VA - Ugly Things

This is an outstanding compilation of rare tracks from various Australian garage rock bands. After listening to several highly disappointing comps that I scored a few days ago, I didn't have high hopes for this one. However upon hearing this for the first time, I was very impressed to say the least. This is rare Australian garage rock at it's best, and in the same vein as the Nuggets compilations that I'm sure you are all familiar with. The front, back, and inside covers are included in the rar file, as are the liner notes. The following is an excerpt from the liner notes included with this release:

The first volume of Ugly Things was issued in 1980 and featured these introductory notes: The writing of liner notes for this album is a taste of relative ease. Though we are most desirous of conveying illuminating data and succint facts, there is really not a great deal that can be told about most of the Australian rock groups of the mid-60's in having this album. To be sure, this is not a greatest hits album. Nary a track contained within was ever in sneezing distance of any top 40. Rather, these tracks are the final remnant of a fast surging third-level of Australian beat groups. These are (in most cases) the garage and church hall bands who somehow wrangled a chance to cut a solitary single. When it went nowhere, so did they.

Recording was a much easier and cheaper process in the days before 24 track desks, $100 an hour studios, 'star' producers, and phasers, flangers, noise gates, aural excites and digital delays. In 1965, a record company or a studio could whip a new band in a 2 track studio with a resident engineer, cut a stack of tracks and stick a couple out in a single without expending a great deal of money, effort or concern at all. Chances could be taken. In a commercial sense, most of the chances taken on these artists were failures. In a musical sense, they render the financiers as patrons of the arts. For this is where the howling, seething, fang-bared face of Australian rock is to be found. Music which was executed with scant regard for the dictates of commerciality. Rock for the sake of rock itself, the only truly productive climate.

It seems that the further removed from the source 'beat' rock was, the more primal it emerged. New Zealand's R&B Chants probably represents the white r&b outfield, with the acts on this album skirting the same boundary. Despite Austalia's predilection for 'cover hits', only a fool would deny the existence of a truly unique indigenous antipodean rock sound. Less polished and harmonic that the US & UK strains, it was a gruffer, harsher, more working class handling of the basic rock principles.

So little seems to be known of the hundreds of non-hit Australian recording acts of the 60's, both in and out of the country. Our damned national inferiority complex led us to believe that it was all weak, derivative fluff.. until albums like Nuggets, Pebbles, Psychedelic Unknowns, Boulders, etc. left us smirking at the frankly unimpressive quality of so many tracks deemed as 'classics of their era' in foreign lands. The rock on this album can hold it's head loftily in the company of any non-hit English or American rock.

Year of Release: 1980
Label: Raven
Genre: Garage Rock
Bitrate: 160kbps

Track List:
1. Missing Links - You're Driving Me Insane
2. Atlantics - Come On
3. Machine Gun Kelly's Rejects - I'm Going Back
4. Creatures - Ugly Thing
5. Steve & The Board - Now I'm Older
6. Elois - By My Side
7. Others - Look Through My Window
8. Chants R&B - I'm Your Witchdoctor
9. Pink Finks - Louie Louie
10. Purple Hearts - Just A Little Bit
11. Movement - I Wanna Be Free
12. Modes - Baby Please Don't Go
13. Master's Apprentices - Poor Boy
14. Pleasers - Hurtin' All Over
15. Henchman - That's All I Want
16. Four Strangers - Sad & Lonely
17. The La De Das - How Is The Air Up There
18. Sunsets - I Want Love
19. Blue Stars - Social End Product
20. D-Coys - Bad Times
21. Derek's Accent - Ain't Got No Feeling
22. Blue Beats - She's Coming Home
23. Vince Maloney Sect - No Good Without You
24. Ray Columbus & The Art Collection
25. Lost Souls - This Life Of Mine
26. Black Diamonds - I Want, Need, Love You

Download: VA - Ugly Things
Download Track 17: The La De Das - How Is The Air Up There
Download Size: 76MB