Awesome Aussie Bands that were horribly underrated

A couple of older bands.

Head Band from Adelaide. Made one good album, Song FoR Tooley, which l have a copy of in excellent condition. One track featured a choir of about 100 school kids, it was quite a haunting effect.

Khavas Jute with Dennis (?) Wilson and Tim Gaze (also in Aerial with Mike Rudd) on guitars. Thier album Wide Open was rereleased on CD, which is where l caught up with, some 20 + years after the vinyl edition came out. Great guitar band.

Fraternity. Bon Scott was in this band as he transitioned from the teeny bopper Valentines, to the harder rocking AC/DC. This is my fave Bon Scott band. They were about an 8 piece effort and got around the Riverina area in one of those old rPioneer coaches, with the round back. The highlight of their set was an extended workout of The Band’s fabulous track, Chest Fever. They did put out an album on Sweet Peach records, but l have never heard it. If Blitzer out there ever does find it and can send me a digital copy, well then the Milky Bars will be on me, when next we meet.

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Bzark.
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Wow. I came into this thread to mention this band. I thought there was no way anyone would remember them.

I’ve still got the tape. I can’t find anything about them on the web.

Do you know if there is any info about them anywhere.

Edit. Just saw the clip you posted. Man I loved that band.

This thread is gold.So many bands I used to follow around. In some great venues as well.

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But she is a kiwi?

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Snout
Bluebottle kiss
Meanies
Snarky
I also love TISM, Even and Died Pretty but those got reasonably big.

Died Pretty had one album that did sort of okay,
I wouldn’t call that reasonably big.
Were they really any bigger than The Johnnys?

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l would say so.

Yeah, bigger than The Johnnies, who went alright too.

I was almost gonna add Bluebottle Kiss too, but wasn’t sure if they’d gotten more exposure in the years since I’d left the country.

The Meanies are an interesting one. They certainly had the huge rabid following they deserved, and scored some dream international band support slots, but remained almost completely underground. Melbourne’s all-age scene went nuts for them based on a string of 7" singles and an EP and they got some overseas cred, RRR and PBS flogged them, but they never really had (or needed?) JJJ support at their peak (around “Come’n’See”). That day they were let loose on the main stage at the Big Day Out (93?) is one of my all-time fave gig memories. The place went berserk.

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Good to see bands like GOD and the Powdermonkeys getting a mention in here. A couple of related bands that are worth checking out

The Yes-Men, which was lead by one of the guys from GOD, put out two albums before being cut down from drugs. Their album Prosody is very good

Spencer P Jones and The Escape Comitee have a great live album called Hang On Hang On with the guitar player from the Powdermonkeys and the singer bassist from Moler on bass

Another great Melbourne band from the late 80’s was The Seminal Rats

Whatever happened to Gyroscope?

I remember seeing them at a pub with about 20 others, then again a year later, same venue, with about 400 others.

Then they just dropped off the radar. I really liked them.

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Hi-5!

At this stage l would like to put in a vote for The Pony. A sweet rocking little group from Sydney, from about 1990.

There was a band that went nowhere in the late 90’s but they had one catchy and cracking song. The band was called rumanastone and the song called sweet.
Try as I might I can’t track down a studio MP3. There’s a YouTube live version which I have to make do with.
Oh, and the lead singer of the band has passed away

I remember The Pony, had a jangly sound not a million miles from The Stems (another severely under-rated Oz act) and big, BIG 80’s hair. Their single “I Lied” was great! Saw them supporting Icehouse at the Venue Ballroom in St Kilda and they were the better of the two acts to be honest.
If I recall rightly, the singer (Pierre Baroni) became a graphic designer, and he did a lot of the album covers for Mushroom releases during the 80’s and 90’s.

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A long time ago I hosted a community radio show.
I went on a rant about an Australian, ARIA award winning band with a top ten album that radio stations just flat out refused to play, how disgraceful it was and that I was going to play one of their songs right now, as far as I was aware for the first time on radio.

And I played Hi-5’s Living In A Rainbow.

My brother was co-hosting and after the song was over he was all…

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No ones mentioned Underground Lovers yet … whom incidentally reformed a few years back & released a not too bad new Album. This was the 1st single from it…

And they are just about to release a 2nd Album since re uniting, in May …

This single was just released recently …

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Big Heavy Stuff

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I remember them. Saw them at the Corner at the behest of a Drummer we jammed with for a while, … it was the beginning of falling out with him, … couldn’t really get into them.

I said at the time that they reminded me a bit of a band I’d seen not long before called AntiSkeptic, who I thought a lot better, and whom I have to thank for my PRS guitar crush. He had 3 of them IIRC, & they, & the band, sounded great.

I think they may actually still be getting around …?

I was thinking of Underground Lovers, but I thought they’d had reasonable success. Just checked their Wiki and they barely scraped the lower rungs of the charts throughout their career, so nice call.
I still love to crank “I Was Right” in a shoegaze playlist. Their female-fronted tracks always sounded better to me.

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Big Heavy Stuff - yep and yep again! How Powderfinger made it big, and these guys didn’t is quite beyond me…