Henry Rollins: The Column! Down Under and 
Hard to Find
[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] 
I am currently in Australia. This will mark my 30th trip to this country since I first came here in 1989. From the very start, Australia fascinated me on many levels. For a history of how Australia came to be known as such, you might want to check out Robert Hughes' book The Fatal Shore. What a backstory. It might make you see some similarities with another large landmass where, centuries ago, voyagers came ashore and did some radical land appropriation from the indigenous people.
Years previous to my first setting foot in Sydney, I had been listening to Australian bands for many years. They included the Saints, the Victims, Radio Birdman, the Scientists, the Birthday Party and all of the spinoff projects post-BP breakup in 1983 (the Bad Seeds, Crime and the City Solution and SPK), to name a handful.
When the first opportunity came for me to travel down here for shows, an offer from top agent Tim Pittman -- who is my agent to this day -- I jumped on it. Getting here from Los Angeles in those days required a flight that was hours longer than any other flight I had ever endured. The flight took so long -- or at least I remember it as being that way -- that when I finally arrived, I thought I had dropped down on another planet. In many ways, I had. I remember feeling that I was really far away from a part of the world I was familiar with and in a very new environment.
There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand. The place is unique and so are the people, but for me, the best part of all this is that the music scene here (from anytime in the past to this very minute) is fantastic.
Australia has certainly had its share of high-profile exports -- AC/DC, the Hoodoo Gurus, Men at Work, INXS and Midnight Oil -- but the perhaps lesser-known bands really should not go unenjoyed. A very short list of some of my favorites: Beasts of Bourbon, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists (and Kim's solo excursions), the Mark of Cain, Mass Appeal, the Cruel Sea, the Dirty Three, the Necks and Tumbleweed.
I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.
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