While Tame Impala is becoming one of the most popular bands in the world at the moment, there are also other bands, making up together a very strong and promising new psychedelic and garage rock scene over in Australia. We learned this fact last year thorough a very interesting tribute to the legendary Nuggets. A number of young Australian rockers covered each one song from the original Nuggets for its fortieth anniversary and the result was the new compilation record known as Nuggets: Antipodean Interpolations of the First Psychedelic Era. One of the central roles on that compilation record was a seven-piece with a silly band name King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard who covered Open My Eyes by The Nazz. They also have a new record out called Eyes Like The Sky, which is a topic of today’s review.
I know very little about King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. The photographs of the band clearly shows that they are quite young and a few texts mention that they come from Melbourne. Sound-wise, it appears that they are very imaginative and very competent musicians. The record that we are reviewing today has been posted on their band camp page for some time now and the vinyl record release is scheduled for April this year in Australia.
The record is a concept effort centered around a wild west tale in the USA, set right after the civil war. My perception that the record works as some kind of a soundtrack to an imaginary western or a novel or maybe even a comic book. Western imagery is obviously close to the spaghetti westerns but another close comparison is what one can find for instance in the Italian series of graphic novels about Ken Parker, created by Berardi and Milazzo, and it covers about the same historical period.
Gunshots, galloping horses, barking dogs, blacksmith tools and native American chants are all worked well into the larger musical picture. But what really works amazingly well on this record is the narration, here performed by the Australian singer and songwriter Broderick Smith who also wrote the actual story so effectively dramatized musically by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Mr. Smith does the narration in a flawless American accent, despite being an Englishman who moved with parents to Australia at a very young age.
The story is short and moves quickly, but there are a lot of memorably poetic moments which are often accentuated by the musical dramatization of the band. Check these lines out: “One thing a white man should never do is move towards an Apache, because you can never get there. How do you catch dust in the wind?”
Broderick Smith is virtually unknown outside his country, but hw is fairly famous in his homeland. Multi-talented, he had an early success with rock bands Carson and The Dingos in the early seventies and more recently, he has a steady acting career on Australian television. It would be interesting to find out how this collaboration came about, but the news from Australia are coming very slowly.
The whole package is a nail-baiting drama that flows like a great rock record, despite the novelty feel to it. Well done lads!
First published on rockxs.com.
Unfortunately, we say goodbye to two great people who influenced rock’n’roll greatly. Alvin Lee from Ten Years After left us on March 6th and George Shadow Morton, producer of the Shangri-Las left us on February 14th. But, we also have a survival story. You probably already heard that Slim Dunlap, the guitar player of The Replacements suffered a stroke last year and he survived it. Although the recovery is slow and expensive, he is holding tight. His old bandmates decided to have a small reunion and make an EP which would directly help Dunlap with the recovery costs. The limited edition EP auction did very well and and now it is scheduled for the regular release as a download and a sound carrier. We hear one of the songs from this record today. We also have one new name today for us, her name is Fredda and she’s from France, but with ties in Tucson AZ. She will be a part of Vacilando 68 promotional campaign this year at SXSW. Another new name is The Go from Detroit. They nurture the retro 60s sound. Guadalupe Plata are also back with the new record and Derek Deprator is also back with a very nice instrumental tune. Probably the most exciting new thing today is King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard with their western conceptual record called Eyes Like The Sky, narrated by Broderick Smith of The Dingoes.
Here is another special in the “Vinyl Jukyard” series. I will fill the entire hour of today’s show with the records that once belonged to the KLSU library. I started my show back in 2001. Around that time, one of the former DJs, Josh was leaving Baton Rouge and I was fortunate that he gave me a big pile of records that he didn’t feel like moving. And he got all those records back in 1996 when the student media faculty decided to throw away all those records into a big trash container between KLSU and the stadium. Luckily Josh saved all those records and some of them are now in my hands. So, today’s topic literally fits the series title. All records had interesting reviews handwritten on the record sleeves. Today we will be reading parts of these reviews for the fun of it and we will be playing these rare records that define the lost history of golden age of underground rock and college radio in Baton Rouge, if not the entire United States. Today’s show is dedicated to all the former and current KLSU djs! Special thanks to Rob Rioux who was always there to help back when I started the show.
Today we say the last goodbyes to Kevin Ayers of Soft Machine and Tony Sheridan who sang with The Beatles back in their Hamburg days. The two rockers passed away recently. We also have some new stuff. We have new music for the Austinites Kelly Willis and her husband Bruce Robison and our good friend Kim Simpson. They all have new records out. Billy Childish has recently put out a record with his Spartan Drags, and that opens out new show. Donovan put out a record that he started making in 1970 with John Phillips and The Jazz Crusaders. Mikal Cronin has a new single out. We also have Freedy Johnston from his recent gig in Cleveland and one new name: Colleen Green from Oakland CA.
Lots of new stuff this time. Let’s begin first with the familiar names. We have two new songs for the two main members of The dB’s. Chris Stamey has a new album and Peter Holsapple submitted a track to the Bobby Sutliff benefit. Two friends from the old UK rock’n’roll scene, Van Morrison and Georgie Fame each recently had new records, so we check that out. Mark Lanegan also appeared on a tribute, this one was for Tim Hardin. Legendary controversial music producer and musician from New York City, Kramer, covered a whole bunch of Brill Building era songs. Of the newbies, we have Brian Lisik from Canton OH, Hot Nun from San Francisco. Veronica Falls from England have a very aggressive advertising campaign for their new record Waiting For Something To Happen, but it’s still a very nice record and we get to hear a song from it.
Today we are saying the last goodbye to one of the true rock’n’roll legends. Reg Presley of the Troggs left this ugly world on Fabruary 4th this month. We listen to his music at the end of the show. We also have some new stuff. Mike Watt put out a record with his Italian friends Stefano Pilia and Andrea Belfi. The three of them make together a trio called Il Sogno Del Marinaro. Richard Thompson is also back with a new record called Electric, and it is one of the better ones he made in recent years. We also have two new bands today, Punks On Mars from Brooklyn, NY and the Schills from Portland, OR. Glttery Schills are ran by the Paisley Pop Records boss Jim Huie and this label also released a tribute to Bobby Sutliff recently. Today we continue listening to this record with a selection from a very interesting collaboration between Velvet Crush and Matthew Sweet.
MBV ya all… The biggest buzz since the power went out at the Super Bowl is the return of My Bloody Valentine. Without much pomp, they released a new record simply called mbv, and it sound like time did not change anything in their dreamy ways. Another interesting return is for Endless Boogie, who are going to put out a new album by the end of February. In the same time, we are expecting the new record for Tim Lee 3, and we are previewing one song from each band and each new records. New names today are Livingstone Daisies from Melbourne, Australia and The Resonars from Arizona. I made mistake announcing the band in the show though – their name is not The Resonators, but The Resonars. Another new band today is Prkos Drumski from Novi Sad – another representative of the neo-acoustic scene in ex-Yugoslavia. Trixie Whitley is back with the new record and Eamon McGrath uncovered an unpretentious collection of demos that predate his legendary Young Canadians by a few months. There’s also an interesting moment where we play Hanging On The Telephone in three different language versions as a tribute to The Nerves.
Today’s spotlight is on the neo-acoustic music scene in former Yugoslavia. There was a huge folk movement also known over there as akusticari in the early to mid seventies. It seems as that scene is being revived. We already presented Belgrade’s On Tour some time ago, and today we have two more new names. Irena Žilić is a young singer songwriter from Zagreb with her modern and fresh take on western folk music. Nina Romić, also from Zagreb, is on the other hand more rooted in the local folklore. In this episode, she covers a song written originally by Satan Panonski – a hard blood shock punk from the eighties who was both influential and controversial at the same time. Nina’s cover is a part of a larger tribute called OÄi u magli. We also have a new album by our old friends from Rijeka My Buddy Moose. Their style is more on the roots rock side. Their new album Shine Shine Shine is produced by Chris Eckman from The Walkabouts, who also lives in that neck of the woods these days – Ljubljana. The Walkabouts have a live album called Berlin and we check that out as well in this show. Elsewhere form Europe, Amsterdam, we have an instrumental outfit called Bevel Emboss who create a wonderful tapestry of guitar sounds on their new album called Celluloid. Back to America – we have Arbouretum from Baltimore for the first time and super-group Sweet Apple have a new single out there which announces their album due this Spring around the Record Store Day. Mark Lanegan is a guest vocalist!
Today we explore connections of the new Australian psychedelic rock scene with Todd Rundgren. Tame Impala is a new band from over there that a lot of people were excited about last year. Their album Lonerism ended up on many year end lists right at the top positions. They even collaborated with Todd Rungren on one track and they covered the opening tune on his 70s masterpiece A Wizard A True Star. Another band, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard also showed up recently covering Todd’s song Open My Eyes, which he put out with his band Nazz on the famous Nuggets compilation. Also from Australia, we have a long time Evan Dando’s collaborator Tom Morgan with the new LP. London band The Barracudas, who had a minor surf hit in 1980 are back with a cool new 45. Also, we introduce Cleveland band Wolly Bullies in our Live in CLE segment.
Crowdfunding is a cool new way to help musicians make their albums ahead of time, get some special releases in return and maybe even influence the content in some ways. I mean, without your help, the stuff wouldn’t even be out. Today we introduce two artist that took the road of crowdfunding. Clara Engel is from Toronto and she’s a singer songwriter. She previously published in UK and Italy, but not in North America. She started a website on