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Rip It Up, Issue 37, 1 August 1980, Page 8

There’s a lot of money being made over here by PA hire firms, light hire firms, promoters, agents, accountants, poster printers, power companies, phone companies, landlords and other supposedly necessary people and corporations. These snivelling swine receive about S9OO per week from us. We make between S6OO and S9OO per week from an average of seven gigs. But! "Things will get better once you’ve got some product out." "Soon you’ll have more money than you can handle.” "Look what happened to Mi-Sex.” “You’re doing it the right way; starting at the bottom and working your arses off to get a good audience.” On The Other Hand (From an article by Stuart Coupe in Sydney Shout ‘What’s Wrong With Sydney Rock') "Toy Love are energetic and tedious.” This is the extent of our Australian media coverage. So We've all gritted our teeth, tightened our belts, set our sights, blown our noses, and looked Sydney square in its glossy, Americanised face, and said in strong, unfaltering voices, "Help ..." The Good News We've recorded an album. We’ve got new songs. We've had several good gigs (almost up to standard of the average Windsor-Last Resort-Gladstone-Cook night.) Late night TV’s great dumb movies and 'personalities’ getting pissed in the commercial breaks. Beer's cheap. There are at least two good bands in Sydney.

Other Stuff Don’t believe what you hear about great Australian audiences going bananas at the drop of a drumstick. They do, but only for bands that Ram and Aussie Rolling Stone have told them are great. 99% of bands here are light shows and street theatre with a New Wave soundtrack. A couple, notably the Sheiks, dismiss the crap and provide good, unslick, honest music. We've got a residency at a good pub, the Civic, on Friday nights which is sometimes shared by that most gentlemanly of bands,. Proud Scum. Posters are really bland over here just the name of the venue, and who’s playing there. We’ve rectified that by having our talented Alec Barthgate do a lovely one of a digger consoling himself with a sheep. Good on yer, Alec. Australians talk- funny, and some still gob. Mods hit punks, and Greeks hit mods, and Kiwis hit up and go to the Astra in Bondi (a large-scale Occidental, for all you Queen St habituees). Everybody likes Madness and the Specials anjflavoured milk. Boots are cheap, but there are no boot boys except for a handful of New Zealand imports. TV rock shows are even worse than in NZ. They have the same film clips with real dorks introducing them and dreaming of their very own prime-time talk show. Takeaways are generally pretty good. Everybody and his Pekinese has a synthesiser or a female bass-player. Mi-Sex have an awe-inspiring influence on some local bands, all of which stick to one style and do it to death. You can safely bet that if the first song of a show is fast heavy metal, then the rest of the night is going to be pretty similar. Even if a band is good at its style, you are bound to be sick of it by the end of the evening.