Instant Memory were a band I had back in late 1981 to very early 1982 with Mick Donovan and David White in Adelaide. I think we only played five or six times. But I liked the songs even if my guitar skills were very limited back then and I still sung like a strangled goose (though I was at least starting to sing more proper like).
Anyway I’m just starting to put up all of the songs. There are over 230 all up and I will put them up incrementally. Maybe half were written in 1981 to 1983. The rest were written from 1983 to about 2014 – I keep writing in this style, it’s almost my default!
I’ve put up an album of the original set already. This one is songs from maybe the late ‘80s and 2008 to 2014.
They are all pop, sometimes daftly romantic or a little sweet, twee or fey and old style, some are dark and a little weird. Hoagy Charmichael by way of Brill Building maybe, with a dash of the Velvets and the Byrds, more art school and minor-ish. Some of it has big choruses. It all sounds very 80s and I tried to give it that kind of sound - the reverb guitar and vocals, fat drums with lots of tom toms. 
I am very fond of these tunes even if some are often awkward and odd. I hope most of them are melodic enough to get by. Some veer very close to their influences, there are a few songs that if Johnny Marr or Robert Forster heard them they'd be knocking at my door and asking me how I could have such a cheek to nick their style. 
But I think they sound like I was way back then: hopeful, a bit brash, romantic in a floppy fringed way, someone who would listen to McCartney's 'Waterfalls' or Bacharach next to something by Gang of Four or The Pop Group. "I wore my hair like Roger McGuinn's" sang Edwyn Collins, yup, that was me. 
Influences: Aztec Camera – High land, high rain / Orange Juice – You can’t hide your love forever (and) Rip it up! / The Go-Betweens – Before Hollywood / Echo and The Bunnymen – Crocodiles / The Durutti Column – The return of ... /Josef K – The only fun in town / The Smiths – The Smiths (and) Hatful of hollow / Pale fountains – Pacific Street / Talking heads – ‘77 / The icicle works – The icicle works / John Cale - Paris 1919 / Velvet Underground – VU and Nico / Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes / The Chills – Submarine bells / XTC – Go / The teardrop explodes – Kilimanjaro / Wire – various / Magazine – Real life / The Divine Comedy – Casanova / New Order - Movement / The Cure – Three imaginary boys / U2 - Boy / REM – Life’s rich pageant / East River Pipe – The gasoline age / The monochrome set / The lilac time / Tactics – My Houdini / The Associates – various / Prefab Sprout – Swoon / Eno – Another Green World / Tin Pan Alley songs

30 Seconds Later

When Bullets Fly

Influences: Aztec Camera – High land, high rain / Orange Juice – You can’t hide your love forever (and) Rip it up! / The Go-Betweens – Before Hollywood / Echo and The Bunnymen – Crocodiles / The Durutti Column – The return of ... /Josef K – The only fun in town / The Smiths – The Smiths (and) Hatful of hollow / Pale fountains – Pacific Street / Talking heads – ‘77 / The icicle works – The icicle works / John Cale - Paris 1919 / Velvet Underground – VU and Nico / Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes / The Chills – Submarine bells / XTC – Go / The teardrop explodes – Kilimanjaro / Wire – various / Magazine – Real life / The Divine Comedy – Casanova / New Order - Movement / The Cure – Three imaginary boys / U2 - Boy / REM – Life’s rich pageant / East River Pipe – The gasoline age / The monochrome set / The lilac time / Tactics – My Houdini / The Associates – various / Prefab Sprout – Swoon / Eno – Another Green World / Tin Pan Alley songs

Year/s: 1981-1985

There's about twenty albums of IM stuff so it's gonna take me a while, but here's another. All '80s and reverb-y and lush and hopefully sweet too. Hell, there's even one minute and fourteen seconds of my attempt at a Christmas song, albeit a slightly cynical one (though only slightly).
Enjoy!

Christmas Lights

In The Clouds

It's No Wonder

Ignorance Is Bliss

My Hooves On The Loose

Souped Up

Influences: Divine Comedy / Pulp / Animal Collective / Vampire weekend / Aztec Camera – High land, high rain / Orange Juice – You can’t hide your love forever (and) Rip it up! / The Go-Betweens – Before Hollywood / Echo and The Bunnymen – Crocodiles / The Durutti Column – The return of ... /Josef K – The only fun in town / The Smiths – The Smiths (and) Hatful of hollow / Pale fountains – Pacific Street / Talking heads – ‘77 / The icicle works – The icicle works / John Cale - Paris 1919 / Velvet Underground – VU and Nico / Lloyd Cole - Rattlesnakes / The Chills – Submarine bells / XTC – Go / The teardrop explodes – Kilimanjaro / Wire – various / Magazine – Real life / The Divine Comedy – Casanova / New Order - Movement / The Cure – Three imaginary boys / U2 - Boy / REM – Life’s rich pageant / East River Pipe – The gasoline age / The monochrome set / The lilac time / Tactics – My Houdini / The Associates – various / Prefab Sprout – Swoon / Eno – Another Green World / Tin Pan Alley songs

Everything Is Out

Better Now

Suspended

Summer is over

https://youtu.be/jgt5QTEVXds

Your seas

https://youtu.be/cc-pxmOIcEU

Influences: 
The Who "My generation"; Small Faces; The Kinks; The Jam "All the mod cons"; Ash; Green Day; Supergrass; You Am I, early Blur etc.

Year/s: 
1992-1997 

Members:
Me - guitars, vocals, keys
Tony Fear - guitars, backing vocals
Al Backstrom - guitars, backing vocals
Conrad Jakob - Bass
Mario Sultana - Drums

I finally got almost all of the songs The Bambi Kino (TBK) actually recorded, bar maybe four or five (which I’m hoping someone might have somewhere …)
Now they were recorded at all sorts of studios, some 4-track, some 8, some 16, some multi, sometimes in just one afternoon, to over two or three weekends. So quality wise, they were all over the shop.
So, using some AI, I managed to separate out all of the tracks from those old cassettes and CDs. Then sprinkled some magic dust on the bass and drums to get them sounding of a piece, and re-did all the vocals. Added some harmonies and keys here and there too.
And voila!
I’ve not put them in chronological order, they kinda work all mixed up. But you can pick the earliest tracks, they’re the ‘all in, best dressed’ trashy ones, mostly. 
We were quite the most zeitgeist-y band, without any intention of being that. I had a swag of songs in the bag two or three years before the band actually happened and kept building on those. And I kept hearing other bands in the same vein, all through the whole shebang.
There’s a bunch of other TBK albums I ‘ve got to get through. The third of the three demo albums I’ll add soon, but then there’s my versions of all the other songs we did that didn’t get demo’d, my alternate versions of the ones that did, and all the other songs we never got to. Some I’ve separated off into two other projects, one very Carnaby Street, swinging’ ‘60s, the other more Laurel Canyon. I will get to all of these, all being well, in the next six months! But it’s a grand total of around 135 songs to get to …

Come Back

Don't Follow Me

Gossip

Man Upon The Stairs

Matter

Sorted Out

Sick Of Me

A Million Stars

Shake It

All You Have To Do

Electrical Rockets

Hangover Square

Thinking It Over

Schoolies Week

I Want It All

Find Someone Who Cares

Telecast

Get Me Out Of Here

Days Away

Loaded Gun

Oops. I put up the incorrect version of this earlier, the last verse had the vocals far too loud. Here's the fixed one. There is another version of this with Al-B doing a massive 'Creep' like power chord into the chorus, I will put that up with the third album of demos later this month!

A Million Stars (correct Mix)

Various mod influences - The Who "My generation"; Small Faces; The Kinks; The Jam "All the mod cons"; Northern soul; Stax; Motown etc

The Heat

One of my attempts to write a mod soul ballad

A Life Together

Various mod influences - The Who "My generation"; Small Faces; The Kinks; The Jam "All the mod cons"; Northern soul; Stax; Motown etc. This album is spare tracks and b-sides kind of material ... There's still about nine more songs in this bucket of mod-ness, which I'll get to one day!

No Difference At All

Evening all. 
So I'm going slowly deaf, Meniere's robbing me of the highs and lows of my hearing very slowly but surely. Which means I'm recording fast and furious-like, trying to work my way through a crap-ton of songs across about twenty or so separate projects, before it becomes ridiculous to even try. These projects go back to 1978, my last year of high school. I’m sure you can do the math!
I always joke that I’ve never met a genre I didn’t like. Or have a crack at. So there’s post punk, art rock, country/americana, folk, folk pop, southern rock, ambient, jazz, indie pop, punk pop, piano pieces, 60s fuzz pop … lots of different stuff. Over 44 years there’s about 1200 songs, and I don’t imagine I’ll get ‘em all done, at least not before my ears pack up. 
So there are caveats for a lot of this stuff. Most of which are to do with not agonising over every part and every mix, just getting the songs done reasonably ok. I’ve had a lot of time to live with some of these, so I’ve re-imagined quite a few, or fixed them, or just tidied them up. I used to sing like I was gargling and being tickled, so I’m now doing my best to sing proper like, as best I can. 
It’s been a long road, and I’ve been signed to a major, dropped, released indie stuff, been on (Oz) MTV, played thousand plus people gigs and to empty rooms. There are moments I’d trade, and moments I wouldn’t trade for quids.
I hope you enjoy the music. Please, though, I can tell if a song has been played, so don’t put a like or some vague comment about the song, when I can tell you haven’t played it. It wastes both our time, and kinda breaks my heart.

lofijames-1

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