That's a look we should all strive for.
Especially the hat.
Its on my wish list.
read about him here
http://bayarearadio.org/audio/jazzbeaux/
he was a very cool cat
I like Pink Floyd and Morrissey. I rest your case.
Last edited by 4F Hepcat (2013-09-05 08:16:17)
The original Australian pub music scene was hugely influential. Its important to remember that small intimate bars and pubs are only recent, 15 years or so, in Melbourne and Victoria , and still essentially non existent in other states. Pubs would pack in 1,000 plus to a gig. Bands survived on live performances. Years before making a record. There were bands who could pull big crowds who never recorded or who had bad recorded sound but were great live. That legacy lives on,even though now there's smaller venues, and creates an interesting unique Australian rock sound that's hard to define. But it is honed by gigging to largish pub audiences. Its not PET Shop Boys or etc.
Someone once told me that Aus you have to some draconian pub opening hours in the 40s and 50s?
A lot of British music is parochial. The Kinks for example certainly were. The Village Green Preservation Society, can't get more parochial than that. I don't see anything wrong with this though. Why does music need to be relevant to other countries? If they want relevance they can make their own.
Pub rock, or small gig rock is great to listen to live, but when recorded and listen to at home it just comes across as a cacophony.
From the Beatles onward a lot of British bands saw the recording studio as not just as a place to record music but a instrument in itself. This is one of the reasons that a lot of British bands didn't come across well in gigs. It was impossible to re-create the sound outside the confines of the recording studio.
Also the acoustics of a venue come into play, for good and bad. And that's one reason open air live concerts inevitably sound naff on record. I think The Who are an extremely Brit themed and parochial band, they still conquered the world though. Then you have The Divine Comedy, they haven't travelled well.
My missus thought Madness was a joke at first, she really couldn't get it, but eventually, these foreigners will inevitably come round to our way of digging music!
But then again you have Morrissey and The Smiths, which seem like the Kinks totally English and yet they travel well into the surfing communities and latin world.
Thanks for sharing that pub opening times horror story, which explains why the scenes in the pub in The Sullivans always seemed crowded and the drinking imbued with a sense of rush. The Brits suffered the similar restricted pub times during WWI that lasted until the early 90s. The government also reduced the alcohol content of beer, significantly stouts that had traditionally been in the 7%+ region down to less than 3.5%.