Sizzling sixties mod pop from Australian hitmakers
Label: Columbia
Year of Release: 1967
Australian hitmakers often got a raw deal from global audiences in the
sixties (and far beyond that period, actually). It didn't make much
difference to the average A&R person in London, Paris, Los Angeles
or Berlin whether an Aussie act had managed a top ten hit in the
regional Sydney and Adelaide charts - unless the group were prepared to
literally ship themselves over to a new country and tour properly and do
promo there for a long time, they were a very distant and not
particularly safe bet. The only real alternative market these bands had
was the more accessible (but not exactly populous or profitable) New
Zealand.
It's largely for this reason that Australian hit compilations from
bygone decades are a treasure-trove of mostly unheard and often great
work. The smaller size of the Australian marketplace poses all sorts of
horrible challenges to the British collector, too, as anyone who has
ever tried to obtain a DJ copy of The Easybeats "Sorry" will tell you -
it's an Australian hit, but finding a reasonably priced copy in the UK
is almost as bad as hunting down a psychedelic rarity.
The Vibrants here began life as the backing group for the singer Bobby
James before he wandered off to form the Bobby James Syndicate. After
that point, Geoff Skewes (organ), Terry Osmand (guitar), Terry Radford
(guitar), Brenton Haye (sax), Jeff Gurr (bass) and Rick Kent (drums)
forged their own way on the Australian gig circuit.
A few line-up changes later they managed to sign to EMI in their own
country, and this, their second single, sold well enough to chart in
Melbourne and a number of other Australian territories. It's a cover of
the Holland-Dozier-Holland track which turns it into an - er - vibrant
piece of mod-pop, close to the early Small Faces work in places, albeit
with a bit less roughness around the edges. It was a big enough hit
that it still features on the 4CD "Greatest Australian Singles of the
60s" box set released by Warner Music, but there's a YouTube clip below
for anyone who wants to hear the track. It's propulsive and nagging, and
if it had been issued by a British act would have been compiled on a
sixties rarities CD here way before now.
The flip "Danger Zone" is another cover, which showcases how competently
the band could recreate soul sounds - it's not difficult to hear how
they must have been a huge draw on the Australian circuit.
The group's line-up, always a fragile and constantly fracturing thing,
meant that numerous members came and went throughout their lifetime, but
the Vibrants (in name at least) finally called it a day at the end of
1971.
If you can't preview "Danger Zone" below, please go right to the Box source.
1 comment:
Stripped of its original soulfulness, its lost its original appeal
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