The Celibate Rifles-Roman Beach Party (1987)

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Artist: The Celibate Rifles

Title: Roman Beach Party

Label: What Goes On 

Format: LP

Cat #: GOES ON 11

Year of Release: 1987

Country and Year of Edition Issue:  UK 1987

Listed Condition: VG+/VG corner clip upper right corner

Sell Date: 12/31/20

Sell Price: $9.99

Discogs Last Sold: 9/23/20 VG/VG+

Low: $5.15

Median: $11.88

High:  $27.27 M/M

Current low price: $5.99 VG+/VG+

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 19

Have/Want: 478/70

Where Sold:  Memphis, TN

Time it took to sell: 5 years

Where and When Bought: Worcester MA That's Entertainment used $2.99 within year it came out

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No


A couple years ago the world lost Damien Lovelock, vocalist for The Celibate Rifles for many years.  Released in 1987, Roman Beach Party was the bands 4th album, although what got into the US often was different than the Australian versions.  US radio got Quintessentially Yours and Mina Mina Mina as well as The Turgid Miasma of Existence and the live Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from 1983-6.  All of these album were baseline repeated selections on my mid-80's shows.  They came to us through the excellent What Goes On label which specialized in garage rock bands in Australia as well as Sweden and the UK.  What Goes On came to the US via Dutch East Trading out of Long Island (also home of Homestead records), which meant these titles were well distributed and regularly promoed here up until 2000 or so when they went belly up.  I suspect one of said copies wound up in the hands of an indifferent critic in central MA, as I bought my used copy very soon after release if memory serves me well.  Certain "finds" stand out for me that way.

I got to see The Celibate Rifles around this time at UCONN in Storrs, CT.  I think the audience number was less than 10, and an angry Lovelock slammed down his mic at the end of the set in disgust after an excellent hour of rocking seemingly cut short without an encore.  I think they went to TT's in Cambridge the next night, where I couldn't have gone,  but my then of-age friend Will had a preference for the Storrs night so I got to go to the all ages college gig when I was 17.  Will probably had a work conflict for TT's so the stars aligned.

Roman Beach Party is one of those album I can see the song titles on a radio playlist burned in my mind of yore: "Jesus On TV" and "A Word About Jones" I can see those titles block printed on a gridded piece of playlist of paper.  Ask me to hum one of these tracks and I can't even after recently listening and nodding to myself at it's general excellence.  Other albums of theirs had bigger personal hits.

That said, the Rifles were one of the great exports of Aussie Rock. If you like Radio Birdman or the Cosmic Psychos, you can plop these albums right in between.  There was zero deviance from the live guitarbassdrum aesthetic or "sweetening" of the sound, no overbearing snare, no overuse of reverb.  Finding these bands were a big deal around that time in general and for me always.   The back cover brags about no keyboards being used in the making of this record in bold for all to see. 

Save those tinkles for someone else!
 

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