B SIDE magazine, issue #24. My memory's usually good with life's non-essentials, and I'm pretty sure this came out at the very tail-end of 1989, just as I'd finished or was finishing high school. Certainly the releases and bands covered within date it as 1989 at some point. Sonic Youth toured here in January of that year, which is when the interview was conducted. I probably say this about every issue of B Side mag, but this really is one of my faves, possibly my all-time fave (yeah, number one!). Perhaps its contents are coloured by my purchasing it during my liberation from high school - like being sprung from jail - but content-wise, it's hard to beat.

The penultimate issue of the publication, it also shows how much it had pivoted from one which primarily covered Australian music in its inception but had, by decade's end, become a great spruiker for the post-hardcore American underground (I mean, I could call it grunge...). Which isn't to say that lots of the finest Oz sounds aren't covered here (because they are), but clearly as the '80s begat the '90s, the poster children for a new decade were Mudhoney and Sonic Youth, I guess, as well as some of the AmRep/Touch & Go artists covered inside. I'll vouch for Die Kreuzen until I croak, though I couldn't ever muster the same enthusiasm shown for Bastards and Tad which are exuded here. I loved Killdozer back in the day, though I just can't imagine what mood I would need to be in at this point in my life where I'd feel like putting one of their records on. Anyway!...

Rob Younger and John Murphy grace the cover. Younger is obviously a well-known Oz-rock figure, and at this point The New Christs had just released their awesome Distemper LP (a recording which has aged well) and his interview here, conducted by Aberrant's Bruce Griffiths, is a good one. John Murphy? It's coming... Murray Engleheart interviews Mudhoney and, for reasons unknown, asks them if they were influenced by Saccharine Trust (Murray!!), a question which seems to stump Mark Arm. King Snake Roost present a US tour diary (a hoot and a holler), and there's an interview with the never-to-be-heard-from-again Meat from Adelaide. Well, that's not entirely true. About four years ago, the singer of said band came into my record shop with copies of their posthumous (very posthumous - they released nothing in their brief lifetime) LP to sell on consignment. He seemed amazed that I instantly recognised the band, and has been living in Ireland for the past 20+ years. He drops by about once a year when he's in the country to see if any copies have sold (I think we've sold one), so if you're looking for some obscure feedtime/Aberrant-style Oz-rock grunt from the late '80s - I mean, if you are - then by all means, please contact me. They were fine.

There are city scene reports from the relevant newshounds-on-the-street, Bruce Griffiths, David Laing and Harry Butler, as well as reviews of contempo discs by Splatterheads, Lubricated Goat, Killdozer (Twelve-Point Buck - the 'dozer disc I'd go to), Rollins Band, Die Kreuzen (their excellent Gone Away EP, given high praise), Antiseen, Bored!, Laughing Hyenas, Buttholes et al, as well as a lengthy live review of the truly shitawful Hitmen by my namesake (sorry, Dave). And there's more!

The highlight is the extended - six pages! - and detailed article by Harry Butler telling the story of musician John Murphy. At the time of buying this issue, I had never heard of John Murphy, though the article immediately piqued my interest: John had been involved in the early Melbourne punk and post-punk scene with bands like News and Whirlywirld (whom I'd wind up reissuing), moved to the UK in 1980 and played with everyone from Current 93 to Nico to Whitehouse, moved back to Australia in 1984 and was heavily involved with the Dogs In Space soundtrack and the subsequent Max Q project with INXS's Michael Hutchence and old friend Ollie Olsen. 

Max Q has, so far as I've heard from those involved, always been a bit of a sore point, as its members, all veterans of the post-punk underground with an international rock star up front, felt that Hutchence's management sabotaged the band, believing the project was beneath their golden boy and that it could hurt his career trajectory. Michael Hutchence was very much into it (and a good human, from all reports), though Max Q's success was hampered by those wanting its singer to concentrate on what made them money. None of this is a big secret, and surely documented elsewhere, anyway.

In the late '80s, John Murphy was also in the pioneering scuzz-rock outfit, Slub, though I believe he'd left the band by the time I really noticed them. The band of his which really caught my ear in real time was Dumb & The Ugly, the instrumental power-trio with Dave Brown and Michael Sheridan. John had relocated to Sydney, though they would play occasional shows in Melbourne and were a force of nature live, a walloping mix of (as John would put it) Hendrix, Gore, Chrome and Swans. Their debut 12" EP remains a top-10 Australian disc for moi. Their records were being released on the Dr. Jim's label, which my brother and I found out early on was run by Dr. James Glaspole (and, more anonymously, my friend Edgar Lee), the older brother of a school friend of my brother. In fact, we had all gone to the same high school, as had John Murphy, the latter also attending the same primary school as me and growing up just streets from my house (though John was approx 12 years older, graduating in 1977).

Through this connection, I became friends with Dr. Jim and then John Murphy, interviewing him for my fanzine in 1993 and keeping in touch over the years. John was still playing music when he passed away in 2016, involved with the likes of Boyd Rice and Death In June and living in the US and Europe for the last 20 years of his life. The Harry Butler article in B Side, to get back to things, spoke of John's involvement with the pre-punk teen band, Mandrix, who played around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the mid '70s, and I quizzed John about this over the years. The band actually played a gig in Kew in March of 1976 supporting AC/DC at a church hall when John was only starting year 11 in high school. AC/DC had risen to considerable prominence here by that stage, but were still playing many suburban high schools, shopping centres, churches and halls in their rise to the top. Huh... the flyer looks like a punk rock show. A Mandrix track was finally issued on a John Murphy CD which was compiled by Alan Bamford (also R.I.P.) and others in tribute to John's music over the years, and it's a monster: total 'Sabbath/Hawkwind-style space-rock boogie, it's amazing that they were playing in my 'hood when I was probably still eating dirt in the garden.

B Side lasted for one more issue, which came out 12 months later, then folded. The John Murphy article was part 1 of 2, though I believe Harry Butler wound up publishing the second half in his own DNA fanzine years later, because it curiously wasn't published in B Side's next and final issue. These 60 pages of print, writing & pictures were deeply influential on my psyche. Dig it.