Plunderers

Plunderers – Troy Horse

In 1990 the Plunderers booked a day at Troy Horse Studio (on King Street, Newtown) to record a bunch of tunes that we had decided to drop from the setlist, as we had too many songs. With Mickey Levis engineering, we recorded eleven songs on their ‘trusty’ Otari 8-track machine.

The ½ inch multi-track tape of the session has six tracks filled up with Stevie’s rhythm guitar, my bass and Geoff’s drums. We never went back in to Troy Horse to finish them off so the tape is all instrumental (with a tiny bit of vocal leak). You can hear where a guitar solo would have reigned supreme. Oh well, what could have been!

Recently, while going through a box of tapes, I found an unmarked cassette with rough mixes of these songs…with guide vocals!

There’s a little bit of wow and flutter on the recordings – due to the state of the cassette – and a couple of the songs you can hear where the tape has been a bit mashed up (at the beginning of “Way Past One” and “If You Could Read My Mind”). “Cool of the Day” was so crumpled it didn’t make the cut.

“Fidget” was transferred to another tape and turned into “Eskimo” which was released on the “Cheerleader” single by Hippy Dribble. “TEN (So Mixed Up”) goes back to the pre-Plunderers days with Elmo Z. Reed and was always a song that never had a defined arrangement, so it was good to have a recording of it. We also recorded our version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”, which remained part of our setlist.

Stevie Plunder: guitar, guide vocals / Nic Dalton: bass, guide vocals / Geoff Milne: drums

Recorded by Michael Levis at Troy Horse Studio, sometime in the first half of 1990

The Plunderers formed in January 1984 in Canberra with Stevie Plunder (born Anthony Hayes) on guitar and vocals; Nic Dalton on bass guitar and vocals; and Elmo Reed on drums. In May 1984 Lindsay Dunbar joined on drums, along with David Branson on violin and Jacquie Martin on saxophone.

The group went into hiatus for six months when Lindsay left and Stevie and Nic joined the Gadflys. In June 1985, the band reformed (adding ex-Gadflys’ drummer Peter Velzen) and this line-up released their debut single “Strange Affection” on their own label Rattlesnake Records. The group moved to Melbourne in October and added Andy Lewis on keyboards, guitar and harmony vocals. They released two cassettes, No Era Is Safe and Half A Cow, both in 1986.

By the end of 1986, they relocated to Sydney. Andy Lewis left the band in 1987. In June 1988 they issued their debut five-track mini-album, Trust Us, which was produced by Charlie Owen on the Green Fez label. They followed in November with another single, “I Don’t Mind”, produced by Rob Younger. In January 1989 Pillage was replaced on drums by Geoff Milne (ex-Eastern Dark). The group issued their next single, “I Didn’t Even See Them at All”, in June 1989 on Citadel Records. In March the following year they issued another five-track mini-album, Sarah’s not Falling in Love, which was produced by Younger. In September another single, “Christo”, appeared, which was followed in July the next year by a four-track mini-album, Home Movie, produced by Younger.

In 1989 Hippy Dribble was formed as a side project with Dalton as Nic Dribble, Milne as Geoff Dribble and Plunder as Stevie Dribble. Hippy Dribble played psychedelic pop and issued a four-track extended play, Wild Strawberri, in November 1990 on their own Trip Records label. The trio formed another side project, Captain Denim, in December 1990 to play “more laid-back songs mostly from the very early Plunderers days when they were influenced by the likes of Buffalo Springfield, Country & Western and folk rock”.

In 1992, Dalton joined US band the Lemonheads and Lewis and Plunder formed the Whitlams so the band was put on a break. Releases still flowed: Citadel released a compilation cd called Banana Smoothie, Honey, the band self-released an eight-track live album, 13.7.91 Live! Live! Live!

Hippy Dribble released another four-track EP, Cheerleader, on Dalton’s own label, Half a Cow. In April that year, Hippy Dribble resumed and issued a split album: their side is Silver Apples; while Captain Denim is on the other side with Fade; on the Half a Cow label. The material had been recorded four years earlier by the line-up of Dalton, Milne and Plunder.

On 25 January 1996, Stevie Plunder took his own life at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, at the age of 32 years. The Plunderers would be no more after this event. On 12 February 2000 Andy Lewis also took his own life. He was 33.

In November 2000 Half A Cow re-issued Banana Smoothie, Honey as a double CD format with five bonus tracks originally released by Hippy Dribble/Captain Denim. Nic says: “The Plunderers kept saving our songs for our first album. Stevie Plunder died and we never got to record an album – my single biggest regret regarding music. We had all these great songs that were never recorded”.

2019 interview with Nic re. Plunderers

Plunderers Bandcamp