Issue #1

Uncovering Australia’s Fem Rock Past
By Kylie Purr

I’ve been searching out music made by Australian girls in the 70s, 80s and 90s and it’s a bit of a haul. Sporadically, I uncover a record by a band lucky enough to have made a label, but the really good, gritty stuff, it appears, is nowhere to be found. So that part of my collection consist of mostly all girl bands that were leaning towards hard rock, the Wet Ones and the fabbo Matrimony. This article will treat the bands in chronological order, but because of the lack of any ACTUAL DATES on the RECORD I can’t be sure of when their stuff was released. But judging on other evidence (Wet Ones going onto other bands whose records I have and can tell the date of recording on) the Wet Ones are pre-1988. Also, I know the Mothers existed in Sydney in the late 80s but I haven’t been able to find any vinyl as yet. But I will!

WET ONES “Its a Premoistened World”
The first release from these Melbourne girls of the late 80s is a very Australian sounding pop/rock EP. The guitars have that clean sound that seems to stamp Australian songs at the time. Those who know of him would not be surprised that Billy Baxter (Hollowmen, amazing Melbourne pop writer and singer) produced this record, and preserved the Australian sounds WET ONES made. Witty, nasty, boy-scolding lyrics are every where in one case rhyming “dirty ball sack” and “you’re a maniac” in “No Good Boyo”. “Next Summer” is a bit of a summer song piss take, a great singalong, until you realise what you are singing:

“everything will be plastic/cause the world is a toy”
“Love’s a mess/got it all over my summer dress”
“love is wet/about as wet anything can get/love is sticky/always ends up sorta icky” and stuff about meeting a boy who isn’t sarcastic on your summer holiday at Sorrento Beach.
And every good band needs a theme, and theirs is about how people think its weird being an all girl band saying “don’t worry/Mum rides in the van”. The girls ask us “should we wear suspenders/and be orgasmic/shake our tits and bums”. I say no, cuz like the Wet Ones say “its a premoisened world!/it’s a premoistened life!/we are the wet ones!”

This is my favourite Wet Ones record with its perfectly neat pop songs, with “Crack Up” being the Wet Ones having a bit of an explore with their art, messing with stuff. All the Wet Ones covers have handwritten, girly text all over them.

WET ONES “Giveaway Single”
A 7″ that was, well, given away at a show. But like all the other WET ONES releases, there is almost ZERO information on the sleeve. All I know is that Genny did the cover art (who I assume is Genevieve the bass player, cuz it has the same type of art on all the covers). Who knows where it was given away! It features a re-recorded version of “Next Summer”. The flip side is apparently a traditional track, called “Alligator”, recorded live by radio station 3LO at the SWAPO Benefit (whatever that is). It’s an old rock and roll shouty song pulled off in great party style.

WET ONES “Crack Up”
The Wet Ones are a pop group with witty lyrics, that are kinda hokey at times. Its weird arse stuff – not cool-weird, just really weird and by this their second release its getting weirder. The first song is called “I Saw This Boy (I liked his head)” and features opera singing bits, and then laments of “I want him dead!”. See, even that makes it sound far cooler than it is. OK, now I think I’ve got it. Imagine The Raincoats if they were from suburban Melbourne and drank beer in the sunshine. The second track “How Beautiful You Are” has a jangly riff chugging nicely along, with those strange flasetto opera voices again – not singing anything, just flailing about. The Wet Ones, it seems were very much a pop band, but not a nice pop band. They were loud, silly and didn’t care if they were cool, sang about stuff that girls who liked to drink in pubs were concerned with: boys, sleazy boys and how stupid boys are. Either that, or they really DID want to be a cutesy pop band but just weren’t as pop perfect as those other pop perfect girl bands. That’s pretty much it, but I sell them short if I don’t mention their lyrics are clever at times. The strange backmasking (recording something then playing it backwards) that is the whole of the track “Heaven’s Above” is disturbing…but those Wet Ones look so sweet! On side two, “Dream Of Love” is a nice, normal pop song. The next track “Nuclear Waste” is very strange: ‘my baby likes nuclear waste’ sung in that strange opera falsetto, with it all descending into a chorus of growly, wailing girls. Meanwhile, throughout all these tracks, the music is pretty rock/pop – its all in the delivery. I think these ladies would have been a lot of fun live.

MATRIMONY “Kitty Finger”
I was pretty happy to find this album, released independently in 1989, for 8 bucks many years ago. But lucky for everyone else, it has been reissued by Kill Rock Stars. Matrimony were a band out of inner city Sydney in the late eighties, all fine young ladies and a boy on drums. One of the members was Zeb Olsen, who then went overseas and joined forces with Kathleen Hanna in Viva Kneival. Then she came back and made the amazing Mesmo (who I got to see once only) and Half. And now, I have no clue what she does. I spoke to her once when there was a small series of gigs that had mainly girl bands she was putting on, strange little bands I only ever saw once, like Smoke, Alternahunk and Peel. Those gigs got me so excited, but then like a puff of smoke all the bands, the gigs and the girls seemed to disappear back into the woodwork. I think they were disappointed in the response, or bored, or just out there and I didn’t know it.

“Kitty Finger” is their one and only release, with 15 tracks of thrashy punk barely held together. Lead singer Sybilla makes up silly songs like “Kitty Finger” and “Fish and Chips Sweetheart”, while fuzzy guitars riff underneath her nursery rhyme vocal stylings. “Pete Song” says “I don’t love you!” over and over…poor Pete! And there is a fantastic cover, a version of The Scientists (Kim Salmon’s old band) “Frantic Romantic”. One of the people who helped produce is Matthew Bright, who was in Distant Locust, and is now the contrabulous guitar player in Sydney band AlienChrist (which also features Jasmine from Alternahunk).

I’ll tell you here in case you haven’t heard – this is the record that all these famous people say was the beginnings of Riot Grrrl. As for how much it started Riot Grrl, well, all that stuff gets annoying if you spend time on it. The record has a great spirit, people just PLAYING to make their feelings heard, not wanting to be rock stars. The whole album has a devil may care feel to it, even the band photo on the back is haphazard. Its like the only photo they had where all the band members are in shot, taken at what looks like a house party they were playing at.

I love this album cover, it’s so blatant. A photo of a girl’s chest from neck to waist, nude with a beautiful necklace on, and its all photocopied and messy. MMMmmmmm, raw! Now I look closely I can see Sybilla the vocalist wearing the necklace in her solo photo. So I guess its her chest! All the writing is handwritten!

GIRL MONSTAR
“Surfing on a Wave of Love/He’s Hell”
I first heard Girl Monstar hunched over a cassette radio thing in my bedroom on a Sunday desperately trying to tune in 2JJJ, which was broadcast in Sydney, four hours away. This is in the old days (but not the olde 2JJ days) before it was ‘Triple J’ and broadcast to kids across the land. Then, I had to try to hear the crackly, half tuned sounds. So anyhow, one day I tuned the station in enough to hear it if the volume was on full and I heard Girl Monstar and was hooked as!

The A side of this 7″ has lots of talk about ’surfer boy’ who “came and saved me (oh yeh)/on the beach he laid me (oh yeh)”, nice retro pop lyrics and style. A bloody good song for a summer surf tape (I’m gonna go put this on my summer surf tape!) and full of lush harmonies and crisp, tight riffing. This track sounds not unlike Hoodoo gurus around the Stoneage Romeos era…a bit.

“I don’t care about his mind/I’m just looking for some bump and grind” is the gist of “He’s Hell”. Some may begrudge the ladies for singing one of those “he’s so cool/he’s my boy” kind of songs, but I suppose its a good change from all those fake bad boy metal bands who sing about “going all night long/woah, gonna getcha bay-beee” and so on. A bit of reclaiming of that style of song?

The members of this Melbourne band are a bit interesting. Drummer, Sue World had played in the Wet Ones previously. Singer/guitarist Sherry Valier went on to be Sherry Rich, who now lives and records her alterna-country stylings with her band Courtesy Move, and is released here in Australia on Rubber Records. Lead guitarist Anne McCue is a popular folk-rock singer in the states, playing with folk like Lucinda Williams.

GIRL MONSTAR “Joe Cool/Egomaniac” 7″
Joe Cool is the song that hooked me into Girl Monstar, and I’m pretty sure this was their big hit. Maybe because this song is about a skate king called Joe Cool who is busy breaking all the rules. I think the skate king appealed to me more than the surfer boy. This one is more of an anthem, where “Surfin’…” is a summer sing along, but I think I’ll put both of them on my summer car tape. And it should tape well, since the cover claims it is recorded in ‘magnificent monstereo’, little joke there from the ladies. “Egomaniac” the B side, does little to change the Girl Monstar credo – boys are BAD.

I also have the full Girl Monstar album, but have lost the CD in my flatmates room, and can’t track him or it down before the article deadline.

RUM-BABAS “3 Good Reasons”
These girls are all metal ‘yeh!’s and cherry squealin’ guitars. When I first heard it I cringed heaps, cuz its very Oz Rock. But now I’ve listened to it, it grows on each listen. Upon bringing the record home, my friend Sherry loved eyed the cover, which has a shot of the band on it: “polka dots, lace, denim, crucifixxs!” So, if you were a teenage in the 80s like me, YOU KNOW that was THE way to dress, lace and crucifixs were the height of trashy-Madonna-girls fashion! There is some nice hand drawn art by the girls, and the handwritten text all over.

The A side of this 10″ single is “3 Good Reasons” and its a great, full rock song written collaboratively by three members of the band (the other two tracks are written by the singer and bass player, respectively) and is by far the strongest song. And you gotta sing along:
Give me one, two, three good reasons/why I should be loving you/my love is d-d-dangerous
“Gave Me Away” is more like the surf pop stylings of their labelmates Girl Monstar – both bands were on the Timberyard label at the time of this release in 1991, the year Girl Monstar released their debut album). I think it is the great lead vocalist, Sandi and the harmonies by the other three members that suck me in to this band. There is even a sugar sweet key change! Pop stylings aplenty!

The final track “I Want Your Heart” reminds me of 80s top forty soft metal. In a good way…if possible. So much chorus effected vocals for that singing-in-a-cathedral sound.

**The full version of this article will be available in the next issue of Kylie’s zine Catpounce.