Various / Cassette
The Good Shit Downunder
THE GOOD SHIT DOWNUNDER VOL 1
ALL OZ MIXTAPE: 1980-1989
This double sided cassette mix-tape of Australian 80s boogie, dance, electro/synth-funk and more from the 1980s was produced for Groovescooter’s 21st Birthday celebrations and includes 2 x 30 minute DJ mixes, plus stickers (and/or bonus T-shirt), PLUS a bonus digital-pack of 20+ bonus edits, remixes and cover versions.
Side A: Paris Groovescoter mix
Side B: DJ Mr Lob mix
The Story…
Back in the ’80s when the people behind Groovescooter first started playing in bands and were navigating those final, near-suicidal years of high school stuck in suburbia, there were a bunch of Australian bands who gave us hope and provided a window to an escape hatch. These were artists who inspired by paving the electronic way locally and pushing against the entrenched pub-rock mentality in Australia. Rather than swimming with the boardshorted tide, they took their influences from the Stateside disco/soul/boogie/r’n’b scenes and the newer European strains of electronic dance music. We looked up to these artists, went to their gigs and shamelessly emulated them. Eschewing guitar solos (and often guitars altogether), they instead lugged drum machines, Simmons kits and synthesizers to gigs, while struggling with MIDI and early sequencers live. Some of them even managed to get their hands on a costly Australian invention called The Fairlight (for which we were insanely jealous).
Outside of inner-city Melbourne and Sydney, favouring dance music over guitar-posturing at the time took some courage, as sometimes punks would gob or threaten violence, while rock yobbos hurled homophobic insults at the stage. So hats off to the renegades like The Reels, the mighty Rockmelons, Models (for the utterly groundbreaking Alphabravacharliedeltaechofoxtrotgolf), I’m Talking, Flotsam Jetsam, Vitabeats, Flaming Hands, Deckchairs Overboard, Fiction Romance, Big Pig, Pel Mel, Machinations and many others. This mixtape and the bonus pack of edits is inspired by them and others.
You can PURCHASE the cassette from our Bandcamp store.
