Tag: Sonic Archaeology

Exploring Fire of God’s Love with Sisters Irene O’Connor & Marimil Lobregat

Sister Irene O’Connor and Sister Marimil Lobregat first met each other while missionaries in the Philippines in the 1960s. A decade later they met again, this time in Sydney, and set about recording Fire of God’s Love, an album that has steadily grown in popularity over the subsequent decades. In 2013, I tracked Sister Irene and Sister Marimil down and recorded a conversation about how they came to make such an influential record. This was the tale they shared in the subsequent podcast I aired……

Music that brings you closer to God

Sister Irene O’Connor: I don’t think there’s any one music or any one answer to anything. I think it’s a matter of different likes and dislikes and different characters and different needs, and especially now in Australia, different cultures and things. So, I would like to see where it’s possible. I know it’s not possible, but for example, with the Catholic Church, if we had different masses geared to different maybe age groups or different likes and different dislikes. So even if they had a mass for children, something very, very simple with one little reading and simplified on their hymns, but it’s sort of very difficult to cater at one mass for everybody. So, I would say three masses. But say which one is going to be what style it is and I think that could help a lot and it would group together the different type of people where they could share more rather than someone sort of being a bit… anti-Gregorian chant and waiting for something really on the folk style or something like that, putting up with one and then the other putting up with the other. And it should, that’s not what prayer or worship’s about, it’s something that should bring each person closer to God and it can only do that if it’s meaningful to you.

Jordie Kilby: Some thoughts there from Sister Irene O’Connor, someone who’s enjoyed a long career helping people find meaning in their lives. And one very powerful way in which she’s done that is through her music. I think you can get a sense pretty quickly, even from that short grab, that Sister Irene is someone with ideas, someone who’s looking to push the boundaries of what she knows and then watch what happens. This is the fascinating story of Sister Irene O’Connor and the creation of her 1976 album, Fire of God’s Love. But it wasn’t easy tracking them down…..

Introducing Sister Irene O’Connor and Sister Marimil Lobregat

Sister Irene O'Connor
Image of Sister Marimil Lobregat
Sister Irene O’Connor (left) and Sister Marimil Lobregat (right)

Sister Marimil Lobregat: I hadn’t heard of anyone talking about that record, that’s why I was so surprised when I heard from you. Yeah, I had forgotten about it completely. Yeah, I suppose I have so many other exciting things, that I didn’t give it much thought.

Jordie Kilby: That is Sister Marimil Lobregat. You see, there are actually two stars in this story. Marimil was the engineer and in many ways the producer on the recording. She’s credited on the record. I found Maramil via a small ad for courses offered by the University of the Third Age in Sydney and it turns out that her talents go way beyond her involvement in this record.

Sister Marimil Lobregat: Well I’m very involved mostly at Calvary Hospice. I work with a dying. I massage, I develop creative massage programs for people who are very ill and I’m very involved with the teaching of classes of Tai-chi, especially Qigong, as relevant to life though, not just as a form of oriental practice, but I’m attaching the spirituality of the body with it. I have another ministry, but it’s on a very quiet side. I work with the prostitutes. I also give workshops. I used to give weekend retreats on the spirituality of the body using, again, Qigong. I don’t think the bishops would like to hear that very much, though. Because it’s not, it doesn’t sound Catholic. But see, I’m not here to please the bishops. I’m here to do a mission, whatever I see is fruitful and beneficial for those who need it most.

Jordie Kilby: As you can probably tell, Sister Marimil is another soul with plenty of ideas about how to help people in whatever way she can. In fact, when I rang the lady who ran the uni course to see if she could put me in touch with her, she said she’d never heard that she’d made a record, but she wasn’t at all surprised. “She is an amazing woman”, I was told. Wait till you speak with her. You’ll see what I mean. So she gave me her details. And over the course of that weekend, I exchanged emails with Sister Marimel. She hadn’t spoken to Sister Irene for years, but still had her contact details. And by the end of the weekend, we’d spoken to both. And the tale of two nuns who created fire in their spare time on a series of Sunday afternoons in Point Piper and Homebush in the mid-1970s began to emerge.

Sister Irene O’Connor: So you just want me to talk about how music, the music thing started with me?

Jordie Kilby: Yeah, music in your life. We spoke yesterday with Marimel.

Sister Irene O’Connor: You did? All right, yeah. And she told you about her recording and everything?

Jordie Kilby: Yeah, she told us about the recording from her perspective. And a little bit about your friendship and your relationship and how long you’ve known one another and where you met.

Two Sisters With A Mission

Sister Marimil Lobregat: We first met in Singapore. As you know, I come from the Philippines. My first mission was with the lepers in the Philippines, in Tara Leprosarium. And after six or seven years there, I was sent to Indonesia. But to get established there, the missions there, I had to have a permanent residency. And it was very difficult at that time, because it was during the time of President Sukarno. So anyway, that’s how I was sent to Singapore first, for the sisters there to work on the visa, for Indonesia. And that’s where I met Sister Irene. Irene was already there. I think she was teaching the pre-kindergarten level. And while waiting there, I was asked to teach the kindergarten class. That’s where I met Irene, yes.

Sister Irene O’Connor: She didn’t do any music or anything with me then. I was, I don’t know whether she, I can’t remember if she passed through before I did the first LP with Phillips. She might have, she wouldn’t have even known that you know I was doing music but you know, being Singapore we had a lot of sisters coming. They’d arrive at Singapore from different countries and then they’d go to Indonesia or New Guinea or different places like that and they used to stay a day or two for a while in Singapore and that’s how I met Maramil. But [later] we, we ended up in Sydney in the same community.

Sister Marimil Lobregat: I missioned here to Sydney, Australia, to work at the Catholic Audio Visual Centre as a sound and visual technician, because I had experience in that. So eventually, Irene also was sent to Sydney, and we met again here.

God Is Dwelling In My Heart

Sister Irene O’Connor: I had already recorded with Phillips a few years before – Sing a Song to the Lord – and that was an LP with 10 songs and I did it under a different name. I did it under the name of Myriam Frances and nobody knew it was me in Singapore except the Phillips people.  And I didn’t do it originally as a big LP, I did it on four little EP, extended play records, and it had four songs on each. So when it got to three, everybody liked it and it was very successful in Singapore, Philips in Holland took it and put it all together as an LP and it came back in Singapore as that and that was released over in Australia as well. That was the biggest thing for me, I think, was the one I did is called God is Dwelling in My Heart. That went all over the world. I was away 15 years, and I came back to Sydney and I went to mass one day down at St. Patrick’s, I think it’s Churchill, it’s down near Circular Quay. And it was just a midday mass, or 10 o’clock, I can’t remember. I opened the door and I walked in and there were all these schoolchildren there from the school nearby and they had guitars and, you won’t believe it, I got the shock of my life, they were singing loud through the speakers, God is Dwelling in My Heart.

Myriam Frances' LP Sing A Song To The Lord
Myriam Frances’ LP Sing a Song to the Lord collected tracks from her first four extended play 45s issued in the 1960s.
The first extended play 45 issued by Myriam Frances (aka Sister Irene O’Connor) in the Philippines in 1966

Fire Of God’s Love

Sister Marimil Lobregat: Years after, as I said, for me it was thirteen or fourteen years after I was sent here to Sydney, Australia. And we were both living at the convent at Point Piper. Every day I would go to work very often, including weekends, to Homebush, because that’s where the Catholic Holy Visual Center was established. So, because I was in that area of recording and visuals too, she asked me one time, you know, if she could, she was ready to record another record. I wasn’t doing records then, but anyway, we were given the use, allowed to use the studio at Homebush on weekends, like on Sundays, which is when we went several Sundays to record the tracks that are now in the record file.

Sister Irene O’Connor: It is a bit of a unique record in that sense, you’d never think that two nuns, I mean, if you said two women it’s bad enough putting it out at that time, but if you say two nuns, it was a bit of a surprise. But we were both more or less into that sort of creative sort of way of spreading, you know, God’s Christ’s message of love. I do it with the music and the songs and things like that. And she… mainly she does a lot of lovely tai chi and things and I think she’s made videos and all of them. So anyway, we’re a bit different.

Sister Marimil Lobregat: Maybe if I knew what I was getting into, you know, but at that time, you know, you’re young, you’re hopeful. It was the two of us. She did all the music, all the recording. We did it at Point Piper. We had a kind of a little soundproof room over there. So, she recorded it there. I recorded it for her while she played the music, the background, the drums, whatever. I recorded it into the Revox. Then we brought that recording, the tape, to Homebush. I played it from the sound room where I had the master mixer. And Irene was over at the studio, which was also soundproof with the earphones in order to hear the music and sing into it. And also, at that time we didn’t have separate tracks. It was all in one track.

Sister Irene O‘Connor: I had to be the choir and the orchestra. And I just played it, I found, pulled one out today and I thought, I must listen to that and remember what I did on it because I thought I might be talking to you today. And I thought, I’d better see what’s on it. And I was quite surprised that I could hear myself doing… See, I had an organ when I came back here and had a little organ, then I had a guitar. I did all the harmonies too. It’s like, sounds like a lot of people singing in some places, but it’s all me singing different times, adding one. And that was the great thing that Marimil did. She sort of… well, put it all together, all together in one thing and I was like the orchestra and the choir and I don’t know what you’d call her, the engineer and the conductor or something.

Fire of God’s Love, Sister Irene O’Connor’s legendary 1973 LP on Philips.

Sister Marimil Lobregat: I remember that we would go early in the morning and leave late at night. We had to repeat the track on account of the fact that it wasn’t, like we couldn’t get the proper echo, the proper reverb for the voice, for the music. So, I had to bounce the volume with the recording, you know, and that took many repeats before we were more or less satisfied with it.

Hear Sister Irene O’Connor talking about the reverb on the track Fire

Sister Irene O’Connor: The one funny thing that I remember was I wanted the one called Fire. That was going to be very special. And I wanted it to start off like mysteriously, like in a big cathedral or in a cave or something. So, I wanted this reverb sound, but where she [Sister Marimil] worked, they didn’t have any reverb because it’s only radio sort of stuff, you know. And I didn’t know what we’d do. And then I went into the bathroom one time and we said we’d try in there. I said, “this is echoey, this might do.” And it was going to be all right. We had a great big, long, long lead from where her recording thing was, and it went round out one room and into the other. I started to sing through and it was sounding fine. I had earphones on, I don’t know how I connected up to what was going on, but the trouble was the dog next door in the house started to bark, and he got recorded while we were doing it, so we had to get rid of that. I still wanted this reverberation, so I got a little reverb for $20, I remember the price and all of that, that would go in an organ. And I don’t know what Marimil did, but somehow, with her great engineering idea, she somehow attached it, and we used a bit of a reverb of that from there.

Jordie Kilby: Can we ask you about a couple of the other songs on the album? Keshukoran.

Sister Irene O’Connor: Ah yes, I love that one because, when we were in Singapore I taught in kindergarten, and we had a gardener. I can’t remember his name, isn’t that terrible, but he was a lovely man. And his family lived down, just down from us and they were Muslim. And I said, I wanted to write something in the Malay language, like, you know, to share. And I could see I had to be careful. I would ask him how to say I wanted to praise God. I wanted to check with him, I knew a little bit of Malay but not much, and they would say “Allah, Allah”.  But he said “oh no, you don’t say that, you’ve got to say Tuhan.” Tuhan means Lord, and I think it’s because, like, Allah is too sacred for me to be talking about. But it was lovely and that’s why the lyrics mean, “O Lord, the Creator, we adore you, the Almighty.” All the verses are very simply put, I just asked him how to say birds, and paddy fields, and rivers, checked it all up, and for the sun and the moon and the stars. So, you just hear this, all these little phrases. So it’s saying, “for the sun, let us give thanks to the Lord. For the rivers and the seas, let us give thanks to the Lord, and for the paddy fields….” And that’s all it is. It’s very simple. But I thought, I put in the little bongo things, and I remember playing that when I recorded it. Here you see, I played the guitar, and when you hear a bass on it, I think it’s just me with my foot playing the bass foot pedals of the organ. And it goes boom ba boom. And it sounds as though I’m playing a bass drum or something, but I’m not, so… It’s all a bit of trickery, but I’m doing it all.

Jordie Kilby: Who did you think would buy the record then?

Sister Marimil Lobregat: Well, we didn’t think of that, you know. I remember we went a couple of times, Irene and I – because it was a private thing you know and she didn’t have any agent or distributor or anything – I remember we went to Woolworth’s and we approached one of the salesperson there and he kept promising, yes, he was going to talk to the manager to sell it there. You know, Woolworth’s of Town Hall, the corner (in Sydney). Yep. Yeah. But he never got to the manager or anything. I don’t know what the plan was. Perhaps the plan was to go to Catholic schools or shops or something, but I don’t remember exactly what… I just… see, after I did all that recording, little by little, I weaned out of… Irene’s recording projects.

Sister Irene O’Connor: I lived up in the mountains, up for a while there, and I composed a lot of other things. A musical, which I did on the four-track, and that even came out on the CD. I got someone to edit that for me, put it all together. I just did all the playing and all the singing and the voices, but I didn’t even know how to boil it down, as I call it, to stereo. That was a musical for St. Francis. Just had a call from a lady the day last night or the night before saying, she loved the one on “praise in the morning praise in the evening”, it’s called, and it’s all the Psalms and canticles. So, other people wouldn’t be interested in that you know they like more like the the jazzy things or the Calypso and South American sort of beats. I like those things and I still love love that kind of music but I feel the type of music I’m doing, I want to do now, and I have been doing, is meditation music, very quiet, gentle music, just to be in the presence, to pray sort of what I call silent prayer.

Sister Irene O’Connor’s musical for St Francis of Assisi issued as a cassette in 1982

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After being a difficult record to find for many years, Fire of God’s Love recently received and official reissue. If you’ve enjoyed this story and do not own a copy of the album please consider ordering a copy here.

This interview was originally published as part of the RareCollections podcast.

A Guide To Australian Warner Bros Record Labels In The 1960s and 70s

Recently I became interested in understanding the evolution of the Australian Warner Bros label during the 1960s and 70s. This post focusses on key releases that highlight changes in the label design and information over two decades. Warners issued and reissued many of their albums over the years and my aim is to help clarify which years/eras certain pressings come from.

This guide is informed by marginalia from records in my collection, online articles & discographies, as well as newspaper articles found using the amazing Trove database at the National Library of Australia. Others have written extensive accounts of the Warner Bros story both in Australia and elsewhere and I have provided links to a few favourites at the end. This is a work in progress and I appreciate any feedback or additional information that improves its accuracy.

Quick overview of the different Australian Warner Bros. Records labels

  • 1960-63: Grey label Mono
  • 1960-63: Grey label Stereo
  • 1963 – 65: Long ARC text
  • 1966 – 69: Gold label
  • 1967: ARC credit dropped
  • 1969 – 70: W7 & green label
  • 1970: Shield logo & local acts
  • 1971: Shield logo & green label
  • 1972: ℗ year added
  • 1973: Burbank label for international acts
  • 1976/77: WB shield with ‘Records‘ written through
  • 1978: Cream label

1960/61: Establishing An Australian presence

The Rogers Record Review column in the Canberra Times on the 15th August 1960 covered the ‘big news’ surrounding the premier release for Warner Bros Records in the Australian market. Twelve of the best selling LPs from the U.S catalogue were selected as an initial offering including titles by Pete Rugolo, Bing Crosby, George Greeley, Raoel Meynard, Paul Desmond, Roger Smith, Bill Haley & His Comets, The Bobby Havana Boys, Tab Hunter, Stan from the TV Show Hawaiian Eye, The Warner Bros Military Band, and Edd Byrnes.

As ‘Kookie’ in the successful TV show 77 Sunset Strip, Byrnes was one of the star actors on the WB books. The top right corner of the LP’s front sleeve shows the boxed Warner Bros logo which would increasingly appear exclusively on the rear of the sleeve in following years.

Although released in Australia in 1960, the licensing and manufacturing information at the bottom of the sleeve copies the U.S release and reads “© 1959 Warner Bros Records Inc. A subsidiary and licensee of Warner Bros Pictures Inc. Manufactured and Distributed by Australian Records Company Ltd.”

The rear sleeve advertises ‘Vitaphonic’ high fidelity. This continues to appear on WB releases until at least 1968.

The grey label features a black and yellow WB shield logo. Variations on this logo come and go over the following decades. For the first decade WB was manufactured by the Australian Record Company Limited. They’re credited in the third row of text from the bottom (just above Vitaphonic High Fidelity).

The Outriggers LP is an early stereo pressing from the 60/61 period. It was originally released in the U.S in 1958. Note the catalogue number 1224 is lower than 1309 for the Kookie LP above. For the next decade Australian releases were selected from the broader U.S WB catalogue and not always issued in the same order as the U.S.

The cover reproductions remain true to the U.S pressings. The © text on the rear of this sleeve reads 1958. Years can’t be relied upon exclusively to accurately date Australian pressings until local WB manufacturing begin printing the ℗ year on labels in 1972.

1963/64: Manufactured in Australia By The Australian Record Company Limited

In 1963/64 there is a shift in the way the Australian Record Company is credited on the labels. Previously the text reads “Australian Record Company Limited“. The updated text is smaller print and longer. It reads “Manufactured In Australia By The Australian Record Company Limited, Licensee All Rights Reserved.”

  • Original 1960 text
  • Updated ARC text

It is difficult to be certain about the exact date. The last release I can find with the original text is W 1490 -Let’s Go! With the Routers. This was advertised as an upcoming U.S release in Billboard magazine of January 1963 and so it’s highly likely that it was issued in Australia sometime later that same year.

An early example of the new text is on the LP W 1525 Ski Surfin’ by The Avalanches. This was advertised in Billboard magazine as a new U.S release in December 1963. Therefore, it must have been released in Australian in December 1963, or far more likely, released sometime in 1964.

The updated text was certainly in place by September 1964 when the Peter Paul And Mary In Concert LP was released and being reviewed in Australia.

Interestingly, LPs like the debut by Peter, Paul & Mary, which was certainly issued in Australia by January 1963, were also issued with the updated text. This suggests that there were multiple pressings of at least this LP in the first year of its release.

1965/66: Warner Bros label goes gold

In June 1965, W 1589, Peter, Paul & Mary’s LP A Song Will Rise was a best seller in the U.S. The album was originally released on the grey WB label in Australia. Unfortunately I can’t find a primary source to confirm it, but it seems reasonable to say that WB would have wanted to get it out as soon as possible to capitalise on their popularity and therefore it was probably issued sometime in mid to late 1965.

By April 1966 the label had changed to gold. Ike & Tina Turner’s Live Show (W 1579) is an early example. The album was released in the U.S early in 1965 and the sleeve of the Australian pressing carries a © date of 1965. However, reviews don’t begin appearing in Australia until April 1966 suggesting WB delayed local release.

1967/68: Warner Bros. – Seven Arts Ltd.

In November 1966 Jack L Warner sold his share of the Warner Bros. Company to Seven Arts Ltd. In July 1967 shareholders of both companies approved the sale of WB to Seven Arts. The resulting merger was named Warner Bros. – Seven Arts Ltd.

The Association’s album Insight Out was packaged to capitalise on the success of their song Windy which was in the Australian charts in August/September of 1967.

Though the album was released in Australia after the merger took place, the text on the rear sleeve still reads This record published and © 1967 Warner Bros. Records Inc., A subsidiary of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc.

Anything Goes by Harpers Bizarre first appeared in the U.S Billboard charts late in December of 1967. Original promo copies of the U.S pressing credit still use the WB shield logo on their cover and credit Warner Bros. – Seven Arts at the bottom of the rear of the sleeve.

However, text at the bottom of the original Australian pressing, likely issued early in 1968, does not yet credit the merger and reads “This record published and © 1968 Warner Bros. Records Inc., A subsidiary of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc.”

The Grateful Dead’s self titled debut album was being reviewed in Australia in March/April 1968. The text at the bottom of the rear sleeve is the earliest reference I can find of an Australian pressing that credits Seven Arts. It reads “This record published and © 1968 Warner Bros. – Seven Arts, Inc., A subsidiary and licensee of Warner Bros. – Seven Arts Inc.”

Interestingly, the album was originally released in the U.S in March 1967. The fact that the Australian pressing has a © date of 1968, and the Harpers Bizarre LP also has a © 1968 date, despite being originally released in 1967, suggests that the © year printed on sleeves is becoming more reliable during this period.

The gold label was still being used in 1968 for this second WB album release from the Grateful Dead.

1968-69: W7 logo and the first green labels

Either later in 1968, or certainly by 1969, a new W7 logo had begun appearing on the front and rear sleeves – usually in the top right corner. The logo was introduced in 1967 in the U.S for films made by the company but it seems to have taken a little longer before it became a fixture on their recordings.

There is also another shift in the colour of the label – this time to green. Along with this change is new text that appears on the top of the label that reads Warner Bros. – Seven Arts Records. Underneath this text is the W7 logo.

Again, it’s difficult being too specific about when the changes occurred, but in this case the © date on the rear sleeve for Lalo Schifrin’s Bullit soundtrack (WS 1777) says 1969 and my copy has a radio station stamp showing May 1969 so it had certainly happened by then.

1970: Warner Bros begins Australian operations

In July 1969 the Kinney National Company acquired the entire Warner Bros. – Seven Arts company. This was a fascinating business move by Kinney who had previously run parking lots and a funeral home. By 1970 Seven Arts had been dropped from the name and the company was known again as Warner Bros. The label remained green but there was a return to the WB shield design, this time with blue text on an orange background.

Looking to expand further, Warner Bros. announced in July 1970 that it was opening Warner Bros. Records of Australia later that year. With Paul Turner as President of operations it launched officially on October 1st 1970. This launch marked the end of the Australian Record Company’s period as the licensee for WB in Australia, though it would still take care of distribution until late 1972 when WEA Records Pty Ltd. took over. Turner and his team were given full control of releases and promotional activities. They were empowered and encouraged to sign local acts and the WB companies in other markets, which now included Canada and the U.K along with the U.S, were to help market those acts to their own audiences.

The first local act to release an LP on the new label was Tamam Shud with Goolutionites And The Real People (WS-200001), which came out in late 1970. The label highlights the changes in design with Warner Bros. Records along the top and the WB shield logo featured below it.

The other change that takes place at this time is the manufacturing credit on the rear sleeve. From 1970 on it simply says “Manufactured and Distributed under license.” The example here is from the Brownsville Station LP from 1971.

1972: Year of release printed on label

The international corporate shuffling and negotiations continued and in the first half of 1972 Kinney Music International renamed itself WEA International. The WEA initials standing for Warner, Elektra and Atlantic -the three major labels that had been bought out by Kinney. WEA Records Pty. Ltd. took over sales and distribution from November with operations in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane. WEA Records Pty. Ltd. begins to appear on labels and sleeves as the distributor after this date.

Worth noting is that from 1972 onwards the Australian pressings of Warner Bros. Records begin to put the ℗ year on their labels just under the catalogue number and MX numbers. This makes it much easier to date pressings after this period.

Featuring G. Wayne Thomas, John J. Francis, Brian Cadd, and Tamam Shud, the Morning of the Earth was an early local success for the label becoming the first Australian film soundtrack to achieve gold sales status.

1973 – 1978: The ‘Burbank’ label design for international artists

In 1973 Warner Bros. began using a logo that reflected the surrounding of their headquarters in Burbank, California. This has since become known as the Burbank label. Most noticeably the text at the top now reads “Burbank, Home Of Warner Bros. Records”. The change seems to have occurred in mid 1973.

Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell’s soundtrack for the film Deliverance would have been one of the final releases using the green WB label in 1973. It was being reviewed as a new release in Australian newspapers in June 1973.

The self titled album by English band Greenslade (BS-2698) was being reviewed in August 1973. The only copies I have come across are on the Burbank variation.

The Burbank label didn’t change significantly over the following four years. The only update that I’m aware of is the addition of the word ‘Records’ through the middle of the shield logo. While I can’t fix a date for the change, it doesn’t seem to appear on anything before 1976. Releases I have from 1976 & 1977 have both variations.

Only international artists appeared in the Burbank label. Australian acts continued releasing albums on the green WB label through until 1975. An example is the Stone soundtrack by Billy Green (600 002) which appeared in 1974. Local acts began appearing on other labels of the Warner stable, like Reprise, after 1975.

1978: First use of the cream/white label

The final variation considered in this blog is the cream or white label which began being used in 1978. An example is the the Champagne Charlie album from Leon Redbone (BSK-3165). This continued into the 1980s.

Other WB sources of information

Michael De Looper has compiled an excellent discography of Australian Warner Bros. releases in the 1960s and the 1970s. It covers LPs, EPs, and 45s.

The Global Dog site has a comprehensive discography for Warner Bros 45s released in Australia.

The Milesago website has an excellent writeup on the history of Warner in Australia.

For thorough information on Warner Bros Records and it’s history in the U.S check out Warner Brothers Records Story – David Edwards, Patrice Eyries, and Mike Callahan

Robert Lyons is a good source for info about the U.K Warner Bros operations and pressings.

As I said at the beginning, if you spot anything that you feel should be corrected, or have information that can help further develop the detail in this blog, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.

This is Sonic Archaeology

Welcome to Sonic Archaeology. I’ve set this up to share knowledge I’ve acquired, research and interviews I’ve conducted, as well as writing, documentaries, and mixtapes I have created over the last two decades. 

The plan is to share regular posts that will highlight stories and music that I love, and at the same time provide a glimpse into different aspects of cultural and social history from all corners of the world. 

When I was younger, the Indiana Jones films convinced me archaeology was my calling. Unfortunately, I spent too much time talking music with my science teachers, failed their classes, and couldn’t enrol for the required university degree.

After filling my house with recorded artefacts over the last 30 years, I now realise that I’ve been an archaeologist all along. It’s just my focus has been the study of human history via excavations undertaken at markets, garage sales and church fetes rather than Thracian battlefields or Mayan temples. And so – Sonic Archaeology. 

My tastes are diverse. I’ve been digging for records since I was a kid scouting second hand stores for obscure discs on my dads wants list. My dad has been buying them all his life as well. I quickly acquired his liking for raucous sax and guitar breaks, thumping rockabilly basslines, doo wop harmonies, lush exotica soundscapes, and anything else that stood out as being a bit different. Later I developed cravings that were satisfied by fatback drums, sassy horns, and sweeping strings. It seems there is an endless combination of instruments and styles that will move my soul in one way or another. 

Along the way I learned that all the interesting sounds I heard were personal expressions of lives being lived. And the stories of those musicians, their recordings, and the circumstances they made them in became a great interest in my life.

I was lucky enough to get a job in radio. Work that allowed me to indulge my passion. Fortunately, my dad was also working in radio, and together we were able to devote a lot of professional time to researching and presenting programs and documentaries involving many of our favourite players. Our longest running project was called RareCollections and featured exclusively Australian musicians and stories going back as far as the 1930s.  It ran as a podcast and weekly show on ABC Radio National for 4 years. 

For much of the last decade I have been working and traveling around the Pacific region. Through Sonic Archaeology, I’m looking forward to sharing some of the recordings I’ve come across during those travels as well.

There’s always more to say, but this initial offering is really here to welcome you to the site and encourage you to explore what’s here (more to come soon). If something connects with you then please leave a comment or drop me a line. Meeting other sonic archaeologists and making new friends has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this whole journey. 

Please enjoy.