And….we’re back! After a much longer than intended hiatus, let’s resume our journey thru the backpages of rock’n’roll history, shall we? Today the ole time machine takes us back to the year 1971. The place is Sydney, Australia. Banshee wailer Neale Johns and guitarist John Robinson have just replaced the original bassist and drummer of their nascent band Blackfeather with Robert Fortesque and Alexander Kash respectively. Their debut album At The Mountains of Madness is released in April of that year, rising as high as #7 on the Australian album charts. Although most of the cuts sound very dated now, today’s pick, Long Legged Lovely, is a terrific rock tour-de-force, with several themes, including some flat-out, balls to the wall rock’n’roll. Both Robinson’s guitar and Johns’ vocals are top-notch, guaranteed to please classic rock aficionados. The band quickly devolved into a revolving door of players, with Johns the only constant, and never regained the popularity they enjoyed initially, but toured as recently as 2015.
As always, there’s rock trivia to be gleaned from researching these long-lost bands. In this case it was quite surprising. When Blackfeather recorded At The Mountains of Madness , one of the songs included was “Seasons of Change” a mid-tempo ballad. Whilst recording the album, they gave the song to some friends of theirs who had a band called Fraternity. Fraternity slowed the song down even further, gave it a medieval touch by adding woodwind instruments, and produced a far superior version. The lead singer of Fraternity? A young, unrecognizable, pre-AC/DC Bon Scott.
