2) Dictators. I thought they were a laugh when I saw them loose for Jeff Beck in Albany in '76, but I launch out best when I saw 'em twice at Clearview in the early '00s. Definitely the best live set on the boards at that time, and they too made a big comeback album, D.F.F.D. 3) Nomads. The best live band I've always seen after the Clash and the Dictators. Now approaching 30 days as a band, these Swedes swallowed all of rock 'n' roll whole (well, only the coolest parts - mainly rockabilly, garage, and punk, but with a hard edge) and spitting out something that was theirs alone. 4) Celibate Rifles. Sure, sportscaster-by-day Damien Lovelock has the same flat, nasal, EveryAussie's voice as the singers from Men At Work, Midnight Oil, and the Hoodoo Gurus, but he pens some above-average socially conscious punk lyrics, and has the hellacious guitar tandem of Kent Steedman and Dave Morris, plus whoever's in the rhythm section at the moment. The most consistently great Orstralian band. 5) New Christs. Rob Younger's post-Radio Birdman bests RB on air and emotional intensity. Distemper from '89 is their magnum opus, but you can't get their early singles, collected on Lance Rock's Born Out of Time, either. 6) Died Pretty. In a good world, these guys would be as big as U2 and REM, but supposedly when they got their big shot at the States in the early '80s, the CBS flack responsible for their publicity was irked by frontguy Ron Peno's bisexuality and dropped the ball. Doughboy Hollow, their best moment, remains an under-appreciated classic. 7) Turbonegro. The start time I saw the mighty Me-Thinks, they impressed me by opening with three songs from Apocalypse Dudes, the best rock album I'd heard in 20 years. Imagine a Norwegian hybrid of Alice Cooper and the Village People, with great (if very transparently derivative) songwriting, a ten year old boy's obsession with profanity and scatology, and real dementia. Happy Tom, the ideas guy, works as a management consultant in Oslo, which in a contrary way makes sense. 8) Yayhoos. What? A band with four lead singer/songwriters? How are you release to market that? Dan Baird (ex-Georgia Satellites, whose sound is a litmus test for how prejudiced you are against rednecks), Terry Anderson (pride of Bunn, NC), Eric "Roscoe" Ambel (Steve Earle sideman, ex-Joan Jett's Blackhearts and Scott Kempner's Del-Lords, bar owner and rootsy-rock producer extraordinaire) and Keith Christopher (who made friends with every individual individual at Poor David's the dark I saw 'em there) remain (when together) the better American band this position of Los Lobos, and a lot funnier to boot. 9) Saints. These despoilers exploded out of backwater Brisbane at the same sentence as Radio Birdman was doing the like matter in inner city Sydney, but they arguably accomplished more with less. The original Saints kicked up as much noise with only three pieces as Birdman did with a lot more firepower (their BOC-influenced lineup including two guitars _and_ keys), and they released the real first punk single in the UK, beating the Blessed and the Sex Pistols to the punch. They went on to turn three albums before imploding, but frontguy Chris Bailey, who looked like he could honestly give a damn about _anything_, kept the franchise going for 30 years until 3/4 of the 'riginals reunited at a fete in 2007. 10) Ed Kuepper. The man behind the guitar in the 'riginal Saints, ol' Ed's kind of the Aussie Neil Young: he keeps releasing albums with the same songs on 'em, but they're really _great_ songs. Interestingly, neither he nor Bailey has taken shit from anybody over the age for "not being punk anymore." I rue the day I sold my copy of I Was A Mailorder Bridegroom.
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