The Ampersands appears to be a popular name for bands. I've found at least three different bands by that name when doing a Google search. This one is the Australian band from the early 90's consisting of Andrew Withycombe, Darren O'Shanassy, Kim Lester, and Maria Poletti. They put out an album on cassette and a few EP's, then apparently disbanded and went on to get married and have kids and have a life, the only comment on this video at YouTube is "OMG, that's my dad!". A shame, any band cool enough to put a raspy flute in their music is a band cool enough that it ought to be heard by a wider audience, but Australia was a very insular place in the early 90's and there was no Internet back then to let anybody outside Australia know that anything was going on there...
This one is named "Cicchitti Pipeline" and was on both their EP "Dart" and their cassette tape "Half Folklore, Half Lies". Maria Poletti was a decent singer, a bit of production and a better microphone (I recognize the tone of a cheapo live performance mike) would have really opened this song up well, but even as-is it's an interesting listen.
-- Badtux the Music Penguin
Interesting -- I never heard of & when I was living Down Under, and I've been an Aussie music fan for decades. Of course, I gravitated toward the howling, screeching garage-punk bands. Melbourne had not one, but TWO thick "street paper" music tabloids that came out each week, and I'd read them on the trams, but Ampersand eludes my memory. That background of the scrubby eucalypts on the road footage, though -- very Australian!
ReplyDelete