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Loud As Ever - Sound As Ever Compilation # 3

by Sound As Ever (Australian Indie 90-99)

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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Centre Of The Universe, Finally Over, 25, Blues Into Gold - The Songs Of Gynia Favot, God-like, Hanging onto the 90s: Sound As Ever 90-99 compilation #4, Calamity Jane's Live Radio Sessions, Full Circles, and 5 more. , and , .

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about

Compilation concept and curation by Jane Gazzo

Cover concept and artwork by Ben Brown

Artwork/layout by Chris Rees

Mastered by Ernie O at his Urban Fringe Compound

Thanks to Scott Thurling for the guidance and advice, the bands for their submissions and ‘Sound as Ever’ members for their constant enthusiasm.
C, 2021

Cat number: SAE: 4

All Praise Be to the GB
After the success of our first 2 Sound as Ever compilations, lovingly curated by Scott Thurling, we decided we needed to get loud and dirty for Volume 3.

One of my favourite live venues in the 90s was the GB, so using the much missed sticky carpet pub gig-guide as a template, I decided I’d curate the compilation as if I were booking the bands over a week. (Also ensuring some of our fave artists from other capital cities were included too) We are truly grateful to all the bands who submitted their songs, Nick Wheelhouse for the memorable walk back in time and to famed artist Ben Brown who totally got the brief first go.

The Sound as Ever page is now a year old and currently boasts over 16K members. All 90s Australian music continues to be celebrated and adulated in the SAE community and Loud as Ever is the perfect snapshot of a time long gone but so loved.
Jane Gazzo – February 2021

credits

released April 4, 2021

‘A Scene set to Explode!’

In April 1990, I became the publican of Richmond’s Great Britain Hotel. I was 22 years old and when I picked up the keys to the joint, there was no instruction manual – just a foolscap page of about 30 band names and their phone numbers. It had been a blues pub mostly back then and I was keen to shake things up. I only had to book the Friday nights so I randomly picked two names from the page that didn’t sound like blues bands (The Glory Box and Vertical Smile). As far as booking bands, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
I’d run a couple of pubs prior to the GB, but when I took over, I had no track record to show and the GB had no cred. It didn’t even have a stage. It had a charm and an atmosphere that suited what it was, but as a live venue it was very limited. Why play in front of a ‘just extinguished fireplace’, (I heard a drummer caught fire once) with a 400W vocal PA to nobody when you could play the Richmond Club…or the MCG?

Everything changed once Bored played. The pub had never been so full until that night and it stayed full for the next 5 years. I’m indebted to them. (RIP Dave). There was a lot of camaraderie between the bands, so once you booked one band, the rest came to play or support their mates and the burgeoning scene. By 1992 we were selling more booze than Richmond's 37 other pubs combined; supporting a roster of over 300 bands, with 15 to 20 of them playing each week; averaging 200 punters for mid-week gigs and over 300 punters every thu/fri/sat/sun night. There was a real sense of community and I truly felt I was in the right place at the time in a scene that was set to explode.

The Richmond cops were always on my case. They’d use any reason to harass me. Noise complaints were a favourite excuse of theirs and one night when the Cosmic Psychos were headlining, the cops bailed me up twice and threatened to close down the pub if I didn't drop the volume. That was the Psychos one and only show at the GB but from a booker’s point of view it was a coup to get them. It still holds the record as one of the loudest gigs ever. My ears were ringing for days.

There was one New Year’s Eve when skinheads tried to take over the pub. Scourge were headlining when the place exploded. A dozen or more skinheads unleashed a military style attack they'd been planning for weeks. Here I was, tripping on acid, in a pub with no security! For a moment they got the upper hand. There was a few fisticuffs. But this was the GB! All the skinheads there that night got hurt. Some badly.
But the record for ‘most people crushed together to watch a band’ goes to the Powder Monkeys. I think it was a Friday night album launch. They already held the record, but on this night they smashed it. 412 payers in a room that held 150 comfortably at best. That doesn't include the 50 plus on the guest list (their guest lists were always extensive) and the 200 plus people jammed into the front bar. Controlled chaos. It was so hot! And it went off.

When I think of those heady days, I see a crowded pub full of music lovers, sticky carpet, a veil of hazy ciggie smoke and a sea of flannel shirts. However, after 5 inebriating years, something in the scene shifted. The internet was in its infancy and rave culture was creeping in as well as the corporate record company suits looking to exploit independent acts and turn them mainstream. I was 27 years old and burnt out. It was time to do something else. I also needed to give my body a break from booze and bad habits. I walked away in 1995.

The GB was about so much more than great rock'n'roll...much more! It was about the people who drank there, the staff who kept it running and the myriad of punters who lived upstairs with me over the years. It was about bar fights, bomb scares, arson and death threats. It was my lounge room and I considered everyone in it my friend. If I could live those years again I wouldn't change a thing.
-Nick Wheelhouse

Former publican Great Britain Hotel 1990-1995

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Sound As Ever (Australian Indie 90-99) Melbourne, Australia

Sound As Ever 90-99 is a community and forum for friends, fans,bands and industry figures to commemorate, celebrate and appreciate one the most exciting decades in Oz music.
It came from a need of wanting to document this time and the wonderful people and artists who were part of it.
A place to immortalize the time and relive some lifechanging moments.
www.soundaseveraustralianindie90-99.com
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