Pub Rock

The team behind last year's excellent The Glory Days Of Aussie Pub Rock compilation return with another four-CD instalment paying testament to the halcyon days of our nation's live music scene, and fortunately they have a deep well from which to draw tunes and inspiration.

Festival Records and Warner Music Australia are excited to announce the release of the definitive overview of the great Aussie Rock scene from '70s and '80s and into the '90s: 'The Glory Days Of Aussie Pub Rock Vol. 1,' on 4CD set! Featuring a whopping 91 tracks 'The Glory Days Of Aussie Pub Rock Vol. 1' focuses on the birthplace of classic OZ Rock - the pub! It includes seminal songs from virtually every successful Aussie rock band from the mid-'70s through to the early-'90s, including Cold Chisel, The Angels, Divinyls, Midnight Oil, Mental As Anything, Baby Animals, Split Enz, Hunters & Collectors, Paul Kelly & The Coloured Girls, Men At Work, Australian Crawl, Skyhooks, The Screaming Jets, Rose Tattoo, Dragon, Tmg, Sunnyboys, Stars, The Saints, Noiseworks, Black Sorrows, Models, The Sports, Renee Geyer, Mi-Sex, Jimmy Barnes, Ian Moss, Boom Crash Opera, Stevie Wright, Choirboys, Icehouse And Flowers, The Reels, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, Mondo Rock, Richard Clapton, Radiators, The Badloves, Boom Crash Opera, Tim Finn, The Church and more!.

In some circles, Mickey Jupp is something of a minor legend, a roots rocker with excellent taste and a cutting wit, best heard on the songs "Switchboard Susan" and "You'll Never Get Me Up in One of Those," both covered by Nick Lowe. Basher's endorsement is a clear indication that Jupp is a pub rocker, a guy who specializes in laid-back good times, so it shouldn't come as a great surprise that his first band, Legend, was proto-pub, an unabashed celebration of old-time rock & roll, filled with three-chord Chuck Berry rockers and doo wop backing vocals. Nevertheless, listening to their 1971 LP is a bit of a shock, as it's completely disassociated with anything that was happening in 1971, even with Tony Visconti enlisted as their producer. Legend's sensibility is ahead of its time in its retro thinking, pointing the way to the rock & roll revival of the late '70s and not even that similar to the country-rock of Eggs Over Easy or Bees Make Honey…

This two-CD reissue of Ducks Deluxe's first two albums differs from the previous Edsel two-on-one release, as no tracks were omitted due to space constraints. In retrospect, these recordings seem more relevant after the passage of time, as they provide a clearer linkage between British blues-based album rock and late-'70s punk and post-punk new wave. In fact, the influences of British pub rock span back to '50s rock & roll and R&B. Their take on Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown" bears an uncanny resemblance to perhaps his biggest hit, "Summertime Blues." But it's Ducks Deluxe's original pieces that evoke echoes of artists like the Rolling Stones, Them, and Mott the Hoople. "Fireball" sounds like a direct outtake from All the Young Dudes or Mott, while the R&B-rich "Falling for That Woman" suggests Van Morrison at his soulful best. "Rio Grande," from Taxi to the Terminal Zone, wouldn't sound out of place on Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks.

The Winkies were probably six months late in cutting and releasing their debut album – six months, and one set of sessions. The news, earlier in 1974, that they were in the studio with Brian Eno was greeted with wild enthusiasm and anticipation; the collapse of those sessions, and Eno's replacement with Guy Stevens, somewhat less so. Far from the maverick icon which his posthumous reputation canonizes, Stevens' mid-1970s reputation owed more to his unreliability than his knob-twiddling skills, and it was no surprise whatsoever when The Winkies finally arrived, bearing more in common with the pre-fame Mott the Hoople (of course, Stevens' last major project) than the glorious glam pub hybrid which the band had hitherto nurtured.

Like Dave Edmunds, guitarist/pianist/vocalist Mickey Jupp was a champion of traditional rock & roll during the late '70s, a time when it had been all but discarded. Unlike Edmunds, Jupp wrote the majority of his own material, which updated '50s rock & roll with a tongue-in-cheek irony.