HUNTERS & COLLECTORS
Hunters & Collectors are an Australian rock music band formed in 1981. Fronted by founding mainstay, singer-songwriter and guitarist Mark Seymour, they developed a blend of pub rock and art-funk. Their Top 10 albums are Human Frailty (1986), Ghost Nation (1989), Cut (1992), and Demon Flower (1994). Their hit singles were “Talking to a Stranger” (1982), “Throw Your Arms Around Me” (1984), “Say Goodbye” (1986), “When the River Runs Dry” (1989), “True Tears of Joy” (1992), and “Holy Grail” (1993). They became one of the best live acts in Australia and according to musicologist Ian McFarlane, their “great achievement was to lay bare human emotions in the intensely ritualistic milieu of the pub-rock gig”. (More from Wikipedia)
Hunters & Collectors, Ghost Nation – I liked this 1989 album so much (their sixth) that I have picked up another couple of albums by this fine Australian band that came along when movies and rock bands alike from Australia were finding audiences around the world. Hunters & Collectors were opening for Midnight Oil at one point but were struggling to find success in this country. Allmusic was not impressed, giving the album only 2 stars; but Australian music journalist Ian McFarlane called Ghost Nation “perhaps the band’s finest album to date”, and Rolling Stone Australia named them Australian Band of the Year in 1990.
(December 2015)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
December 2015 – 1990’s pop/punk band AMANDA JONES; Story of the Month on the early American singles by the Beatles; also, Rochelle Harper, Lisa Loeb, 3 Doors Down, Level with the Ground, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo, Meri Wilson, Bobby Brown, the Cruzados / the Plugz, Terence Trent d’Arby, An Emotional Fish, Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Hunters & Collectors, Looters, Shakespear’s Sister, Robert Tepper, Y Kant Tori Read / Tori Amos, Ugly Kid Joe, Paul Young, the Rolling Stones, Mandy Brix, the Joneses.
(Year 7 Review)
