Lime Spiders are an Australian punk rock band which formed in 1979 with founding mainstay Mick Blood on lead vocals. Their debut studio album, The Cave Comes Alive! appeared in June 1987 and reached the top 60 on the Kent Music Report Albums Chart. Their most successful single, “Weirdo Libido”, was released in January that year and reached the top 50 on the related Kent Music Report Singles Chart. In April its music video was the first ever shown on Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV music series rage. The track was used on the 1988 feature film Young Einstein’s soundtrack. The group disbanded in 1990 and in 1999 Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, noted they had provided “raucous sound mixed screaming vocals and wild, fuzz-tone guitar riffs to arrive at a mutant strain of acid punk that bordered on heavy metal”. The band have reformed for reunion shows and tours. (More from Wikipedia)
As best I can recall, the above albums were the first two that I acquired in the Pebbles series that has filled my life with great, unknown 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock for more than 30 years. These LP’s, Pebbles, Volume 9 and Pebbles, Volume 10 were the last two albums in the first group of 10 that was released in 1979-1980, purportedly by BFD Records of Kookaburra, Australia. Actually, the series was masterminded by Greg Shaw, founder of Bomp! Records in North Hollywood.
Why he came up with the Australian connection is unknown to me, but I remember reading a review decades ago in the Village Voice of an album by the Lime Spiders, an Australian rock band that started out at least as a psychedelic-revival band. The article mentioned that interest in 1960’s American garage rock started in Australia; and looking back, I wonder whether that was for real, or whether the writer was just fooled by the supposed origin of the first Pebbles albums.
(July 2013)
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