Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

There's a great record shop in Sydney called Mojo or Mojo music or something with Mojo in the title.. which specialises in psych stuff - I got a few compilations of 60's Oz bands from there a few years back. Not sure whether they have a web page - will check.

8)

It's actually Gil Matthews' label - he was the drummer in the Aztecs, with Billy Thorpe, for what you might call the 'classic' line-up. Thorpe is now dead as some of you will know, but even when alive the label wasn't his.

I'm Australian and love what my country has to offer musically, so I'm not going to argue... Many great bands have already been mentioned, such as X, Lime Spiders, Hard Ons, AC/DC, Cosmic Psychos... Celibate Rifles are well worth checking out, particularly their first album Sideroxylon [when I was younger their stuff that was current at the time didn't do much for me, but the early stuff is solid].
La Femme were great, and their album has been reissued on Aztec, likewise Coloured Balls and other Lobby Loyde stuff [which I've reviewed most of in the Unsung Reviews section]. Also worth checking out, out of what's been reissued by Aztec, are Spectrum, Buffalo [though you might want to skip Average Rock & Roller], Kahvas Jute... and some of the Aztecs stuff is pretty good, especially on More Arse Than Class. Heaps more to mention but I'm a bit rushed for time right now and my music collection is at home. For those of you who know about my Japanese music page that's been up on the Record Heaven website for a few years, I've also been working on and off on a similar thing for Australia, which will hopefully be up on the same website later this year, so you'll be able to read my assessments of a whole load of bands there.

I recently learned of a Melbourne band called Sand Pebbles, who judging by the track I heard on the radio late the other night do long, spacey jams in a similar mood to Floyd's 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun'. They've done a few albums but I haven't heard any of them - they're having a launch for their latest in a couple of weeks [at Northcote Social Club - details can be found on-line, do a google search]. Not sure if I'll be able to make it but it should be good. Publicity is calling their latest album "the most psychedelic album ever made in Australia", which is probably not true - there's a lot of pretty weird undeground experimental music that's come out of Australia, and I've made some pretty tripped out stuff myself that is more psychedelic than what I heard - but despite that sort of hype they're a very good band.

Anyway, I've always thought a lot of Aussie rockers were admirable for their lack of rock star pretension, and down to earth nature, so I'm glad to hear people from other countries thinking the same. It's not all like that, though - for example the guys in Jet are apparently a bit up themselves [you can tell that just by looking at photos of them!]. The Powderfinger guys are very nice though, and haven't gotten big heads. My wife's sister went to school with them, and her mum fed them in their early days as a struggling band, so I have some inside info there ;-) Personally I don't like their music, but I respect them.

I've got an old cassette by an Aussie band called The Cruel Sea which I quite like. Kind of swampy almost Cajun,.