MORE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

ARIA (Australian Record Industry Association) is proud to announce a further 3 music artists who will be honoured at the inaugural ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame. This standalone event will take place on Thursday July 14, 2005 at the Plaza Ballroom at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre and will be telecast in full, exclusively on VH1 on Sunday July 17th from 9.00pm. FOX8 will provide an encore screening of the event on Saturday July 23rd at 8.30pm.

Joining already announced music icons Split Enz, Renée Geyer and Normie Rowe as part of the standalone Hall of Fame event, these new inductees are a veritable time capsule of Australian music history.

He is a pioneer recording artist, performer and media persona: Before Smoky Dawson, there was only Tex Morton; after Smoky, there was Slim Dusty and everybody else…In 1941 Smoky cut his first songs for Columbia at their old Homebush studios in Sydney. But the Second World War had broken out. Smoky served in the army’s Entertainment Unit. After he was discharged and married, in 1947 he launched his own touring rodeo show, which featured him as a buck-jumper and knife-thrower as well as singer. At a time before television in the 1950s, Smoky was the biggest radio star in the country. His weekly Kellogg’s show, co-starring Flash, his beautiful Palomino horse, became one of the most popular in Australian history, with a fan club membership said to have approached an incredible one million, and including such celebrities as Bert Newton and Paul Keating, who all swore allegiance to Smoky’s Code of the West. The show’s theme “Riding with a Smile and a Song” became Smoky’s signature tune and his biggest hit. The advent of television and vinyl rock’n’roll records changed everything, but Smoky survived with a grace that has become typical. Smoky had to wait thirty years to release his first album, 1961’s Bushranger Ballads, because the LP format wasn’t invented until then! In 1979, Smoky was inducted to Tamworth’s Roll of Renown. Nashville’s Country Music Association also presented him with a Pioneer Honour Award. In 1983, just after the death of Flash, Smoky was made an MBE. For once, the term living legend is more than appropriate. Smoky Dawson was our first cowboy and he is the last cowboy, a star who’s shone across a virtual Century of Australian life. Even now at 92, Smoky still leads a full public life - is still married to Dot - and his induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame is just the latest in a long line of accolades.

The Easybeats, Australia’s original rock ’n roll legends, came together in Sydney’s Villawood Migrant Hostel during 1964. Englishman lil’ Stevie Wright had been in the country for some years and had been fronting The Langdells under the name of Chris Langdon. The other four were new arrivals: Scotsman George Young, Liverpudlian Gordon ‘Snowy’ Fleet, and Dutchmen Dick Diamonde (Dingeman Vandersluys) and Harry Vanda (Johannes Vandenburg). By the beginning of 1965 they had a manager, regular work in Sydney beat clubs and a recording contract with Albert Productions. The band stormed to number one in Australia in May 1965 with their second single “She’s So Fine”, thus beginning the ferocious phenomenon of ‘Easyfever’. Airports, TV stations, theatres and hire cars were reduced to rubble, fans were hospitalised and general mayhem reigned wherever they turned up. With their vital, urgent sound the Easybeats gave Australian music a new identity and confidence. They were our Beatles and Rolling Stones in one. The hits came tumbling: “Wedding Ring”, “Sad & Lonely & Blue”, then three number ones in a row – “Women”, “Come And See Her”, and the Easyfever EP with “Too Much” and "I’ll Make You Happy” – and then a top five with the musically intriguing “Sorry”. Harry Vanda and George Young then wrote what is arguably The Easybeats most, acclaimed and recorded piece, the working class anthem, “Friday On My Mind” - since recorded by David Bowie, Peter Frampton, Gary Moore and scores of others. In the 35 years since, the Easybeats have become emblematic of powerful, dynamic and assertively original Oz Rock. Their hits have lived again through versions by the likes of LRB, the Sports, Saints, Divinyls and INXS with Jimmy Barnes. In 1986 the original group reunited for a triumphant national tour and in 2001 an APRA industry poll named “Friday On My Mind” as the all-time greatest Australian song.

Few groups have touched the national spirit as Hunters & Collectors did between 1981 and 1998 when they finally called it a day. Their intense live shows, their innovative style of rock & roll and Mark Seymour’s acute lyrics made Hunters bona fide music icons. Right from the outset, Hunters & Collectors were hailed as THE band to experience live. The seven-minute single “Talking To A Stranger” came with Richard Lowenstein’s radical video clip. By the 1986 album Human Frailty and single “Say Goodbye”, the band had stripped away unnecessary excess to arrive at the sound that combined equal parts refried boogie-rock and lyric paradoxes. The group’s line-up was in flux until the 1984 breakthrough album Jaws of Life that was their first substantial hit. The single from the subsequent The Way To Out LP, “Throw Your Arms Around Me” is one of Australia’s most enduring songs and has been regularly covered by other Australian musicians. So many of their songs have become anthems. The ALP launched their 2004 campaign with “Do You See What I See”, and the Australian Olympic team adopted “Holy Grail” as their theme song – a fact picked up by the AFL who use the track as their official song. Subsequent albums – Human Frailty, What’s A Few Men, Ghost Nation (which saw the significant addition of Barry Palmer on guitar), Cut and Demon Flower consolidated the group’s place in the national consciousness.

TAKE THE TRIP

Manitoba is no more. That mantle has been wrestled away from him by Handsome Dick Manitoba, the frontman for seventies proto-punks, The Dictators, and owner of Manitoba’s Bar in downtown New York City. Bowing to the veteran punk’s legal demands, Manitoba - a.k.a. Dan Snaith - has changed his nom de rock to Caribou. No news yet on whether the remote Canadian province of Manitoba (whence Snaith took his moniker) is planning on changing its name…

As Manitoba, Dan Snaith made his Australian debut as a solo laptop artist, in 2002. Here to promote his album Start Breaking My Heart, the tour and the album set the hearts of the laptop/IDM congensi aflutter and heralded a new name on the scene. His sophomore effort, 2003’s universally acclaimed Up In Flames was a massive critical and commercial leap forward. To the ear, it was like being unleashed in an unparalleled magical fairyland of riotous, ecstatic sound. Using a much broader musical palette, this ambitious work drew comparisons to many well-famed psychedelic-inspired indie popsters, like The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and My Bloody Valentine. The tour of Australia that followed in June 2004, was a giant leap forward also. Manitoba were now a three piece band alternating between; two drum kits, guitar, keyboards, glockenspiel, melodeon, as well as crude home made visuals. All performed by three men in bear masks. If the Flaming Lips gave the impression of being in Disneyland. Manitoba have you feeling like you living inside Willy Wonker’s Chocolate Factory..

And so to The Milk of Human Kindness - the brand new album for Dan Snaith and the first to appear under the name, Caribou. Like a lost album that’s just been rediscovered in a basement for the first time since 1973, it’s part reflective, campfire-comedown, part rampage of sonic discovery, revelling in energy and motion.

And now, at the invite of Splendour in the Grass, Caribou return to Australia in July. Go on, take the trip.

Dates:
JULY
Tuesday 19th: Perth, Amplifier
Wednesday 20th: Adelaide, Fowlers Live
Friday 22nd: Melbourne, Corner Hotel
Saturday 23rd: Sydney, Metro Theatre
Sunday 24th: Byron Bay, Splendour in the Grass

Link:
Review: The Milk of Human Kindness