'Punk rock had caught fire, establishing strongholds in England and America, and eventually reaching X's native Australia. Drawing on its predecessors for inspiration, this music is burning with a primal intensity that is vintage 1979.' So reads a review reproduced on a website for a label which is releasing the umpteenth reissue of the wonderful X-Aspirations (or is it just called Aspirations?) by X. Australian X. The best X, let's be fair, because while the US X had their moments, they also had a lot of noments.
The line is from a review by someone called Nathan Bush. I don't know who that is but when I googled that name I got a lot of hits about a podcaster whose speciality is e-commerce. I don't know if it's the same person.
Why do I care? I'm not a patriot and I don't even really see myself as flying the flag for Aust culture at all, though I suppose I do. I just want to say, if it's a competition about 'who invented punk rock', then there is an extremely good case for The Saints as the first, and the admittedly terrible-sounding (until Peter Jackson's audio technology gets onto it and we can hear everything inc. the kettle whistling in the house over the road) Most Primitive Band in the World album recorded in 1974 shows that punk did not 'eventually reach' Australia but was created in Australia as much as anywhere.
Anyway as I said it's stupid but I guess I just hate lazy claims about 'influence' and assumptions that Australians just sat around twiddling their thumbs for people in other places to give them things to do. I will ultimately cope though.
By the way that X-Aspirations is a massively great album. Just so you know.
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