opinion is the song a good one?

The problem with this approach is that the band has to do exponentially more work to get noticed. Twitter followers and YouTube views can happen overnight, but only if you pay for them.To my mind, radio exposure is one of the main ways that these numbers can be increased - I'm not sure having the equation the other way around is particularly sensible.

Another common complaint is that radio plays the same songs over and over again. Radio 1 seems to only have a limited number of spots available for new music every fortnight and to my mind it seems to be quite low. Still, what's the reason for it? Is it to enforce repetition and minimise variety?

Maybe, but the fact of it is that that is what we require to get to love a song - repetition.You know that album that you say is your all time favourite? It didn't get that way from a single solitary listen - you didn't play it once, file it away for 20 years and then claim it to be your "life-changing" record. No, you played it, over and over again over a long period of time. And so it has to be with radio.While I have no problem with that, per se, I just find some radio programmers and their song choices questionable.

The other reason for repetition is the logic that listeners don't typically listen to radio for more than 2 or 3 contiguous hours per day. By that logic, theoretically someone listening at 10:30am won't be listening at 2:00pm and therefore playing the same song at both these times most people would be oblivious. That's why the "No repeat work day" is a great idea, to cater for businesses who do have the radio on all day.

So, in an age where the internet is changing the way we discover and consume music, can radio compete? It's certainly trying hard, but will it ever return to be the cultural force it once was?

Who knows...

Australian Crawl

Here at TSATF HQ we love a bit of good ol' Australian Crawl, or Aussie Crawl as we colloquially know them.

While we never listen to their work on a daily basis, when we do it is usually with sustained interest. Inevitably, listening to the band's work is accompanied by a game of "What the hell is he singing about?" Because, let's face it, regular vocalist James Reyne and occasional lead singer Guy McDonough are quite loose with their use of syllables. They both share a common trait of distorting and contorting the English language in such an unusual way.

Quite commonly I will listen to a track - and take into account that I have been listening to these tracks for a number of decades - and then read the lyric sheet and think "there is no way you have just sung those words!"

For example, take a listen to "Letter From Zimbabwe" below. Do you know what they're on about?



Nup. Didn't think so.

And it's not as if the songs have lyrics that are intelligence-starved either - the lyrics, when you read them, are quite literate and clever. It's just that the vocalists seemed to be somewhat linguistically challenged...

Still, even if you can't work out the lyrics when listening, the band were adept at some catchy musicianship, with listeners being able to hum the guitar lines and bass lines of their most popular songs almost as much at the vocal line! That to me is the mark of a well constructed song.

The band's entire back catalog has been reissued in 2014 and is now all available on Spotify. Take a listen to the band's Greatest Hits again below!

ENJOY!!!

Lake Street Dive and Mavis Staples

We love a bit of Lake Street Dive here at TSATF Central. It turns out that the band's performance were regarded as one of the highlights of the Newport Folk Festival a couple of weekends ago. From a number of accounts it was a quality set, and it makes we wish I could have been there to see it.

Their set was elevated from the great to the transcendent when gospel soul legend Mavis Staples came onstage to duet with the band on their track "Bad Self Portraits". Lead singer Rachael Price looks to be in absolute heaven with a smile so wide it almost meets her ears!

Take a look at the clip below, courtesy of Chris from the Boston Through My Eyes blog. This is truly goose-bump material. It's a true shame that American National Public Radio (NPR) didn't record the band's set; instead preferring to go with the Jeff Tweedy/Jack White/Ryan Adams-type big name artists to showcase.

Take a listen to this inspiring performance. Sing along with Mavis, and smile along with Rachael!

Sunday Sessions: Godstar

Godstar are one of a handful of guitar-pop bands whose work is so ingeniously simple and catchy that it makes me want to start a band and write music again.

Formed by Half a Cow label owner Nic Dalton, the band features a revolving door line-up of musicians including Evan Dando of the Lemonheads and various members of Sydney bands such as Smudge, The Plunderers and The Hummingbirds. The songs are short, sharp and insanely catchy, with loads of fuzzy guitars and vocal harmonies.

The overall impression one gets is that the music is quickly recorded and mixed, without too much attention to bum notes or slightly off harmonies. It's all a little rough around the edges, but that's what makes it endearing. It's all recorded in various Sydney recording studios with whoever is around at the time. What you are left with is a bunch of great songs wrapped up in a neat package for maximum fun.

The band have released two studio albums in the form of "Sleeper" (1993) and "Coastal" (1995), as well as copious amounts of seven-inch vinyl EPs and singles and a few compilation albums before calling a day in 1998. All are available from the Half a Cow label website. 

Nic has also been involved with many other bands since, such as Sneeze, and the Gloomchasers among others. Pretty much, the name "Half a Cow" can be taken as a trademark of quality - anything you find on that label is worth listening to, but start with the Godstar releases and go from there. 

Check out some of the bands highlights below. Enjoy your Sunday!

July 2014 Playlist

Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the Sound and the Fury Podcast July 2014 playlist. A selection of carefully chosen songs to illuminate your living room, or wherever you feel like listening to it.

This month you get over 200 songs featuring:
New music from: Little Bastard, Dick Diver, Calling All Astronauts, Manchester Orchestra, Iron Reagan, Gaslight Anthem, Ed Sheeran, Courtney Barnett, Bully, Bellowhead and heaps more
Classics from Led Zeppelin, Fifty Foot Hose, Queen, Show of Hands, Liquor Giants, Miles Davis, Sebadoh and heaps more.

Set the list to shuffle, crank it up and ENJOY!!!

June 2014 Playlist

It's the first day of the month, and you know what that means, right? A new playlist. Hand-picked from over 20 million tunes on Spotify.

This is the June 2014 one (sorry it's late) and it features:

New music from Drawn From Bees, Parquet Courts, Bob Mould, New Pornographers, Sheppard, Royal Blood, Milky Chance, Hurray For The Riff Raff and heaps more
Classics from The Yardbirds, Longpigs, Black Sabbath, Faith No More, Graham Bonnet, Stan Ridgeway, NOFX and heaps more

Look out for a total nutso track from Fat and Frantic called "Last Night My Wife Hoovered My Head", as well as copious amounts of tunes from the legends we lost during the month: Doc Neeson (The Angels), Jim Keays (Master's Apprentices) and Gerry Goffin (Drifters, Carole King and various others)

Set the list to shuffle, crank it up and ENJOY!!!