The Stockings - 1981 - Limbo FLAC

 Limbo/Boy Girls/Mercy Man/This Girl That Girl/On My Knees



Hailing from Australia's left coast, this Perth combo indulged in driving, albeit straitlaced power pop/wave without resorting to any obvious gimmicks, not unlike contemporary country-mates the Serious Young Insects.
This Perth New wave band started life in Early '79 as "Rip Torn & The Stockings". Rip Torn being singer Bernie Lynch who left in 1980 to form "Living Single" who then became Eurogliders.

In Grace Knight's book 'Pink Suit for a Blue Day", she talks about meeting Bernie Lynch at a BBQ, where they hit off immediately. "He was absolutely charming, obviously well educated, well brought up and with a nose that stopped passers by....he was in a band called Rip Torn and the Stockings. In Perth back then it was very difficult to get gigs unless you performed covers of popular tunes, the audiences preferred to hear music they knew, and so The Stockings would perform songs by Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Graeme Parker, along with some of Bernie's songs.

 In 1981, The Stockings (now dropping Rip Torn from their name) released their debut album, Red Tango.  The group eventually disbanded in 1982 with band members finding musical interests elsewhere.  

Radio Birdman - 1976 - Surfin At 2JJJ FLAC

Surf City/Don't Look Back/Time Won't Let Me/Transmaniacom MC



One of the pillars of Australian punk, RADIO BIRDMAN was formed at French’s Wine Bar, one of Sydney’s legendary lost venues, mid 1974 by Rob Younger, Ron Keeley and Deniz Tek after the collapse of two other bands the Rats and TV Jones.

Throughout 1975 the band was rejected or banned from just about every venue in Sydney, which led to the departure of original members Pip Hoyle and Carl Rorke, and the formation of what many fans argue is the definitive version of the band with the enlistment of Warwick Gilbert and Chris Masuak.

Finding themselves at a dead end, a fateful meeting with Lou Reed at one of his infamous Sydney airport press conferences resulted in the band conning the owner of the Oxford Tavern into putting on a gig in his honor, and with the show’s success the establishment of their own venue the Fun House which laid the groundwork for Sydney’s burgeoning punk scene.

The controversy and sub-culture surrounding the band gained the attention of then radical left-wing radio station Double JJ who extended an invitation for the band to perform live on air. Recorded six months before the recording of their debut EP “Burn My Eye” this set finds them showcasing that original material alongside early versions of songs that would appear on later releases and covers of the Stooges, MC5, Blue Oyster Cult, the Doors and the Rivieras.

One of the few known documents of their early era “DOUBLE JJ MARCH 1976” is an essential listen for any fan of Australian punk.

Joe Dolce - 1984 - Pizza Pizza WAVE

Pizza Pizza/That's Amore/ If You Want To Be Happy/Shaddap You Face



Joseph Dolce (born October 13, 1947)  is an American-Australian singer/songwriter, poet and essayist who achieved international recognition with his multi-million-selling song, "Shaddap You Face", released under the name of his one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, worldwide, in 1980–1981. The single reached number one in 15 countries, it has sold more than 450,000 copies in Australia, and for many years was the most successful Australian-produced single, selling an estimated six million copies worldwide. It reached No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980.
 

 Dolce was born in 1947, the eldest of three children, to Italian-American parents, in Painesville, Ohio, graduating from Thomas W. Harvey High School in 1965. During his senior year, he played the lead role of Mascarille in Molière's "Les Précieuses Ridicules" for a production staged by the French Club of Lake Erie College, which was his first time on stage, acting and singing an impromptu song he created from the script. The play was well received and his performance was noted by director Jake Rufli, who later invited him to be part of his production of Jean Anouilh's "Eurydice". His co-star in "Les Précieuses Ridicules" was a sophomore, on a creative writing scholarship, at Lake Erie College, Carol Dunlop, who introduced him to folk music, poetry and the writings of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Dunlop later married the Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar. Dolce attended Ohio University, majoring in Architecture, from 1965–67, before deciding to become a professional musician.
 

While attending college at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, he formed various bands including Headstone Circus, with Jonathan Edwards who subsequently went on as a solo artist to have a charting hit song in the US ("Sunshine"). Edwards subsequently recorded five Dolce songs including, "Athens County", "Rollin' Along", "King of Hearts", "The Ballad of Upsy Daisy" and "My Home Ain't in the Hall of Fame", the latter song becoming an alt country classic, also recorded by Robert Earl Keen, Rosalie Sorrels, JD Crowe & the New South, and many others.

Dolce relocated to Melbourne, Australia in 1978 and his first single there was "Boat People"—a protest song on the poor treatment of Vietnamese refugees—which was translated into Vietnamese and donated to the fledgling Vietnamese community starting to form in Melbourne. His one-man show, Joe Dolce Music Theatre, performed in cabarets and pubs with various line-ups, including his longtime partner, Lin Van Hek.

In July 1980, he recorded the self-penned "Shaddap You Face", for the Full Moon Records label, at Mike Brady's new studios in West Melbourne. When in Ohio, Dolce would sometimes visit his Italian grandparents and extended family—they used the phrases "What's the matter, you?" and "Eh, shaddap", which Dolce adapted and used in the song. He wrote the song about Italians living in Australia and first performed it at Marijuana House, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy in 1979. Dolce paid A$500 for the recording and spent $1000 on the music video clip, which was created by Melbourne filmmaker, Chris Lofven.

It became a multi-million-selling hit, peaking at No. 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart for eight weeks from November 1980, in the UK from February 1981 for three weeks, and also No. 1 in Germany, France, Fiji, Puerto Rico, Quebec, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland. Dolce received the Advance Australia Award in 1981. The song has had hundreds of cover versions over the decades including releases by artists as diverse as Lou Monte, Sheila (France), Andrew Sachs (Manuel, of Fawlty Towers), actor Samuel L. Jackson and hip-hop legends, KRS-One. In 2018, the first Russian language version was released by two of Moscow's most popular singers, Kristina Orbakaite and Philipp Kirkorov. The song has been translated into fifteen languages, including an aboriginal dialect.

Follow up single, "If You Wanna Be Happy" charted in Australia (No. 7) and New Zealand (top 40). Dolce's subsequent singles included "Pizza Pizza", "Christmas in Australia" and "You Toucha My Car I Breaka You Face" and he released two albums during this period, Shaddap You Face and The Christmas Album. With Lin Van Hek, he formed various performance groups including Skin the Wig, La Somnambule (1984) and the ongoing Difficult Women (1993). Van Hek and Dolce co-wrote "Intimacy", for the 1984 film, The Terminator's soundtrack, now part of the US Library of Congress collection. He was a featured lead actor in the Australian film Blowing Hot and Cold (1988). He has continued to perform solo and with Van Hek as part of their music-literary cabaret Difficult Women. In the past decade, he has also received extensive recognition as a poet and essayist. 

Glen Tomasetti - 1967 - The Future Is In Your Hands FLAC

The Future Is In Your Hands/The Ringlewood Cockie/Sang The Boy/Ned Kelly Rode The Northern Hills



Glenys Ann Tomasetti (1929–2003), known as Glen Tomasetti, was an Australian singer-songwriter, author and political activist. During the 1960s she appeared weekly on commercial television, performing satirical political songs. She became a household name in 1967 after refusing to pay a portion of her taxes in protest against Australia's involvement in the war in Vietnam. Although best known for her folk music and political activism, she was also an esteemed novelist and poet.

Tomasetti began performing as a singer-songwriter and guitarist in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s she organised folk music concerts at the Emerald Hill Theatre in South Melbourne, a centre of the 1960s Melbourne folk scene. Later in the 1960s she appeared weekly on Channel Seven TV, performing a topical political song after the general news broadcast.

 Australia entered the war in Vietnam in 1962 in support of the USA, and in 1965 began sending conscripted servicemen to Vietnam. Tomasetti became involved in the Save Our Sons organisation, a group of women opposed to military conscription, and in December 1965 she helped to organise the "Songs of Peace and Love" protest concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, described as "the first major response of the folk scene" to Australia's military involvement in Vietnam.

In 1967 Tomasetti was prosecuted after refusing to pay one sixth of her taxes on the grounds that one sixth of the federal budget was funding Australia's military presence in Vietnam. In court she argued that Australia's participation in the Vietnam War violated its international legal obligations as a member of the United Nations. Public figures such as Joan Baez had made similar protests in the USA, but Tomasetti's prosecution was "believed to be the first case of its kind in Australia", according to a contemporary news report. Tomasetti was eventually ordered to pay the unpaid taxes.

Many of Tomasetti's songs dealt with feminism and the situation of Australian women. Perhaps the best known is "Don't be too polite, girls", a call for equal pay and a feminist call to arms. Sung to the tune of a classic 19th century Australian shearing ballad ("All among the wool, boys"), it was inspired by the first ruling on equal pay in Australia, a 1969 Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration ruling that granted equal pay to only 18% of Australian women. The song was still being sung by the Melbourne Trade Union Choir at the time of Tomasetti's death in 2003. Thanks to Sunny.