Steve Lucas has had a wide and varied career. Starting out in 1977, Steve was one of the founding members of the seminal Australian punk bands X.
X's bloodied history has been well known so we'll skip that here.
Steve also fronted Bigger Than Jesus, Double Cross and The Groody Frenzy. All very successful in their own right.
His latest release Change Poison, Make Medicine is now available online
Based on the Mornington Peninsula, Light Music Club formed in early 2022, and has begun their mission to take over the Melbourne music scene. The five-piece band of old high-school friends perform with a powerful and addictive energy that is sure to get the crowd moving.
Hailing from the underground punk scene, They Might Be Dead Frogs is an unapologetic four-piece band formed in Melbourne. Their music fuses old-school grunge grit with modern irreverent Aussie punk, with their unrivalled energy and stage-presence setting them apart from other acts.
The headline act, Select All is a female four-piece band from Melbourne. They are an up and coming band with an old sound. Select All brings back a forgotten sound from the well loved ’90s grunge rock days and adapts them for the 21st century.
Mark your calendars for the 10th of August at the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick!! The night promises to bring an atmosphere charged with electric vibes and a huge celebration of music!!
If Brisbane’s Full Flower Moon Band has at all been floated your way in conversation, it’s probably been tagged with this emphatic sentiment: You’ve got to see them live. With a piercing triple-guitar formation and an arresting, hip-swivelling leader in Kate ‘Babyshakes’ Dillon, there is an undeniable electricity to experiencing the project in this manner. But ‘Diesel Forever’ is also a near-perfect introduction to the band – not least because it manages to bottle that lightning of their live performances and launch it forth through your speakers.
This is the second album to bear the Full Flower Moon Band name, following 2017 debut ‘Chinatown’. Its Bandcamp-only accessibility aside, that album merely hints at the greater potential within the project – something that is fully realised, and even expanded upon, across ‘Diesel Forever’. At a 30-minute runtime, it’s as trim a rock record as you’re likely to hear this year, not to mention one of the most idiosyncratic.
Overseeing lead vocals, lead guitar, songwriting and production duties, Dillon puts key focus on tone throughout the album’s nine songs. That’s made clear by the opening one-two of ‘Highway’ and ‘NY – LA’, which sport weighty guitars that gnash and bite against the steady current of the rhythm section, all while showing off Dillon’s characterful playfulness in her vocals and lyrics.
On ‘Highway’, she toys with classic AC/DC lyrics, dangling them in front of listeners in a deliberately provocative manner. “I’m on the highway”, she moans in the refrain – never specifying where said highway goes, leaving the question lingering. That’s followed by a snarky retooling of another of Acca Dacca’s best-known hooks: “Getting had / Getting took / Getting ripped off / Double booked”.
This meta commentary continues into ‘NY – LA’, which dismantles the holy trinity of sex, drugs and rock & roll in a warped, bluesy head-nodder. You can practically smell the sarcasm sizzling in every lyric, as Dillon spits knowingly deluded ramblings. “You bring the Adderall / And we’ll play for free”, she sneers, before going in for the kill on the closing line: “If everyone buys a ticket / We could play the Tivoli”. Hearing Full Moon Flower Band slice through the bullshit is not only hilarious but also refreshing.
Even if you don’t deep dive on the lyrical content of ‘Diesel Forever’, there’s still plenty in these songs to relish. On ‘Hurt Nobody’ Drew Heijden matches a slinking bassline to Luke Hanson’s walloping four-on-the-floor groove, resulting in a melody that’ll take up some serious real estate in your head once it’s in there.
Elsewhere, singles ‘You Know The Mayor’ and ‘Trainspotting’ maintain the live-band energy with propulsive guitar work and sly, sharp hooks. The story goes that the band assembled to record ‘Diesel Forever’ did so after only one rehearsal. Perhaps that’s PR spin, but such is the free-wheeling looseness on offer here that it’s entirely believable and even commendable.
‘Diesel Forever’ is not here to appease the algorithm, nor to pander to triple j – or Double J, or even 4ZZZ for that matter. It’s a dark, weird rock record that’s unapologetic about what it is and entirely alluring on account of that. Full Flower Moon Band have blossomed and bloomed here, doing so without cutting any tall poppies or by clipping their thorns.
Skids are a Scottish punk rock and new wave band, formed in Dunfermline in 1977 by Stuart Adamson (guitar, keyboards, percussion and backing vocals), William Simpson (bass guitar and backing vocals), Thomas Kellichan (drums) and Richard Jobson (vocals, guitar and keyboards). Their biggest successes were the 1979 single "Into the Valley" and the 1980 album The Absolute Game. In 2016, the band announced a 40th-anniversary tour of the UK with their original singer Richard Jobson.[1]
