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The Venetians (Australian Band)
Venetians were an Australian synthpop act formed in 1982 by English-born Rik Swinn on lead vocals, who enlisted Matthew Hughes on keyboards (ex-Gotham City); Tim Powles on drums (ex-Ward 13); Dave Skeet on guitar, bass guitar, synthesiser and vocals; and Peter Watson on guitar, bass guitar, synthesiser and vocals (ex-Scandal, Extractors). They issued three studio albums, ''Step Off the Edge'' (May 1985), ''Calling in the Lions'' (June 1986) and ''Amazing World'' (1988). They had top 30 hit singles in Australia with "So Much for Love" (December 1985), "Inspiration" (March 1986) and "Bitter Tears" (May 1988). Swinn disbanded the group in 1989. Biography The Venetians were formed in late 1982 as a studio concept band after Rik Swinn (lead vocalist) arrived in Sydney with master tapes of tracks he recorded in England with Vic Coppersmith-Heaven producing. He read a newspaper advert placed by two musicians looking for a lead singer. Within weeks Swinn formed a touring band and ...
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Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west. Sydney is made up of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders". The 2021 census recorded the population of Greater Sydney as 5,231,150, meaning the city is home to approximately 66% of the state's population. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2017. Nicknames of the city include the 'Emerald City' and the 'Harbour City'. Aboriginal Australians have inhabited the Greater Sydney region for at least 30,000 years, and Aboriginal engravings and cultural sites are common throughout Greater Sydney. The traditional custodians of the land on which modern Sydney stands are ...
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Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) is a trade association representing the Australian recording industry which was established in the 1970s by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers (AARM) which was formed in 1956. It oversees the collection, administration and distribution of music licenses and royalties. The association has more than 100 members, including small labels typically run by one to five people, medium size organisations and very large companies with international affiliates. ARIA is administered by a Board of Directors comprising senior executives from record companies, both large and small. History In 1956, the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers (AARM) was formed by Australia's major record companies. It was replaced in the 1970s by the Australian Recording Industry Association, which was established by the six major record companies operati ...
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The Divinyls
Divinyls () were an Australian rock band that were formed in Sydney in 1980. The band primarily consisted of vocalist Chrissy Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. Amphlett garnered widespread attention for performing on stage in a school uniform and fishnet stockings, and she often used an illuminated neon tube as a prop for displaying aggression towards both band members and the audience. Originally a five-piece, the band underwent numerous line-up changes, with Amphlett and McEntee remaining as core members, before its dissolution in 1996. In May 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th-anniversary celebrations, named "Science Fiction" as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. The band was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2006 and in late 2007 Amphlett and McEntee reconvened to record a new single and begin working on a new album. The band played a short series of live gigs in ...
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Scribble (band)
Scribble were a post punk synth pop band based around Johanna Pigott (ex-XL Capris) on lead vocals, guitar, piano and keyboards, which she formed in 1983. She was joined by her domestic partner, Todd Hunter (of Dragon, also ex-XL Capris), on bass guitar and keyboards, and session musicians. They released two albums, ''So Far 1983-1985'' (December 1985) and ''Pop Art'' (mid-1986). Scribble disbanded in 1987 with Pigott focussing on her song writing. History Johanna Pigott formed Scribble as a synth pop band in Sydney in 1983, the year after her previous group, XL Capris had disbanded. For her new group Pigott provided lead vocals, guitar, piano and keyboards. She recruited her domestic partner (later her husband), Todd Hunter, on bass guitar and keyboards. Hunter was also a member of the rock group, Dragon, and had been her bandmate in XL Capris. In November 1983 the group issued a seven-track extended play, ''Scribble'', on Regular/WEA. Session musicians with Pigott and H ...
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Alex Proyas
Alexander Proyas (; Greek: Αλέξανδρος Πρόγιας; born 23 September 1963) is an Australian filmmaker of Greek descent. Proyas is best known for directing the films ''The Crow'' (1994), '' Dark City'' (1998), ''I, Robot'' (2004), '' Knowing'' (2009), and ''Gods of Egypt'' (2016). Early life Proyas was born in Alexandria, present-day Egypt, to ethnic Greek parents. His father's family had lived in Egypt for many generations, and his mother's family were from Cyprus. He moved to Sydney when he was three. At 17, he attended the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School, and began directing music videos shortly after. He moved to Los Angeles in the United States to further his career, working on MTV music videos and TV commercials. Career Proyas' first feature film was the independent science fiction thriller '' Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds'', which was nominated for two Australian Film Institute awards in 1988, for costume design and production de ...
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The Church (band)
The Church are an Australian Rock music, rock band formed in Sydney in 1980. Initially associated with New wave music, new wave, neo-psychedelia, and indie rock, their music later came to feature slower tempos and surreal soundscapes reminiscent of dream pop and post-rock. Glenn A. Baker has written that "From the release of the 'She Never Said' single in November 1980, this unique Sydney-originated entity has purveyed a distinctive, ethereal, psychedelic-tinged sound which has alternatively found favour and disfavour in Australia." The ''Los Angeles Times'' has described the band's music as "dense, shimmering, exquisite guitar pop". The founding members were Steve Kilbey on lead vocals and bass guitar, Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper on guitars, and Nick Ward on drums. Ward played only on their debut album, and the band's drummer for the rest of the 1980s was Richard Ploog. Jay Dee Daugherty (ex-Patti Smith Group) played drums from 1990 to 1993, followed by "timEbandit" Ti ...
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Mark Opitz
Mark Opitz (born 1952) is an Australian record producer and audio engineer. He started his career with Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1971. He has produced AC/DC, the Angels, Australian Crawl, Cold Chisel, Divinyls and INXS. He has won the ARIA Award for Producer of the Year in 1987 and 1988. He had previously won Best Australian Producer at the ''Countdown'' Awards for his work in 1980, 1982, 1985 and 1986. On 8 June 2020 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for "significant service to the performing arts, particularly to music production." In August of that year he was listed as one of The 7 Most Influential Music Producers of All Time by ''Mixdown Magazine''s David Tomisch and Will Brewster. Early years and personal life Mark Opitz was born in Melbourne in 1952. His mother Shirley, his father and an older sibling had moved from Darwin in the early 1950s to suburban Upwey and then Croydon. During childhood his parents separated, he ...
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Nik Kershaw
Nicholas David Kershaw (born 1 March 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. Kershaw came to prominence in 1984 as a solo artist. He released eight singles that entered the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart during the decade, including "Wouldn't It Be Good", " Dancing Girls", "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", "Human Racing", " The Riddle", " Wide Boy", "Don Quixote" and "When a Heart Beats". His 62 weeks on the UK Singles Chart through 1984 and 1985 beat all other solo artists. Kershaw appeared at the dual-venue concert Live Aid in 1985 and has also penned a number of hits for other artists, including a UK No. 1 single in 1991 for Chesney Hawkes, " The One and Only". Early years Nicholas "Nik" Kershaw was born on 1 March 1958 in Bristol, England, and grew up in Ipswich, Suffolk. His father was a flautist and his mother was an opera singer. He was educated at Northgate Grammar School for Boys where he played the guitar – he was self-taught ...
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Icehouse (band)
Icehouse are an Australian Rock music, rock band, formed in Sydney in 1977 as Flowers. Initially known in their homeland for their Pub rock (Australia), pub rock style, the band later achieved mainstream success playing New wave music, new-wave and synth-pop music and attained Top 10 singles chart success locally and in both Europe and the U.S. The mainstay of both Flowers and Icehouse has been Iva Davies (singer-songwriter, record producer, guitar, bass, keyboards, oboe) supplying additional musicians as required. The name "Icehouse", adopted in 1981, comes from an old, cold flat Davies lived in and the strange building across the road populated by itinerant people. Davies and Icehouse extended the use of synthesisers particularly the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 ("Love in Motion (Icehouse song), Love in Motion", 1981), Linn LM-1, Linn drum machine ("Hey Little Girl", 1982) and Fairlight CMI (''Razorback (film), Razorback'' trailer, 1983) in Australian popular music. Their be ...
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Split Enz
Split Enz were a New Zealand rock band formed in Auckland in 1972 by Tim Finn and Phil Judd and had a variety of other members during its existence. Originally started as a folk-oriented group with quirky art rock stylings, the band built a strong regional following, noted for their outlandish costumes and makeup. After Tim Finn's brother Neil joined as co-lead vocalist and songwriter, the band came to embrace a more streamlined and pop-oriented approach and became pioneers of new wave. The band achieved worldwide indie stardom in the 1980s, with particular success in New Zealand, Canada and Australia. The band experienced its greatest success in the early 1980s, with the albums '' True Colours'' (1980), '' Waiata'' (1981) and '' Time and Tide'' (1982) reaching number one in New Zealand and Australia and producing the hit singles " I Got You" (a New Zealand and Australian number-one), " One Step Ahead", "History Never Repeats", "Dirty Creature" and "Six Months in a Leaky Bo ...
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Ian McFarlane
Ian McFarlane (born 1959) is an Australian music journalist, music historian and author, whose best known publication is the '' Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop'' (1999), which was updated for a second edition in 2017. As a journalist he started in 1984 with '' Juke'', a rock music newspaper. During the early 1990s he worked for Roadrunner Records while he published a music guide, ''The Australian New Music Record Guide Volume 1: 1976–1980'' (1992). He followed with two fanzines, ''Freedom Train'' and ''Prehistoric Sounds'', both issued during 1994 to 1996. McFarlane's ''The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop'' is described by the ''Australian Music Guide'' as "the most exhaustive and wide-ranging encyclopedia of Australian music from the 1950s onwards". Subsequently, he was a writer for ''The Australian'' and worked for Raven Records, a reissue specialist label, preparing compilations, writing liner notes and providing research. He fulfilled a similar role at A ...
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National Library Of Australia
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australians, Australian people", thus functioning as a national library. It is located in Parkes, Australian Capital Territory, Parkes, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, ACT. Created in 1960 by the ''National Library Act'', by the end of June 2019 its collection contained 7,717,579 items, with its manuscript material occupying of shelf space. The NLA also hosts and manages the renowned Trove cultural heritage discovery service, which includes access to the Australian Web Archive and National edeposit (NED), a large collection of digitisation, digitised newspapers, official documents, ...
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