Ahhh, 1981 in Australia... a blissful, innocent time. A period where a man could compliment a woman's legs without fear of reprimand, and when ladies flashed their knickers with impressive regularity.

To celebrate, let's watch the following advertisement from "back in the day".

Awesome.

Today's YouTube Clip Of The Day was submitted by Tim C in response to our Sime Nugent gig competition yesterday. As a reward, Tim will find himself on the door (plus one) at Friday night's festivities at The East Brunswick Club.

East Coast living Defamer Australia readers should stay tuned, as we have tickets to give away for what should be an awesome July tour featuring two beloved Australian artists. Let's just say if you're a fan of Custard and/or Frente, and have a healthy admiration for the lead singer of each band's solo works too, then you'll be WELL PLEASED with what we have to offer you next week.

Hola, Melbourne-based Sime Nugent fans (or passionate lovers of his music willing to travel great distances for a good live show).

As you may or may not know, we're big fans of "The Nuge" around these parts, and I was rather excited to learn that the man himself is playing a very special show, Bruce McAvaney style, this Friday night at Melbourne's own East Brunswick Club. With support from Matt Walker and Suzannah Espie, a couple of special onstage guests, and a rollickingly talented band who will probably make your brain explode a bit when you watch them do their "thang", the gig was always going to be ace - but it's also being recorded, which means there's every chance your girlish cries of "TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF, NUGENT!" and "PLAY KHE SANH!" will appear on a CD in the near future!

If you'd like to join me and other people with taste on Friday night, you can buy tickets from the East Brunswick Club's website or on the door at the night. Do it! DO IT!

OR - if you email tips AT defamer.com.au and offer up a remotely interesting YouTube link, you might just win yourself two tickets. Bring a date! Feel them up while one of the country's finest singer-songwriters bangs out the musical bliss! Buy me a beer! Whatever!

We were most pleased to get a link in our inbox (not a metaphor, but perhaps a nice wish for Valentine's Day tomorrow all the same) to the new video clip for Sime Nugent's lovely track "Be There Soon".

The video is described by the creators as follows -

"Made entirely from one family's 1956 home movies, Sime's new video provides a rare view into Australia's past - with plenty of reverberation with today's Australia."

It is, in short, marvellous. Watch it for yourself after the jump.

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What an amazing evening of music, and we say that with some degree of objectivity. No, really!

We had a stack of pre-recorded genius from wonderful artists who generously donated their time to lay down "tracks" of cover songs - and they were fucking awesome!

The atrociously handsome Dan Kelly not only did the world's best John Butler impression for a station id (we're trying to get the audio up here as we speak, stay tuned...) but he also performed a stunning and utterly unexpected rendition of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May"!

Patrick J Bourke* of Dallas Crane fame offered up a version of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", iconic Australian music figure Stephen Cummings gave us Jason Donovan's "Too Many Broken Hearts", Lisa Mitchell from last year's Australian Idol performed a lovely cover of "What I Like About You", and SPOD worked some magic on Beyonce's "Check On It". Dave Graney and Clare Moore got their smooth on in the name of community radio with "Hard Times", Melbourne's own The Basics gave us an exclusive live recording of "Ebony and Ivory", and Little Red moved us all with their a cappella interpretation of "Heal The World".

But that wasn't where it ended! We also had a host of surprise LIVE performers! The Good Intentions belted out Chumbawamba's "Tubthumpin", Ground Components - WITH A PIANO ACCORDION, FOR FUCKS!! - played Dallas Groundies' grandpa's song "Louis the Rat" and inspired a massive singalong, the ridiculously talented Sime Nugent crooned "The Greatest Love Of All", and a supergroup consisting of members from Good Intentions, Eurobeat 3, The Drones, Ground Components - as well as Sime Nugent and Angie Hart - all contributed to a gorgeous take on Dire Straits' "Walk Of Life".

AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOUR HEAD WAS GOING TO EXPLODE?

Angie Hart and Dan Luscombe from The Drones did a last minute duet of "Islands In The Stream".

All in all, a marvellous show. Thank you to all who subscribed to RRR during I'd Rather Jack, and if you didn't? Do it now! On what motherfucking station will you see a line up like that delivering the goods with nothing to gain except perhaps access to a free slab of beer?

rrr.org.au is the station, but if you're not Melbourne based, then we heartily recommend you support your own local community radio station any time of the year... It's where the magic happens, people.

*Also a fellow member (along with Defamer Australia) of hip hop duo The Septics.

Melbourne troubadour Sime Nugent is going to be releasing his second solo offering shortly.

The album'll be called "Sime Nugent Happy Hour" and as the name suggests, he's exchanged his sadpants for a sparkling Kylie-esque pair of gold hotpants. Or to put it another way, if his old stuff was the beautiful heartbreaking soundtrack of you crying into your drink (and for us, it often was), Sime's now jumped off the stage, run to the bar, and bought the first round of Jager shots before suggesting we all stand on the bar and sing songs with choruses that go "Na na na na na na!" and then maybe go dancing for a while.

IN ANY CASE.

There are now some new songs up on his MySpazz page, and the one we can't get out of our head (another Kylie reference - surely this is the first time Sime Nugent has been compared to Kyles not once, but twice in a "piece" of "music journalism"!) is called Alcoholic. It has horns and the aforementioned "Na na na na na na" chorus and in short, we loves it. We are told there will also be a fucking ace film clip featuring boozy puppets or something like that going on a Hilton/Lohan-esque rampage which sounds very exciting indeed, and we'll be posting it as soon as it is "finished off" by the director.

So go have a listen - there are two other new songs on his page as well, alongside ol' Triple J favourite Gentle As She Goes.