Entertainment

If one were to blindly listen in on a Johnny Dole and the Scabs recording, it would probably get lumped into the vast catalog of relatively obscure British punk bands out there. The thing is, Johnny Dole and his cohort hailed from Australia – Sydney specifically. Of course, there’s no way to pick that up immediately from a quick listen. But if we’re paying attention here – and happen to be well versed in the Saints’ catalog – there’s a rhythmic delivery present in the singing here referencing that better known band.

It’s not at all necessarily completely detached from the Brit punk thing. At the same time, though, there’s a reason all that funky post-punk stuff cropped up in the UK and not down under. Partly, that’d be due to different immigrant populations surrounding each disparate scene, but music is a visceral thing as much as a cultural thing. And for whatever reason (we could easily pin it on the criminal element), Aussie bands subjected audiences to a more straightforward, and in some cases more aggressive, take on the genre than elsewhere – Sick Things for instance.

Either way, Johnny Dole and the Scabs showed up in time for the feeding frenzy that prompted major imprints to sign up their very own punk band and crank out poorly produced albums just to cash in. Because of that it seems as if the ensemble were caught up in a professional jive that they weren’t really prepared to engage with.