Melbourne Sharpies

Here's an interesting bit of YouTubage Aussie youth culture detritus that Ken Shimamoto twigged me to. This is from a 1974 student film by Skyhooks bassist Greg Macainsh called "Melbourne Sharpies". It was shot at a Melbourne Cricket Ground concert by Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs and Lobby Loyde & The Coloured Balls, the latter their band-of-choice.

If you're too young to remember or from outside Australia, sharpies (or sharps) were territorial street gangs who ruled various pieces of suburban turf from the late '60s through to the late '80s. The Celibate Rifles' song "Paddo Sharps" recalls them well.

Part Clockwork Orange, part precursors to punk, the most prominent took no shit - and god help you if you were a youngster that wandered into the wrong milk bar or pinball parlour.

That's the Coloured Balls' "GOD" playing as the soundtrack, by the way. There's a website devoted to the Australian sharpies here if you're interested.

Thankfully, most of the sharpies grew up. Most became parking inspectors, lawyers or merchant bankers.

Tidying up, odds and ends, etc

Well, I got knocked out of the Mess & Noise scrabble competition in the first round on Sunday afternoon, playing up in the Corner Hotel beer garden, but was cheered up by heading downstairs afterwards to see the Good Shepherd Circus Pie Classic- a charity event featuring a long list of local musos and others having a crack at competitive cooking. I missed out on getting a taste of Bob Log III's special chicken & breastmilk dish, but among many other highlights, it was worth going just to see Ron Peno at work:

And I didn't get to see Sixfthick at the Espy the night before(due to an unfortunate and stupid incident I don't want to go into here) so it was good to see them, down on the floor:

In other leisure time news- my pool game is getting better, pub trivia is going OK (second, third & last from three attempts), I'm stuck in a never-ending game of punch buggyand it looks like I may crank up the homebrewing again soon. And this week a parcel arrived from my pal Grrtch, which included a very fine Garagepunk.com t-shirt, amongst other goodies: Thanks, Grrtch!

This stuff is all just a distraction from what I should be writing, of course, a bit of a wrap up of Lobby Loyde's memorial service, which I attended on Saturday- that I am finding very hard going.

Thanks to Tim Chuma for the use of those pics, too.

RIP Lobby

Don't know if I can add much to the tributes that have flowed for the man following his recent death. I met him a couple of times, and he seemed like a nice bloke- fairly quiet at times, too. "G.O.D." is probably my favorite, though there is a Colored Balls b-side called "Devil's Disciple" that has to be heard to be believed. I'll be at his memorial service on Saturday, at Lauriston Girls School, 38 Huntingtower Road, Armadale. Special performances from Steve Lucas, Sean Kelly, Brian Hooper, Jim Keays, and Gavin Carroll, and this weekend on RAGE there is some kind of tribute planned too.

Vale Lobby (2)

The official word:

"A public service to celebrate the life and career of Lobby Loyde will be held at Lauriston Girls School, 38 Huntingtower Road, Armadale (Melbourne) on Sat (28 April, 2007) commencing at 1pm. A private cremation will follow. In lieu of flowers, donations to Support Act would be appreciated."

Vale Lobby Loyde

The passing of Lobby Loyde should not pass without mention.

For those not aware (and the media mentions have been low-key by comparison to some of his contemporaries), Australian guitar innovator Lobby Loyde died on Saturday night, aged 65. He had been fighting lung cancer.

Lobby was the quintessential outlaw who made his mark as leader of the (ultimately infamous) Coloured Balls, a searing and often innovative guitar band that influenced a long string of bands following in their wake. The obvious (Rose Tattoo, Billy Thorpe) and less so (Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain) owe Lobby a debt. Julian Cope and Steven Malkmus (Pavement) are among Lobby’s fans. The guy also went on to manage and/or produce acts like the Sunnyboys, X, Painters & Dockers and Sardine v.

The last few years have been something of a Lobby revival, with almost all of his prodigious output re-issued in generously re-mastered form by Aztec Music. It runs the whole gamut - from searing boogie-rock to blues excursions and trippy, psychedelic prog. “Ball Power” remains an Australian hard rock landmark. Half a Cow also compiled the entire recorded output of his earliest band, the Purple Hearts, and this week issued a collection chronicling his boundary-pushing rock-jazz outfit, the Wild Cherries.

I was lucky enough to interview Lobby for the I-94 Bar in 2006 in the midst of Aztec’s re-issues program. He was medicated (I later found out) to block out the pain and struggling for breath, but his raw enthusiasm for music cut through. Fuck, we’ve lost some good ones lately.