I love this type of stuff. This is a historical document of the Australian punk scene between 1976-1979 featuring exclusive, live, unreleased, and rare tracks by the better known bands—Saints (who get the first two cuts, hell yeah!), Radio Birdman, and X—but not stopping there. Great pains have been taken to recreate a cross-section of time, so there are lesser-known, but no less great tracks by Babeez, Psychosurgeons, and The Leftovers. (Plus a smoking track of a band Nick Cave was in, Boys Next Door.) The music speaks for itself. It’s mostly noisy, melodic, driving, and resilient. But it doesn’t stop there. The CD-Rom’s full of family trees, fanzines, posters, and photographs: the whole shebang. It’s a time capsule. The only bad news was I couldn’t get the CD-Rom to work on my computer. Dang. I highly suggest seeking this out if you’re a punk hunter or a purposeful obscurity tracker. What a tidy package—obviously the result of a heap of work.
–todd (Shock, www.shock.com.au)