Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band

The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Music group were formed in 1969 by Mic and Jim Conway of Melbourne, Australia. Although their dad was a wool product owner, the brothers Conway was raised in a family group with professional ties to vaudeville, movie theater, and opera. Motivated by their parents’ assortment of 78-rpm recordings (including choices by Jelly Move Morton and Extra fat Waller) and captivated by the rowdier areas of the traditional blues custom, they produced the Jelly Bean Jug Band while enrolled at Melbourne’s Camberwell SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL, and extended it to generate the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band soon after graduation. The Australian music picture of the past due ’60s and early ’70s was richly filled by reckless neo-traditional groupings with names just like the Starving Outrageous Canines, the Stovepipe Spasm Music group, the Gutbucket Blues Music group, the Moonshine Jug and String Music group, the initial Battersea Heroes, and today the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Music group, who were shortly performing for the general public at Sandringham Seaside, inside the A LOT MORE Ballroom, inside the Thumpin’ Tum (a pub famous for its ham-and-cheese sandwiches), as well as the Yellowish Home, a gallery and overall performance space in Sydney. In 1971 the group made an appearance in Stork, a film by Tim Burstall. In 1972 they toured Australia with U.S. folk vocalist Phil Ochs, authorized a agreement with Image Information, and released their 1st solitary, “My Canary Offers Circles Under His Eye.” This revival of a vintage music hall novelty tune charted within the Australian Best 40. Their second solitary, “I CANNOT Dance (Got Ants in my own Trousers)” b/w “Jungle Dance,” strike the roads in Apr 1973. 8 weeks later on, the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Music group came out making use of their 1st LP, entitled Smoke cigarettes Dreams. This record, also released in a quadrophonic U.S. release (ESP 3009), was filled with classic jazz, blues, and jug music group tunes reinterpreted with techniques that appealed towards the drug-addled worldwide youth tradition of the first ’70s. As well as the Conways on washboard and harmonica, the cardinal users had been string players David Hubbard, Peter Inglis, and Mick Fleming; fiddler Eric Gradman; pianist Jim Niven; and something Peter Scott, who performed jug and tea-chest bass. (Through the entire remainder from the 10 years the personnel with this music group would change quickly and frequently to add Tony Burkys, Stephen Cooney, Chris Coyne, Dave Flett, Geoff Hales, Graeme Isaac, Rick Ludbrook, Peter Martin, Eric McCusker, Gordon McLean, Louis McManus, Peter Mulheisen, Fred Olbrei, Manny Paterakis, Robert Ross, Jack port Sara, Jon Snyder, Colin Stevens, and Chris Worral.) Even more singles had been released in 1974, including a cover of Body fat Waller’s famous strike “Your Feets TOO LARGE,” a tango tribute to bandleader Spike Jones entitled “Hernando’s Hideaway,” and unique works with game titles like “Down Undergroundsville,” “Await Me Juanita,” and “Wangaratta Wahine,” that was also the name of the following LP. This, the group’s all-time best-selling recording, managed to get to fourth put on the nationwide graphs during August of 1975. At that time they were currently presenting their following album, just entitled Australia, which included provocative game titles like “Cocaine Habit” and “Masochism Tango,” a melody borrowed from just one more longtime Conway motivation, Tom Lehrer. Through the fall of 1976, the Matchbox music group became section of something known as the Soapbox Circus, a media ensemble that included a politically outspoken experimental movie theater collective referred to as the Australian Performing Group (APG). This collaborative functionality project, developed prior to the open public at Melbourne’s intensifying Pram Manufacturing plant and La Mama theaters, led to a live recording entitled THE FANTASTIC Stumble Forwards. By 1978 the Soapbox Circus experienced become Circus Oz as well as the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Music group (now equipped with electrical bass guitar along with a rock and roll drummer) was just known as Matchbox. Released in 1978, their last LP was entitled Slightly Troppo. The final of the singles had been “Rest” (June 1978), “Like IS SIMILAR TO a Rainbow” (January 1979), and “Juggling Period” b/w “Dirty Cash” (1980). Matchbox ceased working under that name in Sept 1980. Through the following 10 years the Conways would also business lead the Hotsie Totsie Music group (1981), Carnival (1983), as well as the Conway Brothers Hiccups Orchestra (1984-1988). In 1989 the brothers parted organization; Jim proceeded to go off to utilize the Backsliders while his sibling came back to his unique stylistic stamping grounds with an outfit that operated beneath the name of Mic Conway’s Whoopee Music group.