PREMIERE: Celebrate '70s Youth Subculture With 'When Sharpies Ruled'

Festival Records unveil another essential snapshot of Aussie music history with their newest compilation

Esteemed local label Festival Records and its compatriots at Warner Music Australia have eked out a decent niche for themselves as prime purveyors of retrospective records that are as eye-opening as they are ear-pleasing, a pattern established with previous compilations such as Boogie! and (When The Sun Sets Over) Carlton, and maintained with new release When Sharpies Ruled: A Vicious Selection, an homage to 1970s Melburnian youth subculture.

The album sports 23 of the finest tracks of the era from a diverse array of vintage acts including Coloured Balls, TMG, Skyhooks, Rose Tattoo, Hush, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs, Supernaut, La De Das, Taste, Finch (not to be confused with the early-21st-century post-hardcore act of the same name), Rabbit (featuring AC/DC's pre-Bon Scott vocalist Dave Evans), Fat Daddy, La Femme and more, and comes replete with 28-page jewel-case booklet (with liner notes penned by Skyhooks frontman Greg Macainsh and punk boffin Glenn Terry, who helped pull the whole thing together) and a standalone 60-page booklet of photographs from the days when the mean streets of Melbourne were ruled by people who called themselves "Sharpies" with a straight face.

It's a hell of a trip down memory lane, and we're stoked to be the ones to guide you to it. Check out the compilation in full below.

Impressively, a good deal of the tracks included herein are first-time reissues, giving the whole package an extra air of exclusivity, including both songs from Finch, La De Das' The Place, Fat Daddy's Roll Daddy Roll, Bullet's Rock My Lady, Hush's Riff In My Head, Fatty Lumpkin's Movin' and Rabbit's Wildfire.

When Sharpies Ruled: A Vicious Selection will be released this Friday, 7 August, via Festival Records and Warner Music Australia.

When Sharpies Ruled: A Vicious Selection Track List