God Bless Australia. While I’d never wear an England sports shirt and God forbid I ever wear a football shirt from the egregious business venture (as opposed to a sport) that is the English Premier League, I’m presently endeavouring to buy an Aussie Wallabies shirt — it’s justifiable because I have no idea what sport they play nor have I ever seen them so it’s not a tribal thing. What snobbery!
In other things I’m grateful to Australia for, my favourite Aussie Josephine receives a respectful bow firstly as ever, then I’m pointing specifically to The Guttersnipes today. Michael, Paul, Mark and Andrew have been a pleasure to speak to recently and kindly furnished me with this:
I double-checked as much as I could and as far as I can tell this is the only copy I’ve ever seen of this particular Australia tour poster featuring the late addition of Sunday February 2, 1992.
They’re certainly my music pick of the present week so I’ve ripped the OFFICIAL Guttersnipes Live at the Great Britain in 1992 YouTube set from their Facebook page and would like to present it to you as a fun and healthy way to add some Antipodean colour to your day:
If that doesn’t please your ears, well try a slice of the Southernhemisphereplayaistic studio version of Face the Day:
The gritty vocals are given me a good feel (like Rancid at their peak), the willingness to let the music soar in a jumble of indie sunshine, hammer-on-off rock riffs and a wicked outro well-worth waiting for; a nice touch. Interesting hearing a bit of their story too, peoples, look around you, some of these people you’re going to take with you for decades to come:
“(Paul) We four had fairly similar backgrounds, we all met at uni and lived at the same residential college. Musically the tastes were pretty diverse…One guy was into Depression, Misfits, Butthole Surfers, Mass Appeal and others. Another guy was into Minor Threat, Fugazi, Pixies and Steve Albini. Another was into more folk-pop oriented, (The Saints, The Church) and me, I had a bit of everything (Deep Purple, Kate Bush, The Damned, Einsturzende Nuebaten, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Swervedriver). We all had a bit of crossover with each others tastes. Husker Du, Black Sabbath, etc. Musically, it was an interesting mix and our priority was staying friends believe it or not. Our matrix was the fun factor. We played good songs, and we had plenty of mates who drank a lot of beer. A rent a crowd as it were, which made us instantly popular with the venues.”
“(Michael) I’d add Dinosaur Jr and the Pixies to the list Paul had, and possibly some other Australian bands like God, Bored, The Throwaways and Venom P. Stinger. We were all aware of Bleach around the time we formed too, and a lot of other post hardcore stuff from 88/89.”
“(Mark) There were a lot of very good bands around Melbourne at that time, and a lot of places to play. It was a very unpretentious scene, there was not a lot of fashion bullshit. If you were good people came to see you. I have no doubt the best live music on the planet at that time was in Melbourne, not that we realised it then. You could go see the Powder Monkeys in a small pub then cross the road and see Damaged, two of the best live bands that ever existed.”
Intriguingly, the band state they’ve still got material from their final studio sessions they never got around to releasing…Curious…The unknowns of music past; watch this space and check out The Guttersnipes over on Facebook; there’s a lot going on in Melbourne.
For the record, here are the other three Australia tour posters I could locate:
Nirvana Legacy 
Nice. Who wrote this? Andrew? Just interested.
Hiya! I wrote whatever isn’t in quotation marks. The quoted band members have their names at the front of each quote in brackets.