[2] Many of the pioneers, like The Saints, Sydney band Radio Birdman, and young Perth musician Kim Salmon, were highly influenced by proto-punk sounds from Detroit.
They shared a background in immigrant families (Kuepper's German and Bailey's Irish), and an admiration for high energy 1950s and '60s music, such as the Detroit rock of the Stooges and MC5.
[3] During that time, Queensland was under the control of the conservative, authoritarian Country Party democratic government of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
[citation needed] In mid-1976, the Saints recorded and distributed copies of their single "(I'm) Stranded", which met nearly no critical or public response in Australia.
[citation needed] During 1974, Radio Birdman formed in Sydney, led by another immigrant, Detroit-born medical student Deniz Tek.
Black Chrome's music attacked Australian apathy, its urban wasteland and its non-existent youth culture.
Other Sydney bands in 1977 included the Hellcats (featuring Ron Peno, later lead singer of the Died Pretty), the Psychosurgeons (later known as Lipstick Killers), Johnny Dole & the Scabs and the Thought Criminals (who featured Steven Phillip, later of Do-Re-Mi and John Hoey, who was also later in Died Pretty).
Neither of them fit in with, or were inclined to adjust to aspects of the London scene at the time, such the now-established punk fashion in clothes.
The Saints bassist, Algy Ward continued to make significant impact in the London punk scene however, when he left The Saints to play with British punk rock band, the Damned and to work with Lemmy and Fast Eddie Clarke of Motörhead,[citation needed] playing on The Damned's comeback album Machine Gun Etiquette (1979), which was released on proto punk and pub rock record label, Chiswick Records, who had also released Motörhead's early records.
He toured with the band worldwide, including America in 1979 where they played at Whisky A Go Go, Hollywood, and the Waldorf in San Francisco, significantly influencing the American Hardcore scene.
Ward appeared on the live performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test in England featuring "Smash It Up", before he was fired from the group due to animosity between him and drummer Rat Scabies.
On 8 November 1977 the ABC nightly news magazine program "This Day Tonight" broadcast a feature on Australian punk rock, featuring a live recording of Black Chrome at Adelaide University's Union Hall, with commentary and interviews highlighting the largely negative contemporary attitudes to punk rock.
The message of punk rock is violence and anarchy; and its a message which has got Adelaide radio stations on the defensive.″[165] In April 1978 Black Chrome released the single "Australia's God" on their own label Tomorrow Records,[166] but despite the band driving around Australia to the few record shops selling punk rock and delivering it to radio stations around the country, it failed to secure airplay and sold in tiny numbers.
"[167] Entrepreneurs began to realise the potential of the growing scene and Michael Gudinski launched the Melbourne-based Suicide Records, which in May 1978 released a compilation, Lethal Weapons.
The album included tracks by the Boys Next Door, Teenage Radio Stars (featuring future Models members Sean Kelly and James Freud, and also La Femme members bassist Graham Schiavello and drummer Pete Kidd), JAB (ex-experimental rockers from Adelaide, featuring Bohdan X and synthesizer player Ash Wednesday), the Survivors and X-Ray-Z (former pub rockers from Adelaide).
During the late 1970s, former members of Radio Birdman contributed to several new Sydney bands: the New Christs, the Visitors, the Passengers (featuring Angie Pepper) and the Screaming Tribesmen.
By the early 1980s, only a handful of bands were still playing songs with classic punk sounds, such as the Cosmic Psychos and the satirically-inclined Painters and Dockers.
Melbourne's La Femme were a fascinating meld of late Seventies influences: punk, new wave, glam and hard rock.
The thuggish rhythm section of Peter Kidd and Graham Schiavello played it mean and hard, providing the relentless, driving beat.
An unwillingness to play the pop star game and the serious drug addiction, among other things, perhaps ended up compromising the band's drive.
The Boys Next Door, renamed the Birthday Party in 1980 and featuring Nick Cave, were pioneers in incorporating "darker" elements into their image, with connections to the genres of gothic rock, horror punk and deathrock.
Additionally, bands such as The Hellmen, Toys Went Berserk, Happy Hate me Nots, Bits of Kids and Wet Taxis existed in the latter half of the 1980's.
From Brunswick emerged the smooth distorted sound of the Zorros with their single from Missing Link records "Too Young" reaching Number 3 in Radio RRR charts.
By the early 1990s, the success of grunge music, American punk veterans and revivalists, as well as local bands like the Hybernators, the Speed Demons, the Meanies, Frenzal Rhomb, and Screamfeeder led to the formation of punk-influenced bands such as the Living End, Jebediah, Bodyjar, 28 Days, Dreamkillers, Four Zero One Four, Align, Tiltmeter and Guttersnipes.
[16] Vans Warped Tour successfully returned to Australia in 2013 after an 11-year hiatus,[17] however many DIY grass roots events stepped up to fill the gap.
In the early 1990s, EC Productions co-owned Thrash Grind Grunge music store[19] at 276 Morphett Street, Adelaide.
[21] Another notable fanzine focused on punk was the Melbourne-based Regression (1982–1984), created by Zol Szacsuri and Alby Brovedani of the band Vicious Circle.
[24] Dogs in Space is a 1986 Australian feature drama film set in Melbourne's "Little Band" post-punk music scene in 1978, written and directed by Richard Lowenstein and starring Michael Hutchence.