MELBOURNE–I can’t put my finger on how, but I was researching the usual international warfare stuff I do every day when I stumbled across what could be my finest music writing.
Dom at Step Inn, Brisbane in 2009. Credit: dbs-repercussion
Let us take a fleeting glance back to those high-rolling mid-1980s, a time of teen magazines like Countdown and Smash Hits, lime green shirts and a paisley power-pop outfit from Perth called The Stems. Their simple yet unassailable songsmithery endeared them to a huge European music public, propelled them on to play the final Countdown and, as 1987 brought down piles of Perth’s entrepreneurs, so too did The Stems tear each other apart in a messy split which many thought irreconcilable.
