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By: Dom – Little Red
Date: 11th Oct 07
Release: Album
To Cure: Hypertension
What:
Billy Thorpe - Solo: The Last Recordings
Where:
here and good record shops
When:
since 2006
How much:
$29.95
On:
Liberation
Billy Thorpe died on the last day of summer. That day me and Age went down to Chelsworth park with some beers and fags. I had completely forgotten about his passing until - in the early evening - as we climbed through the golf course fence, we heard ‘Most People I Know...' booming from the football changing rooms. We decided it must be some guys with Gold 104 pumped up on the car stereo after training. But as we rounded the club house we saw it was this old dad band inside with their amps up to 100, shirts off, pouring sweat, with a six pack on the floor, belting Thorpie's anthem out as loud as they fucking could.
I'd seen these guys play all the classics at the school fetes and such but I'd never seen them play like this. It wasn't just a tribute to the late great - it was like they were fighting off their own mortality with the sheer volume of their instruments. They played that song over and over, note for note until we left to see if we could find some young kids playing rock ‘n' roll in Brunswick Street.
We trawled the strip but could only find dub and folk and that shit and it occurred to us that these rock dinosaurs from our home town, East Ivanhoe, were some of the last to keep the candle burning. Maybe you can't just strap on a guitar, turn it up and call that rock ‘n' roll; you have to live it first - like Billy did. They say he lived higher and wilder than anyone and he played that way too. Well, summer is on its way now so it's time to start pumping Thorpie's other smash hit - ‘It's Almost Summer'. Buy it or burn it, Thorpie doesn't care, just play it fucking loud!!