The Throwaways (Australian Band)

The Throwaways were a musical group from Melbourne, Australia who played from 1989 to 1995, consisting of Marc Dorey, Sean Baxter, Dave Kendal, Mat Butler and later Matt Charles. They recorded:
*"Boogie Wonderland" EP (with The Meanies and Nice Girls From Cincinnati)
*"Angle Grinder" CD
*"Teeth" (with Spiderbait, "Guttersnipes" and "The Meanies") EP
*"Wally's Wild Weekend Live Compilation LP" amd
*"Postmadonna Primadonna" CD

Formation

Meeting at high school in the mid-1980s in the provincial city of Geelong, Mat Butler and Marc Dorey proposed the formation of what would become The Throwaways. Influenced heavily by mid-1960s British Beat acts such as The Kinks and The Who, and US acts such as the Velvet Underground and The Doors, they gravitated toward the then underground Australian scene of the era, where acts as the Hoodoo Gurus, the Stems, Huxton Creepers and the Go Betweens were producing a range of 1960s garage-influenced post-punk tunes.

The first musical output at this point was limited to a rough demo of several songs recorded by Dorey and Butler under the mock-punk name "Adolf Hitler and the Gas Chambers", on a portable cassette deck modified by Butler to permit lo-fi mulitracking.

In 1987 Butler & Dorey moved to Melbourne. At University College, Dorey met fellow resident David Kendal, and in 1988 Sean Baxter. A fellow resident of the college was Mark Maher ("Kram"), later of Spiderbait, with whom The Throwaways, Guttersnipes and the Meanies would release the "Teeth" compilation.

First Lineup

In late 1988 Kendal (bass), Baxter (drums), Dorey (guitar), Butler (vocals and guitar) held the first rehearsal of The Throwaways (although the name was not coined at this time), in a corrugated iron shed at Kendal's Bacchus Marsh house. Also in attendance at this rehearsal was Ricky Drewitt (guitar). Essentially a free-from feedback jam, with occasional segues in to lyrical/chord motifs provided by Butler, the session laid the groundwork for the band's melodic noise aesthetic. The rehearsal saw the first airing of songs that later became fixtures of early live sets such as "Tarmac", "Violent", and "Girl in the Lava Lamp". This session culminated in the members propping their respective instruments up against amplifiers left at full volume, and exiting the shed in order to spend the rest of the night drinking beer and listening to the resulting wall of noise over several hours.

Through 1989 the Kendal-Baxter-Dorey-Butler lineup rehearsed a 30 minute set of tunes that saw the initial 60s pop aesthetic mesh with a more hardcore approach to instrumentation indicated by the Detroit punk school, especially as practiced by antipodean exponents such as The Saints and Radio Birdman, with occasional forays into Who-esque jams. These rehearsals led to the first show as an entrant in a 'battle of the bands' competition held at Melbourne University in late 1989, supporting a Cosmic Psychos show. While the band clearly won over the punk-oriented crowd with a swift 15 minute set culminating in a self-indulgent display of feed back and instrument destruction, the competition's judges were not so swayed, and The Throwaways failed to make the next heat of the contest.

Over the next six years, The Throwaways were regular fixtures on Melbourne's inner city alternative music scene, playing at venues such as The Tote, The Punters Club, The Great Britain Hotel and the Richmond Club.

econd Lineup

In 1993 Butler left the group, but remained an active supporter and counsel. He was replaced by Mat Charles, whose arrival introduced a new aesthetic strain inspired by Captain Beefheart and early 80s goth/punk practitioners such as the Birthday Party and Einsturzende Neubauten.

These influences meshed with three emerging aesthetic streams within the band that saw a move away from its 60s pop origins : avant-garde jazz; Alternative Tentacles art-punk acts such as NoMeansNo and the Dead Kennedys; and metal influences such as Napalm Death and Slayer. The results of this direction, PostMadonna Primadonna, were recorded by producer Simon Grounds and released by Dr Jims records.

The band dissolved in 1995.

References

* [http://www.augogo.com/discnum.html Au-go-go discography ]
* [http://www.drjimsrecords.com.au/ Dr Jim's Records]