Ocker Rockers

Rip It Up, Issue 14, 1 August 1978, Page 12

Ocker Rockers

Jeremy Templer

Various Artists Lethal Weapons Suicide Skyhooks Guilty Until Proven Insane Mushroom Little River Band Sleeper Catcher EMI

One of the most popular party jokes of last year, the leading candidate for a ‘‘who needs it” award, was Australian punk rock. If the idea itself wasn’t funny enough the Australian interpretation of it was: a TimelNewsweek idea of "punk” that led to one Australian punk rock group calling themselves the Hitler Youth Movement. Even Auckland’s Suburban Reptiles (with their own reputation for bad taste) turned down the suggestion to rename their lead singer Mona Blades. So nobody should have been surprised to hear of an Australian who had worked with Muff Winwood Barrie Earl forming an Australian record company with a roster of ‘‘new wave" bands called Suicide Records, and describing Suicide as “an alternative to boredom”. Suicide’s first release is a compilation album of Australian new wave, pressed on white vinyl and titled Lethal Weapons. Of the album’s seven groups, Teenage Radio Stars win extra points for their name but also sound best, like the Ramones with overtones of the Easybeats. They can be plain dumb as on “Wanna Be Ya Baby” or (ha!) intellectual "(We’re) The Learned One". Wasted Daze re-work the Who’s "Magic Bus” under its new title, "Mona”, while the Boys Next Door do Nancy Sinatra’s hit, "These Boots Are Made For Walking”, and that’s okay too. X-Ray-Z do the only political song "Three More Glorious Years” but they don't sound like real subversives and these aren’t lethal weapons at all. Three points for audacity: this album will be a valuable artefact within five years, or it will still be a party joke. Skyhooks were included on Vertigo’s compilation, New Wave, but unlike Suicide’s aspirants they have a greatest hits collection, O.E. and originality to their credftT Roger Jarrett’s wild-eyed claim in 1975 that given two years in the States Skyhooks would be as big as Led Zep didn’t really seem that impossible then because the band itself had the persuasive confidence and ambition to be a rock’n'roll success story. I’m prepared to believe it was only bad marketing that stopped them from conquering America in their short stay. On Guilty Until Proven Insane there are evident changes in Skyhooks’ established style; most noticeably as a result of Bob Spencer replacing Red Symons as guitarist. The Aerosmith and Alice Cooper production team of Jack Douglas, Eddie Leonetti and Lee Decarlo has shaped a hard rock sound that dispenses with such throwaway singalongs as "Blue Jeans” and "All My Friends Are Getting Married”. "Women In Uniform” benefits most from this approach and would almost certainly have been a hit single if radio-land could have heard it through 18-inch speakers. Like the Rolling Stones, Skyhooks still feel something of an obligation to be outrageous but they remain as strikingly original as when they first began. The Little River Band’s founders perfected their synthesis of LA country-rock in a band called Mississippi, formed in 1974. As avocal harmony group the Little River Band is most often compared to the Eagles but their style is, more correctly, a combination of the best and the worst of a genre that began with Buffalo Springfield. At best Little River Band are capable of songs like "Statue of Liberty”, “It’s A Long Way There” and "Help Is On Its Way”. But they also have an unerring ear for cliched lyrics (including the largest collection of “life on the road" songs I’ve ever heard) and they can be as bland as the group Chicago. Their greatest strength is their vocal harmonies but Sleeper Catcher (co-produced by American producer John Boylan) is an unfortunate attempt at a "serious” work; overorchestrated and too gushingly pleasant to be listened to comfortably. Only "So Many Paths" comes close to the material this group is best doing, although the song is almost destroyed by awkwardly matched allegorical lyrics. That aside, perhaps EMI need to be reminded that nobody listens to this sort of stuff during winter.