Maybe it had a little bit to do with Phil’s high voice having prominently featured on two early Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers classics “ Breakdown” and “ American Girl” Petty was hot property at the time and Phil’s music was of a similar sort. Certainly, it wasn’t to do with any local success Phil may have had as the oft-singing drummer in the Dwight Twilley band, whose 1976 US hit “ I’m On Fire” did nothing here, and surely it had nothing to do with the fact that amongst the handful of power pop fans around the country, Phil was already a hero. “ Echo Beach” reached #6 in Australia in 1980, but, despite a succession of further hits at home, they weren’t heard down here again.Ī fabulously breezy example of the sub-genre of 60s inspired guitar pop that aficionados call ‘power pop’, “ Previous To Me” seemingly got picked up by commercial radio here out of nowhere. I remember “ Echo Beach” getting flogged on Melbourne’s 3RRR before 3XY picked up on it – it’s angular rhythms were very much in keeping with the local post-punk Australian scene that produced other female-fronted groups like Pel Mel and Do-Re-Mi. More post-punk art pop, this time from Canada. The Waitresses drummer at the time they hit was Billy Ficca, formerly of Seminal New York band Television. The tune was written by the band’s guitarist who’d previously been a member of significant Ohio avant-garde groups the Numbers Band and Tin Huey (whose sax player, the sadly recently deceased Ralph Carney, went on to fame playing with Tom Waits, and was the uncle of Patrick Carney from Akron’s recent favourite sons the Black Keys). We laughed when we read that there is actually a Donnie Iris documentary out there called “ King Cool”, but his sole Australian hit “ Ah! Leah!” was a pretty cool one at that… Sorry for the teasing – we love you Donnie.ĭevo and the B-52’s proved that American art-pop and kitsch could appeal to the masses, so when the Waitresses appeared out of Akron Ohio – Devo’s hometown – with an insanely catchy and smart-funny tune that could appeal in very different ways to both boys and girls, a hit single was assured. Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he get that yellow suit? Eugene Levey/Dick Smith lookalike Donnie Iris wasn’t in the Australian pop spotlight long enough to answer any of these questions, but if he had been we would have found out that he’d actually been a later member of Wild Cherry who’d had the hit “ Play That Funky Music White Boy” (no doubt written in anticipation of the instructions Donnie would need when he joined) and before that, in 1970, he’d written and performed the hit “ The Rapper” - and no it wasn’t a rap song - as a member of The Jaggerz. A good tune could still cut through though, so whilst all sorts of unlikely candidates were picked from obscurity and given their shot, some got their 15 minutes of fame, and we got some great tunes. Music was in a state of flux punk/new wave and disco had shaken things up late in the ‘70s and the biz was still trying to figure what was happening. The late ‘70s & early ‘80s was a great time for one-hit wonders.
0 kommentar(er)
