Box Set

Radio Birdman’s debut album ‘Radios Appear’ was the pinnacle of Australian rock ’n’ roll in the 1970s, but the band’s days were already numbered. PATRICK EMERY dives into a new 7-CD box set compiling all of Birdman’s studio output plus a wealth of outtakes, rarities and live recordings.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] The story of Radio Birdman is shrouded in mythology. A friend of mine – who spent a term as a medical student working alongside Deniz Tek in the emergency department in Billings, Montana – located Radio Birdman’s career trajectory in the context of the ideal hero type in classical mythology explored by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell … before adding, in the context of Birdman’s reunion in 1996, “Except the hero never returns.”

Conceived in that largely infertile period between the halcyon days of the late 1960s and the punk explosion of the mid-to-late 1970s, Radio Birdman revelled in and exploited their outsider status. While the mainstream Australian rock ’n’ roll scene was caught between Billy Thorpe’s 13-minute blues jams and fey local interpretations of glam rock, Birdman sought inspiration from The Stooges, the MC5 and The Velvet Underground.

From its beginnings, Radio Birdman were a volatile beast, their collective persona a facade behind which the personalities of their members regularly fumed and fought – in fact, it is arguable that the very strength of commitment and personality that made Radio Birdman such an imposing rock ’n’ roll force was the very factor that led to its downfall. (Judging by the recent ousting of guitarist Chris Masuak from the band, time has certainly not healed the band’s internal wounds.)

Famously, Radio Birdman refused to compromise: theirs was a loud, deliberately confrontational war on the jive of the mainstream. While songs such as ‘New Race’, and Birdman’s adoption of a uniform and evocative emblem and pretensions to military discipline, led to ill-founded charges of fascism, the band’s politics never fit in with any linear philosophical or ideological structures.

“Radio Birdman were never a punk band in the tabloid sense of the term.”

But although Birdman claimed no political allegiance, in reality they were a political outfit in the purest sense of the term – as Michel Foucault once remarked, where there is power there is politics, and Radio Birdman was all about power.

Despite the coincidence of the emergence of the UK and US punk scenes with Birdman’s rise, Radio Birdman were never a punk band in the tabloid sense of the term. But if punk is about a do-it-yourself ethos, and challenging the dominant discourse of the institutions of power, then Birdman were as punk as they come.

Radio Birdman existed for only four years before imploding on a 1978 European tour. In that time the band released an EP and two LPs, including an overseas release of their debut album, Radios Appear. A final LP, Living Eyes, was released in 1981 to coincide with the New Race tour, the so-called supergroup comprising Tek, Rob Younger, Warwick Gilbert, MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson and Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton. (A bootleg live album, Eureka Birdman, was recorded surreptitiously at a show at the Eureka Hotel in Geelong in 1977, subsequently finding its way into the United States as Where the Action Is). A second EP, More Fun! (featuring three songs recorded at the band’s last Australian concert before embarking on that ill-fated European tour), was released in 1988 as part of the Under the Ashes box set.

After years of rumour and promise, the complete original Radio Birdman studio recordings, together with outtakes, rarities and a scintillating recording of the band’s Paddington Town Hall show in December 1977 have been released in box set form.

You can start anywhere with this selection, and arguably no better than the cover of The Stooges’ ‘TV Eye’, which opens the original Radios Appear. Heralded by Younger’s blood-curdling scream, and fuelled by Deniz Tek and Chris Masuak’s duelling Detroit rock guitars, there are few better opening tracks than this.

From there the album is as close to perfect as you could hope: there’s Detroit surf rock (‘Murder City Nights’), Nuggets garage (‘Monday Morning Gunk’), pop anthems (‘Do the Pop’, ‘New Race’). And who else but Radio Birdman would find inspiration in Edgar Allen Poe (‘Descent Into the Maelstrom’) or Rembrandt (‘Man With Golden Helmet’)? Alongside The Saints’ debut album I’m Stranded, this is the pinnacle of Australian ’70s rock ’n’ roll.

“As the lyrics to ‘Hanging On’ suggest, the spirit was hanging on but the night was closing in.”

The first bonus disc comprises the Burn My Eye EP, together with various alternative versions of the album tracks (‘Hand of Law’, ‘Man With Golden Helmet’, ‘I94’, ‘Anglo Girl Desire’, ‘Descent Into the Maelstrom’) and an intriguing acoustic version of ‘Love Kills’. Also, the rarely heard ‘Insane Alive’ – intertwined with Garland Jeffreys’ ‘Wild in the Streets’ – finally sees the light of day.

The second Radios Appear (the ‘white album’) was put together to capitalise on Sire Records’ signing of the band; sadly, the mooted US tour never went ahead after Sire dropped Birdman from its roster after encountering substantial financial difficulties. In addition to a large chunk of the Australian version of the album, the white version includes Birdman’s classic Hawaii Five-O tribute ‘Aloha Steve and Danno’, another would-be pop classic (‘Non-Stop Girls’), ‘Hit ‘Em Again’ (written by Tek with Ron Asheton during a trip to the US in 1976) and a cover of Thirteenth Floor Elevators’ ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ that might just be the best cover of that song ever recorded.

The bonus disc accompanying the white album is full of more gems: a cover of the MC5’s ‘Shakin’ Street’ (itself a clue to Birdman’s pop sensibility), a no less incendiary take on ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ and a harmony-less ‘More Fun’. The outtakes of ‘Breaks My Heart’ and ‘Crying Sun’ pack a punch absent in the subsequently recorded version, while the alternate version of ‘Aloha Steve and Danno’ is more syncopated jungle rock than garage surf classic.

By the time Living Eyes was recorded in Rockfield, Wales, in 1978, Radio Birdman was on life support. To listen to the original version of the record, released posthumously in 1981 to coincide with the New Race tour, is to hear a band seemingly going through the motions: the production is thin, the performances tainted with fatigue. As the lyrics to ‘Hanging On’ suggest, the flag was gone; the spirit was hanging on, but the night was closing in.

Re-mixed in the late 1990s as part of a CD re-release of the original recordings, Living Eyes took on a new guise – here was the Birdman spirit uncovered like a masterpiece restored to its original mesmerising condition. In addition to early Birdman tracks such as ‘Burn My Eye’, ‘I94’ and ‘Smith and Wesson Blues’ (all of which had appeared on the Burn My Eye EP in 1976 – with the Living Eyes version of the EP’s title track having new lyrics written by Tek just prior to the recording session), songs such as ‘455 SD’ (a Tek tribute to the automotive industry of his US home state), ‘Iskender Time’ and ‘Do the Movin’ Change’ exhibit the blend of garage rock attitude and pop sensibility which underpinned Birdman’s sound and style.

The Living Eyes bonus disc album includes two tracks written by Chris Masuak, neither of which made it to the final album (although both would become staples of The Hitmen’s set in the early 1980s). Birdman’s version of ‘Didn’t Tell the Man’ would eventually be released on the More Fun! EP); while still a great song, the version of ‘Death By the Gun’ included here lacks the potency of its Hitmen incarnation. (And for a sense of its live qualities, track down the Eureka Birdmen bootleg.)

“Broken bottles, blood and irrational crowd behaviour provide the background for this most intense of performances.”

And then there’s the Paddington Town Hall gig from December 1977. This live set is best listened to while reading the account of the concert in Vivien Johnson’s excellent Birdman biography/ethnography. Stories of broken bottles, blood on the walls and irrational crowd behaviour provide the background narrative for this most intense of performances: starting with an even more confrontational rendition of New Race, this is Radio Birdman at the peak of its powers, on the cusp of global domination; conversely, on the precipice of its impending fall.

The set is a cross-section of the band’s catalogue, punctuated with covers of Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Transmaniacon MC’ and the MC5’s ‘Ramblin’ Rose’. But where is the cover of Kraftwerk’s ‘Radioactivity,’ which according to Johnson’s biography was in the set that night?

On the bonus DVD you get a sample of the live action from the night, with live performances of ‘Aloha Steve and Danno’ and ‘What Gives?’. Witness the manic behaviour of Rob Younger, writhing around on stage, the freakish cadaver from another world. The DVD also includes the promotional clip to ‘Aloha Steve and Danno’ released in 1988 to coincide with the Under the Ashes box set, and a couple of rough and ready black-and-white performances (‘Monday Morning Gunk’ and ‘Ramblin’ Rose’) from Macquarie University in 1976.

The box set comes with a stack of never-before-seen photos of the band, together with liner notes written by former Rolling Stone editor Toby Creswell. Creswell makes the astute observation that, for all the Detroit associations made with Radio Birdman, the band’s sound was as much about surf rock – The Pink Fairies and Venturas were regulars in Birdman’s set – as it was about mining The Stooges and MC5.

As the years pass, the mythology of Radio Birdman only grows and strengthens. While, by definition, any myth is tainted by factual imprecision, to listen to this box set is to realise that there will never be another band like Radio Birdman.

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The Radio Birdman box set is out now through Citadel Records.