Robert Freeman will always be remembered

Australian Rock, an addiction that does not come out

Two albums that caught my attention this year had to do with Australia. One is the one that for me is the best of the year, within the genres that I like, the last album Don Bryan Estepa , Sometimes I Just Don'tKnow , who is Filipino by birth, but has grown up in the antipodes. The other is not Australian, but has one, Dave Talon . This is Poor Little Things , a group based in Switzerland. 

Steppe moves in very pop terrain and the little things throw for the hard rock partying. However, neither of them removes the smell of Australia, which is something that adheres to the melodic facet of the songs and is very recognizable. Who best described this spirit - don't laugh - was Johnny Depp . When the actor went to shoot one of the deliveries of the pirate saga to Australia, he had serious legal problems for not having put his dogs in quarantine upon entering the country. He could even drop ten years in jail. 

So that he was not hooked on the legal gears, he collaborated with justice by recording a video in which he explained to the world the importance of the quarantine of dogs when entering this country. It is the least, the fact is that it seemed that they were aiming at him with a gun and said everything he was obliged to say, but releasing some spike in a passive-aggressive way. Thus, he pronounced a phrase that nailed him. "Australians are very warm, but also very direct." And neither more nor less, that is the secret of his music. The melodies are irresistible, they seduce and envelop you, they caress your nipples with the dampened fingertips, but then they put a brick in the car on the gas and hit the drum like in the Roman galleys. 

Dave Talon, before moving to Switzerland, had been in one of the later formations Kings of the Sun . A group of hard rock of which there were many in the eighties, but with so much overabundance in that genre, even the good ones were mediocre. In his case, his group was from the upper middle class, but what he most remembers what he has recorded now is The Angels , combo that in the international market went with the name of Angels From Angel City or Angel City to dry by the amount of demands that could fall from the two dozen Angels that were already in the markets beyond the seas of Oceania. 

Angel City were the poor brother of AC / DC with Rose Tattoo . Even the latter had a late recognition when Guns N 'Roses made a version of " Nice Boys" for their second album, possibly the best of the four electric songs that came in the face A. Of Angel City, however, little more has transcended despite having been releasing records until 2014. The point is that, although they shared some rhythmic schemes with AC / DC, Angel City had pop sensitivity. That's why you didn't like his songs, you loved them. You were not a fan of the group, you wanted to be his friend. That is the tonic with all that music scene. 

It is repeated, group by group, with the majority of Australian artists. Although they are garage , power pop , punk rock or hard rock , in all of them there is that pattern. The paradigm is perhaps Radio Birdman . Now they may seem normal what they did, but the formula of Stooges and Blue Öyster Cult at the same time was a Martian. A take-it-all of the four cardinal points of the seventies, Stones , Doors , the elegant hard rock of BÖC and the new aberration brought by the Stooges, the punk, which crystallized on the planet precisely in the year of its debut album, Appear Radios . 

When the internet went through ISDN and all this was field, the continuous mentions of Radio Birdman impatient me. I thought it was an unknown group, very noisy and everything you want, the typical thing that epes the pedantic music lover. When I put on the aforementioned I first chose my attitude was sarcasm and "let's see what the fuck it is." 

I heard the classic version of the album, the one that starts with " TV Eye . " Precisely it may be the song I like most about Stooges, so I was not particularly surprised no matter how well it was performed. The problem came later, " Murder City Nights . " That went into phrases made of too much rock to be punk and too punk to be rockand the guitar was traveling through another dimension. It was so perfect that it seemed done in a laboratory. In the moment before listening to it, if I had been able to request an a la carte group, I would have included precisely all the ingredients I was hearing at that time. From there the whole album entered me with petroleum jelly and I celebrated it with the faith of the convert without needing to make excuses or go around with rodeos. That was the best, period.

The revolution in the mind continued incessantly to each group of that country that was discovering. Australian did not give clues only to a genre and melodic tics, but also supposed quality. Concerning all groups of the twentieth century was fulfilled: Celibate Rifles , Stems , Fun Things , Hoodoo Gurus , Screaming Tribesmen ... How could it be that all were good? Even diving in the seventies the same thing happened, Colored Balls , Buffalo ... And Australia between 1970 and 1990 only had between ten and fifteen million inhabitants. It was a miracle. 

In Spain, in the few niches that devote attention to rock, it is undeniable that due attention is paid to the Australian, the apostolate of the Route 66 magazine has even raised suspicions. Not surprisingly, here was published in 2016 The Year We Kill Skippy: A Tour of Australian High-Energy, Punk, Garage and Power Pop (66 rpm editorial) by Manuel Beteta , a book outside Australia that serves as a guide to Australian rock reference . 

In its pages, Beteta explained that the Australian groups of the late seventies and eighties had in common that they took rock as it had been in the seventies, without giving in to the new eighties productions, they assumed the Detroit, Stooges and MC5 classics , but also the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star , and considering that everyone already knew punk , they shaped their little universe in the eighties. The treasure of the island in a literal sense. For the author, after years of challenging the British / American duopoly of rock record collections With references to the antipodes, the pinnacle of ecstasy came with the Spanish tour of Radio Birdman in 2006: 

[…] I left stunned, comfortably dejected. It had been such a rewarding experience that I could not waste those pleasant moments going home. I only wanted to walk aimlessly on the Gran Vía, very empty at that late hours of the morning, while the images of the concert hit me in a loop again and again. I remember that I wanted the city to wake up and get going as soon as possible because I needed to tell it.

He was referring to a language, if not dead, if periclited. The golden years of Australian rock were the eighties and nineties. Then there was a generational change with other references that, although many of them sink their roots in this period, is another story. And so it must be, the styles of music that do not die are very glorious, but they give a lot of harm. 

The question is why Australia. The starting point, according to this critic, is the appearance in June 1976 of the first single of the Saints , (I'm) Stranded and in October Burn my Eye by Radio Birdman. Two milestones that marked a turning point: "The youth abandoned musical servitude to the United States and England and began to develop their own identity." The criticism that Melody Maker made could not be more successful and unfortunate at the same time: " Metal-pop that is not going anywhere."

The Birdmans had to do their part. Radios Appear was recorded at Trafalgar studies, which had been equipped to get out the sound of Californians seventies groups of soft-rock type Eagles . However, they put corrugated iron sheets on the walls and between the amplifiers so that the highs were harder as there was more reverberation. All thanks to infused science. As they admit in the interview that the book includes: "Then we didn't know a shit about studies, we just thought we knew." 

It has nothing to do with the sound of these groups, but it is a very current controversy. The aesthetics of Radio Birdman, with red bracelets with the group's logo in black on white, and the military and uniformed formation with which they appeared in the photos, just as it would have happened now was not understood by some sectors. They were branded as fascists and, as unequivocal evidence, was their song " New Race . " In reality, everything was an irony that sought a youthful anthem, a generational break song that staged the new order, the emancipation of the kids from the boring old world of the time, with those figurative elements. That is, a part of ass. 

However, Rob Younger regretted having brought the group's letters and imagery to military issues: “Our Blietzkrieg poster was a great design, but I wish that our war aesthetic had ended there. It became too literal for me, and it became a big drag around the band. I've been defending myself about questions about whether I was a Nazi since then. 

The reality was more prosaic. Everything was born in a glass. That scene arose from the bars, where drunks before an audience of drunks everything goes. This is how these groups were forged not only in those years, but also in the 21st century. Australian groups come mostly from the circuit of pubs and their music is usually designed for live shows, perhaps that's why it is always described, regardless of gender, as intense and direct, because it has the urgency to hit in the here and now , on the day of the week that is your turn to cheer up the drunkenness of the parish. One Friday, he says in the book, there could be half a dozen concerts scheduled to choose from. There was a lot of supply also because, with the recession of the early eighties, Many young people had nothing better to spend their time than picking up a guitar. It all came together. 

In addition, these groups had other motivations. The main Australian cities are on the coast and it is the surf culture and surf music that flies the most in their compositions. On the other hand, apart from all the American and British influences impossible to avoid, if all these musicians have something in common when they are interviewed is that they always quote Easybeats , who was the great group of the island in the sixties and of which all they sucked, even more than the Rolling Stones. 

Danny McDonald stressed in these lines that in those riffs there was also national pride: «The eighties, and to some extent the nineties, were the golden age of Australian music, which is also consistent with the evolution of Australian general culture. The Australian identity peaked in the eighties and for a time it was individual and unique, which led us to develop pride and arrogance. That particular sense of identity eroded over time. Now Australians are more interested in the culture of the United States and England ».

Even Dave Faulkner showed some resentment towards the metropolis: "Unfortunately, the British press has always been very hostile to the Australian gangs, these people don't seem to forget that one day we were one of their colonies, it's as if Australians don't deserve their respects" , complained to Beteta. For having, they even had their own Nirvana . It was the case of the Bored! and his Feed the Dog that marked a generation there, although from the previous postulates of some Blue Cheer and Motörhead.

But there was Spain with open arms. The underground of the antipodes penetrated perfectly in a country and in an era - now people are more stiff - where hedonism and fun had religious dyes. Bob SusnjaraHe confessed in these pages that they hallucinated the first time they came to Spain and saw that the public, the people they drank after bowling, knew more about Australian music than the Australians themselves: «That tour and all the following were like a Long party In Madrid, Malasaña blew our heads. So many bars and so many people playing such good music! As soon as they learned that we were Australians, they started playing Australian music. When they arrived in Almansa, in Albacete, they could not believe that in a bar, the Bar Code, they had posters of Radio Birdman and Trilobites , a group from the suburbs of Sydney.  

For Beteta, in the end, what happened between the two countries was basically an act of fornication: 

It is known that the characteristic musical connection between Spain and Australia is peculiar, diverse and fruitful for both countries. In our country punk , power-pop , garage and high-energy have always been demanded and for a time neither the United States nor the United Kingdom offered enough bands to quench the thirst for guitars. Australia, however, did know how to offer its best catalog, groups that were always well received and with legend honors. Many found here the success and recognition they did not find in their land. Knowing this particularity, it did not take long to forge a special relationship between Australia and Spain.

Hard-Ons , Dubrovniks , Meanies , Lime Spiders , New Christis , Cosmic Psychos , Hitmen , God ... the list is so extensive and of such a level that it would justify a single complete collection of discs uniquely and exclusively dedicated to the island. Paraphrasing Radio Birdman in his anthem Do the Pop : «The way, the truth and the light».