Westall '66: an unsolved Melburnian mystery

Little green men, alien abductions, extraterrestrials living among us …all too often, the notion of life from other planets loses credibility because of the whole whacked-out Weekly World News angle. Which can make it hard for folks who experience genuine intergalactic encounters to be taken seriously. But when 200 people witness a UFO only to get shut down by authorities and told it was just a stray weather balloon… well! That’s even more absurd than the idea of Hilary Clinton adopting a baby alien.

 Yet (joking aside) this is what happened to staff, students and neighbours of Westall High School in Melbourne’s southeast back in April 1966. At around 11 o’clock on an apparently normal Wednesday morning, their reality was turned inside out by the appearance of a silver disc hovering and then landing just behind a line of pine trees in nearby Grange Reserve. It eventually shot off at jaw-dropping speed, but not before some kids were able to run over and get a closer look.

So what was it? Some 48 years after the event, this remains a mystery. Judging by the recollections of some of the witnesses in the documentary Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery, it sure as hell wasn’t a weather balloon or experimental aircraft like they were told. But they soon realised that if they talked about it, they’d be considered crazy.

These drawings are stills from the evocative animated sequences by artist Lee Whitmore that illustrate some of the recollections recounted in the documentary Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery

Immediately after the event, the school principal called an assembly, where he told the students that all they'd seen was a weather balloon. He banned them from speaking to the journalists that had congregated outside (although some did) – and as a result, there wasn’t a lot of media coverage. Channel 9 news reported on it at the time, but the film has since gone missing.

Local newspaper The Dandenong Journal ran a couple of stories, but never got to the bottom of it:

"The Dandenong Journal - 1966 14th Apr - page 1" by Photo or scan of newspaper page, and intellectual property owned by The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, News_Corporation. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of The Herald and Weekly Times Ltd via Wikipedia -

Not wanting to come across like a crackpot is a powerful motivator to shut your trap for most people; even more so for adolescents, I guess, at that stage of life where you just want to fit in. But even teachers felt the pressure. One was visited by some mysterious government types who told him that if he didn’t keep quiet, they’d spread rumours that he was an alcoholic. Another, who’d taken photos of the flying saucer, had her camera confiscated.

Westall '66 gives the witnesses a chance to speak about the incident without fear of judgement. Not all the stories are consistent: some mention seeing two flying saucers; others remember the UFO playing a game of cat and mouse with a group of small airplanes. Some recall getting so close to the craft that they could feel the heat emanating from it. Others remember a large circular imprint of flattened grass where the object had landed. There's even talk of a girl called Tania who got to Grange Reserve first, fainted, was taken off in an ambulance and never seen again.

Cover illustration from The Clayton Calendar, a school publication from the time

In the days that followed, students and other locals saw official-looking men in suits at the site of the UFO landing and at the school, but nobody knows who they were associated with. The Australian military? The US military? ASIO? Researchers into the event have come up against a brick wall in terms of archived documents or reports; even the RAAF’s records of UFOs for 1966 don’t mention Westall.

Fascinating stuff. 

There is now an extraterrestrial-themed kids' playground at The Grange, complete with flying saucer! (Pic: Weekend Notes, Melbourne)

And the theories keep coming. Just last month in The Herald Sun, there was an article claiming that the silver disc seen by the Westall students all those years ago was in fact a special silver balloon used to test radiation levels post-Maralinga, which had blown off-course after being launched from Mildura.

While I couldn’t possibly do justice to the quirks and convolutions of this confounding slice of Melburnian history in one blog post, I can definitely recommend the documentary, following researcher Shane Ryan's quest to uncover the truth. Spoiler alert: he doesn't.
These witnesses are definitely not crazy. The official cover-up is like a plot from the X-Files. And I simply can’t get Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “It Came Out of the Sky” out of my head…

Song of the month: "Claudette Jones"/Peter & the Silhouettes (December 1966)

Some of you might be familiar with The Louie Report, a blog dedicated to Richard Berry’s party classic “Louie, Louie” (it even profiles the version by Melbourne’s own Pink Finks, who featured in this blog very recently). Apparently more than 1000 artists have covered “Louie Louie” over the years – making it the second-most covered pop song ever (after “Yesterday” by the Beatles). Too bad poor old Richard Berry never got any royalties for it.

Kinda like “Louie Louie,” Peter & the Silhouettes’ 1966 garage stomper “Claudette Jones" has inspired more than a few cover versions in its time. Unlike "Louie Louie", however, the original version of “Claudette Jones” is still the best*. Mind you, the covers aren’t so bad either (but more on those shortly).

Peter & the Silhouettes, 1966. L-R: Kieran Keogh, Manuel Pappos, Peter Rechter, Tony Truscott, Kevin Clancy

First things first: Peter & the Silhouettes hailed from Bendigo (where they were hugely popular) not Melbourne, but I think we can overlook a minor geographical detail like that. The fact is, “Claudette Jones” is such a fun, fuzzed-out slab of garage grooviness that where it comes from is immaterial.



This song ticks all the boxes for a bloody good time: thumping drums, dinky Farfisa organ, silly lyrics and an instantly catchy chorus, topped off with some sizzling fuzz guitar. Personally, I think music critic Richie Unterberger’s description of “Claudette Jones” as “pretty fair garage pop” misses the mark completely: it’s a bonafide ripper, and while it may not have set the charts on fire, that’s only because it never came out as a single. 

Recorded in Johnny Chester’s Melbourne studio at W&G in 1965, “Claudette Jones” was eventually released in 1966 as part of The Scene from Northern Victoria, a compilation showcasing the regional talent of the day (apparently the rest of the album was rather underwhelming). Since then, it’s appeared on Kavern 7’s cracking compendium of unsung 60s Aussie garage, It’s a Kave-In, which is where I first heard it, and possibly on other compilations too.

If you don't have it already, you need this album!

By 1967, Peter & the Silhouettes had morphed into The Tol-Puddle Martyrs. Under this name, they released a couple of singles and played regularly in Melbourne. They even came fourth in the 1968 national grand final of the Hoadley Battle of the Bands competition. But the big time eluded them, and finally the group fizzled out.

Vocalist/keyboard player Peter Rechter moved to Melbourne to study music, and ended up playing in a series of other bands. In about 2006, The Tol-Puddle Martyrs reformed, and I was lucky enough to see them play a short set at Bar Open. Forty years after its original release, “Claudette Jones” had lost none of its energy or garage goodness.

The Claudette Jones legacy

Anyway, for the music nerds among you, here are a few of the “Claudette Jones” covers I mentioned.

99th Floor (Italy, 1993):
Any band calling itself The 99th Floor is gonna get it right, and this version proves my theory correct! Super-faithful to the original, its charm factor is magnified by the singer’s Italian accent. Unfortunately, this Youtube upload cuts off before the end, but trust me – it’s worth a listen. 



Lords of Gravity (Melbourne, 2005):
This dearly-missed Melbourne band wowed local punters with their intense live shows and 60s sounds. Here they are doing “Claudette Jones,” only heavier, faster, wilder! Dig that waspy fuzz and Lord Evan’s blood-curdling scream.




Firebirds (Netherlands, 1995):
A tad too fast for my liking, but Claudette bears up pretty well under the super-sonic treatment. The Firebirds clearly have their hearts in the right place and energy to burn! 

 

Kamikaze Trio (Melbourne, 2004)
“Claudette Jones” meets straight-ahead Oz rock: complete with a very modern drum sound and a blatant absence of fuzz or Farfisa. But the fact it remains listenable is testament to the song’s timeless appeal. Listen here
 
And finally, The Tol-Puddle Martyrs!
It’d be remiss of me not to include this 2006 video, featuring the reformed Tol-Puddle Martyrs and certain faces from around the current Melbourne music scene that some of you might recognise….




* No question about it: the best version of “Louie Louie” ever recorded was by The Sonics.

Then and now: time-warping in Port Phillip Arcade

I’d never been in Port Phillip Arcade until a couple of weekends ago — it just hadn’t registered in my consciousness, despite its Flinders Street frontage and intriguing metal King Neptune sculpture above the entrance. Compared to some of this city’s better known, grander arcades (Block Arcade, for example) Port Phillip Arcade isn’t what you’d call a head-turner.

In fact, with the exception of Neptune, it’s rather drab.

 
Still, there’s something defiantly no-frills and untrendy about it, which in this faddish age is kinda sweet, I guess. Home to cheap’n’cheerful Asian eateries, a cake-decorating emporium, an enormous stamp shop that’s apparently been there since the year dot, an engraver and a café, Port Phillip Arcade is nothing if not utilitarian.

But let’s face it: it’s seen better days…

Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (National Library of Australia)

Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (State Library of Victoria)

Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (National Library of Victoria)

These gorgeous photos by Wolfgang Sievers show the arcade looking shiny and modern, with its American coffee shop and its ‘cake bar’ (anyone know what a hamburger puff is?).

Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (State Library of Victoria)

I’m guessing Lillian Lingerie (below) catered more to the budget-minded shopper than the babelicious if the window display is anything to go by. 

Check out the painting above the doorway of the store next to Lillian's! Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (State Library of Victoria).

For those whose historical interests extend to ye olde colonial times, here’s an interesting fact: Port Phillip Arcade stands on the site of the former Port Phillip Club Hotel, a venerable old building dating from 1838. But who should come along to demolish it in 1960? None other than the notorious Whelan the Wrecker — a name synonymous with the loss of much of Melbourne’s pre-modern architectural heritage… 

Photo: Wolfgang Sievers, 1969 (State Library of Victoria)

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Melbourne song of the month: “You’re Good for Me”/The Pink Finks (May 1966)

Before there was Daddy Cool (and well before the 80s blandness of Mondo Rock), there was The Pink Finks, Ross Wilson’s first band. Formed in 1965 when Ross was a 16-year-old school boy and Ross Hannaford was about 14 (how cute is that? Two teenage Rosses!), The Pink Finks were inspired not only by American r’n’b and blues, but also by British bands such as The Yardbirds, Stones and Pretty Things who covered that kind of music.

Five Finks: L-R Ross Hannaford, Ross Wilson, Geoff Ratz, David Cameron, Richard Franklin

The Pink Finks didn’t have a long lifespan, lasting from late 1964 to late 1966, but they managed to release four singles during this time (on three different labels) and were a popular R’n’B act around the suburban Melbourne dance hall scene. However, due to their young age, their gigs tended to be limited to weekends only. Legend has it that Ross Hannaford’s parents turned up at one show and dragged their naughty (and very underage!) son home. That’d cramp your style a bit. 

Rocking out at Festival Hall in the 1965 Hoadley Battle of the Sounds final (they didn't win: The Crickets did). Photo: Everybody's

“You’re Good for Me” was The Pink Finks’ fourth and final single, released on W&G. This scorchin’ little number, clocking in at 1 minute, 35 seconds, was written and produced by 50s rocker Johnny Chester (who’d supported The Beatles on their Aussie tour just two years earlier) and is a bonafide gem.

 
Puzzlingly, it didn’t chart and didn’t even rate a review in Go-Set magazine. Weirder yet is the fact that it hasn’t cropped up on any Aussie 60s comps that I’m aware of. Fortunately, it lives on as part of the 1980 Raven EP, “Louie Louie” and — of course— on the fathomless rock’n’roll wormhole that is Youtube. (Somehow, I suspect the original 7” is about as elusive as Tony Abbott’s humanity, but that’s another story…)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of a short song, and “You’re Good for Me” fits that bill to a small-but-perfectly-formed T. Rollicking along at a cracking pace (but not so fast it loses its groove), it’s distinguished by Hannaford’s fluid, rockin’ guitar licks (with more than a passing nod to Chuck Berry) and Wilson’s bratty, snarling vocals. Funny to think that he’d been a wedding singer before the Finks, because he’s a damn sight more Mick Jagger than Frank Sinatra, if you know what I mean…



For those of you who’d like to know more about this shortlived but important band, check out their chapter in the ace book Wild About You. Otherwise, turn up the volume and play it again…

Think Pink. Pic: imdb.com

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Mystery girl: Jan Stewart

In this day and age of digital footprints and full-disclosure Facebooking, there’s little that a good Google search won’t reveal. However, as I discovered today, the worldwide web falls intriguingly short when it comes to 1960s fashion model Jan Stewart.

Jan glamming it up in some swinging ski gear. Photo: Janice Wakely

As far as I know, Jan was from Melbourne, and worked with local photographers such as Bruno Benini (profiled in an earlier blog post) and Maggie Diaz.

Reclining Jan. Photo: Maggie Diaz

With her Audrey Hepburnesque features and natural grace, she was every bit as divine as my favourite 60s model Jean Shrimpton — but clearly didn’t hit the same heights of fame, because I simply can’t find anything about her online except a few photos and an interview snippet where she recalls the staging of this fabulous shot in a Little Collins Street building site for Sportsgirl:

Frock with a view. Photo: Bruno Benini

So, unless anyone out there can tell me more about this beautiful mystery babe, we’ll just have to be content to swoon over her… Besides, as they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words.

Jan doing Jean! How Shrimpton is this? I have a postcard of this pic somewhere, from that 2011 Como House exhibition, Mannequin. Wish I could find it so I could give the photographer due credit...

Yogi Jan. Photographer also unknown.

Melbourne song of the month: '5:10 Man'/The Master's Apprentices (July 1969)

So it's already two weeks since Jim Keays left us, and I doubt I'm the only person still in shock that he's gone. He was one of Australia's great performers, imbued with the kind of star quality, irreverence and talent you don't see so often these days.

RIP Jim Keays: another legend heads off to the big jam session in the sky. Photo: Faster Louder

I was lucky enough to see an 'incarnation' of the Masters Apprentices (OK, so it was Jim Keays, Doug Ford and a bunch of boganish blow-ins) in Perth almost 10 years ago at the Hyde Park Hotel's back bar, and I had a blast. They kicked off with my favourite Masters' song, 'Undecided', and proceeded to give us a rollicking run-through of their classics interspersed with a few choice covers.

With his long hair, hippy pendant and (if memory serves me correctly, which I think it does) a hat that looked like it'd been pinched from a wizard's wardrobe, Doug Ford seemed a little - ahem - spaced out, but soon warmed up.

Jim Keays, on the other hand, was firing on all cylinders from the get go. In between belting out numbers with the energy and exuberance of a man in his 20s, he shared anecdotes about the band's past, from their early garage-punk days in Adelaide right through to the time he found himself at the urinal next to John Lennon at Apple Studios! He seemed so at ease onstage, like it was his natural habitat.

Set list from Hyde Park Hotel gig, 15 August 2004. That's Doug's autograph on the right, by the way. Jim vanished before I could get to him. Probably saw me coming, hehe...

Anyway, onto this month's song...

This video of the Masters performing their hit '5:10 Man' on the ABC program Hit Scene is a bonafide ripper. As if synchronised dancing, sexy matching outfits and wacky camera work aren't enough, we get a baby-faced (but far from innocent!) Jim singing about square worker-drone types while flirting like a pro with his TV audience. 
Part rock, part pop, all good fun, '5:10 Man' made it to number 16 on the Go-Set charts. Marking the Masters' transition to a tougher, psychy sound, the song established the band's legendary second line-up (Keays, Ford, Wheatley and Burgess) as a force to be reckoned with.

Dig that funny doo-woppy finale!

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Beatlemania is alive and well...

...and Melbourne pop artist extraordinaire Gemma Jones is living proof! That's right folks, today is B-Day - half a century exactly since The Beatles first played Festival Hall - and to mark the occasion, I interviewed Gemma about her own Beatlemania, and her incredible series of paintings that capture the era's hysteric highs, Screaming Fans. 

Neither Gemma nor I were born when The Beatles toured Down Under, but read on and you'll see that the legacy of their Aussie visit lives on — in vibrant shades of orange, pink, minty green and teal — thanks to this most creative and talented of artists. (By the way, for readers who aren't familiar with Gemma's work, see the end of this post for more info. Talk about a one-woman pop-cultural sensation!) 

Gemma - aka Paintergirl - with her treasured Glenn A. Baker book and 'John' painting

Tell me about how your Beatles love affair started?
I was born into a record collection full of Beatles vinyl eight years after the Beatles 1964 tour.  My parents were really relaxed and encouraging with my brother and I flipping records and playing what ever we wanted on the stereo at a really young age (I don't know that I'd be the same) … and The Beatles were an instant favourite amongst the sixties gems. 

I still remember exactly where I was when I heard from the radio on top of the fridge that John Lennon had been shot down.  I guess I can pin point in that moment my loss of innocence. 

An influential book I've held onto since I bought it as a teenager is Glenn A Baker's The Beatles Down Under: The 1964 Australia & New Zealand Tour, which is a whole 130 pages of their crazy visit to Oz 50 years ago.  As many photos of fans as of the Fab Four themselves.

What inspired you to create the 'Screaming Fans' series, and how long did it take you to complete all the paintings?
Screaming Fans were brewing in my bird brain for a few years before they came tumbling out onto canvas. These paintings encompass a whole lot of subject matter very dear to my heart and psyche: girls, the sixties, The Beatles, popular culture and the depiction of femininity. I think the wild, weirdness of Beatlemania has always made me happy. That totally obsessive state of being is all about defying acceptable ways of being and behaving. Extreme misbehaving! It's a kind of beautiful Otherness to me, I guess.

To be honest I can't remember how long the eight paintings took to actually make — but the whole journey of conceptualising, researching and making the works was probably about six months.  

'Not a teenybopper'

Looking at the paintings as a whole, I'm struck by the power of these girls' emotions — their teen-screaming seems to transcend mere fun-loving fandom, and enter into the realm of sexual desperation or frenzy. It's quite a full-on effect, in fact ('Electric Hand' and 'Exploding Star' in particular). Were you aware of this dimension when you were painting them?
Yes!  I just love that cusp between — to be completely simplistic — happiness and sadness.  Or yeah, as you say, fun and frenzy.  Are these girls actually having a good time?  When does love and adoration turn bad?

These are not secret crushes or casual fancies — these are all-engulfing, self-indulgent, overflowing nonsensical passions!  These girls are defying the efforts of their parents, their boyfriends and the newspapers to 'understand' them.

'Electric Hand'

And also the rarity of this kind of public hysteria is great.  I guess we all know those private, behind closed-doors sobbing-letting-go moments, but for a moment like this to leak so loudly into the public domain is pretty powerful and confronting.

The fans are part of this big surge of crowd mentality, but when you look at the photos and the footage, most of these girls are totally caught up in the moment and selfishly unaware of anyone else.  Completely unselfconscious.

Yup — it's electric and it's explosive and its very own power.

'Exploding Star'

What do you think was so special about Beatlemania compared to female hysteria over, say, Frank Sinatra or Elvis?
To be honest, my own blinkered obsession with the sixties mean that I don't really know much about the fandom around either of those two.  But there isn't really anything on my radar that matches Beatlemania.

I was thinking about the kind of easy-going, out-of-a-packet fandom that happens in the age of the internet … click 'like', download the album for free, buy your concert tickets online.  I love the upfront homegrown, humanity of Beatlemania.  Sure, you could buy Beatles wigs and badges — but there was also so much handmade, heartfelt love too.  In that Glenn A Baker book, there are so many great fan drawings of the Fab Four and homemade welcome banners.  Fan mail almost broke the postal system. Fans putting genuine time and energy into expressing their PASSIONS.  It's still absolutely palpable over the ages.

'Love'

I'm making an educated guess here, but is John your favourite Beatle by any chance? And if so, why?
Hahaha, yes John is my all-time favourite Beatle.  I love that non-sucky, tough, smartness (and startarseness) that he embodied.  He was loving and cynical all at once.  He was a totally unpretentious artist   What's not to love?  

He was the true heart and head of the Beatles.  There was plenty more that George, Ringo and that other guy contributed and they are also great — but John is my number one.

'John' - NB: this painting is for sale!

 I heard a theory once that you can tell a lot about someone's personality by which Beatle they like most — do you agree? If so, what conclusions would you draw if someone told you their favourite Mop Top was George, for example?

To be honest, I'm always surprised that anyone would love another Beatle above John.  When someone says that they like Ringo better, I always assume they are just trying to be contrary for the sake of it. Or maybe they just have a thing for drummers?  I dunno. These days, I'm just happy if someone genuinely loves The Beatles, full stop.

I want people to care that much that they bother to have a favourite in 2014!

Whatever I (somewhat jokingly) think about Paul, it did make me sad when #whoissirpaulmccartney was trending on social media.

'She Loves Them'

Have you ever seen one of those Beatles tribute bands (eg. The Bootleg Beatles)? I saw one play in Perth once, and found myself screaming like a teenybopper even though they weren't that great and were wearing ill-fitting wigs. Could Beatlemania have become so entrenched in our collective consciousness that even pale imitations can provoke hysteria?
No, I've never seen a full-blown Beatles tribute band … but I love the idea that they could trigger something in our shared history (or shared hystery?!) that make you want to lose your shit spontaneously.  Could be a kind of therapy, huh?
 
If you could time travel back to Festival Hall in either 1964 to see The Beatles or 1968 to see The Who and The Small Faces, which would you choose and why? (HARD question, I know!)
A hard AND mean question.  I gotta be honest, I think the whole controversy around the 'Big Show' tour of '68 is pretty appealing … and whilst I love The Beatles for being one of my first favourite childhood bands, The Small Faces and The Who have a whole other level of teen adoration and love from me, which harks back to me first unlocking the Mysterious World of Mod.

By the way I still genuinely love Festival Hall because I like to think that the memories of all of those bands and all of those screaming fans still linger. Just as much as I like it when you have to walk across the tarmac and take the rear stairs on to an airplane. Don't tell me you don't turn around and wave and pretend that you're one of The Beatles. [ummm, nup. Never done that myself! Next time...]

'Stars in her eyes'

So, word has it you've got a new exhibition coming up. Tell us more...
My new mini-show is a small exhibition of paintings and prints under the banner 'How Am I Not Myself', which opens at Melbourne's Outré Gallery on 18 July 2014. My friend Victoria Mason (an amazing jeweller) has done a collaboration with me as part of the show too.  You're all invited! RSVP here.

Find out more 

Check out Gemma's website 
Read a review of her 'Screaming Fans' exhibition

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