The LOVED ONES- More Than Love

I was completely unaware of The Loved Ones until I picked up this 7" (in Revolve, a great little Sydney shop), but they now stand as one of my favourite Oz groups. The Loved Ones have a quite distinct sound, apparently their unusual time signature and chord choices were influenced by their origins as a trad jazz band! Singer Gerry Humphries as a superb intense voice a little like Eric Burdon but with more of an American garage snarl. More Than Love is the flip side of the slightly more poppy (though still pretty weird) Ever Lovin' Man.

The LOVED ONES- More Than Love

The Loved Ones released a string of equally strong singles and one album, and are to this day legendary in the annals of Australian rock history (INXS covered The Loved One to great success). There is CD collection of these singles available here and below is some atmospheric footage of the The Loved Ones miming to The Loved One.

First post! The EASYBEATS- Sorry

Welcome!

Being someone who buys his records from wherever I find them (I don't allow myself to use ebay as I couldn't be trusted with my rent money), moving to Australia opens up a whole new world of music to me. The 1960s Australian pop scene had many of the same influences as the UK and USA but was isolated enough to be a sort of parallel pop universe, where the chart topping acts of the day often didn't get a release outside of Australia/New Zealand. For me this is great!

I love 60s pop, psych, garage etc, but having immersed myself in this stuff since the age of 14, I'm pretty familiar with what's available in the UK. Here though, I can pick up great singles for a few dollars by acts I had never heard of.

The Easybeats aren't quite in this bracket, as I've heard most of their songs through best of LPs. But the early (and best!) Easybeats singles didn't do much damage to the British charts, if they were released at all? So suffice to say I've been hoovering up these great slabs of RnB pop as fast as I can find them. 'Sorry' is probably my favourite and should have been a worldwide smash on a par with the Kinks or the Who's early records.