Judith Durham is an Australian singer, songwriter and musician who became the lead singer of the Australian popular folk music group The Seekers in 1963.
Australian indie rock is part of the overall flow of Australian rock history but has a distinct history somewhat separate from mainstream rock in Australia, largely from the end of the punk rock era onwards.
Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high-profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to gain a high profile in the international jazz arena.
Essendon Airport were an Australian electronic music, post-punk group formed in 1978 which explored experimental minimalist and funk music. Founding mainstays were the duo of David Chesworth on electric piano and drum machine and Robert Goodge on guitar. They were joined in late 1980 by Ian Cox on saxophone and Paul Fletcher on drums. In 1982 they added Barbara Hogarth on bass guitar but disbanded in the following year. The group issued a four-track extended play, Sonic Investigations , and a studio album, Palimpsest. They reformed as the original duo line-up for occasional performances in 2003 after the issue of a compilation album, Sonic Investigations of the Trivial. A new double CD version of Palimpsest, and other live material, was released by Chapter Music in August 2011.
An Australian recording and performance group called Nasenbluten were formed in Newcastle in 1992. The group were founded by three DJs, Aaron Lubinski, David Melo and Mark Newlands. They've first pioneered hardcore techno, gabber, amigacore and cheapcore music in the Australian market, releasing the six studio albums before disbanding in 2001.
Ash Wednesday is an Australian musician, who played in JAB, Models and Einstürzende Neubauten.
Kurt Swinghammer is a Canadian singer-songwriter and visual artist based in Toronto, Ontario.
Kenneth Stephen Nicol is a British guitar player, vocalist and songwriter. He was a member of The Albion Band for many years and for eight years (2002–2010) played in British folk rock band Steeleye Span.
Australian musicians played and recorded some of the earliest punk rock. The Saints released their first single in 1976. Bands playing subgenres or offshoots of punk music, such as local hardcore acts, still have a strong cult following throughout Australia. Fans started to form bands, both punk and dissimilar in sound, beginning a distinct Brisbane punk scene, one of the first in the world. By 1977, other bands were starting to form in Sydney, under the influence of local and overseas punk acts. These bands and other Australian and overseas punk acts were strongly supported by public radio stations. The Young Charlatans had formed in Melbourne out of the ashes of earlier bands. During the late 1970s, former members of Radio Birdman contributed to several new Sydney bands. The Quick and the Dead, who played in Perth during 1979–81, pioneered a sound closely related to Oi!.
Australian heavy metal music has its roots in both the Australian hard rock and pub rock tradition of the 1970s and the American and British heavy metal scenes. Since the mid-1980s, Australian heavy metal has been particularly influenced by foreign bands, particularly Swedish death metal, American thrash metal and black metal from Norway. Within Australia heavy metal has always remained part of the underground but since the mid-1990s many Australian metal acts have found widespread acceptance in overseas markets, particularly in Europe.
Linda George is an English-born Australian pop, jazz fusion and soul singer from the 1970s. In 1973, George performed the role of Acid Queen for the Australian stage performance of The Who's rock opera, Tommy. She won the TV Week King of Pop award for "Best New Female Artist". Her cover version of "Neither One of Us", peaked at No. 12 on the Australian Singles Chart and her 1974 single "Mama's Little Girl" reached the Top Ten. From 1972 to 1998, George also worked as a session singer and later became a music teacher. Her last CD recorded in the late 1990s will be available in 2012.
The Australian ska scene has existed since the mid-1980s, when it started enjoying the same sort of interest as it did in the United Kingdom, following the success of UK 2 Tone bands such as The Specials, The Beat and Madness.
Stylus were an Australian blue-eyed soul group formed in 1975. They were the first Australian act to be released by Motown Records in the USA. Stylus toured supporting George Benson, Average White Band, Ike & Tina Turner, and Little River Band. According to rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, Stylus "scored a number of hit singles and became very popular on the Australian pub and concert circuit". The group disbanded in 1979 and subsequently had various reunions. In 1998-99 Japan's Toshiba-EMI re-issued three Stylus albums on CDs. Their reunions have resulted in a live album, Still Alive (2003); and a new studio album, Across Time (2010).
Mark Cawthra is an English musician and record producer working in the UK. He was born in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England.
Cidny Bullens, formerly known as Cindy Bullens, is an American singer-songwriter, who is best known for serving as backup vocalist on tours and albums with Elton John and Rod Stewart; as well as providing vocals on the soundtrack of the 1978 feature film Grease. In 2012, Bullens publicly came out as a transgender man and changed his name to Cidny Bullens.
Frederick Lawrence Mandel is a Canadian session musician, keyboard player and guitarist.
The Dead Livers is the name of a country rock band formed in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in April 1978. Formative members were Marty Atchison (vocals), Brendan Mitchell, Michael Schack, Edward Mitchell (guitar)(1978-1978) and Tony Pizzi (drums) (1978-1978). Later members included Richard O'Keefe (drums)(1978-), Warren Keats (guitar) (1979-1979), Peter Thorne (guitar),(1979-1979) John Berto (guitar) (1979-), Randy Broughten (1979-1979)(before joining the Gear Daddies in the US), Bob Suffern (1980-1984), Rodger Delfos (guitar) (1980-), Ross Nicholson (1983-1984), Craig Reeves (piano),(1984-1988) Les Gough ,(1984-1988) Chris Shanley (keyboards) (1995-2001) Ron Mahony (drums), (2002-2012) Don Farrell (guitar) (2002-) and Mark Meallin (guitar)(2014-2014).
Bilders is a New Zealand music group of varying lineups that produced a string of self-recorded 7-inch vinyl releases between 1980 and 1982 leading to Beatin Hearts, the first studio-album from fledgling New Zealand independent record label 'Flying Nun Records'.
Y Pants were an all-female no wave band from New York City active from 1979 to 1982. The trio, made up of photographer/musician Barbara Ess, visual artist Virginia Piersol, and filmmaker Gail Vachon, developed a unique sound via their acoustic toy instrumentation of toy piano, ukulele and a paper-headed Mickey Mouse drum kit, augmented by electric bass guitar, Casio keyboards and various low-tech effects.
Steve Tallis is an Australian singer-songwriter and guitar player.
