Rock music in Australia

Rock music in Australia, also known as Oz rock, Australian rock, and Aussie rock, has a rich history, rooted in an appreciation of various rock genres originating in the United States and Britain, and to a lesser extent, in continental Europe and Africa. Australian rock has also contributed to the development of some of these genres, as well as having its own unique Australiana sound with pub rock and its Indigenous music.

From 1955 to 1975, three distinct "waves" of Australian rock occurred. The first wave was from 1955 to 1963 and was influenced by American and British styles with local variants provided by artists such as Johnny O'Keefe, who had a hit with "Wild One", which appeared in July 1958. Late in that stage, clean-cut acts, which featured on TV's Bandstand and toured as the "Bandstand family", were representing local music on the record charts. The second wave from 1964 to 1969 was directly influenced by the Beatles and their tour of the country in June 1964. Two major acts from that era are the Easybeats and Bee Gees. A weekly magazine, Go-Set, which was published from 1966 to 1974 and aimed at teenagers and twenty-year-olds, quickly became the most influential and popular music-related publication of the period. The third wave from 1970 to 1975, with the advent of pub rock, was typified by early exponents, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Blackfeather, and Buffalo. Internationally, AC/DC started as a pub rock group in November 1973 and became one of the most well-known Australian rock bands, with more than 71 million sales in the US alone by 2014. Beginning in that era was Countdown, which was a popular music TV program on national broadcaster ABC and ran from November 1974 until July 1987.

After 1975, Australian rock began to diversify, including local contributors to punk and indie rock styles. By the 1980s baby boomer acts were prominent, which included John Farnham, whose album Whispering Jack (October 1986) peaked at number one on the Australian charts for 25 weeks and was certified 24x platinum indicating shipment of over 1.68 million copies—the highest by any Australian artist. Also in that decade and the next, Indigenous rock groups such as Yothu Yindi and Warumpi Band achieved wider recognition.

1950s to early 1960s: "First wave" of Australian rock

In the mid-1950s American rockabilly and rock and roll music was taken up by local rock musicians and it soon caught on with Australian teens, through films, records and from 1956, television. They are perhaps the most well-known rock group from Australia, despite the fact that only one of the current band members is actually Australian-born. They have sold millions of albums, toured the world several times over, broken countless attendance records, and influenced hard rock music the world over.

From their humble beginnings, Scottish brothers Angus and Malcolm Young forged a hard-hitting pub guitar sound, similar to Alex Harvey but tougher. After Bon Scott joined the band, the band shot to the top of the Australian rock scene in 1974–75 with their song "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". The band later achieved international success, especially with the release of their album Highway to Hell. This was to be Scott's last album. During the subsequent tour, he was discovered in the backseat of a friend's car, having died of alcohol poisoning.

The band found a new singer in English-born Brian Johnson and released their next album, Back in Black, in the early 1980s. The U.S. took notice of the band with the song You Shook Me All Night Long, and the album of the same name became one of the best-selling albums by a band ever, selling over 22 million copies in the U.S. and 42 million copies around the world.

AC/DC are credited as a seminal influence by scores of leading hard rock and heavy metal music acts, and they are now rated the fifth-biggest selling group in U.S. recording history, with total sales of over 100 million records.

Little River Band

Another highly popular and lucrative band of this period is the soft-rock-harmony group Little River Band (LRB). Resurrected from an earlier band called Mississippi, LRB centred on a trio of seasoned veterans. Lead singer Glenn Shorrock had fronted Australian 1960s pop idols The Twilights and singer-guitarists Beeb Birtles and Graeham Goble had been the core members of Mississippi; prior to that, Birtles had played bass in chart-topping Australian 1960s pop group Zoot whose former lead guitarist Rick Springfield also became a solo star in the US.

Under the guidance of manager Glenn Wheatley (former bassist in The Masters Apprentices, one of the top Australian bands of the Sixties) LRB became the first Australian band to achieve major ongoing chart and sales success in the United States. They achieved huge success in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their single "Reminiscing" now ranks as one of the most frequently played singles in American radio history.

1970s and 1980s: Indie, punk, post-punk, and early Australian electronica

Other developments starting from the mid-1970s were the appearance of early electronica, as opposed to electronic music, as Percy Grainger had invented some obscure electronic instruments earlier, and Rolf Harris was famously associated with the Stylophone. The most notable of early electronica were Cybotron, Sydney's Severed Heads and Melbourne's Laughing Hands and Essendon Airport who began to experiment with tape loops and synthesisers, but did not rise to prominence until the 1980s. Electronica had existed in the Australian classical music scene with David Ahern in the late 1960s. By the late 1990s Severed Heads were signed to the influential label Nettwerk records. Single Gun Theory had been with Nettwerk since 1987. The pop band Mi-Sex scored a major hit with the single "Computer Games" in 1980, which was one of the first Australian pop recordings to employ sequenced synthesiser backings. In 1980 producer Mark Moffatt pioneered dance technology by becoming the first in the world to use a Roland 808 rhythm composer and MC 4 digital sequencer on record with his studio project The Monitors. (exactly the same type of equipment had been in use around the world however, simply manufactured by other brands. The 808 of the time bore little resemblance to its later sample playback incarnations, machines whose capabilities were more like that of the Fairlight CMI series 1 and Synclavier)

Following the punk movement several influential bands of this post-punk era were The Birthday Party, led by Nick Cave, Foetus, The Celibate Rifles, The Go-Betweens, SPK, Dead Can Dance, These Immortal Souls, Crime & the City Solution, No, Louis Tillett, Laughing Clowns, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, Beasts of Bourbon.

1980s

While many Australasian bands from the 1980s remained cult acts outside of Australia, some, including Little River Band, Men at Work, AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil, and later Crowded House and Electric Pandas found wide success throughout the decade. Groups with international hit singles included Real Life with "Catch Me I'm Falling", "Send Me an Angel", Divinyls with "Pleasure and Pain", Big Pig with "Breakaway" and Rick Springfield with "Jessie's Girl". Moving Pictures had a hit album with Days of Innocence. Jimmy Barnes and Michael Hutchence performed "Good Times" a song by the Australian songwriting duo Vanda & Young and it was included on The Lost Boys soundtrack. Expatriate Mike Chapman continued his career as a prominent record producer and co-wrote "Mickey" which became a major hit when Toni Basil performed it.

Baby boomer acts

The 1980s was a boom period for acts whose members were usually born between 1946 and 1964 (baby boomers); this includes occasionally critically praised, popular acts such as The Party Boys, James Reyne, Models, Sunnyboys, Hunters & Collectors, Machinations, Johnny Diesel, Matt Finish, Hoodoo Gurus, Chantoozies, The Dugites, The Numbers, The Swingers, Spy Vs Spy, Eurogliders, Mental As Anything, Boom Crash Opera, I'm Talking, Do Ré Mi, Rockmelons, Stephen Cummings, The Reels, The Stems, Paul Kelly, Nick Barker, Jenny Morris, The Triffids, The Choirboys, Icehouse, Redgum, Goanna, 1927, Max Q, Noiseworks, GANGgajang, The Black Sorrows and The Zorros.

The mainstream taste was to tap into the "classic" Fifties rock look, with a contemporary touch, while alternative rockers were often identifiable for sixties and seventies retro. At this time Goth fashion was very unusual and heavily applied black mascara was the sign of a deeply troubled person.

Many of these acts often topped the Australian charts but never gained international success. One notable exception was Joe Dolce who moved to Australia in 1979 from the US. His Australian Number One Shaddap You Face was Number One in the UK and fifteen other countries, selling over six million copies internationally and achieving the before unheard of sales of nine times platinum in Australia. There was no music industry award at that time to acknowledge sales of this magnitude so the Victorian Premier Sir Rupert Hamer presented Dolce with a specially made perspex-framed album cover and the Advance Australia Award. This Mainstream Australian rock of the eighties was generally uncontroversial with the exception of Kylie Minogue for her limited vocal range, Christina Amphlett and Ecco Homo, who were deemed by some to be too sexually provocative and Yothu Yindi's "Treaty", which was objected to by some because a white person Paul Kelly co-wrote it. Nick Cave was not famous in Australia until Triple J Radio became a nationwide, prominent broadcaster. Audiences who went to The Angels' gig were famous for their good humoured response "No way, get fucked, fuck off!" to the lead singer's lyric "Am I ever going to see your face again?".

Mainstream acts

Mainstream acts such as singer John Farnham, Daryl Braithwaite and Jimmy Barnes were very successful for many years within Australia, but remain largely unknown outside the country.

Farnham's commercial comeback was one of the biggest success stories in Australian music in that decade, the former "King of Pop" spent years out of favour with the public and the industry, often reduced to working in suburban clubs, but he returned in 1986 with the album Whispering Jack, which became the biggest-selling album of that year and remains one of the biggest selling Australian records. His manager was Glenn Wheatley, former manager of Little River Band.

Renowned artists such as singer-songwriter Paul Kelly and his band The Coloured Girls (renamed The Messengers for America), ambient-rock-crossover act Not Drowning, Waving and Aboriginal-band Yothu Yindi drew inspiration from distinctly Australian concerns, particularly from the land, and they were critically well received within Australia, and also found international listeners.

One noteworthy group in this decade was the pioneering Aboriginal group Warumpi Band from the Northern Territory, whose landmark single "Jailanguru Pakarnu (Out from Jail)" was the first rock single ever recorded in an Aboriginal language. Triple J was the cutting edge radio station of the time and was instrumental in bringing this band to public attention, as were Midnight Oil, who took the group on national tours with them. Their classic 1987 single "My Island Home" was successfully covered by Christine Anu in the 1990s. Another memorable song of the Aboriginal rock scene is "Black Boy" by Coloured Stone.

Darkwave

Critically acclaimed acts like The Church, Cosmic Psychos, the darkwave-world music group Dead Can Dance, Hunters & Collectors, Scribble, The Moodists, The Deadly Hume, the Wreckery, the second incarnation of The Saints, Laughing Clowns, The Go-Betweens and a new band formed by Nick Cave and Mick Harvey, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, developed consistent followings in Europe and other regions. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the side project Honeymoon in Red were heavy on the pop cultural references to cult favourites like Johnny Cash and Saul Bass and lurid pulp fiction. From the late seventies to the late eighties there was also a lively Australian post-punk scene which was made up of bands that showed obvious influences of bands such as Tangerine Dream, Wire, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Suicide. J. G. Thirlwell, whose influential Foetus, began life in Melbourne before moving to London and the US. Of the early Australian electronica scene just a few truly memorable recordings emerged, for example "Lamborghini" by Severed Heads, "Pony Club" by The Limp "The Pilot Reads Crosswords" by Scattered Order and the electronica of Hugo Klang. The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were precursors of postrock. SPK was a sinister industrial band in the early 1980s and they surprised many of their fans by reinventing themselves as a fashion friendly synthpop group in the mid-1980s. SPK's sound was unlike the chilly asexual minimalism of many little known experimental bands of the time. Australian Crawl, a chart topping rock group, dabbled in minimalist composition with "Reckless", using a very simple bassline and voice, without alienating their established audience.

The use of violin was unusual in Australian rock bands, however, three who did include it were Box the Jesuit, Crime & the City Solution and Sidewinder, with classically trained Richard Lee, later with Dragon, on that instrument.

Garage rock revivalists

Detroit rock influenced bands such as the Celibate Rifles, The Scientists, Lime Spiders and The Hitmen would serve as precursors to the garage rock revival of the 1980s and the grunge scene to follow. From the bass heavy "I Don't Wanna Go Out" by X in 1979 and throughout the eighties the Australian indie rock scene produced hook driven melodic songs with heavy guitar and bass backing. Examples are Johnny Teen and The Broken Hearts "I Like It Both Ways", "I Lied" by The Pony, Too Much Acid by The Pineapples from the Dawn of Time, Chewin by Space Juniors, These Immortal Souls' "Blood and Sand, She Said" and The Scientists' "Swampland". Some bands had a foot in both the mainstream and alternative scenes, for example, The Johnnys, Hunters & Collectors, Hoodoo Gurus, TISM, Painters and Dockers. In 1989 the group No released "Once We Were Scum, Now We Are God", an Ep that was in parts as hard rock as The Cult, despite No being generally perceived as an "underground" band.

Noise rock acts included Lubricated Goat and People With Chairs Up Their Noses. Some of the louche pub rock names of the time were People With Chairs Up Their Noses, Free Beer, Shower Scene From Psycho, Thug, No More Bandicoots and Nyuk Nyuk Nyuck.

The Mark of Cain, one of the better and more consistently hard rock bands of the decade, formed in Adelaide between 1984 and 1985.

The decade also saw perhaps the most concerted examination of the routine and everyday aspects of suburban and inner-city life since perhaps The Executives 1960s classic "Summer Hill Road." This approach was explored not only by Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls (in songs like "From St Kilda to Kings Cross" and "Leaps and Bounds") but also by The Little Heroes (e.g. "Melbourne is Not New York"), John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong e.g. "King Street" and The Mexican Spitfires e.g. "Sydney Town" and "Town Hall Steps."

Hong Kong's Leslie Cheung covered Big Pig's "Breakaway" in 1989, in this decade, one of the rare instances of a popular overseas artist covering a song by a popular Australian band (other than AC/DC).

Iconic music festivals of the decade included the Narara Music Festival, Australian Made and Turn Back the Tide at Bondi.

1990s: Ravers and alternative rockers

thumb|left|The [[Big Day Out in Sydney, 2010]]

In 1990, Boxcar released their first album, Vertigo. Central Station Records in Sydney was one of the leading retailers of dance music. The Sydney street press became half and half dance music and rock.

Highlights in rock from people of ATSI background were Archie Roach's Took the Children Away, Christine Anu's Party and her version of My Island Home and Yothu Yindi's World Turning.

Fans of early punk band The Saints were excited when Ed Kuepper reunited with members of The Saints and played and recorded as The Aints. Kuepper was at the time receiving praise from the critics for his album Today Wonder, that featured simply Kuepper singing and on guitar and Mark Dawson on drums.

In 1991, the band Necrotomy played live on the Peter Couchman talk show special Couchman on Heavy Metal during a period of media controversy about heavy metal music.

( Metal as a form of music around the world underwent a massive stylistic evolution after this, with the emergence of many new styles such as black, doom, melodeath etc. in which Australian bands such as Alchemy, Armoured Angel, Abominator, Lord chaos, to name a very few, played and are still playing, a part in.)

Another acoustic act of the late nineties was Machine Translations.

The nineties was famous for not only grunge but also eclecticism with Machine Gun Fellatio and Def FX being popular cross-genre acts.

Gerling, an alternative rock and electronica band, formed in 1993, as was the pop–punk band Noise Addict featuring Ben Lee, who went on to be a prominent singer and songwriter into the following decade.

Peril was an attempt to make the self-styled avant garde music of the Tzadik Records label.

Musicians and music fans of the nineties tended to be less nostalgic for pre-punk rock compared to those of previous decade. The Cruel Sea and Divinyls were exceptions, showing the influence of the music of the sixties. Dave Graney and TISM continued to be popular with their irreverent commentary on contemporary culture.

Baby Animals released their eponymous debut album in 1991, which was briefly successful.

The Screaming Jets was a popular hard rock act from Newcastle. Having a down to earth image, they and Divinyls were examples of bands that survived the backlash against so called Hair Rock of the Eighties. In 1993, the Melbourne rock band Horsehead also gained popularity after garnering interest internationally from Madonna's Maverick Records and had a hit single 'Liar' reaching the weekly top 40 ARIA charts and was performed televised on MTV's 'Take 40 Australia'. The band stylistically shared affinities with the huge American grunge scene at the time, drawing from the likes of Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. The band also had a second hit single and video 'Oil and Water' which won the Australian Kerrang! award for best rock video. Their debut album was mixed by the legendary Mike Fraser. In 1994, hard rock band The Poor charted at #30 in the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks with "More Wine Waiter Please". The Candy Harlots' 1990 Foreplay EP reached 17 in the ARIA national Top 100 chart.

Paul Capsis was one of the few rock acts to work with a theatre director, Barrie Kosky.

Killing Heidi had a hit song with 'Mascara' in 1999.

Raja Ram was one half of Shpongle and their debut album in 1999 was Are You Shpongled?.

Roots music continued to have a strong appeal, with acts such as Blues band Bondi Cigars and Zydeco band Psycho Zydeco.

The comedy quiz show Good News Week was regularly signed off with Paul McDermott singing his rendition of Hunters & Collectors' "Throw Your Arms Around Me".

Alternative rock

Throughout the developed world, alternative rock of various kinds became more popular during the 1990s, especially grunge. As in other countries, independent music festivals also saw a resurgence in popularity, notably the Big Day Out (which began in Sydney in 1992) attracted and helped build the careers of many Australian acts as well as showcasing international artists to a local audience, and the Woodford Folk Festival, attracting large crowds in South Eastern Queensland.

Notable Australian independent acts of the time included the Falling Joys from Canberra; Christine Anu from Cairns, Queensland; Diana Anaid from Nimbin; Magic Dirt from Geelong, Tumbleweed from Wollongong; The Superjesus from Adelaide; Regurgitator, Powderfinger, Screamfeeder, The Sallyanne Atkinson Hate Squad and Custard from Brisbane; Something for Kate, The Living End, Dirty Three, The Paradise Motel, Rebecca's Empire, Bodyjar and The Meanies from Melbourne; Jebediah, Ammonia and The Blackeyed Susans from Perth, RatCat, The Clouds, You Am I, Vicious Hairy Mary, Caligula, The Whitlams, Bughouse, The Crystal Set, The Cruel Sea, Crow, Nitocris, Front End Loader, Skulker, Frenzal Rhomb, and Pollyanna from Sydney; Spiderbait from Finley, New South Wales and Silverchair, who began as a teenage combo in Newcastle, were discovered by Triple-J and have since become one of the most successful Australian bands of all time. The changes brought about in this period and the aforementioned bands are discussed in the book The Sell-In by music journalist Craig Mathieson.

Frank Bennett covered many of the fashionable alternative rock bands in big band mode. His version of Radiohead's "Creep" was his most well known recording, which was listed in the Triple J Hottest 100, 1996 and earned him two Aria Award nominations in 1997, one for Breakthrough Artist – Single and the other for Best New Talent. His music was less danceable than overseas Retro swing acts Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Brian Setzer Orchestra. Frank Bennett was deeply ironic and had only moderate success with audiences who were attracted to the romanticised Harry Connick, Jr. Music in the style of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett was unfashionable in the Alternative rock scene, stigmatised by the derisive term Lounge Lizard. Nevertheless, Frank Bennett's follow-up album Cash Landing with a full orchestra, still earned him another ARIA Award nomination, this time for Best Adult Contemporary Album. Singers Dave Graney, Tex Perkins and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (particularly for their album The Good Son), also drew on the styles. By the end of the decade there was renewed interest in Lounge music from elements of the club scene, the interest being in both the composition and the campness.

2000s–2010s

thumb|[[Triple J's Come Together festival]]

Several Australian rock bands saw international success in Europe and the US. Notable examples include The Vines, who rose to prominence in the UK before becoming known in Australia, and Jet. Jet, influenced by seminal 1960s acts such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, had their single "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" used in an Apple iPod commercial, and consequently have sold 3 million copies in the US alone. Another band which had great success is Wolfmother, a hard rock band, very influenced by 1960s/1970s psychedelic rock and heavy metal bands, like Black Sabbath. In 2007, Wolfmother were awarded a Grammy for best hard rock performance for their extremely successful single "Woman".

Apart from those bands which achieved international success, one of the well known Australian rock bands of the first decade of the 21st century was Grinspoon. They first achieved success in the music industry in 1995 after being Unearthed by Triple J, and have been a mainstay of festivals such as the Big Day Out ever since.

A wave of female fronted, PJ Harvey-esque bands emerged in Australia during the early 2000s, most notably Little Birdy and Love Outside Andromeda. And with the phenomenal success of Missy Higgins, artists such as Sarah Blasko and others have found themselves a strong following.

There has also been an abundance of modern rock bands who have been influenced by the alternative and progressive scenes. Bands like The Butterfly Effect, Karnivool, Mammal and Cog have all seen success, with Karnivool probably gaining the most international attention.

Roots music and indie

Domestically, roots music, seemingly a catch-all term for somewhat more laid-back acoustic music covering blues, country and folk influences, came to some prominence, including Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, The John Butler Trio, and the plaintive harmonies of The Waifs. A number of "blues and roots" festivals have sprung up and are attracting large audiences.

As well as these uniquely "Aussie Bands", the mainstreaming of alternative music led to a shift of focus in indie rock in the 2000s. Post-rock indie band Art of Fighting, recorded their debut full-length album, Wires, in 2001. The album was successful and went on to win an ARIA award for Best Alternative Release. 2005 in particular sparked many brand new Australian "indie rock" bands such as End of Fashion who won ARIA awards for their debut self-titled album and hit song "Oh Yeah" (as well as performing at the Homebake festival and appearing on talk show Rove Live several times). There is also Kisschasy who appeared in concert on 2 October 2005 with teen favourite Simple Plan. Another band to appear on the scene at this time were John Smith Quintet wielding their new brand of funk onto the Australian charts and music scene. Melbourne indie rock artist Gotye achieved considerable domestic and international success in 2011–12.

Hardcore punk

Australian hardcore punk is an active rock music subgenre with a dedicated following. Many bands never tour outside their home state but enjoy a relatively large local fanbase. Recorded material of their work may be hard to acquire as live shows are the mainstay of the scene.

The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic is strong with local distributors and small record labels active in most capital cities. Unlike the United States relatively few bands are straight edge or influenced by particular political views or religious convictions.

The strong sense of DIY ethics supported by independent street press and community radio stations mostly in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth forms a breeding ground for creative artists who wish to explore the audio spectrum, as seen in Sticky Carpet rockumentary of Melbourne music scene.

In recent years, Australian hardcore bands have been growing in fanbase and success, the most notable being Byron Bay's Parkway Drive signing to American punk/hardcore record label Epitaph Records.

thumb|[[Pendulum (drum and bass band)|Pendulum bassist Gareth McGrillen. The band mixes numerous genres, including electronic.]]

The first popular Australian rock song to resemble contemporary dance music was the funky The Real Thing (1969) by Russell Morris. The high beats per minute blip of mainstream Electronic music in Australia appeared in the early 1980s with Severed Heads' Lamborghini. Severed Heads formed in 1979 and were the first electronic group to play the Big Day Out. The band achieved long-term success, winning an ARIA Award in 2005 for "Best Original Soundtrack" for The Illustrated Family Doctor, where lead singer Tom Ellard said the band would never fit into mainstream music.

Electronic rock

Traditional rock bands such as Regurgitator have developed an original sound by combining heavy guitars and electronic influences, and rock-electro groups, most notably Rogue Traders, have become popular with mainstream audiences. However, Cyclic Defrost, the only specialist electronic music magazine in Australia, was started in Sydney (in 1998) and is still based there. Radio still lags somewhat behind the success of the genre—producer and artist manager Andrew Penhallow told Australian Music Online that "the local music media have often overlooked the fact that this genre has been flying the flag for Australian music overseas".

In the late 2000s and early 2010s indie-electronic, indietronica and synthpop music rose in popularity, with Cut Copy, and Midnight Juggernauts being notable Australian exports and touring internationally.

Neo-psychedelic

Since the mid to late 2000s, the popularity of psychedelic rock music in Australia has been steadily climbing due in part to the worldwide success of Perth band, Tame Impala. To bring the style into the 21st Century, Australian Psychedelic music carefully blends these elements along with Electronic Music, Shoegaze, Hip Hop and a multitude other genres that have come to prominence since the 60s. Rather than being propelled by song lyrics, the edginess of the scene comes from the music which relies heavily on the use of effects including tape delays, phasers, sitars, fuzz boxes, and pitch modulators.

Generally, the lyrical content differs from early psychedelic music which focused mostly on absurdity and drug use. Although there's still references to those subjects, the lyrics dial in on the issues introspection, paradox, identity, and isolation. The vocal melodies tend to weave together with the music to create a wall of sound as opposed to prominent, melodic lines. The dynamic of the Perth bands tends to be more cerebral and pop oriented than the raucous, tripped out rock by the likes of Wolfmother from Sydney or King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard from Melbourne

It's mainly two record labels, Modular Recordings and Flightless who have been signing and promoting most of these bands. Promotion of these bands is focused mostly on regions outside of Australia with some of the biggest audiences being the US, the UK, and Mexico. Australia itself has a large number of music festivals that cater to the psychedelic, as well as other alternative music, scene. These include Big Day Out, Sydney Psych Festival, Come Together Music Festival, Pyramid Rock Festival, among others.

References

General

Note: Archived [on-line] copy has limited functionality.

Specific

External links

"The First Wave: Australian Rock and Pop Recordings (1955–1963)" holdings at the National Film and Sound Archive.
"The Sixties: Australian Rock and Pop Recordings (1964–1969) " (formerly "The Second Wave ...") holdings at the National Film and Sound Archive
"Australian Rock Music" archived from the original by Government of Australia website.
Listen to an excerpt of 'Jailanguru Pakarnu' and read more about it on australianscreen online
'Jailanguru Pakarnu' was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia Registry in 2007
Moduar Recordings Website
Flightless Records Website Flightless Record Label
Stanley Kane Australian Psychedelic impact Stanley Kane's Blog