Archive Treasure: Astro-gurrl Zine

First up from the linked sections of Pig Meat's Zine List we have Astro-gurrl (AG), a zine the brainchild of Helen from Sutherland, NSW. Helen started AG in 1996 at the age of 15,

The earliest archive of the main page is from 1999, where Helen describes her zine as such:

astrogrrrl is a small fanzine done sporadically by me, helen a 17 yr old grrrl in australia... my zine is small and i like it that way.. zines are whatever you want so there are no design rules etc etc.

Typos, liberal use of Comic Sans and an almost stream-of-consciousness approach editing typify what I'm increasingly labelling 'Web 1.0 earnestness', a delightful pre-social media naivety about web design and content.

For a 17 year old (at the time), the author appears somewhat insightful about the contemporary culture of the period:

recently i have realised the futility of despising commercial youth culture(Australian example=recovery US equivalent=mtv) and that it should follow that the logical thing is not to adopt other peoples ethics, morals, culture but to make yr own.. yay.

Although I actually rather like Recovery (despite the zaniness and occasionally cringe-coolness of the hosts). Probably my own personal grass-is-greener para-nostalgia acting up. They looked like they put so much effort into it, it looked FUN. I digress.

There are some darker portions of the site, as evidenced in the intro blurb:

so this zine is by me for my friends and like minded people who know that kids belong in the world and get pissed off in cyberculture when you search for "teen" or "girl" all you get is a list of porno sites. boring.

And the poodle poem sets off alarm bells:

  my poodle is suicidal.
i can tell by the slash marks on her paws.
her down trodden disposition and her
general loss of enthusiasm whilst eating and chasing her gold plated stick.
i think she wishes that she was not fed fried mince every night.
mabey she is sick of being treated like a fashion accessory.
i am sick of her lack of cheerfulness and want her put down.
anyway, dalmatians are fashionable now.
i wonder if they come in lime green.
.............grumpy.

But on the whole, the page is a good example of teenage zine media, which is all too lacking in today's creative climate seemingly dominated by hipsters in their late 20s who bombed out of their arts degree and have been bonging on ever since. I'm just kidding, I made that last bit up, but it fits everyone I've ever met in the past two years that print zines. Well, the ones I don't like anyway. Shut up Iso, you're talking rubbish.

The links section is another veritable portal of period info. There's a link to Thunderpussy, another grrl zine that I've come across that I'll likely profile on here at some point. The zine also tipped me off to the band Earth To Nigel, a charmingly Sebadoh-ish noise pop group entirely made up of Kram's cousins. They will receive their own feature on here in due course.

Miss Helen seemingly continued on the same pathway and later stepped up the effort into the more sophisticated Astro Publishing, a portal for her own and associated works. Sadly, almost all of the links are unarchived. This is a massive shame. The Spycorp 3 zine ('the wheneverly journal of the suburban riot kid underground') sounds enormously promising.

Worth a dig around!

One final note. The Cynical Youth Coalition sounds absolutely badass.

P.S. dog photos

Rubbing All The Right People Up The Wrong Way - Again (1998) - Various Artists

I THINK this is a Shock Records comp from 1998, there's nothing on the cover to suggest otherwise. Incidentally, the cover appears to be a 12" square poster that you need to fold out to get the track listing. I assume this is a sequel to an existing comp, which I have yet to track down.

In between the sludgy prog and doom (not my kind of thing, but you might like it) there are a few gems that stand out; the buzzsaw of Cosmic Psychos' 'Guns Away' (a tale of suburban obssession?), MYC's memorable 'Know Something' (a staple of late 90s Melbourne punk), some Frenzal (always welcome), the upbeat skate punk of H-Block (sadly poorly documented - isn't there supposed to be a 101 in there? More stuff here. UPDATE: There's a bandcamp!) and Crettins Puddle (who will surely get there own feature on here at some point, they keep cropping up in my research).

Also worth a mention, Nancy Vandal (who from what I can tell dominated with their ska/rockabilly punk around the time, and I think did a reunion not long ago) and Budd, who I still need to dive into (they're still semi-active and pulled off the Albini-isms better than Ricaine did in my opinion, from what I've heard, WEDGES of noise).

Some tracks, like the Intoxica track, are downright greasy and don't quite sit right. Also 'Sadistik Exekution'? There are a few parts of the 90s I tend to gloss over.

The intro to Downtime's 'Monkey' is heavenly. Shame it doesn't quite correspond to the rest of the song (I was really hoping for pseudo-Knapsack territory for a second).

This came from a record swapmeet I went to and bought up every cheap Australian-produced CD I could find from the 90s in hopes that I'd uncover another Sandpit, but no such luck. In fact, some of the ones I picked up were pretty crap. These will be uploaded in due course.

I also highly recommend driving around Bayswater and Croydon blasting this in a '92 Ford Laser on a hot summer's day, which is what I did about half a year ago looking for crap drains.

1. Falling Short        2:16    Toe To Toe
2. Know Something        2:44    Mid Youth Crisis
3. Heat        2:13    Mindsnare
4. Karma        4:03    Superheist
5. Monkey        3:47    Downtime
6. Mum's Changed The Locks        1:57    Frenzal Rhomb
7. Legalised TV Violence        2:28    H-Block
8. Vodka & Lime        2:40    Crettins Puddle
9. Rock & Roll Concert        2:01    Nancy Vandal
10. Pulse        3:04    Front End Loader
11. Hot Rod Chick        3:15    Intoxica
12. Guns Away        3:30    Cosmic Psychos
13. Golden Cow        2:53    Horse Head
14. Kneecap        2:39    Budd
15. Johnny The Song        4:07    Beanflipper
16. Spiritual Justice        3:47    Abramelin
17. Road To Ubar        5:37    The Alchemist
18. Sadistik Elektrokution        3:47    Sadistik Exekution

Rubbing All The Right People Up The Wrong Way (1998) - Various Artists

Archive Treasure: Pig Meat's Zine List

Hand in hand with the development of much music in our era of focus was the proliferation of ZINES. I've yet to scratch more than the surface when it comes to 90s Australian zines (not just indie/punk zines either) but as you might guess information is rather scant. My first two ports of call were the Warm Cola and Beanz Baxter web pages from the late 90s/early 00s.

Pig Meat, a rather unusual web portal maskerading as a Tripod homepage, contains a trove of such useful info, specifically their epic Australian Zine List (still live! Archived version here). Pig Meat was a zine itself, making its way onto the internet at the dawn of the modern era (1996). Unfortunately, the archive of the zine doesn't look like it was ever finished (correct me if I'm wrong)

The doctored John Howard image on the landing page immediately sets the setting. Selecting 'no frames' (of course),  you're soon greeted with a beautiful illustration in lieu of a textual site map, surrounded by links. I recommend exploring some of these, there's a wealth of info on countercultural activities of the day, as well as even a few live recordings and an apparently Nirvana radio interview (in .rm format, regrettably).

I recommend trawling the archived page for links, as most of them are defunct and this eliminates the extra step of having to enter dead URLs into the Wayback Machine.

Another note regarding the Zine List - home addresses publically listed for zine correspondence! Unthinkable in this day of inscrutable paranoia! What a beautiful example of Web 1.0 Earnestness and Naivete.

I'll be slowly going through the Pig Meat zine list and evaluating these pages for Archive Treasure posts in the future. Stay tuned!

The Plastic Hassle (1993) - Ripe

Celebrated by indie darlings The Sugargliders, whose brilliant 2012 compilation A Nest With A View (which you all need to BUY because it's really good) contained the liner notes that repeatedly name-dropped Ripe and subsequently lead me to track this album down.

Released in 1993 on Beggar's Banquet in the UK, the group drew various comparisons to Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground but for me they come across more as a proto-Britpop type ensemble, with the added concession of being local and somewhat ahead of the wave. What you get is mildly catchy distorted pop (typified expertly by perennial favourite, album opener 'Something Fierce').

Guitarist Peter Moran also featured on a Sugargliders track or two, indicating some synergy between the two bands despite their very different sonic outlays.

Ripe had several other releases (including lots of singles/EPs) that I will likely put up if I ever find them. Someone had the insight to upload their first album Filterfeed but the link is broken at this time of writing. They also made the Britpop reference, and I only found the page after writing the bulk of this post! Synchronicity.

Enjoy!

1. Something Fierce        4:20
2. Supernatural        4:11
3. Centre Of The Universe        6:13
4. Moondriven        5:25
5. The Plastic Hassle        7:23
6. Get Your Shit Together        4:10
7. Mother Figure        3:54
8. Daylight Wants To Kill        10:51

You can now get this album officially on Bandcamp!

The Plastic Hassle (1993) - Ripe

El Caballo Rojo (1999) - 2 Litre Dolby

I'm sure this has received some international recognition. Post-rock, sadcore-esque. They were signed to Nic Dalton's Half A Cow Records, where they were described as 'desert rock', perhaps fittingly so. Seminal, atmospheric, all those adjectives.

2 Litre Dolby formed in Sydney around late 1996. At some point late in their existence they relocated to Melbourne and were allegedly threatened with legal action by the similarly named creators of various noise-reducing (lo-fi-virtue-ruining) technologies.

Recorded and mixed in 1998, El Caballo Rojo was the sole offering from the group aside from a split 7" with Art of Fighting and an earlier EP 'The Wrong Compass' (or 'Fist Fit' - ambiguous A/B side delineation), released on Blind Records in 1998. It was well received at the time (as far as I can tell) and continues to be referenced in various Facebook-based emo fan groups. See their artist page on the Half A Cow website for a more detailed run-down of this album. HAC also have a great deal of stuff available for purchase on their Bandcamp page, which I wholeheartedly recommend partaking in.

I've got two copies of this - one was hidden in the copy of Wonder From A Quarter Acre I bought from the Narre Warren Savers. Coincidentally, they also make an appearance on this comp with a truncated version of El Caballo Rojo's second track 'Frida Kahlo'.

Excellent emo sad music, such that I can't really listen to it.

1. The Fish + The Drowned Man        10:08
2. Frida Kahlo        9:04
3. Good Morning Hal        3:34
4. Dead Letter Office        6:24
5. Nostromo        1:28
6. The Paper Dawn        13:13
7. Mystery Of Sixes        11:06
8. Johnny Bombay        11:31

El Caballo Rojo (1999) - 2 Litre Dolby

European Farming Methods (1994) - Food

Yet another cut from the auspicious Au Go Go catalogue (boy, we're getting a lot of mileage out of them aren't we?), this time the sparsely-documented FOOD from Geelong.

Before this project was but a twinkle in my eye, I mused about what an Australian Fugazi equivalent would be, and thus took my first tentative steps into the world of 90s Aussie indie rock. Years later whilst trawling through the archive looking for info on Sandpit, I came across a gig review (announcement? I can't find the page...) mentioning Food, basically describing them as Fugazi wannabes.

Which is funnily enough a reasonably good assessment. Duly, I bought the lone copy of their 1994 album European Farming Methods that was on eBay at the time and had a listen. The vocals are McKaye-esque to a fault, as is the dual-wield guitars and slightly reverby rhythm section.

Whilst Food fall short of the subtleties and elegant simplicity of most of Fugazi's catalogue, they do convey much of a sound with the concession of being local. A little like the Ricaine/Shellac relationship (though I just had a listen to Ricaine's 'Urbanity' and it's pretty good, much more varied than their first album, which is the only other I have).

1. Adhesive        2:56
2. They Float        2:50
3. Essay        3:46
4. Hunger Pain        4:12
5. Judgement        2:19
6. Saturation        4:20
7. Through My Teeth        2:59
8. Penis Arrow        3:08
9. Guess Who        3:06
10. White Lie        3:22
11. Word        5:10
12. Everyone's Someone To Somebody        4:01
13. Bottled Water        4:21
14. Paper Bag        3:45
15. When        4:22

Food - European Farming Methods (1994)

Musikal Identikit (2000) - Various Artists

Another great Au Go Go comp from the latter days, I'm not sure if this was released in 2000 or 2001 but most of the bands recorded their contribution in the first months of the former year, so I'll go with that.

For me, the highlight was the By Ferry Or Steamer tracks, featuring the inimitable Brendan Webb on guitar (whose former band Sandpit give this blog its very name and URL). These are like a more subdued Sandpit, delving further into the Dirty Three-esque instrumental sadcore Sandpit occasionally touched upon during the final stage of their all-too-brief existence.

Similar highlights from Sleepy Township, featuring Guy Blackman of Chapter Music fame, whose jangly indie pop is entirely endearing. The obscure Angler also make an appearance here, featuring their vaguely-post-rockish instrumental stylings (maybe by way of Regurgitator). The Tigers are probably my favourite relative unknowns here, and as such finding further material from them is at once frustrating and ongoing.

Perhaps not quite as consistent as the Wonder From A Quarter Acre compilation from two years prior, Musikal Identikit is another essential piece of period listening.

1. Caribbean Delight        4:40    Sleepy Township
2. Loose Change        4:37    The Hired Guns
3. Spanish Summers        5:01    By Ferry Or Steamer
4. One Trick Pony Show        5:16    The Frustrations
5. Guts        2:34    Angler
6. How Delightful        4:22    The Disappointments
7. Wish Me Well        6:32    Gersey
8. Deutsche Fraulein        3:47    Registered Nurse
9. The Tinsel Stage        2:44    The Tigers
10. Slayer Bells        6:07    The Tigers
11. Laundry Powder        3:16    The Frustrations
12. Seduction Of An Old Flame        6:22    Angler
13. God Preys On Small Things        3:07    Registered Nurse
14. Theme From By Ferry Or Steamer        3:32    By Ferry Or Steamer
15. OK Wonka, How Much?        3:31    The Disappointments
16. Stationary        2:30    Sleepy Township
17. Are You Gonna Leave Her At The Church?        4:15    The Hired Guns
18. A Few Fans        1:56    Gersey

Various Artists - Musikal Idenitikit (2000)

Archive Treasure: 'The Site Formerly Known As Scenestar'

Something that I spend long, long nights doing is digging up primary sources such as these, through the Internet Archive.

The site, created by Matt Atlee, age 17 (!), presumably in the Box Hill High computer lab, started as an online presence for Scenestar (which I mentioned in my first post) but soon became a more sprawling collection of local scene info, with (all-ages) gig listings, links to band pages and zines. Special highlights include a mention of Fugazi's 1997 Australian tour, with S:Bahn and One Inch Punch supporting an all ages show at the Lava Lounge. It's also a reminder of how personal web pages could be in that era, Matt's personal page an example of Web 1.0 earnestness.

These kinds of sites are vital for my kind of research, as there is no Google-like time-specfic search capability in the archive (as far as I can tell). The only way to find info is to jump form archived page to archived page, digging through the archives.

I've started bookmarking a fair few of these pages, particularly ones that serve as 'jump points' for others. I hope to paste a few of them over the course of this blog.

The number of comps mentioned on the news page... I'll need to trawl through these...

Update: lots of links on this latterly archived page.

Wonder From A Quarter Acre (1998) - Various Artists

This incredible comp was released by Au Go Go in 1998, similar in tone to their subsequent 'Musikal Identikit' offering. I first came across it when S:Bahn put their two tracks up on their Bandcamp page to download. Featuring artists such as Art of Fighting, Sea Scouts, Golden Lifestyle Band and 2 Litre Dolby, the compilation is a nice cross section of this particular niche in the late 1990s.

Highlights include both of Art of Fighting's tracks (all I have of their catalogue thus far, unfortunately), the S:Bahn tracks ('Down on Broadway' being one of their finest moments, an angular slow-burner), 'Frida Kahlo', a different cut of the first track from their seminal El Caballo Rojo LP (this one is shorter by three minutes) and El Mopa's jangly contributions.

Jutting out are two early tracks from The Avalanches (probably pertinent given the recent release of their second album), which are in primordial form of that further explored on their debut, rather than the earlier noise rock that I was hoping for. The protracted grunge of the Sphyzein tracks, whilst good in their own right, tend to stick out like a sore thumb.

1. The Chorus Is Suffering        4:26    Art Of Fighting
2. Under Sea Community        4:01    The Avalanches
3. Tenderhook        3:23    El Mopa
4. Lake Of Fur        3:50    S-Bahn
5. Zac Heard A Scream        4:22    Sea Scouts
6. Bit        3:21    Sphyzein
7. Honey Von Cutulle        3:04    2 Litre Dolby
8. A Call Backward        4:21    The Golden Lifestyle Band
9. You And Me On Mars        6:13    Art Of Fighting
10. Yamaha Superstar        1:53    The Avalanches
11. Frida Kahlo        6:29    2 Litre Dolby
12. Down On Broadway        3:56    S-Bahn
13. The Againth Of Must I        4:37    The Golden Lifestyle Band
14. The Ascent        3:53    El Mopa
15. Deep Seat        3:31    Sphyzein
16. The Lighting Song        6:15    Sea Scouts

Various Artists - Wonder From A Quarter Acre (1998)

Decimus Gnu (1995) - Various Artists

A little while ago I was interested in graphing the prevalence of all-ages gigs over the past 30 years, to see whether or not there was a decline or not.

Key in the all-ages scene for a while in the mid-90s was Scenestar, a promo/booking organisation dedicated to getting AA gigs happening. There's a Wikipedia page on it here.

Scenestar was spearheaded by Aaron Shipperlee and Pheona Donohoe, the latter of whom was active in Dandenong's Muso Network (under the FReeZA community youth events banner), Rock'N'Roll Highschool (playing in the band Tuff Muff) and eventually got a spot on ABC's Recovery, which is probably one of the most amazing bits of archival footage I've ever seen (aside from when they did the vox pop at The Glen and aired it on Rage... that was a good morning).

Mentioned on the Wikipedia page is this compilation, Decimus Gnu. Mostly poorly recorded grunge bands, it's an interesting document from an era particularly relevant where it's difficult to imagine indie rock shows being held in Noble Park, let alone all-ages grassroots events. Some of the standout tracks include those from The Reflection, whose other lone appearance (as far as I know) on Indent's (?) Incestuous comp has almost persuaded me to track this latter CD down, and Muffcake, whose 'Esprit' is amongst the higher-fidelity offerings on here.

Listening to this makes me think of riding BMXs in the Noble Park (Mile Creek) canals on a summer day, drinking Big Ms, heading up Mosh's Tomb drain in Clayton... but none of that is likely representative of the time. Does anyone know the bands on the AA bills for the Noble shows? I had that info somewhere but it's lost in my bookmarks somewhere. 

Perhaps you were in one of these bands? Comment accordingly...

1. Silver Lungs        6:10    Superhunchbacks
2. Models Inc.        2:23    Powersect
3. Break Free        4:16    Seaweed Gorillas
4. The Misadventures Of Gerry Gerbal        4:17    Headcase
5. What You Said        2:18    Caffeine
6. Manson        2:04    Salmonella
7. Kilcunda        4:27    Paddycome Home
8. Tusk Rock & Roll        3:33    Tusk
9. Super-Seeded        4:33    The Reflection
10. Another Day Another Near Miss        2:51    The Reflection
11. Diggin' The Blues        4:44    Tusk
12. Lowlife        5:10    Powersect
13. Just Don't Know        4:07    Super Hunchbacks
14. Rumpelstiltskin        2:49    Salmonella
15. Lock And Load        3:47    Seaweed Gorillas
16. Granny's House        1:50    Headcase
17. Attention        5:10    Caffeine
18. Esprit        7:32    Muffcake

Various Artists - Decimus Gnu (1995)

UPDATE: This is what the Noble Park Youth Resource Centre now looks like! Three bedrooms and a shopfront SOLD! Gee whiz!

It appears all ages gigs in Noble Park were held at Memorial Park, which is now as I understand the same Ross Reserve where we did athletics day in high school.You can now hire the hall for an exorbitant fee.