Plastic Threat 7. We civic-mindedly steered away from songs likely to offend, which was no mean feat (eg: Baby do you want a drink/Yeah I said, at your cunt I think, from Love Your Neighbour, and any number of other examples), doing the slower, more melodic choices like Strange Place Of Love. I can recall my plectrum arm aching with the downstroke speed and savagery of my attack, and dripping with sweat, wondering vaguely if I would be able to keep up the pace to the end of the set. Mischief Brew started after Erik Petersen's previous band, The Orphans, broke up in 2000. The Orphans. In tracing Perth punk rock back to its very earliest roots, this website has, I hope, provided some pieces of the jigsaw that have been missing until now. Screaming Orphans, a genre-breaking, chart topping all sister band from Ireland, are known worldwide for their award-winning sound, combi The Anthem For A Doomed Public 9. As to why – well, that IS more complicated than can be covered in a few words. Orphan and Jonathan often performed together and they served as Jonathan’s backing band on his 1974 release Lucky Day, a live album recorded at the (then) Harvard Performance Center. Orphan was the creation of songwriter/singer Eric Lilljequist (born January 1, 1948) who grew up in Massachusetts' Brockton/Avon area, the ensemble emerging in the mid-'60s, a time when few bands in the…. The Orphans is a cinematic audio drama that uses layered sound effects and rich performances to pull the audience into the world of the story. Doesn’t have to be about The Orphans or any particular band – just your story of that incredibly potent time and how it affected you. I also acknowledge on site, and I do so again now, that The Orphans were only a footnote to the main acts on the Perth punk stage, as were my other punk bands, The Geeks and the HY. Also, Billy was showing an interest in songwriting, which was a development I didn’t exactly embrace. They were too late to be part of the first wave as I define it. So began a highly productive phase, which was to yield the rest of the songs that made up the Orphans’ repertoire. Unlike with The Geeks and The Hitler Youth, the rehearsals were closed shop most of the time. The offer from London Records allowed for more creative freedom so they signed a four-album deal with that label, tracking three albums starting with 1972's Everyone Lives to Sing, followed by 1973's Rock & Reflection. The Orphan’s Hands provides them with a safe home and a means to an education, which prevents these vulnerable young men and women from ending up in human bondage. On arrival at the hall, we learned that The Orphans were to appear second on the program – a lowly ranking, given the bands that were programmed above us. And later hardcore punk bands like Enemy Sounds and their next incarnation, Quick And The Dead, were way too late to be considered part of the original punk movement. After Fire, he bawled into the mike “Do ya want some more, or what?” That was faintly embarrassing, because it came uncomfortably close to the sort of cliched rock crowd-teasing wank that punk is supposed to revile, but what the hell – Billy had been great, and there was enough of a response for us to take it as an affirmative. Hi Colin. I hope, and believe, that my account of the time, and that of others who have contributed to the site, has some value for readers interested in delving into the early period of punk in Perth, which in retrospect was very exciting and quite extraordinary. Originally calling the group Orphans, they dropped the plural during the first wave of musicians who worked with Lilljequist on his music. Virus One 2. A female acid casualty with a promising vocal delivery who claimed to have recently seen the late Jim Morrison in Sydney tried out for a couple of weeks; she was too close to hippyville for comfort, and some of my lyrics were too sexist and/or sexually male-orientated for her to carry off. The Orphan Band of Springdale is a heartwarming and educational read. I don’t see any other way I could have interpreted your comments. The Rockets were a post-first-wave band that were hard rocking and punky, but more along the lines of the earlier Detroit sound of The Stooges and the MC5 (though in terms of musical worth, not to be compared with either, I suggest). The Beatle arrived at his party while Orphan was performing on-stage. The Manikins (known as The Veneers initially) formed from the remnants of The Cheap Nasties, which had disbanded when Kim Salmon left in late 77; core Nasties member Neil Fernandes continued as guitarist and main songwriter, and with vocalist Robbie Porritt coming to the fore, The Manikins took on a new identity. On looking back at The Orphans’ repertoire, flawed though the execution of some of the songs surely was, I think we should have been proud. There were Hitler Youthesque amphetamine rushes (Bored and Soul Sister Mary), slower melancholy pieces (Strange Place Of Love, Sweet Suicide), testosterone-fuelled roof-raisers (Fire), tragi-teen melodramas (Heard It On The Radio), a lyrically perverse song about a fallen nun with terrific, original drum treatment by Max (Sister Claire) and a weird, brutally beaty number in 5/4 time with a jungle drum feel (Teenage Lust). Their posse only consists of a mere thirty members, making them one of the smaller, close-knit gangs in New York. You’ve gotta remember, I’m a writer. Quiet conservative Colin? Whereas The Victims had branded themselves with an unmistakable punk identity, we were probably more extreme musically, and threatening in a way The Victims had not been, but did not look like a punk band. Billy claims he never presented me with song lyrics – we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that. That might not have been fair or just, or even the best thing for the band. Andy Thorley - August 20, 2019. Out of a surprisingly easy labour, The Orphans were born. I met Billy at a pre-arranged time on a Saturday afternoon at a flat in the Fremantle area he had days earlier moved into with his girlfriend, Claire (they had just arrived in Perth, in fact, seeking a fresh start away from the big bad Eastern States). It was thrilling as only a first band can be, but we had no idea about our future or who we were as a band. I don’t know what happened and didn’t ask, but Claire and Billy were over from that point. Significantly, we never played in public, and never settled on a name (‘The Geeks’ attached itself post our demise). James Baker, admirably, retained the 60s Mod look that had always set him apart and rescued the band from complete visual cliche. Not sure what you mean to say here. - Duration: 12:27. The Hitler Youth lineups were never stable, and the final one, good as it was, lasted only a couple of weeks. Speed, cider and Riesling carafes back then and now decades means any chance of a lucid contribution from me is futile. Four siblings gathered together for their mother's funeral in Glasgow face individual torments over night during a tumultuous storm that rips the roof off the church. They had a mostly skinhead following, and displayed all the worst qualities of, say, The Victims, with none of the good ones – noisy din-mongers with oi-punk songs devoid of the charm of James Baker’s lyrics, or of any real melodic quality. The band greeted the news with tempered excitement, and our rehearsals became more intense than ever. The two brothers Treat and Philip lived alone since they were kids. But it wasn’t really merely arrogance. It may have been that he could not adjust to the studio recording process, and as he has since reminded me he had a head cold and sore throat that interfered with his sense of pitch. Your Customers 5. Rudolph was not a choice I would have made in other circumstances, partly because I associated him with the conspiracy that had gutted The Geeks, partly because none of the original Orphans members had come from the Perth punk clique and ideally I wanted to keep it that way. Your email address will not be published. Most feedback I’ve had on the site – and I’ve had a lot over the years – has indicated that people understand that intention. Colin worked assiduously on his bass parts (there was a melodic bass run in the verse of Strange Place of Love that was quite challenging, and that I should have allotted to myself on guitar…the problem was, I was still a buzzsaw specialist and not capable of playing it! The Orphan Band of Springdale is a middle-grade fiction novel that was narrated through the lead protagonist, Augusta “Gusta” Neubronner, an eleven-year-old from New York who was sent by her parents to her grandmother in Elm Street, Springdale, Maine. But that’s just how it was, at least from my perspective. Home page of Screaming Orphans, a celtic, folk, indie, pop, songwriter, traditional group from Donegal, Ireland. Max and I, and I think Colin also, met the two singers at the trusty previous haunt of The Geeks and The Hitler Youth – yes, the fabled Wembley Boy Scout headquarters in Jersey Street, Wembley (now erased from Perth’s history as have so many venues and landmarks from the time). The choice was a no-brainer: Billy was our singer. Don’t miss one special night of music with The Orphans at Potawatomi Hotel & Casino in downtown Milwaukee. He answered the door with wet hair, shirtless, Claire moistly pouting in the room behind with a fluffy white towel around her. We sounded like it, but I had never made any attempt to be accepted into the punk clique, Max shared my unsociable attitude, Colin seemed indifferent, and Billy was too working class for what was essentially a group of middle-class art-school types kidding themselves that they were oh-so-street. Yep, by this time, the first wave was long gone. However, I wasn’t interested in assisting him in his first songwriting steps. I recorded a rough tape of some of my new songs and made copies for the prospective band members. Further, they rejected the punk label, and indeed, were right to do so. Orphan was the creation of songwriter/singer Eric Lilljequist (born January 1, 1948) who grew up in Massachusetts' Brockton/Avon area, the ensemble emerging in the mid-'60s, a time when few bands in the region performed their own material. Profile: Punk band from Los Angeles, CA. Hernando’s?? With the support of people who care deeply, they have overcome against all odds. The idea was to preserve the Orphans songs with versions of better quality than were recorded during the band's short life, but that remain true to the spirit and live feel of the band. See actions taken by the people who manage and post content. It probably takes me less time to bang out a lengthy response like the one above than it takes the average non-obsessive non-writer to type out a few quick lines! In case the clue doesn’t fit or there’s something wrong please contact us! A crazed Orphans fan driven to go the gob at Hernando’s Hideaway, 1978. Porritt’s elongated frame, extroversion and confident vocals gave the band a colourful, distinctive image and a new sound, and they developed a musical ‘respectability’ that was to disengage them as the former junior partners of a punk rock double act with The Victims, take them out of the exclusively punk domain and place them before a wider audience at rock venues such as the Shenton Park Hotel. Max doin’ it with feeling…(on stage at Hernando’s Hideaway, Perth, 1978). The Orphans took over at Hernando’s, but the glory of their predecessors was not to be theirs. This was the first new song we had worked on without Colin, and I started thinking that perhaps we could find a good new direction as The Orphans after all. Bass player Dave Cardwell, now known as Rudolph V, wore the regulation gelled spiky hair, leather jacket and chains; Dave Faulkner went under the moniker of Flick, and also came complete with the gelled spiky hair look and other standard Brit-punk paraphernalia: studded dog collar, leather jacket, wraparound sunnies etc. We were too loud, too punk and too basic musically for the average punter, but Colin and I could have passed as bank clerks, and Billy and Max as bogs, and that left the punk audience in a dilemma. No one was up themselves, there were no punk-identikit poseurs, Colin was solid on bass and had a nice tone, Max was as great as ever, everyone liked my songs and each other, and musically we were pumping. Not globally important, not even important in the punk scheme of things, but significant enough to those who care, I trust, to have been worth the blood, sweat and tears. The Orphans. However I tried to tell myself otherwise, I knew in my bones that it was over for The Orphans. It seems you think the detail I’ve gone into is unnecessary or extraneous. Unlike the rest of us, he did attempt to befriend some of the punk set, but for the most part they snubbed him – ironic, considering his “street” credentials left most of them looking like spoon-fed private school pretenders in fancy dress. NB: As with all my writings on this site, I have striven to be scrupulously accurate in my recollections, and wherever possible cross-checked the facts with others who were there. Ross PS: I have never had any doubt that you loved the Orphans songs, and am stoked to hear that your mate enjoyed the CD. Peace. The Orphan Band of Springdale is a heartwarming and educational read. When James Baker contacted me to offer The Orphans an early supporting spot on the coming Leederville Punk Festival bill at the Leederville Town Hall on Friday, 21 April 78, I accepted immediately. They got offers and auditions with surprisingly more notice from Columbia, garnering interest from Clive Davis after leaving Epic. The band was previously nominated by the Irish Music Awards for Best New Irish CD and have won the Top Celtic Rock band category. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. (Actually, I’m pissed off at a lot of things about life and people today, but certainly not you!). If you write “We were an honest original ( Ross) rock/punk band lets don’t complicate things”, doesn’t that mean you think I have complicated things in my write-up? The Geeks was a special time, even if it was only a few intensely creative months. Billy soon nipped our fond imaginings in the bud by moving in fast to snap up Yvonne as his new ‘girlfriend’. Following The Bags were The Exterminators (the band who’d been advertised as The Invaders) – again, never likely to leave their musical mark on punk posterity. We achieved a lot creatively in the few months we were together, and it’s a time I will always hold dear. Home page of The Social Orphans, an alternative group from San Diego. Yvonne and Julie were just a couple of punk gals who genuinely dug the band. So that, kids, is it – the story is complete. Maybe punk’s early moment had passed in Perth, and The Orphans had simply arrived on the scene too late. —BookPage Intelligent, empathetic, and brave up to a point, Gusta is the most complex of the many well-drawn characters whose stories intersect, sometimes in surprising ways. The Orphan Band of Springdale is a heartwarming and educational read. Some of their stuff was good, actually, although I wouldn’t have classified them as punk. It had all gotten so ugly, and the excitement of the early days of punk of only scant years earlier had given way to a macho beery aggression that stank of armpits and bad breath. It's a fine document of Orphan live working with their folk star friend. Lloyd had been a dominant force in The Geeks and The Hitler Youth, and indeed both bands were the better for that, but I had worked up enough original material of my own to build a new band around. The Orphans are London (vocals), Mike (guitar), Nic (guitar) Stas (drums) and Gesha (bass): together these guys have a great sound! Orphans - Topic 1,108 views. Don’t be fooled! They were fronted by George Blazevic (now deceased), a journo going through his band phase (actually, that is unfair – he was a journo at the time but subsequently had extensive involvement in the Perth theatre and arts scene). Way belated reply – sorry, Tim! I had confidence in my new songs, and knew that now it was time for me to go it alone. My recording experience had been with a cheap mike and a Teac reel-to-reel 4-track at home, and I had gotten quite good results without any of this effort. You’ve mistaken my tone if you interpret my response as being an indication of being pissed off. I only went there a couple of times, once to see The Cure (was bored…they weren’t well received and I recall Robert Smith scolding the disgruntled punters with the declaration, “Look, we’re not a rock and roll band, awright” – and right he was). TOUR DATES; THE FILM; STORE; VIDEO; PHOTOS; CONTACT The Victims were the darlings of the punk set. Cheers! Sometimes, my lyrics alluded to, or were ‘borrowed’ from other songs: Oh baby I like your lips derived from the opening line of Iggy’s Funtime off The Idiot; the title of our song Sweet Suicide was taken from a line of Patti Smith’s Redondo Beach and the opening line of the same song, Tonight I lay awake in my room, was pretty close to the opening line of The Modern Lovers’ Astral Plane; the title of The Orphans’ Teenage Lust was also a title off the MC5’s Back In The USA, though otherwise the two songs were not remotely similar. It sounded nothing like The Orphans live, which was what I was after, but everyone was dog tired after all day and half the night in the studio. The Victims’ final gig was at the Leederville Punk Festival in mid-78; The Orphans played their first earlier the same night – and blew The Victims off the stage. It can be seen, then, that on this auspicious occasion no one expected much out of The Orphans’ debut. Part post-punk, part early indie rock, their musical ambiguities impart a sound that is hard to define, but easy to relate to. Lilljequist played on Edwards' first three Atco albums with the entire Orphan band backing him in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, on March 22 and 23 of 1974 for the Lucky Day LP. This album, by the way, was recorded and produced by Roger Fife, and was done in the same studio as White Zombie (the Make Them Die Slowly album), the Ramones (their Brain Drain album) and Sonic Youth. Buy Your Logic 6. Whether Hassa’s perspective was shared by others or not, I strongly suspect that other elements were behind our marginalisation – our refusal to conform to an identifiable “punk” dress code (apart from Billy, who soon graduated to thin black ties, badges etc), combined with our social aloofness, placed us on the outer with the small but tight-knit punk clique of Perth. After their stint at Epic and hoping for another deal, the band began recording on spec at Intermedia Studios in Boston where their friend Jonathan Edwards tracked his hit "Sunshine." Obviously, though, given his mindset as described the PA proposal would have been a catalyst prompting his decision to quit. Required fields are marked *. Thus, the first wave subsided, leaving The Orphans beached. We were all green, and had no idea that “recording” included endless hours of sitting around listening to each drum being tapped as the engineer made this and that adjustment to this and that knob, and that the same process would follow with all instruments and vocals before we recorded a note of a song. Hence the detailed nature of some of the testimonies on this site. Max raved about it, and for a short while it seemed we had found a new lease of life. Managed by Ed Mottau, a guitarist who worked with John Lennon prior to the Elephant's Memory, Mottau was in turn managed by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary. BTW George, if you do feel like writing down your recollections of the time, I’m always keen to add another perspective to the site. Erik Petersen, most famously of Mischief Brew, was a Creep Records lifer. I hope it’s been entertaining. Later, came It’s Over, which went as long as 7 minutes – pretty well unheard of in punk circles at that time, although Disco Junkies, one of the Geeks songs I had co-written with James Baker that The Victims played as their own, had extended past 10 minutes on occasions. There’s only so much value in writing about music, and I’ve just about exhausted it here. Now, must go off and pop some ADD pills! The voice’s owner introduced himself over the phone as Billy, and eagerly informed me that he was just right for a punk band because he had recently been released from Pentridge Prison, having been convicted of armed robbery! If that is merely my ego talking, then so be it, but that is for others to judge. And Julie had a young daughter, and as far as we knew a partner, so…. Lest you feel too relieved at my balance here, however, let it be known that I do believe The Orphans’ first gig was the most energetic and probably the best public performance of any first wave Perth punk band, short and sweet though it was. And I do stand by my claim that The Orphans, whose only real moment of public glory was on debut at the Perth Punk Festival, did have a substantial body of original songs of quality in the first wave Perth punk scheme of things, even if too few punters came to see us to etch that as a fact of note in the niche history of the era. I can have no valid say in that conversation. I was largely indifferent to their songs and they didn’t burn with the sort of energy I wanted from a punk rock band, but they performed with a musical sophistication that their local “new wave” peers did not approach. The band consists of the four Diver sisters – Joan, Angela, Gràinne and Marie Thérèse. We launched into Oh Baby (You’re Givin’ Me The Shits), a simple little rocker with a hard-driving riff that I never have bettered for self-propelling energy, and it wasn’t half bad for a first run. I was always more concerned with ensuring the lyrics were phrased to suit the melody, and with the images that came through the lyrics, than with meaning. I recall Kim Salmon singling out the song for comment that night, stating to me that it had a “great melody”. Re Orphans CDs, don’t think I have any more, but you can download the entire “Exposed” album off Bandcamp, including the cover art and inner, and burn/print as many CDs as you want from that. 'Orphans Revisited' - comprises re-recordings of complete Orphans repertoire after the band broke up by founder member/songwriter Ross Buncle. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1967 Vinyl release of "Hey Gyp / Without You" on Discogs. It was no doubt a magical summer, as Moulty & the Barbarians and the Velvet Underground were also making noise on Cape Cod, the Barbarians sometimes sharing bills with Orphan. The Fakes looked like a poor man’s Roxy Music, with fake leopard skin all over the place, and sporting saxes among the usual onstage armoury of guitars. I remain proud of those songs, and of those I co-wrote with James Baker in The Geeks. Billy was straight at it and he sounded closer to Iggy or Chris Bailey. The raw, windswept beauty of the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland has inspired adventurers and artists, alike, for centuries. Just whack your story of the time down as it comes, and it would be great! The term “punk” gave way to “new wave” (although the two terms had become virtually interchangeable), and a host of semi-pro commercially-orientated bands claiming to be new wave – The Dugites, for instance – began showcasing their mostly bland and tame originals at the bigger suburban pubs, before bigger suburban crowds. Yep, punk had finally ‘arrived’ way out west. Johnno (John Rushin, now deceased), whose Pommy heritage and stocky build had earned him the nickname Bovver Boy among a select few of my contacts, broke ranks from the rest of the punk set and singled me out for some appreciative comments. There is not a lot to tell of the Hernando’s gigs. It needed more rehearsing. 1 in the iTunes World Music charts and in the top 10 in the Billboard World Albums charts. It is ironic that the biggest crowd we played before at Hernando’s was there to see a debuting band that was supposed to be supporting us – The Fakes (well-named). First up was a group of young guys no one knew, Blok Music (an early incarnation of The Triffids, sans David McComb). The regular punkers attended, but all the boys and girls of Perth who were anxious to be hip and be seen to be hip came too – in their droves. Dignified and old. Facebook is showing information to help you better understand the purpose of a Page. I was better than that, I knew it, and I wanted to prove it. Billy just couldn’t stay on pitch. Orphan played on many bills with the Castle Music stable of artists, Martin Mull, the McKinney Brothers, Travis Shook & the Club Wow, and, of course, Jonathan Edwards. I ended up settling for whatever was down on the tape. All in all, we were taking ourselves very seriously as a band, and the results were starting to show. —BookPage Intelligent, empathetic, and brave up to a point, Gusta is the most complex of the many well-drawn characters whose stories intersect, sometimes in surprising ways. In fact, I do not see our debut as anything approaching the cataclysmic – that sort of superlative suggests an arrogance and inflated sense of importance that I hope does not afflict me.