Various Artists - Long Live The Evolution (The Best of DoubleJay)

(Australian Bands 1976/77)
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Now here's another true rarity, especially for those outside of Sydney. This is an album of specially recorded live performances by a wide range of popular Australian acts of the mid 70's. It was only ever given away as a prize to listeners to the then new and groundbreaking station DOUBLEJAY (2JJ). Some of these tracks (ie Jeff St John's) which is just brilliant, were never recorded and are unavailable in any other version elsewhere. It also holds the only recording by Adelaide band Tomlin and live recording of Pantha.

2JJ started broadcasting in Jan 1975 on an old ABC standby transmitter
They dived headlong into the stagnant pool of Australian radio and tried with varying degrees of success to stir the waters for a while; to continue the metaphor, to avoid drowning.
2JJ's programming philosophy was to play a broad area of rock/pop/blues/jazz/folk music that you could call “contemporary”, and at the same time remembering the roots of this music, and presenting news, comedy and features for the “young people” the ABC asked them to cater for.
They had several programmers, who listened to music and put records into neat little piles for their disc-jockeys to play on the radio.
Often the disc-jockeys got very artistic, referring to themselves as announcers or broadcasters, and spent hours blending the great sounds at that time, the hits of tomorrow with fascinating information, scintillating wit and sometimes remembering to read out the time.
Other times they came in late, suffering from the after effects of doing various naughty things, and played whatever was lying on the studio floor.

The “Creative Radio”, as they called it, was necessary because 2JJ played music for its own sake, rather than joining in with the old-fashioned Top 40 concept.
Some of them (well all of them, actually) had pretty strange and varied tastes, but what they did have in common was a desire to hear music as it was being played in Australia, day at that time.
So with their 16 track mobile studio, plus a few nice indoor studios at the ABC, 2JJ recorded the bands, singers, players and songwriters that they thought had talent or something to say or potential or any of the things that their publicists would one day claim to have known about all along.

2JJ had a lot of faith in Australian music, not just as a commercial product (good luck, get rich on it if you can), but as a continuing and developing part of all our lives. Long live the evolution !

The rip included here was taken from Vinyl in FLAC format and contains original album artwork. (Thanks to Sunshine for the FLACs)
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Track Listings

01 Skyhooks - Party To End All Parties
02 Dragon - Blacktown Boogie
03 Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons - If It's Love You Want You Can Count On Me
04 Pantha - Rushcutter Bay Heartbeat Reggae
05 Jeff St. John - I Can Hardly Wait For Summer
06 Renee Geyer - It's Been A Long Time
07 AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
08 Ariel - Keep On Dancing
09 Tomlin - 65 Directory
10 Radio Birdman - Burned My Eye
11 Feather - Free And Easy
12 Finch - Short Changed Again

Long Live The Evolution FLACS (306Mb) New link 12/11/2024

Pantha - Doway Do Doway Do (1975) + Bonus Tracks

(Australian 1975-77)

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Along with Pirana (another Sydney band in the early 1970's), Pantha were influenced by the Santana hall mark of using rock over a Latin beat. Their music was an unusual hybrid of rock, jazz, Latin American, West Indian and even occasional Zappa-like tracks.

Even though these guys were obviously channeling the Osibisa/Santana thing, they were doing it with immense fun. Exuberant frontman Paul Curtis was a good vocalist and flamboyant percussionist and other members, apart from Jack Wilson on bass, included sensational guitarist Roger Pell (ex-Kush), fluid keyboard player Danny Bourne (who later joined Mick Fettes, ex-Madder Lake, and Thank God You're Here's Shane Bourne [brother?] in Bandicoot), and, later, drummer Barry Cram (who went on to play with hard rock bands Avalanche and Contraband). Conga player Peter Lee who later switched to drums was not the same Peter Lee who was drummer with similarly funky band Stylus.

The band had one line-up change in their time together, with Barry Cram replacing Adriane Paine on drums and Jose McLaughlin replacing Dannie Bourne on keyboards.

Pantha supported the Doobie Brothers on their "Stampede Across Australia" Tour at Festival Hall, Melbourne in 1976.

Pantha only released three singles and one album (on the Wizard label) during their short lifespan and were recorded live at the DoubleJay studio concert on April 12th, 1977, with a track entitled 'Rushcutter Bay Heartbeat Reggae'

Their album was recorded at Trafalgar Studios, Sydney and was produced by Roger Pell and John Sayers.

My favourite track would have to be 'Bar Diddlyah Bordraux' as it sounds so much like Osibisa, who I also enjoy.

This Rip was taken from vinyl at 320kps and includes full album artwork (thanks to Midoztouch). For your enjoyment, I have also included a live track from their JJ concert in 1977 "Rushcutter Bay Heartbeat Reggae", and a later single "Happiness"/"Life Dreams" along with its accompanying publicity poster.

Track Listing

01 - I Am Not Afraid

02 - Pantha's Overflow

03 - All Things Below

04 - Doway Do, Doway Do

05 - Bar Diddlyah Bordraux

06 - Spiritual Sky

07 - Blue House
08 - Happiness (Single Side-A)
09 - Life Dreams (Single Side-B)

10 - Rushcutter Bay Heartbeat Reggae (live bonus track)

Band Members:

Paul Curtis (Lead Vocals & Percussion)
Roger Pell (Guitar)
Dannie Bourne (Keyboards)
Jack Wilson  (Fretless Bass)
Adrian Payne (Drums)
Peter Lee (Congas Percussion)
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Pantha Link (72Mb)

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