Sherbet was one of the most successful Australian rock bands of the 1970s. The 'classic line-up' of Daryl Braithwaite on vocals, Tony Mitchell on bass guitar, Garth Porter on keyboards, Alan Sandow on drums, and Clive Shakespeare on guitar provided their teen-oriented pop style. In 1976 Shakespeare left and was soon replaced by Harvey James. Sherbet's biggest singles were "Summer Love" (1975) and "Howzat" (1976), both reaching number one in Australia. "Howzat" was also a top 5 hit in the United Kingdom. The band was less successful in the United States, where "Howzat" peaked at No. 61. As The Sherbs they also reached No. 61 in 1981 with "I Have the Skill". The group disbanded in 1984. Subsequent re-unions have occurred since 1998.
Post is the first solo album by Australian singer-songwriter rock musician, Paul Kelly. Kelly had moved to Sydney by January 1985, after leaving his Melbourne-based Paul Kelly Band and the breakup of his marriage to Hilary Brown.
Sweet and Sour was an Australian television series that screened on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1984. It was created by Tim Gooding and Johanna Pigott and was produced internally for the ABC by Jan Chapman.
Rai Thistlethwayte is an Australian rock, pop and jazz musician and songwriter. Thistlethwayte is an accomplished pianist, guitarist, and vocalist. He is the lead singer and primary songwriter in the Australian pop rock band Thirsty Merc. From 2004, Thirsty Merc released a string of hits in the Australian charts including "In the Summertime", "Someday, Someday", "20 Good Reasons", "Emancipate Myself", "My Completeness", "When the Weather Is Fine" and "Mousetrap Heart". He is currently based in Los Angeles. As a solo artist, Thistlethwayte performs under the name 'Sun Rai'.
Daryl Braithwaite is an Australian singer. He was the lead vocalist of Sherbet. Braithwaite also has a solo career, placing 15 singles in the Australian top 40, including two number-one hits: "You're My World" and "The Horses". His second studio album, Edge, peaked at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, No. 14 in Norway and No. 24 in Sweden.
Graham Bonnet is an English rock singer. He has recorded and performed as a solo artist and as a member of several hard rock and heavy metal bands including Rainbow, Michael Schenker Group, Alcatrazz, and Impellitteri. He is known for his powerful singing voice but is capable of also singing soft melodies. His singing has been noted as "very loud" by both his contemporaries and himself, and he claims to be a self-taught singer with "no discipline for lessons". Bonnet's visual style, considered uncharacteristic of hard rock musicians, has been described as being a cross between Don Johnson in Miami Vice and James Dean.
Garth Ivan Richard Porter is a New Zealand-born Australian multi-instrumental musician, songwriter and record producer. He was a member, on keyboards and backing vocals, of the pop group, Sherbet (1970–84), and co-wrote both of their number-one singles, "Summer Love" and "Howzat". Porter is a co-writer and producer for country music singer Lee Kernaghan.
Kevin Nicholas Borich is a New Zealand-born Australian guitarist and singer-songwriter. He was the mainstay of the La De Da's, the leader of Kevin Borich Express, and a founding member of the Party Boys, as well as a session musician for numerous acts.
Robert Joseph Weston was a British rock guitarist, who was a member of Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s. He also recorded and performed with a number of other musicians, including Graham Bond, Long John Baldry, Murray Head, Sandy Denny, and Danny Kirwan.
Roger Davies is an Australian artist manager, business manager, and music producer in the global music industry. Davies was born in 1952, and his career spans more than half a century.
Tony Mitchell is a songwriter and bass guitarist who rose to fame in the 1970s with Australian rock band Sherbet. Mitchell co-wrote some of Sherbet's biggest hits, including "Howzat" and "Magazine Madonna".
Clive Richard Shakespeare was an English-born Australian pop guitarist, songwriter and producer. He was a co-founder of pop rock group Sherbet, which had commercial success in the 1970s including their number-one single, "Summer Love" in 1975. The majority of Sherbet's original songs were co-written by Shakespeare with fellow band member Garth Porter. Other Sherbet singles co-written by Shakespeare include "Cassandra", "Slipstream" and "Silvery Moon". In January 1976 Shakespeare left the band citing dissatisfaction with touring, pressures of writing and concerns over the group's finances. Shakespeare produced albums for other artists including Post by Paul Kelly in 1985. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002 and died of the disease in 2012, aged 64.
Matt Finish are an Australian rock band formed in mid-1979 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Matt Moffitt (1956–2003) and drummer, composer and producer John Prior. The 1981 line-up of Moffitt, Prior, Richard Grossman on bass guitar and Jeff Clayton on rhythm guitar recorded their debut album, Short Note, which peaked at No. 14 on the Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart. The title song, "Short Note", peaked at No. 33 on the related Singles Chart and became a standard on Australian radio stations. Grossman was later a member of Divinyls and Hoodoo Gurus. On 13 August 2003 Moffit died in his sleep, aged 46. From 2006 Prior has continued Matt Finish with various line-ups.
The Party Boys was an Australian rock supergroup with a floating membership commencing in 1982. Created by Mondo Rock's bass guitarist, Paul Christie, with founding member Kevin Borich as a part-time venture for professional musicians with downtime from their other projects; the group had temporary members from Status Quo, the Angels, Sherbet, Skyhooks, Rose Tattoo, the Choirboys, Australian Crawl, Divinyls, Models, Dragon and Swanee, plus international stars such as Joe Walsh, Eric Burdon, Alan Lancaster, and Graham Bonnet.
Harvey James born Harvey William James Harrop was an English-Australian rock guitarist. He was a member of the bands Mississippi (1973–74), Ariel (1974–75), Sherbet and the Party Boys (1982–83). James was diagnosed with lung cancer in July 2010 and died on 15 January 2011, aged 58, leaving behind his three children, Gabriel, Alexandra and Joshua.
Australian pop music awards are a series of inter-related national awards that gave recognition to popular musical artists and have included the Go-Set pop poll (1966–1972); TV Week King of Pop Awards (1967–1978); TV Week and Countdown Music Awards (1979–1980); the Countdown Awards (1981–1982) and Countdown Music and Video Awards (1983–1987). Early awards were based on popular voting from readers of teenage pop music newspaper Go-Set and television program guide TV Week. They were followed by responses from viewers of Countdown, a TV pop music series (1974–1987) on national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Some of the later award ceremonies incorporated listed nominees and peer-voted awards. From 1987 the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) instituted its own peer-voted ARIA Music Awards.
Paul Adrian Christie is an Australian rock bassist and vocalist. He was a member of various groups including Kevin Borich Express (1978–79), Mondo Rock (1980–82) and the Party Boys. As a member of Mondo Rock he performed on the tracks, "State of the Heart", "Cool World", "Summer of '81", "Chemistry", "No Time", "The Queen and Me" and "In Another Love".
Gregory Raymond Quill was an Australian-born musician, singer-songwriter and journalist. He lived in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and was an entertainment columnist at the Toronto Star newspaper from the mid-1980s until his death in May 2013. In Australia he came to popular fame as a singer-songwriter for the country rock band Country Radio (1970–73). Their biggest hit, "Gypsy Queen", co-written by Quill with bandmate Kerryn Tolhurst, was released in August 1972 and peaked at No. 12 on the Go-Set National Top 40. After getting an arts grant, Quill travelled to Toronto in 1974 and by the mid-1980s had become a journalist with the Toronto Star. By 1983 he was married to Ellen Davidson, a public relations executive. Greg Quill died on 5 May 2013, at the age of 66, from "complications due to pneumonia".
Ronald Robert Peel, who also performed as Rockwell T. James, was an Australian guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a member of numerous bands starting with the Missing Links and the Pleazers in the mid-1960s; then the La De Da's from 1972 to 1975 and in various backing bands for John Paul Young. He released a solo album Shot of Rhythm and Blues in 1977 under the James pseudonym, which provided his only top 40 single, "Roxanne". He co-wrote "Rock Me Gently" for Sherbet with its band members, which is a top 10 hit for that group. Peel died in 2020 due to an unspecified cancer.
Gimme Ted, or more fully Gimme Ted – The Ted Mulry Benefit Concerts, is an Australian 2×DVD video and tribute album by Various Artists, which was released on 19 May 2003. It was recorded at two eponymous benefit concerts on 9 and 10 March 2001, with "some of Australia's finest musicians from the past and present" as well as "One-off reunions of classic bands." The artists were honouring rock musician Ted Mulry, who had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour in the previous year. The shows were compèred by Glenn A. Baker, Donnie Sutherland and Ray Burgess.
