Woollen Kits+Woolen Men+G. Green LIVE TOMORROW NIGHT!!*

Gonna be in the Sacramento area tomorrow night? Then I suggest you head over to Bows & Arrows at 1815 19th Street to check out the continuous wave of Aussie invaders and Sacto's own rock & roll arrangement. Here's some sounds to entice you:

Ah, this is all I've got time to post for now but I've seen both the Woolen Men and G. Green's new lineup live and it's bound to be a good time -- you'll just have to take my word for it!

*If you can't wait that long or can't get enough, tune in to KDVS 90.3FM tonight as both Aussie bands will be performing live on "Art for Spastics" at 10pm.

1/27/12 Please Stay Tuned!

Due to foreseen mental roadblocks this week I had to call in some backup to help keep up the trippage. Be sure to check out the killer sets DJ h.g. pulled together this week on "The Triplofonic Sounds" and listen to his show "Can't Hardly Skate" Mondays 6-7:30pm on KDVS. Thanks dude!
PLAYLIST
STREAM IT!! (wait for the 20 seconds or so of news to end.)

Picks from Friday, January 20th

Okay guys and dolls, I'll start with one of my favorite new 7-inches: Please Don't Meet Me by Bloodhouse from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The title track has an ear candy-level of dark distorted discordance while the b-side, "Cool Intentions", has that droning overdriven riffage I'm addicted to.

Next up: "New Boy" is a charming roughed-up little pop ditty by English band Lures. Guitarist Terry and drummer Marianne make up this Hull, UK based duo who released their first 7-inch ("New Boy" b/w "Falling Out (Of Gerald's Car)") on Salvaged Productions back in December. You can grab yourself a copy from Florida's Dying.

Are you a fan of Joy Divison? Then I hope you like uptempo beats too 'cos you just might dig the Crystal Stilts' Radiant Door EP. Even if you don't hear the sleepy Closer era Ian Curtis-like vocals in singer Brad Hargett's voice, the EP's title track still exhibits a certain angsty brand of yearning only further subdued by poppier - rather than anxious and spastically regular - rythmic progressions. I'll share Crystal Stilts' "Radiant Door" here and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" to further convince you:

Hope you'll tune in later this week -- things might get poppier. In the meantime, get the rest of the playlist HERE and treat your ears a little more HERE.

1/13/12 Le Glamour Français Rock!

Favorite track from last week's playlist: "Lola-Cola" by The Frenchies (France 1974, Lola-Cola LP, Harvest Records.) Perhaps France's punker side of glam rock.

Click HERE for a list of triplofonic tunage or HERE to listen to the show (and the glam rock set this Frenchies tune came outta.)

Ah...

How 'bout a nifty Australian McDonald's ad a friend sent me while I decide on my next move... whatever happened to their 29 cent hamburger Tuesdays and 39 cent cheeseburger Wednesdays?

I've been to Australia...once.

But who cares when 2011 was the best year to see the best Aussie bands in the flesh, right here in the States? 

Now it's 2012 but I'm still stuck in the land down-under, but I assure you it's good stuff! Just a quick list of personal favorites and recommendations for last year's best releases:  * = seen 'em this many times live to date and I can vouch!


Three Toed Sloth I Didn't Know I Loved You ('til I Saw You Rock 'n Roll) 7" (Negative Guest List) Gary Glitter cover. Remastered material, orig. rec. '93 with Tom from feedtime on drums.
Circle Pit Sewercide 7" (Sweet Rot)
*Deaf Wish self-titled LP (Radio Records Melbourne)
UV Race Homo LP (In The Red)
Total Control Thee Oh Sees/Total Control split 12" (Castle Face) Perth punks posed against San Francisco garage-stompers.
Scraps Classic Shits LP (Bedroom Suck) Melodic minimal synthpop with female vox.
**Royal Headache self-titled LP (R.I.P. Society) Their Eloise 7" from 2010 is pretty stellar as well. Best band to lend your dad's drum kit to.
Woolen Kits Maths/Out of Town 7" (R.I.P. Society) Hooky baritone-voiced garage pop, playing at Bows & Arrows in Sacramento Jan. 31st with the Woolen Men and G. Green!!
*Super Wild Horses Reading Rainbow/Superwild Horses split 7" (Hozac)
*Bed Wettin' Bad Boys Nobody Else 7" (R.I.P. Society)
Bleeding Knees Club Virginity LP (IAMSOUND)
**Kitchen's Floor Look Forward to Nothing LP (Siltbreeze)
Per Purpose Implicating More Than One LP (Bedroom Suck) With drummer Joe Alexander from Kitchen's floor!! Super nice guy if you ever need a record signed.
Eddy Current Suppression Ring So Many Things (Goner) Compiled material from singles and EPs not released on their studio albums.
**Straight Arrows It's Happening LP (Juvenile & Rice Is Nice) Released in late 2010 actually.

Straight Arrows have become one of my favorite bands to kick out the upbeat garage fuzz and I think seeing them live only helped. Some of the most energetic and fun performers to watch -- just wind them up and let 'em loose!  Fortunately I got to see them when they played the Davis Bike Collective here in town AND outside The Buccaneer at Gonerfest 8 (where I also picked up their super low-fi Hits From The Zong tour tape.) Even got to run into them at a pre-Gonerfest backyard barbecue where us American accents were easily outnumbered and Sydney's own Bed Wettin' Bad Boys played a quick outdoor set to kick-off the ozzie invaded festival. (see below)

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys at Bruce's backyard BBQ (photo courtesy of bedwettinbadboys.tumblr.com)

Here's a song by Straight Arrows called "Magic Sceptre"-- "it's about a magic sceptre!"

If the stuck-in-a-rut, slow 'n scuzzy dark groove is more your thing then check out Circle Pit. Angie Bermuda from Straight Arrows makes up half of this Sydney duo. Here's the official video for "Speed Limits" from 2010's Bruise Constellation:

Just gotta slip one more track in from Kitchen's Floor. Look Forward to Nothing has a different version of "Orbit" than the 7" but this short and sweet grungy groove has a special place in my heart. (The video is pretty rad too.)

The AC/DC Connection: A Little Young Family History

Since we're already on the subject of Aussie rock & roll... I present you with the pre-Bon Scott era AC/DC recording of "Can I Sit Next To You Girl" from 1974:

Whoa... what? The blokes who busted out some of the most well-known and overplayed anthemic badboy balls-to-the-wall rockers started out as a glam rock band?! Well, sorta. It's okay, most people only know of the Bon Scott and Brian Johnson/Back in Black/increasingly over-produced ball-sagging instead of ball-busting sound periods anyway, unless you're a self-professed accadacca nerd like I turned into as a kid. (That's what I get for crushing on a guy who wore AC/DC shirts when we were in junior high.) And yeah, I can hate just as much as I can appreciate. The Dave Evans years ('73-'74) proved to be the band's most flamboyant and jovial era. Note the polyester garbs adorning each member, if you will.
Alright, enough with the passive aggressive jabs at the correlation between the decline in aging rockers' sex appeal and the diminishig effectiveness of their once lusty male libido-ridden songs.* Let's get down to business -- my attention span is fading.
Here's a handful of videos from bands with connections to AC/DC that someone out there might find mildly entertaining:

The Easybeats "Gonna Have A Good Time Tonight" (1968, Sydney) with George Young (older brother of AC/DC's Angus and Malcolm) on rhythm guitar.

George and Easybeats' lead singer Harry Vanda would continue to team up as a songwriting and production duo for AC/DC while spearheading projects of their own under names like The Marcus Hook Roll Band, Haffey's Whiskey Sour, and new wavy studio project Flash and the Pan (Grace Jones' cover of "Walkin' In The Rain" is actually a Flash and the Pan original, yep.) If you can dig the quirky synthpop and drum machine vibe of the next video then I can assure you that there are plenty more like it.

Rewinding a bit... here's a track from one of my personal favorite AC/DC family connections called "Elevator" by London-based pop band Grapefruit -- Ang & Mal's older brother Alex was the bass player. The band was signed to The Beatles' Apple label after John Lennon bequeathed them with their name as a tribute to Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit.

As for Angus and Malcolm, I have yet to find any available recordings of their early bands, though it might be worth mentioning that Angus's teenage band was called Kantuckee and that Malcolm was part of an Aussie band called The Velvet Underground (no connection to that Lewis Allan Reed-fronted VU.)

As for Bon Scott, he had a pop group in the 60s called The Valentines who recorded this nifty Coca-Cola jingle in '69.

Scott co-fronted The Valentines with teenage Aussie heartthrob Vince Lovegrove. See the leopard-vested, tight-jeaned ladies man back in the day in a live television performance HERE.

In '64, Scott's first band - The Spektors - recorded a version of Van Morrison's "Gloria." 

Scott's unmistakeable vocals are perhaps the only distinguishing characteristic to a song that could've easily been lost in the dozens of generic sounding garage rock covers of the time.

Then there were the bearded, flute-playing days he spent in Fraternity. Brace yourself... this one's a bit startling. 

*I'll have to post some examples where I can argue that the converse is also true. Just gimme a sec....

The Last Triplofonic Tuesday 1/3/2012

Choice track from "Ugly Things #3: Savage Sounds from the 60s" Australian garage rock LP.
"I'm Going Back" by Machine Gun Kelly's Rejects (1967 Adelaide, South Australia) featuring an appearance from Rick Morrison from the Masters Apprentices.

Check out more 60s Aussie sounds from today's show by listening here (show starts shortly after the news) and follow along with the Playlist.