2020 rolls on. The brand new physical Lulu’s
store at 905 High St, Thornbury was scheduled to quietly open by appointment at the beginning of this month, but recent COVID outbreaks have meant we have had to reassess.

At this stage; who knows.

While there is a possibility that we’ll be able to forge ahead and begin offering access to the physical space by appointment within the next few weeks, it’s also just as likely that we’ll and up getting locked down again.

Rest assured that we will be continuing on as we have been, with the plan still being to invite you all to come hang out in the space as soon as it is safe to do so. Lulu’s remains committed to supporting and sustaining our community as much as we possibly can, especially those who need it most at this time, with plans being put into action that take steps to using this support network we’ve built to its full potential.

Reat assured that there are exciting things on the way. We couldn’t be any more proud of the space, and community that has built around it, and look forward to sharing it with you all when the time comes.

In addittion to what’s written about here, the following releases are also available and have been of high interest to us...

~ CEMENT SHOES “A LOVE STORY OF DRUGS & ROCK N ROLL & DRUGS” 7"
~ OMEGAS “POWER TO EXIST” LP [RESTOCK!]
~ V/A “DAYS OF A QUIET SUN” LP
~ BANANAGUN “THE TRUE STORY OF BANANAGUN” LP
~ SOOT ZINE 5
~ NEWTOWN NEUROTICS “KICK OUT!” LP
~ RADIATION ZINE [LONG AWAITED REPRINT!]
~ V/A “KIWI ANIMALS: FUTURE/PRIMITIVE AOTEAROA '82-'91” LP
~ CROATIAN AMOR & VARG 2 “BODY OF WATER / BODY OF CARBON” LP
+MORE!
XOXO LOVE LULU’S

TOWNES VAN ZANDT “LIVE IN BRUNSWICK” CS
Surgical Bootmaker

In September of 1990 Townes Van Zandt embarked on his first (and only) tour of Australia. The tour, organised by country musician and Missing Link co-founder Keith Glass, saw TVZ play 4 shows across Rozelle, Moruya, and Brunswick, before taking a couple of weeks break in Melbourne and moving on to a final show in Perth on the 6th of October.

This tape documents his show at Madigans in Brunswick, the first of two, on Saturday the 22nd of September, 1990. Madigans was a nightclub on Sydney Road that has since closed (the building is now occupied by the Brunswick Mess Hall), and tickets were $15.

The performance captures Van Zandt during the longest period of sobriety he would have in his adult life (about a year in 1989-90), and he's sharp as a whip. Playing for nearly two hours, the setlist features tracks that span his whole career, interspersed between stories and jokes from his many years spent on the road.

The sound has been painstakingly remastered from the original audience recording, and offers a surprising amount of clarity and warmth. Live In Brunswick is an essential and unique document for fans of Townes Van Zandt.
SE

SAKEVI YOKOYAMA “OPPRESSIVE LIBERATION SPIRIT” BOOK
BEAST ARTS International

Sakevi Yokoyama's anarchy and violence have had great impact on Australian punk and hardcore. This is his first book, dominated by a collection of GISM related artwork, and extending into his brand stITH. From the early cut and paste artwork inspired by CRASS to his embrace of the computer age, photoshopping disfigured corpses with garish colours and revolting imagery, Sakevi has always pushed boundaries. The distasteful imagery within Oppressive Liberation Spirit will surely offend, unsettle and disturb most everyone. Punx is art book collectors.
DX

OILY BOYS “CRO MEMORY GRIN” LP
Cool Death

Chthonic, catatonic, chronic... .
Cro Memory Grin is a masterpiece. Thirteen turbocharged tracks indebted to the pleasures and pitfalls of their lives in the modern city of Sydney and to the the first and second waves of international extreme music freaks and loonies :. pure fucking aggression. The Oily Boys have graced us with a beast of an album that swells between direct, gripping, tangible hardcore punk and near nauseating psychedelia and throb which at moments feels like either ritual trance or a nervous breakdown. Cro Memory Grin contains near equal measures of tension and release; an exercise in high catharsis.

It’s rare that a punk record can give the listener anywhere near the same intoxicating feel of an “everything louder than everything else” live show, but that’s what Oily Boys have done. That lightning in a bottle feeling of excitement, chaotic energy, delirium, presence in a moment and frenzied flight into a mind state both frightening and ecstatic.
The stone has been carved, the fire has been lit, and this is it.... Cro. Memory. Grin. .
*** Best played LOUDEST ***
AC

DAILY FAULI “FAULI TILL DAULI” LP
Minimal Wave

"You can tell your mother you're sick / ask her for money to buy some speed"

The Danish treats from Daily Fauli evoke the industrial urges of Cabaret Voltaire and early Human League. Nightmare repetitions and an ambitious spirit of play. The menacing and repulsive vocal presence give it a unique and unsettling edge.

Minimal Wave's usual fare is dominated by the Belgian cold wave pop style, full of austere romantic gestures. There's a few bands like Sympathy Nervous and Daily Fauli that delight in despondency and decay, rabid children of Kraftwerk's cold visions, and this record would appeal as much to fans of the Screamers as Throbbing Gristle freaks. A gem in the Minimal Wave crown!
DX

THE SLUGFUCKERS “TRANSFORMATIONAL SALT” LP
Digital Regress

Recorded in one session at M-Squared in 1981, "Transformational Salt"; the now legendary sole LP from Sydney post-punk art school provocateurs The Slugfuckers, very nearly didn't happen.

It was only via the encouragement (and money $$$$) of Mr. Severed Head himself Tom Ellard, that the band tracked the record for eventual release on Ellard's own Dogfood Production System. Ellard had previously worked alongside The Slugfuckers on the "Ear Bitten / No Vowels, No Bowels" split LP for Terse Tapes, which featured sides from Severed Heads and s-fuckers side-project Rhythmyx Chymx.

The band's previous releases, the "Instant Classic" single and "Three Feet Behind Glass / Live At Budokan" EP, were both recorded on a two track tape recorder in a disused room of the local community media studio. It is these recordings (since re-issued as an LP in 2011 by Insolito) that were always the most widely available, and that have in the years since come to see the band defined as "French philosophy shouted over noise". The band have pushed back against this classification, claiming that they really were trying to sound like a "real band", but just couldn't manage it at the time.

It's on "Transformational Salt" that the Slugfuckers claims of being a "real band" actually start to hold quite a bit of weight. The band, while never losing their antagonistic streak, push further away from the noise/proto-industrial sounds of their earlier releases and into something more recognisably post-punk.

Despite at times almost sounding like a more caustic Fall, there is an unmistakable core of humour and heart underneath it all that to me sees them fall more in line with the likes of The UV Race than The Primitive Calculators, despite actually sounding more like the latter.

Wherever The Slugfuckers fit within your own personal canon of Australian underground music, their importance and vitality cannot be denied. An excellent and long-awaited reissue of a legitimate classic.
SE

THE NO “VOLUME ONE” CS
Faustian Haus Tapes

Since hearing The No on cassette some many moons ago they quickly became one of my most cherished groups in the land. Taking the best unused band name and combining all there is to love from 70’s punk, 80’s post punk and eternal outsider pop queerness, The No burns the dark and strange incense that the vast edges of my mental landscape needs. Volume One’s offerings bring to mind an urgent and frantic Christian Death, a raving mad Joy Division, a spiked Stooges, The Scientists put through a washing machine and left outside to sway in a midnight breeze. I get the feeling that this band will be left beneath an unturned stone, but for thou searchers in the vastness; I implore you to steal a candle, light it, and then celebrate in the shadows with The No.
AC

TURQUOISE DAYS “FURTHER STRATEGIES” 2LP
Minimal Wave

This new wave gem has received a loving re-issue through MINIMAL WAVE. TURQUOISE DAYS’ deeply charming charisma lies in their almost fearless songwriting filtered through simple, effective melodies and raw homemade tones. You can imagine these tunes being performed to great effect by more professional outfits of the era (and since) but it’s hard to imagine any so great as the naïve art on display here. After hearing the duo’s most well recognised number Grey Skies, a few thoughts tend to run through one’s mind; “Wait, have I heard this before? It’s so familiar. How have I not heard this before? Maybe I’ve heard it in my dreams. This is definitely going on my next mixtape. Where has this been all my life? Heavens above, I need more.” And Further Strategies is there to catch you as you come back floating down from the clouds, launching you further into a journey of moody synth and drum machine driven tracks which peer into two minds that have unlocked imagination and created fire out of their scarce cache of sticks and stones. Also available from MINIMAL WAVE are AURAL INDIFFERENCE, SYMPATHY NERVOUS, THE MISZ, FIVE TIMES OF DUST as well as compilation albums.
AC

RADIO BIRDMAN “2JJ NOVEMBER 1976” CS [COMING SOON!]
DOUBLE JAY ROCK

The second and final instalment in the rise of Radio Birdman “2JJ NOVEMBER 1976” might just be that holy grail definitive document of the band at the height of their powers.

With the establishment and success of the Fun House in 1976, Radio Birdman had forged a place for themselves within Sydney’s conservative mid 70s music scene. But increasing controversy led to increasing obstacles for the band as they found the industry eager to have the growing sub-culture and unconventional sound contained to it’s own innocuous microcosm, their now famous emblem designed by Deniz Tek being adopted by the band and their loyal fanbase drawing accusations of fascism, cult and/or communism from the industry and community at large.

For musicians in mid 70s Australia (and hell probably everywhere) the name of the game was mainstream or bust and the industry made it clear there was no place for Radio Birdman until the band found one of their few fans and allies within the industry, Anthony O’Grady, an editor for Rock Australia magazine who had aspirations to shake up Australia’s Top 40 chart trends and decided to take the band under his wing.

To accomplish this they were going to need a recording and utilising his position and connections Anthony O’Grady took the band to every studio he knew where they found themselves facing the same problems they faced in the live circuit with no studio, engineer or producer willing to touch them due to their sound, outlaw reputation or a combination of both.

Persevering through rejection after rejection they approached O’Grady’s final option, Trafalgar, a low budget studio designed and built by “the song doctor” Mark Fisher and producer John Sayers in the heart of Annandale between 1973 and 1974 who were looking to bring the contemporary “American” sound to Australia by sourcing hardware from LA and taking advantage of bargain basement “five for one” microphone deals.

Unimpressed with their efforts and citing dull quiet acoustics Radio Birdman pronounced Trafalgar D.O.A. and prepared to abandon the session whilst O’Grady negotiated a second shot with the engineers allowing the band to record on their own terms. They proceeded to search nearby demolition sites, hauling sheets of corrugated iron through the streets, upstairs and covering the walls to Fisher and Sayers horror to achieve a more amplified electronic percussive sound (a technique arguably pinched and utilised to great effect by Tony Cohen and The Birthday Party a few years later).

Whether they were surprised by the results or confident in local sales the manager of Trafalgar decided to form a label around the band, financing the recordings, signing a deal and facilitating the release of their debut 7” EP “BURN MY EYE” in October 1976. With a single press of 800 copies it was ignored by the press on its release only available through the studios mail order, stocked by a few sympathetic record stores or sold out the back of the bands station wagon after shows which brings us to “DOUBLE JJ NOVEMBER 1976”.

Recorded eight months after their previous live to air to help promote the “BURN MY EYE” EP, “DOUBLE JJ NOVEMBER 1976” showcases very little of that material focusing instead on songs that would appear the following year on their now legendary debut LP “RADIOS APPEAR” alongside covers of the Beach Boys, Barry & The Remains, Blue Oyster Cult, The Outsiders and of course The Stooges.

This incredible performance is perhaps the only recording in existence which not only documents what Fun House devotees claimed is the one true great era of the band, but also points towards their turning point with the controversial return of keyboardist Pip Hoyle, who cameos with the band on “MAN WITH GOLDEN HELMET" and “LOVE KILLS” proving to be the dividing line not only with the fanbase but within the band itself and an essential document of punk counter-culture in Australia. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BY LULU'S
BH

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LULU'S JULY 2020 NEWSLETTER

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