Oz Punk

Robert Forster and Grant McLennan met as students at the University of Queensland in 1975. Brisbane ‘had a hayseed image’ back then, Forster says, ‘lacking the cosmopolitan groove of Sydney or Melbourne’. Yet it was Brisbane that gave rise to The Go-Betweens (formed by Forster and McLennan in 1977) and The Saints – bands whose originality was as unforeseen then as it is venerated now.

For Ed Kuepper, a founding member of The Saints, Brisbane was a stimulus: ‘You’re forced into a situation where, okay, if you want to do something, you’ve got to do it yourself’. In 1976, without having been blooded on the Sydney or Melbourne pub circuit, The Saints recorded a single – ‘(I’m) Stranded’ – and distributed copies themselves locally and overseas. With its grungy, unadulterated guitar riffs, it was described by the UK’s Sounds magazine as the ‘Single of this week and every week’, and earned The Saints the distinction of releasing a punk single before The Sex Pistols did.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, Radio Birdman – formed in 1974 by Rob Younger and Deniz Tek – had garnered mainstream distaste with their unpredictable, almost visceral, performance style. In 1977 though, once punk had become a thing, Radio Birdman were signed to record their first LP, Radios Appear. Earlier that year, Nick Cave had seen Radio Birdman and The Saints live in Melbourne. For Cave, as writer Clinton Walker says, the Saints gig ‘was living, breathing confirmation of what was possible, even out of little old Australia’s supposed backwater’.

"Sends a permanent shiver down my spine" taken from ‘Shivers’. Written by R Howard (Mute Song Ltd / Mushroom Music)