Little Band Scene - History

History

"There were impromptu bands with noise guitars, drum machines, briefcase synthesisers, being played by people that had never learned to play music. The bands didn't really exist; they just played in loungerooms, and occasionally at venues. It was all low-tech equipment, but at the same time it was almost state-of-the-art, cutting-edge equipment—not what you'd consider rock'n'roll instrumentation."

The Little Band scene got its name from "Little Band nights", gigs organised in Melbourne by members of Primitive Calculators. Originally they were bands made up of members of the Calculators, Whirlywirld and friends, and acted as support bands for the Calculators, Whirlywirld and The Boys Next Door. The Calculators and Whirlywirld lived next door to each other in a split terrace and had rehearsal spaces in each house. By using the Calculators' and Whirlywirld's equipment, it made it easier to practice and set up for the night. These bands often had a charming disposable quality, happy to play once or twice and then form other "little bands". This was often a result of the bands being composed of non-musicians enjoying the opportunity to realise their naive musical ideas. One journalist described their output as "sloppy, clangy and discordant. By turns, they could sound equally fantastic: a mixture of epileptic drum machine rhythms, stabbing synth lines and creepy/witty lyrics making for oddly compelling results." Some in the scene had received proper training in electronic music and composition, including members of Whirlywirld, who studied under Melbourne-based composer Felix Werder.

A local record shop owner, Max Robenstone of Climax Records and Alan Bamford, who recorded and mastered the Primitive Calculators' self-titled LP, paid for the recording of the Little Bands EP in 1979, featuring Morpions, Ronnie and the Rhythm Boys, The Take and Too Fat to Fit Through the Door. It grew from there and began to take on a life of its own. At later nights, up to ten hastily assembled bands would play for fifteen minutes each. The scene flourished from 1978 until early 1981. A number of lasting musical partnerships were forged in the scene; Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry went on to achieve international acclaim with their band Dead Can Dance. The little bands interacted with other distinct post-punk scenes in Melbourne, including "The Organ Factory" (an experimental arts space in Clifton Hill), and the "proto-gothic" scene at the Crystal Ballroom in St Kilda, spearheaded by The Boys Next Door (later known as The Birthday Party), The Moodists, and Crime and the City Solution. After the Calculators and Whirlywirld left town for Europe and London in early 1980, the Little Band scene centred on the shared spaces of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies and Use No Hooks.

The first phase—up to the departure of the Calculators and Whirlywirld—was documented on an unreleased double LP, No Sin Like Dancing, that is catalogued in Clinton Walker's book Inner City Sound. Several little bands can also be found on the 1981 One Stop Shopping compilation released by Tom Ellard's Terse Tapes label, as well as on issues of Bruce Milne's cassette magazine Fast Forward (1980-82). Bootleg copies of Alan Bamford's 3RRR Little Bands radio program are also known to exist. Little band recordings have appeared on Chapter Music releases, including the 2007 Primitive Calculators and Friends CD, and the Can't Stop It! compilation series.