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Jerome and band

Australian Rock

Australian Rock has always been very much a part of Australian life. Especially mine.
The 80's were probeably my best Oz Rock years. I was young and couldn't afford CDs so radio was it. These days I'm still buying 80's stuff I missed then.
Keyboard was really in then. This type of music is so much harde to get in the 2000's.
Oz Bands in the 80's I liked included:

Pseudo Echo
Mental As Anything
The Angels
John Farnham with the phenomenal album "Whispering Jack"

Some bands I loved in the 90's and highly recommend: .
Noiseworks
Southern Sons
John Farnham
Yothu Yindi
James Blundell
James Reyne
Keith Urban (new hit album 2003, Golden Road)
Screaming Jets
Jimmy Barnes
Rick Price
Diesel
Midnight oil & INXS

These few shots to follow were taken at a the Frankston Guitar Festival (near Melbourne) in 2002. .
We went especially to see Bob Spencer perform (ex lead guitarist with The Angels for years) along with his band, including Stuart Fraser (ex. John Farnham's band) and Jerome Smith (from USA, who amongst other people, has played with Mick Jagger)

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Frankston Guitar Festival

Back at the 2002 festival, Stuart Fraser did a surprise number...a Beatles vocal and guitar number....Tax Man.
Very nice.

A small, intimate and friendly audience.
Great to be able to see without people's heads in the way, to pick your spot wherever for photography.

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Stuart and Kate

Stuart and I...conversation afterwards

Oh, isn't this nice. It was great to meet Stuart. I'm a big fan of his from years ago when he played with John Farnham.

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Jack Jones

1990's concert

Around 1990 I travelled to the small country Victorian city of Ararat, to see Southern Sons play live.
They had 2 fantastic studio albums in the late 80's/early '90's, then all seemed to go quiet...
The lead singer, Jack Jones, had an absolutely fantastic voice, likened a lot to that of Australian musical legend, John Farnham.

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Southern Sons

Southern Sons

The Southern Sons concert again....

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The Angels on stage

The Angels

The Angels were one of Australia's biggest hard rock bands of the 80's (and the 90's too, for that matter, but they didn't get much airplay in those later years. Still, loyal die hard fans more than kept them alive)

They have a huge following in Australia, and to some extent around the world.
They're most famous for their huge hits, including "Am I ever Gonna See your Face Again", "Take A Long Line" and "Marseille"
The Angels produced at least 10 studio albums in their 25 year career (which ended only in 1999). Added to that, compilations and live albums.
I had the pleasure of attending about 4 of their great concerts (including catching the Lounge Lizard tour in Bendigo with Angry Anderson, plus Liveline 99 home here in Ballarat.
They were supposed to be playing in Melbourne on that date, one of their last performances, but the hotel they were scheduled to play at burned down, and so Ballarat got lucky at the last minute!

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Australia has always had a great tradition of Pub Rock (could be it started with some of our earliest immigrants, the Irish)
Melbourne is one of the best places I've been for Oz Rock in terms of variety, selection, number of venues and frequency.
Many country town pubs do it great too, on a smaller scale (and with much less frequency) .
One good example of a good ol' Aussie community pub, with plenty of locals behind the bar, was here at the Hepburn Springs Hotel (Central Victoria, 100 kms NW of Melbourne, and only 30 mins from my home) which we visited in February 2003.

Entertainment of the evening featured my husband's Angels tribute band.
L - R. David (rhythm guitar), Dave (drums, backing vocals), Dean (vocals), Peter (bass) & Paul (my husband, lead guitar & backing vocals).

The band began to form in '99, at almost the same time as the original "Angels" band retired (though in 2 separate pieces they have now re-formed, doing different stuff)

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Equipment: David plays a Gibson SG guitar with Marshall amp.

Paul plays a custom made (for The Angels) Strat with Engl 50 watt amp.

In 2003 the band have completed work on their first home studio produced demo EP, containing 4 songs.

If you're interested in hearing what the band sounds like,the songs are available for download at: www.geocities.com/almost_angelsau/

Since I love music so much (and enjoy a lot of Australian rock/hard rock) it's a great experience for me to go behind the scenes of a home grown rock band, to watch their gigs grow larger, and move further from home. To see the different gigs they end up with (so far has ranged from a gig at the Superbikes, one at the Phillip Island Motorcycle Grand Prix and several in county cities as well as Melbourne) and most of all, the enjoyment they get from being a band. Five quite different guys, from all different backgounds, united due to The Angels and music.

Sitting in on the recording of the Demo CD was another great experience, and a real test of patience for all involved!
On one hand, setting up your own recording studio using the Cakewalk program on the computer and bringing in the musicians one by one or two by two saves a lot of money on studios, but the time factor is still there, plus all the repetition that has to happen all along the way.
I discovered what absolute perfectionists musicians have to be. After a while, I could barely hear any of the mistakes they said were in their recordings, meaning they were going to start over again.

At present my role in the band has been band photographer, which I really enjoy, and twice backing singer for "Wherever you will Go".