Fun Fact: until fairly recently - as in, into my 30's - I didn't know that the Australian crawl was another name for the swimming stroke better known as the front crawl; I just knew it as the name of a band I had a passing familiarity with. I don't know much of their material, but I did take a particular shine to this song - it has a sort of subdued epic feel to it that I like. Even despite those e-drums, but eh, it was the '80s. It still works.
Austraian crawl, the swim, is these days freestyle . Aus crawl were great .. one of my favourite bands as a teen
Really surprised me when Australian Crawl didn't break through over here. Must have had some airplay otherwise I wouldn't have known them but I don't recall them having any hits.
I had the first dingoes album. They went to the USA to try their luck, but had the misfortune to be signed to the same label that had Lynyrd Skynyrd, shortly before the plane crash that claimed the lives of half the band. In all the drama that followed, the Dingoes were kind of forgotten about. I doubt the Americans would have "got" them anyway. There was something very Australian about them, more so even than Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil.
They were great. But let's be clear, they were a new Zealand band, through and through. Crowded House, on the other hand, qualify as Australian because they formed in Melbourne and two of the three original members were Aussie.
He did a killer version of the Cole Porter song "I Get a Kick Out of You", a song I never liked all that much until I heard his version.
One of the more unusual acts to emerge from Australia in recent years is Midnight Juggernauts. Their music could be described danceable space rock; influences from Hawkwind, Kraftwerk amd ELO are discernible, though they do not sound quite like any of these. They have done three albums, of which I think each is better than its predecessor. They apparently went down quite well at several international music festivals, but I have not heard anything from them in quite a while so I don't know what they are currently up to. This track from their third album gives an idea of their sound:
The Throb got a brief mention earlier. Their "Fortune Teller" is better than the Stones, but this one is my favourite:
Sebastian Hardie Australia has never exactly been a progressive rock hotbed. Hence when this band released their first album in 1975 they sounded quite unlike any other local act on the radio. They drew influences from Pink Floyd and Yes, but definitely had their own sound. Surprisingly, they had a hit single from the album, "Rosanna". This was the opening of the main suite from the album:
I always loved this song, but I never heard anything else they did, and in fact it's the sum total of all I know about them. What became of them, does anybody know?
Australia had a number of imitators of the Phil Spector/Righteous Brothers sound in the late 60s, including this band, but as far as I know this was an original song:
Paul Kelly and The Coloured Girls (before the name change to Messenger Service because it was felt, rightly so, that it wouldn't go over well in the U.S.)
Correction: Just "The Messengers". You're thinking of Quicksilver Messenger Service. I presume you know the origin of the name. Kelly called the band the Coloured Girls because they provided backing vocals, just like the coloured girls in Walk on the Wild Side. Of course the American public and press were guaranteed to take it the wrong way, so changing the name was the right thing to do.
This might be 30 years old, but Melbourne's The Shower Scene From Psycho were so that they could've damaged diplomatic relations with several countries through the force of their weirdness.
Healing Force included Mal Logan (organ) who went on to join The Dingoes & then on to The Renee Geyer Band Charlie Tumahai who later moved to the UK & joined the band Be Bop Deluxe Lindsay Wells who returned to Perth & can be seen in his time warp churning out Hendrix etc copies[ at the Perth Blues Club
