From: cgregory@deakin.edu.au (Chris Gregory)
Subject: Re: Leaping on a tangent...
Date: 09 Mar 1995 12:10:49 +1100

Kris wrote:

>So I'm going seize his risk-taking and jump in here with a question.  I should
>probably be going to psychedelia.com with this, but some exoticat out there
>should be able to help me.  I'm looking for information on a band called
>"Master's Apprentices".

Urgh. Master's Apprentice were an Australian band. I can't say that I know
much about them, except that some of their old TV appearances turn up every
so often on a late-night music show here.

They had a few local hits, including 'Turn Up Your Radio' and some awful
art rock dirges a bit later on in their career, before breaking up. Every
so often the lead singer turns up on TV current affairs shows bemoaning the
fact that no-one will give him another record contract.

>I have a G.H. cd by them that I bought a couple years
>back based on the first track "Turn Up Your Radio".  Don't recall the label at
>the moment and lent the disk out recently (hence my revived interest) but
>there is literally no information about the band at all with the cd.  I'm
>guessing they are very early '70's psych/glam rock underdogs that never made
>it big anywhere (this Greatest Hits had to be somebody's labor of love).

Nope. They were big here... There were worse Australian bands though, most
of which I'd be too embarassed to mention (I'm not including the ones that
did make it overseas, which were even more embarassing).

>Replete with soccer haircuts and dandy ruffled suits, I can only liken the
>sound to 13th Floor Elevators and the Archies vs. Led Zepplin and Herman's
>Hermits.  Very odd.  The result sounds not unlike Dr. Teeth and the Electric
>Mayhem (the house band from Jim Henson's "Muppet Show") let loose on AM radio.
>If anybody out there knows who I'm talking about, any info would be
>appreciated.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Kris
>

If you like glam-rock, I'd recommend searching for anything by an
Australian band called Skyhooks, who had a string of local hits in the
seventies.

Perhaps the closest thing to exotica that Australia has produced is Rolf
Harris (his Australian Aboriginal-styled songs probably make him the
Australian equivalent of Martin Denny).

I remember seeing Rolf Harris perform in my town when I was a little kid.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to perform 'Jake the Peg', a song about a man
with three legs, because some of the local hoodlums had stolen the extra
leg that Rolf used as a stage prop. This made it to the front pages of the
local newspaper (it was a small town...)

Australia has also produced a lot of fairly vulgar novelty songs, usually
in the country-and-western vein ('There was a Redback on the Toilet Seat'
was a number one hit about a man who was bitten on the arse by a
particularly lethal spider while using the outside toilet).

The only other bit of Australiana that I can think of at the moment is an
album called 'Stairways to Heaven', which featured a heap of different
versions of the song 'Stairway to Heaven' performed by different people
(the Rolf Harris version being the standout track). The album was produced
as a result of a TV show called 'The Money or the Gun', which featured a
different  band playing 'Stairway to Heaven' on each episode.
Unfortunately, some of the best versions didn't make it to the CD release.

The fact that the host of 'The Money or the Gun' hated the song 'Stairway
to Heaven' says something about the Australian sense of humour. After all,
this is the country with the oldest and longest-running ABBA fan club in
existence.

Chris

---
Chris Gregory
cgregory@deakin.edu.au