Various - 1966 - Spinnin' High FLAC

 Tony Barber Someday/I Want Her Too/Is It Raining/You Can't Lie To A Liar    
 Steve & The Board The Giggle Eyed Goo!/Rosalyn/Margot/Rosemarie    
 Marty Rhone Nature Boy/Every Minute Of You/Thirteen Women/I Can Tell   
 Ronnie Burns True, True Lovin'/Too Many People/Very Last Day/Let It Be Me


There were a few of these 4x4's released in the sixties mostly by Festival Records a bit like having 4 EP's  on one album this one has 4 of the best Marty Rhone, Tony Barber, Ronnie Burns and Steve And The Board.




Marty Rhone was born as Karel (or Karl) Lawrence van Rhoon on 7 May 1948 in Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies (later named Surabaya, Indonesia).  The family migrated to Australia on 21 April 1950 and briefly lived in Sydney and Brisbane, and then moved to Darwin. After he finished primary school, the family moved to Sydney, where he attended Crows Nest Boys High School.  In mid-1961 he appeared on a talent quest segment of ATN7-TV series, Tarax Show, and was offered a singing spot on a children's show, Kaper Kabaret. In late 1965 he formed a band, The Blue Feelings, and they auditioned for an appearance on Saturday Date, a teen music show. After the audition Spin Records owner, Nat Kipner, signed Rhone to a recording contract and the label issued his debut single, "Nature Boy", in February the following year. For his next two singles, "Thirteen Women" (April) and "I Want You Back Again", Rhone was backed by Spin Records label mates, The Soul Agents, a beat pop group. They had formed in 1964 and by 1966 consisted of Jerry Darmic on bass guitar, Roger Felice-Andrews on drums, John Green on guitar and Barry Kelly on organ.

Rhone's fourth single, "She Is Mine", included the self-penned B-side, "Village Tapestry", which appeared in September. None of these singles charted on the Go-Set National Top 40, however Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described "Village Tapestry" as being "highly regarded among 1960s aficionados". In Iain McIntyre's book, Tomorrow Is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era, 1966-1970 (2006), the track was listed by Ian D. Marks as one of the 'Top 7 Proto-Psychedelic Australian Tracks from 1966'. Marks described it as "completely out of left field. With a gentle, almost medieval lilt, autoharps a-strumming and a charming spoken word verse—there was nothing like this released in Australia at the time. Melodic, evocative and delicate". During 1966 Marty Rhone and The Soul Agents supported The Rolling Stones on the United Kingdom rock group's tour of Australia. They also performed on the bill of the P.J. Proby Show at the Sydney Stadium with Wayne Fontana, Eden Kane and The Bee Gees appearing. Marty would go on to have more success in the 70's.


Ronald "Ronnie" Leslie Burns AM (born 8 September 1946) is an Australian rock singer and guitarist. He fronted the Melbourne band The Flies in the early 1960s.
As a solo artist, Burns became one of Australia's most popular male pop singers from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. His first single, "Very Last Day" was released in June 1966 on Spin Records and peaked at No. 12 on Melbourne's Top 40 singles chart. His second single, "True True Lovin" followed in August and reached No. 15. Go-Set published their inaugural pop poll on 5 October, Normie Rowe won 'Australian Male Vocal' of the year – he was later called 'King of Pop' – with Burns second and Johnny Young third. Also in October, Go-Set published Australia's first National Top 40 singles chart, Burns' third single, "Coalman", which was released in January 1967, peaked at No. 6. Another Top 20 single was "Exit, Stage Right" in June. In August, Burns topped the Go-Set pop poll for 'Top Male Singer' and ABC-TV broadcast a documentary, The Life of Ronnie Burns. Over the next four years, he consistently finished third on the Go-Set pop poll.

 Burns had several minor national hits – "We Had a Good Thing Going" (October 1967), "When I Was Six Years Old" (March 1968), written for him by Brian Cadd and Max Ross of The Groop, and "Age of Consent" (January 1969), written by Terry Britten of The Twilights. Most of Burns' 1967 material was written by The Bee Gees, the tracks appeared on his first solo album Ronnie (Spin, July 1967). "Smiley", Burns' biggest hit, reached number two on the Go-Set National Top 40 in February 1970. It was also written by Young, Young revealed that the song was inspired by the experiences of fellow pop star, Rowe, whose music career ended in late 1967 when he was drafted into the Australian Army and he was sent to fight in the Vietnam War. It is one of the first Australian pop singles released in stereo and features a lavish orchestral and vocal arrangement by John Farrar (ex The Strangers) who went on to write and/or produce many hits for Olivia Newton-John.

In the early 1970s, Burns had moved from pop to more adult contemporary music, he toured the club and cabaret circuit. Further Young-penned singles were "The Prophet" in January 1971 and "If I Die" in 1972. He appeared on variety TV shows including as a judge on Young Talent Time, where Maggie Burns was a choreographer. Burns' last single, "Brand New Number One" was released in 1980 on the Fable Records label.


In the short time they were around, Steve & The Board supplied listeners with a menu of sublime and snotty garage-punk songs and a wild stage presence. Formed in late '65, the group was unusually one of the very few young Australian beat units to be allowed the indulgence of an album without a string of chart hits behind them. This situation may be attributable to the fact that Steve's dad just happened to be the boss of Spin Records -- producer, songwriter and entrepreneur Nat Kipner, who had previously been one of the partners in Ivan Dayman's Sunshine label.

Nat had formed a close relationship with The Bee Gees. In 1966 he saved them from being dropped from the Leedon label by Festival Records, persuading the company to transfer them to the Spin label and co-produced most of their last Australian recordings with Ozzie Byrne at his St Clair studio in Hurstville. Through his father, Steve Kipner and the band became good mates with the Gibb brothers. Colin Petersen drummed on many of the Bee Gees Spin recording in 1966, and Carl Keats is also probably the only person to have ever written a song specifically for the Bee Gees -- "Lonely Winter" (1966). Steve & The Board returned the favour by covering Barry's "Little Miss Rhythm & Blues" on their Giggle Eyed Goo LP. The album was recorded at the end of 1966 with Colin Petersen, but he quit immediately after the sessions and head to the UK soon after.

 A particularly interesting piece of Steve & The Board trivia is that Brisbane-born drummer Colin Peterson was a noted child actor. Colin will be known to generations of Australians for his portrayal of the irrepressible young larrikin Smiley in the classic 1950s Australian film of that name, and he also appeared in The Scamp and A Cry in the Streets.

Nat Kipner penned the band's first single, the rude and raucous "Giggle Eyed Goo", which cheekily copped a line in the bridge from a contemporaneous toilet-paper commercial jingle -- "It's pink and blue and primrose too". This remarkable piece of ratbag punk-rock became a sizable hit in Eastern states in '66, and was followed up by a great rocking track with possibly one of the corniest garage rock titles ever: "I Call My Woman Hinges ('Cos She's Something To Adore)".

Colin Petersen's replacement was Geoff Bridgford, a solid player who went on to join Melbourne soul stylists The Groove. Geoff played on Steve and The Board's final single, "Sally Was a Good Old Girl"/ "Good for Nothing Sue" (January 1967), but the group broke up soon afterwards, in May 1967.



Guitarist, singer, songwriter and author Tony Barber is one of the unsing heroes of the Beat Boom in Australia. Rock historian Dean Mittelhauser considered him "one of our most underrated performers from the Sixties" and felt that Tony had "played a bigger part in the success of Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs that has been generally credited".

Tony was one of the many music-crazy young migrants who arrived in Australia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and he had played in a minor band called The Electrons before leaving the UK. Within weeks of his arrival in Australia in 1964 he met a cocky young singer called Billy Thorpe in Kings Cross and he was immediately drafted in as the fifth member of Billy's backing band, The Aztecs. Tony was already developing into a competent pop writer and he composed both sides of the Aztec's first single "Blue Day" / You don't love me", released on the Linda Lee label in April 1964.

Two days before The Aztecs' next recording session, Tony received a 'care package' from his brother in the UK that contained the Rolling Stones' first EP. Afer hearing The Stones' version of Lieber & Stoller's "Poison Ivy", Tthe Aztecs decided to record the song on their next single. It's now a matter of history that their version (widely regarded as being superior to The Stones') shot to #1, became one of the biggest Australian pop hits of the year, kept The Beatles out of the top spot in the Sydney charts in the very midst of their tour, and made Billy and The Aztecs into national stars. Tony featured on the next three Aztecs singles, "Mashed Potato" "Sick and Tired" and "Over The rainbow" -- all of which were major hits -- but in late 1965 Tony and the rest of The Aztecs quit en masse, mainly because of ongoing financial wrangles with manager John Harrigan.
After leaving The Aztecs, Tony and fellow Aztec Vince Maloney formed the shortlived Vince & Tony's Two, with John Shields on bass and Jimmy Thompson on drums. In late 1965 Tony was signed as a solo artist to the newly formed Everybody's label, which had been established by Clyde Packer's Consolidated Press. Tony's solo debut single (produced by Nat Kipner) was a thumping beat original called "Someday", which it was one of the first (and only) four singles issued on Everybody's. None of these singles -- including Tony's -- was unsuccessful on first release because of resistance from radio DJs who (not unreasonably) regarded the label as blatant cross-promotion for Packer's Everybody's magazine and refused to name it on air.

 The label was hastily rebadged as Spin Records and Tony's single was re-issued in February 1966. This time it took off, becoming a major hit that peaked at #7 in Sydney and #11 in Melbourne. Tony released four more singles on Spin -- "Wait By The Water" (Apr. 1966), "Wondrous Place" (July '66), "Lookin' for a better day" (Jan. 1967) and "Bird's Eye View", which was written for a long-forgotten TV documentary. Tony was also granted the rare privilege of recording an entire LP, entitled Someday ... Now!, on which he was backed by labelmates Steve & The Board and The Bee Gees.

Although he was signed to Spin as a recording artist, Tony also worked with another independent label during this period, the Melbourne-based Phono Vox. He produced several singles by Phon Vox artists, including Denise Drysdale and The Bentbeaks, and he also wrote the A-side of Denise's single "Sunshine Shadow". In late 1967, after his Spin contract had ended, Tony released one single under his own name on Phono Vox, but this proved to be his swansong as a recording artist. During 1967 Tony married his girlfriend Sue Peck, a staffer with Go-Set magazine, and soon after he left the pop scene to concentrate on business ventures and raising a family. In the 1980s he reunited with his old friend Billy Thorpe in the successful 'Sunshine Friends' soft toy enterprise.

In 2002, after more than thirty years away from the limelight, Tony reunited with Billy and the original Aztecs for the historic Long Way To The Top concert tours. His experiences inspired him to write a memoir of the tour and his early days as a pop musician, entitled Long Way Til You Drop. Regrettably, there was opposition to the book from some of those involved in the LWTTT tour, fuelled by pre-publication media hype that suggested it would be a tell-all exposé. In the event, Tony's book proved to be an entertaining, witty and affectionate account of an important chapter in Australian rock history.