Album Review: Various Artists - Boogie!

Back in 1970, long before the Internet and social networks, Australian music fans were still depending on imported records and magazines that could take six to eight weeks to arrive to keep “up to date” on the musical trends of the day that weren't getting exposure through the mainstream.

Luckily, the majority of Australia's musicians were keeping up, and those that wanted to be taken seriously were inexorably pushing into the then-distinctly uncommercial areas of hard rock, blues and boogie that had become popular through “underground” acts like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and Led Zeppelin in the UK, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Canned Heat, among many, in the US. So while the labels were pumping out pop covers by local bands like The Mixtures and Autumn, the “pop” artists of the previous decade grew their hair and beards, pulled on ubiquitous bongs and jammed out variations on the 12-bar blues that set the foundations of the Aussie pub rock sound that AC/DC ultimately used to conquer the world.

This 44-song compilation gathers together the most influential of the releases by those “grown-up” blues/boogie rockers from the early '70s, and it's not surprising to see many of them are still around in one form or another: from Spectrum, whose iconic I'll Be Gone they resolutely refused to include on their debut album, because rather than despite its becoming a #1 hit, to Chain, who scored an unlikely #1 with the chain gang blues Black And Blue; Renee Geyer belting out Dust My Blues with Kevin Borich to the late entry Cold Chisel belting out Goodbye (Astrid, Goodbye). There are multiple contributions from fallen heroes Billy Thorpe and Lobby Loyde and tracks from Madder Lake, Ted Mulry Gang and Friends among others that don't really fit the “boogie” template, but all up Boogie! is an impressive collection documenting a vibrant period in our musical history that cared as little for commercial acceptance or success as the punks that superseded them in the late '70s.