Evolution of the SHARPIE DANCE - 1970s Australian subculture
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- music = Coloured Balls - Going Down (live at Sunbury'73)
SHARPIES (aka SHARPS) - an Australian youth subculture in the 1970s who shunned everything mainstream.. including the dance styles of the time. Early 1970s Sharpies went tribal and danced in groups with an aggressive and intimidating flailing of elbows and knees. By the latter '70s the style had morphed somewhat. It is common in these modern times to see variations of the dance at nightclubs and concerts when certain band's songs are played, such as ACDC, The Angels, The Aztecs, Skyhooks, Rose Tattoo, and of course Coloured Balls. These are Australian bands that Sharpies flocked to see in the 1970s
I wasn't born til '77, and never been to Australia, but the "Sharpie" subculture looked like a blast. AC/DC has always been popular, here in the US, but thanks to TH-cam and the internet, I've found so many Aussie bands, movies, and TV shows, I really have developed a deep love & respect for Australian culture, and even learned some "Aussie Slang." I can't wait to visit...and possibly move there one day.
An Elderly couple I grew up next door to (sadly the husband died 5-6 years ago), has "children" (not much younger than my mother) that have been living in Australia for decades... Knowing them, they have probably lived all over the country; when I was a kid the mother and father (RIP) traveled all over the world... They spent more time traveling than they did at home. One of my first jobs as a kid was moving their lawn/shoveling snow/raking leaves...and also taking care of their cat (that lived to be 22-24 years old!), while they were gone...
Anyhow, if I do leave the US, I reckon Australia would most likely be my #1 destination. Poland would probably be #2, but I am not fluent in Polish (When my grandparents moved to the US, it was "frowned upon" to speak other than English, so I did not learn "fluent" Polish)
Anyhow, CHEERS & GREETINGS to Australia! I can't wait to see the country, someday!
As a "side-note" I DO have a pet *bearded dragon* (pogona vitticeps)...my 2nd one (my wife's 3rd)... So I guess that could sort-of be our little "connection to Australia" (sort of?). Y'all DO have some very interesting animals and spiders there!
Cheers from the US!
Mate.. hope you do get down for a visit. Have you had a look at Vander & Young. some of the best music ever. AC/DC Stevie Wright (Evie) Easybeats etc etc. You can still get down to Fitzroy in Melbourne and watch some cool bands at the Tote or the Old Bar like the Cosmic Psychos and the Chats, and you only have a couple of hundred at the gig. You can smell what they backstage.
The best thing in Australia 🇦🇺 are the unique animals (koalas, kangaroos etc), but the US has amazing animals also. I always wish we had squirrels, bison and bears here.
So did they have children, or "children"?
Just, what ever you do; don't dance like this!
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This channel is a fantastic Aussie cultural artefact. Good job compiling this one Brookesy.
thanks, glad you enjoyed it
Absolutely brilliant those were the days fuckin great
No brand names, no inhibitions.. what a great culture we had
At my school Huntingdale tech in the 70's brands were important. Lest you be labelled a k marter. Levi's ok Lee better. Faberge elite. Lee shirts and Connie's and platform shoe's.
Those were the day's my friend.
We thought they would never end..❤
My brother went on a school excursion to Ayers rock. The sharpies performed this dance atop it.
And all those blokes and sheilas are Pops and Nans now, like me.
They were fair dinkum grouse days.
I was 7years old in 1975.I would see sharpies and be really scared of them.My dad was in the military and he hated long hair so he would give me a skin head hair cut.The sharpies in my area had similar haircuts.So everyone at school though i was associated with them and the school bullys would never picked on me.
Was listing to the coloured balls the other day . Came across them because I love the song "flash" been listing to it for about 2 years . Now I know who sings it and the not bad . Early Aussie rock
Superb
Much respect from the US of A! I wasn't born until '77, and did not know of this subculture until I was in my early 30s, probably.
AC/DC was *extremely popular* in the States, but I wish I had known of Lobby Lloyd & the Coloured Balls, Daddy Cool, and more Aussie bands back in my teenage years of the 1990s (I actually turned 13 in 1990).
Since the invention and popularity of the internet, TH-cam, and other social medias, I've come to learn so much about Aussie Culture/slang/TV shows/Australian gangsters and notorious "crims" (to use an Aussie term) as y'all have an interesting history and culture! "Everynight...Everynight" and "Chopper" are 2 of my favorite movies (and I rocked a "Chopper Read 'stache" for *years* before I knew who he was... I even had the same teeth, or lack thereof, too, before I got my dentures! Haha)
I was blessed born in 62 in Melbourne and didn't realise how good I had it as I thought everywhere had quality bands but no I was in the epicentre. Daddy Cool lived around the cnr and Hi Honey Ho was the best I thought. Many artists were Hush, The Sports, Skyhooks. Sherbert. Axiom. Ac/Dc. The Divinlys, Baby Animals, Richard Clapton, The Ferrets, Mental as Anything, Australian Crawl, Hunters and Collectors, Psuedo Echo, Kids in the Kitchen, The Models Goanna Little river band, John Farnham,. May I suggest listen to Susi of Baby Animals and our pin up girl Chrisse Amphlett RIP of the Divynals and play Doc Neeson RIP from The Angels and finally The Screaming Jets. That's only scratching the surface it wasn't all about AC/DC here they were just one of many.
Great vid! Thank you! I lived in Sunbury in 74-75 i had to take the train into Melbourne to go to a school for troubled kids. It was across from MIU. I was only 14-15 years old. But I loved seeing the sharps and skins. Always decked out with the short jumpers, high waisted pants and platforms. Very different from my home near the coast in northern Ca.
I loved the 70’s these were the days where life was full of pure joy, freedom and crazy making fun. Good one ✌🏽
I remember a sharpie at high school around 1967 in Melbourne. This bloke who had long hair, one day came to school with short hair, baggy pants, and wearing a maroon polo shirt. I asked him why he was dressed like that and he said he was a sharpie. A gang of Sharpies used to hang around outside of local dance halls looking for fights. They ran for their lives when confronted with a hand full of Rockers.
blueycarlton May I ask, if you can recall, what were the differences between 60s sharpies & 70s sharpies? I’ve seen a video here on TH-cam called Mods and Sharpies Melbourne. Apparently they didn’t get along. In that video, it’s 60s sharpies and they look different from the Sharpies(70s) everyone associates the subculture with. How early was the sharpies subculture?
@@jamesofla9697 i can tell you in Sydney they started around the Mid 60s and dressed really Sharp and Dapper with short back and sides army cut,they dressed with tight fitted tailored made high waisted trousers some 6 to 8 buttons high or jeans,black or white shoes with no socks,polo shirt a cardigan,and sometimes an andy cap style golf hat,up until about 1974,then the mullet and flares came into it from 75 onwards,cant tell you much about when and how in Melbourne
That footage is pure gold Brooksey. I reckon you would have been one of those 'naughty boys' haha. Good times.
Who me.. a 'naughty boy' '??? haha you betcha 😎
Sharpies fought in gangs and were piss weak one on one .
If it was me dancing in one of these clips I'd be so embarrassed about my kids and grandkids ever seeing me.
dont be
If that was my father/mother, I'd be so proud 😁
What about punks pogo dancing and gobbing on the band they watched. Who gives a shit ?. Are chicks twerking in lingerie on hip hop videos ok ? ...
Anyone remember sharpie girls in Melbourne 79 on with boom boxes playing Marianne Faithful?
I share a house with Linda’s brother and have known her and her family for over 30 years, just like me she’s a mad tiger supporter as well
❤😎
Best days off my life, it loo to so ,I don't know but we were there, without a care in the world, but facing, our (Parents) but who didn't Like (SLADE) 😂
Never had them in Newcastle they would have been bashed
Don’t think so my friend you don’t know what the scene was like
@@patkelly6349 only way they could fight was in gangs
@@dennishatzidimitriou7899 Dennis you are a funny fella you must be a young guy but it wasn’t really gang fights and to be honest there was never much in it but no knives or guns like today very different era but some guys were quick with their fists
I tell you one thing ,you may have bashed a few of them,at the end of the day they where just young people clinging to an identity,but part of that Identity was in more cases than not no retreat,it was not a case of bitch slapping one and hoping he would run,he had more to loose than a fight ,he would have lost his identity with his peers.They definitely knew how to have a good time with a little danger present.
Dream on Newcastle had nothing on Melbourne
that dancing is the only dance that matches the heavy sounds coming out of oz at the time. i love it.
Awesome video mate!
Slade alive
I was at that Slade concert.
Not sure what year it was but I think it was early 70s
At Olympic park Melbourne.
One of the support bands was Lindisfarne which stole the show. Not sure but I think status quo also played support. 👍
I was at the show also but it was the Melbourne Showgrounds.
The internationals line up was
Caravan (who you could see were really uncomfortable trying to get their prog rock over)
Lindisfarne (You're correct they stole the show)
Slade (Biggest band in England and Aus/NZ at that point)
Status Quo (I thought they were better than Slade, they released Piledriver a few months later and the rest is history)
@@roysavio9689
I wasn’t sure witch stadium the concert was at as I don’t live in Melbourne. I lived then and still do live in Gippsland. Lindisfarne is the band that got the best crowd reaction. From my memory slade was only on stage for about a hour.
Sometimes the support band is better than the main act. I’ll always remember going to a Elton John concert at the Kooyong tennis stadium in around 1970 I think. The support for Elton John was billy Thorpe and the Aztecs who absolutely stole the show. This was the first time I seen billy Thorpe live. He blue me away. I went on to see billy Thorpe many times after that.I was so Sad when he died.
If Lindisfarne was a rock group then Jethro Tull was heavy metal!
January 1973
Imagine the Clash or Pistols had been let loose in Australia? Chopper Read RIP.
I was born in '68 and I was in Primary School when this was going on. I loved ACDC as a kid, but those Conney jacket wankers did too and unfortunately if you lived in Broadmeadows at the time,.....good luck. Their hairstyle was an EXTREME mullet that predated the international mullet. Where I grew up there were two gangs in the 70's. The Sharpies and Archie Roach and his Brother. The Sharps were the Arvidsons and the Krugers. The Roach Brothers are the Aboriginal people who became famous. I might be dead soon....
At 1min 30 was Australia's first stage dive
Sharpie. What an ironic name...
Magna done it better in"fast forward"
Magda. Lol 😂
And yeah she did!
Yeh she rocked it hard out haha.
nowhere on earth will you see more mullets than you will in oz. as true then as it is now.
in this case it looks like even the skinheads had to have at least a little bit of a mullet goin' on.
😂😂 I think Australia was at the end of the queue when subculture was being handed out
Nah, it was heaps fun ;)
I was there. It was sub sub and fucking mental at times.
HA!! I feel kinda guilty for finding that comment as funny as I do.
Well you wouldn't be able to handle it. People didn't hide behind there computer screens back then trolling others. Human.
And later was the Melbourne shuffle
Used to be a melbourne sharpie.. remember you Brooksey
It's nice to be remembered Karen... hopefully for only good reasons.
Looking at this Thin Lizzy video from 1973 at 3:23, is the girl in yellow doing a Sharpie dance? th-cam.com/video/e8Q-LY_x8tM/w-d-xo.html
I grew up in Brisbane, in 1975 I was 20 and luckily there was no Sharpies around. Most likely if any turned up they would have got the shit kicked out of them, not be me but many would’ve been lining up.
I’d be embarrassed to admit that…sorry to say, but it just shows what a cultural backwater Brisbane was then.
Do not underestimate the sharpies mate. They were very fucking scary and usually with good reason. Most of them could and would have taken on anybody. I was a little rocker in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, 13 years old and remember me and my mates having to bolt, shit scared being chased by sharpies.
I`ve lived in Brisbane for 25 years and was wondering if Brizzy ever had a sharpie phase? I grew up in Perth and in 1975 i clearly remember them, but by the time i was in high school the sharpies had sort of morphed into Bogans,
It's like nature had to give up and try again.
Knuckles draggin' along the ground
I wonder if being a sharpie was just a confused off shoot of what the punks were up to in the uk at the time. It certainly didn’t seem to stand for anything, or even evolve into anything else in the end. Did it just die and whimper under a bush? Calling on all ex sharpies for some understanding and reason.
SHARPIES are an Australian only subculture that began in mid 1960's, well before England's punk scene which began in late 1976. Sharpies were around until about 1979. Plenty of info here facebook.com/groups/1396994830524256/
Strange looking species those aussies..
Angry Anderson had hair???!!! 😹
He was known as mildly upset Anderson in those days
Grouse.
I was part of this great days but gee the dancing was crap looking back
I was about 13 - 14 when this was going on and at the time I thought it was pretty stupid...
turns out I was right.