Elsewhere: Heaven is cranking up raucous rock'n'roll

By GRAHAM REID

Curiously enough, this age of ambient-lounge and trip-hop is a blissful time to be alive if you are into raucous rock'n'roll. And it doesn't matter if you are a neo-punk of 20 or a pension-claiming 45-year-old because there's the new and the old out there just waiting to be cranked up.

Consider: the Strokes, White Stripes, Hives and others stumble around the planet playing variants of garageband/new wave rock; our own Datsuns and D4 who've been at it for years seem to be paddling on to the crest of the same new wave; and recently we've seen compilations of local 80s ska-rock heroes the Newmatics and the Move to Riot trash'n'thrash collection of punk and garageband noise.

This is all good, and of course this being the Queen's Jubilee year we know what that means: 25 years since the Pistols and time for the reissues. Already there's the Bollocks album and another collection of "hits" and other raggedy stuff, there's a three-CD box set next month and God Save the Queen has been reissued with a dance mix.

The Pistols things have garnered a fair degree of attention, but there are a couple of other worthy period-piece reissues which have slipped out but missed the scanners.

Radio Birdman were one of the great Detroit rock bands, except they came from Sydney. Inspired by the Stooges and MC5, they blasted out of Australia in one of those short, fast flights that would end in legend or obscurity. They managed to achieve both. Most people never heard of them let alone their sonic boom thrash-pop, but the few who did became passionate.

Regrettably, there were very few, and the Birdman career lasted all of four years, leaving a couple of albums and some singles and EPs, and a lot of people later saying, "Wow, did that really happen?"

Birdman were, like the Saints from Brisbane, smarter than most contenders and in their sound you could hear strange suggestions of surf rock (Aloha Steve and Danno addressed the stars of the television show Hawaii 5-0 and includes a snatch of the theme) and a real pop-rock sensibility. They might have been noisy, but they knew when to pull back, how to shove in a chorus you'd remember, and weren't beyond a little coiling guitar solo for extra texture. And dammit, they also had a piano player who pulled out everything from Jerry Lee Lewis to melodic Bob Seger-type balladry. Little wonder people were impressed.

A few years ago there was a box set, but you needed fast cash and it was gone before you could trade in your Cars albums. Now there's a cracking single disc The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-78) through Seattle's Sub Pop label (Shock here), and it bristles with energy from Aloha Steve and Danno through its 22 tracks. If they hadn't come after you'd swear you could hear echoes of the Clash here (Hand of Law), and scattered around there's sleazy nightclub jazzy piano (Love Kills). You can hear them invent new wave on Non Stop Girls upon which XTC and a dozen others unwittingly built their early careers. Yes, Radio Birdman did all that and more, and then disappeared.

The great Radio Birdman also appear on a double-disc collection of a decade of Australian garageband rock from the mid-70s. Do the Pop! (Shock) takes its title from a Birdman track, but pointedly opens with one of Australia's classic songs, the Saints' (I'm) Stranded which anticipated punk by a year and also drew on the Stooges and the sound of Detroit. Needless to say, they shared bills with Birdman, largely because no one else could.

Do the Pop! offers an excellent overview of the period with tracks by the Sunnyboys, Celibate Rifles, early Hoodoo Gurus, Lime Spiders, Died Pretty, the Hard-Ons, and the Stems. And, as with that Birdman collection, it comes with thorough liner notes.

Yes, it's a long haul after the first dozen tracks but something like the pure power pop of the Hitmen (Didn't Tell the Man) or the desperate girl-pop of the Passengers will leap out and surprise you.

It's worth persisting with to find the frequent little nuggets and songs played by people whose lives seemed to depend on it. That's kinda rare.

What was it Wordsworth said about an exciting period in history: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and in a garageband was very heaven"?