CAM-PACT
Melbourne 1967-1970

History

Seminal Melbourne band CamPact began as a soul group in the style of contemporary Tamla, Stax and Atlantic soul acts, and later explored teen-pop, heavy rock and finally into blues/psychedelia. The band formed in April 1967, and according to Ian McFarlane, their original name was The Camp Act, but this was deemed too "risque" for the time and altered to CamPact. The band was a nexus for some of the leading players on the Melbourne scene, and some very noteworthy personnel passed through during its short lifespan, creating connections with most of the major Melbourne bands of the late 60s and early 70s.

The original 1967 lineup was Mark Barnes (ex-Moppa Blues, Roadrunners, Delta Set), Keith Glass (ex-Rising Sons, 18th Century Quartet), John Pugh (ex-Roadrunners, Delta Set, James Taylor Move, 18th Century Quartet), Chris Stockley (The Road Runners, Delta Set) and drummer Bob Lloyd, who had been one of several drummers who played in the shortlived second lineup of 18th Century Quartet in 1966. 

In the liner notes to the recent Cam-Pact CD, Keith Glass recalled the origins of the group's tongue-in-cheek name and image:

"There it was on the wall of the men's public toilet at Her Majesty's hotel in Toorak Road, South Yarra. "Be modern, be camp" someone had scrawled and in a flash we had our group name. John Pugh, Bob Tregilgus, Mark Barnes, Chris Stockley and myself had been rehearsing, for a solid month or so, sans name, our "soul group with teen appeal". In a moment of idiocy and after a few drinks at the trendiest pub in the trendiest stretch of Melbourne we had it, for better or for worse. "The Camp Act" (as it was initially) was fairly fitting in the sense we were all extremely heterosexual but also fairly fey. Of course some were more fey than others."

"Barnes in particular cultivated the sweet little boy act but underneath was a cuttingly cruel tease of both sexes with an acid tongue and a razor sharp mind. A few months later he and Stockley would perform a lingering mouth to mouth kiss in our first film clip to accompany the song "Something Easy" just outside Her Majesty's. It only just made the cut as they came out of the clinch but the intention was clear. We wanted to get somewhere by shock tactics mild for today but wild for the time."

They approached David Flint, of Melbourne disco Thumpin' Tum for an audition and he was impressed enough to offer them a gig and take over their management. Their first gig was in March 1967, and the group was soon working solidly, including a regular gig at the Tum. Bob Lloyd and John Pugh left the band in late 1967 -- Lloyd was replaced by Trevor Courtney (formerly of NZ band Chants R&B, with Mike Rudd), and Pugh by Greg Cook (ex-Silk'n'Dreams). Lloyd went on to play with Carnival, Extradition, and Forest; Pugh went on to play in several well-known bands including James Taylor Move, The News, The Avengers, Healing Force, Ray Burton Nightflyers and the Renee Geyer Band. 

"Our first publicity shots included all five of us seemingly naked in the one bed and when we couldn't get it published it was pinned to the wall of The Thumping Tum disco, which became our "nerve centre" of operations; until some shocked patron objected to it and our manager and Tum operator David Flint took it down. John Pugh and I were over reacting to our previous year and a half as one half of The Eighteenth Century Quartet, a band originally built around the songs of Hans Poulsen we had been lured into with visions of overnight/overseas fame and fortune. So what had we done? Kicked Hans out of his own band just because he was personally unbearable and turned the remainder into a pseudo soul group anyway. This was the music we loved. Southern soul specifically. Others wanted to go to London or Los Angeles we wanted to go to Memphis and Muscle Shoals."

Winchester, England born Chris Stockley was a kindred spirit from John's old group The Roadrunners and Mark and Bob came from that source too. These guy's were among the first to play the blues in Melbourne and Max Merritt had shown us that Soul, a derivative of blues/gospel and country could be even more potent and alluring. Our mission was to grab ourselves a solid repertoire of soul classics and after some intensive rehearsals at a space across town in Carlton we had about 60 songs down with the emphasis on Otis, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and a smattering of Detroit stuff if it was hard edged enough, from the Four Tops, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye. We had the records, no-one had a better set list.

In the months that followed, except for a few must keep classics, if another band started playing any of the songs we did, we dropped them. The Chelsea Set and The Groove caused us a few heartaches in that department. Trouble is, for a while there John and I thought we were Sam & Dave instead of two extremely white boys from suburban Melbourne. In the 18CQ we'd seriously started writing songs inspired by Hans truly great pop efforts, many of which remain unheard. Now we wanted to be soul men. Pugh even pushed himself to rasp up and after hearing Max drank a lot of whiskey he took to it with vengeance, as he has many things prior and since.

Our first gig was at The Queensbury Hotel on March 4th 1967, followed later that night by a spot at The Thumping Tum. We were working pretty solid almost immediately. After a few months live work, John wanted out to start his own band (first called Flowerpower then The News). We'd always had trouble with Bob (now going under the surname Lloyd) and his jazz leanings leaving the backbeat too light. He moved on too. So that first version of the band went unrecorded. In came another soul freak, Trevor Courtney on drums, (previously of New Zealand band Chants R&B) and the young Greg Cook on guitar and organ. Greg leaned more to English melodic pop - read Beatles. He was sort of the odd man out and we led him wildly astray. With me concentrating on being a front man this was the group that first recorded.

The second version of CamPact -- Barnes, Cook, Courtney, Glass and Stockley -- was the best known and most successful lineup. In late 1967 Cam-Pact were spotted by entrepreneurial doctor and would-be pop svengali Geoffrey Edelsten (whose family owned the Edels record retail chain). Edelsten's Hit Productions outfit had a deal with Festival Records and among his other 'discoveries' was Pastoral Symphony, a concocted studio group featuring members of The Twilights and others. Edelsten signed Cam-Pact to record a single and their debut release "Something Easy" / "Michael" came out in February 1968 and rose to the middle of the Melbourne Top 40.

"Doctor Geoffrey Edelston was funding recordings all over town and had a deal with Festival by that stage as 'Hit Productions'. We were playing four nights and some days a week while juggling day jobs or in my case and Mark's, tertiary study. The infamous Doctor rubber stamped a deal one night at The Thumping Tum and into the studio we went. I think the pure soul thing in me had diluted enough by then to realise we should record an original if possible. Together with Greg I concocted "Something Easy" with some cringe inducing lyrics over a solid beat group approximation of an uptempo soul groove and a horn section we gathered from members of the Ram Jam Big Band and my ex-girlfriends twin brother on trombone (Peter Thoms -- a professional musician in London to this day). The reason for the 'B' side choice ("Michael") is a total mystery to me now. English based soul man Geno Washington did it -- why we did I don't know, it sounds very strained and slight."

"With the work we'd been doing and a certain teen appeal we had, the record made the Melbourne charts, peaking in the 20's. One of our hot spots was the lunchtime gig at Tenth Avenue in Bourke Street. Playing for the extremely young just teenage girls who skipped school to be there and get 'em to go across the road to Coles and buy our single. Trev especially used to sit one teenybopper on each knee during breaks and as I walked past would say "Just doing some promotion, man".

"The second single "I'm Your Puppet" was the sort of stuff we should have stuck at. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were better writers than I was ever going to be and the James & Bobby Purify version I owned was obscure enough that we could cut it and win. The string arrangement by BEA's resident arranger Geoff Kitchen was whitebread but probably made it more poppy and really more us, as deep we really were not. It charted higher than the first single and also got some action interstate although still not in hard to crack Sydney. As for "Drawing Room" this version (it was previously done by the 18CQ) has become a bit of a psychedelic classic -- we simply threw everything at it as a frustrated reaction to never getting the studio sound we wanted. At last Chris could turn his amp up, up, up. It also signifies we'd become caught up in the early prog-rock mania. The pure soul time was gone, the rules were out the window and we hadn't even taken any serious drugs yet.

"We really blew it with the next single. Mark was becoming a bit unreliable and I'd switched over to bass and the idea was to share vocals around the remaining four piece. I think we'd been listening to the Fifth Dimension and Jim Webb songs specifically. So needless tempo changes, over the top vocal arrangements and puerile pop replaced all we had learnt. "And It Won't Be Long", for which we also did a film clip, sank without trace. It was crunch time. We decided while doing gigs in Sydney to enlist the ears of chart topping producer Pat Aulton. "Potion Of Love" was an obscure soul song in the breezy Philly Soul style Trevor was particularly fond of. (It was actually originally recorded by The Ambers who hailed from New Jersey). By this stage, through constant gigging the band had become extremely tight, so there were just the four of us in the big old Festival studio on the track and I think we nailed it but perhaps fashion and trends beat us because this, to my ears sounds like the best single we ever did. It caused not a flutter. The B-side gave Chris a chance to show off some newly acquired jazz chops and Trev to sing like Georgie Fame."

"Time for me to leave. On a whim (and while still officially attending RMIT) I went to audition for the stage production of "Hair" and was offered a lead role. I would be earning many times what I was (not) making in the band. On the last week in Melbourne with Cam-Pact we did 11 gigs, then I flew at my own expense to back to Sydney for rehearsals. I remember Trev falling off the drums with exhaustion final song of the last gig. All of the money from that final weekend went in "expenses" I apparently owed the band. Hmmm. Chris jumped ship almost at the same time and running into Glen Shorrock and Brian Cadd while I was rehearsing for the opening of "Hair", I suggested him for the group they were planning called Axiom."

When Trevor Courtney left in late '69 (thus creating a totally new lineup) he was replaced by Ray Arnott (ex-Chelsea Set, The Browns). Chris Lovfen (bass) later made a name as a film-maker, with the legendary promotional clips for Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" and Spectrum's "I'll Be Gone", and he later wrote and directed the cult rock'n'roll road film OZ (with music by Ross Wilson and Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons).

"Cam-Pact with Trevor and Greg played on, they came up to Sydney again to record the blatant bubble-gum "Zoom Zoom Zoom" with new boys Bill Blisset on keyboards and our old mate (and still my close friend) Chris Lofven on bass. I went down to the studio and may have played tambourine on the session. It was commercial but failed to revive the bands fortunes. Soon Trevor went to The Vibrants, Greg to The Mixtures and the rest of the latter Cam-Pact weirdly enough mutated into Company Caine."

"Then there are some crude partly psychedelic originals as we attempt to find a style, Chris Stockley's offering perhaps the best original soulful song we ever came up with and failed to capitalise on, and "Duke Of Earl" our one take at a stage fave. A bit off pitch vocally in places but pre-dating the Daddy Cool doo-wop revival by a few years. To me, hearing the strange recording choice of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" after all this time is a revelation of how strong my country and soul roots were and still are."

"Cam-Pact was a pretty tight little outfit most of the time with a lot of talent in it. It stretched in too many directions however. Soul/pop/psychedelic and more. It was a sign of the times. Those times were between the pure 'beat' days when it was exciting just to pick up an instrument and the emerging big Australian rock sound of the seventies which really got going with outdoor festivals and licensed premises. Cam-Pact wouldn't have been at home there. We really belonged in the so-called 'disco's' such as The Thumping Tum, The Catcher, Berties, Sebastians and the list goes on. The Rococo period of the swinging 60's, complete with frilly shirts, tight pink trousers and ambivalent sexuality."

Arnott became a mainstay of the '70s scene, going on to Company Caine, Spectrum, Mighty Kong and The Dingoes; Barnes joined Party Machine, Andy James Asylum and Sundown; Cook moved onto The Graduates, The Mixtures and later, Mondo Rock; Smith of course went on into Co.Caine and Mighty Kong, then joined Billy T, and Heavy Division.

Keith Glass has been a very important figure in Aussie rock, although his many contributions are still not widely recognised. After leaving CamPact, he embarked on tertiary studies, but that ended abruptly when he successfully auditoned for the cast of the original Australian production of the rock musical Hair in mid-'69, and he performed with the show in the central role of Berger for about 12 months, and sang on the subsequent soundtrack LP. In 1970 he formed pioneering Australian country-rock band, Sundown, which included Kerryn Tolhurst and Broderick Smith, (Dingoes), old mate Mark Barnes, Barry Windley (Chessmen, Cherokees) and Richard Wright (The Groop). In the early 70s he also went into record retail, setting up the fondly remembered Melbourne import shop Archie & Jughead (which can be glimpsed in a scene in OZ).

Ca. 1978 Keith founded Missing Link, the Melbourne shop and record label which were crucial in the emergence of the New Wave scene in Australia; he managed goth-rock pioneers The Birthday Party and released early recording by The Birthday Party and The Go-Betweens. Missing Link also distributed important new wave recordings from the UK and the US, including Money by The Flying Lizards, and the early recordings by The Dead Kennedys.

Since then, Keith has established himself as one of Australia's most respected country music performers and songwriters. He still performs regularly, and in recent years he played with his group The Keith Glass Band, which reunited him with Chris Lofven (bass), plus drummer Rob Souter (ex-Lizard, Dynamic Hepnotics) and top-rated country picker Bob Howe.

In 2002 Keith reactivated the Missing Link label and one of its first releases was a nineteen-track CamPact compilation, featuring all the group's studio sides, plus many previously unreleased tracks.

- DK

Discography

Singles

Mar. 1968
"Something Easy" / "Michael" (Festival FK 2195)

May 1968
"Drawing Room" / "I'm Your Puppet" (Festival FK 2364)

Sep. 1968
"Good Good Feelin' " / "It Won't Be Long" (Festival FK 2538)

Jun. 1969
"Potion Of Love" / "Cry My Heart Out" (Festival FK 3005)
Produced by Pat Aulton

Sep. 1969
"Zoom Zoom Zoom" / "Getting Myself Together" (Festival FK 3125)

EPs

1968
Something Easy (Festival FX 11496)
"Something Easy" / "Michael" // "Who Could Be Loving You" / "Mercy"

1969
Cam-Pact / Pastoral Symphony* (Festival FX 11511)
"Love Machine" / "Spread a Little Love Around" // "Drawing, Room" / "I'm Your Puppet"
*Shared release - tracks 1, 2 were by Pastoral Symphony, tracks 3, 4 by Cam-Pact

1969
Zoom Zoom Zoom (FX 11661)

?/77 Living In The 60s (Missing Link)
Drawing Room / I'm Your Puppet / *Wasted (On A Fantasy) / *(You Don't Have To) Break It To Me Gently
4-track EP issued on Keith Glass's own label; the two tracks marked* were previously unreleased Cam-Pact recordings from 1968.

Albums

Oct. 2002
Psychedelic Pop 'n' Soul 1967-69 (Missing Link)

The Singles:
"Something Easy" (Glass-Cook)
"Michael" (Brownlee)
"I'm Your Puppet" (Oldham-Penn)
"Drawing Room" (Glass)
"And It Won't Be Long" (Courtney-Cook)
"Good, Good Feelin'" (Courtney-Cook)
"Potion Of Love" (Taylor)
"Cry My Heart Out" (Courtney-Cook)
"Zoom Zoom Zoom" (Zompa-De Caesar)
"Getting Myself Together" (Courtney-Cook)
Demos & TV Tracks:
"Wasted On A Fantasy" (Glass}
"You Don't Have To Break It To Me Slowly" (Stockley)
"Monkey Time" (Mayfield)
"If I Promise" (Read)
"Duke Of Earl" (Edwards-Williams-Dixon)
"We Can Have A Love" (Glass-Courtney-Cook-Stockley)
"By The Time I Get To Phoenix" (Webb)
"Going Home" (Cook)
"I'm Your Puppet" (Oldham/Penn)

Available HERE

References/Links

Special thanks and acknowledgements to Keith Glass. 

Paul Conn
2000 Weeks: The First Thirty Years of Australian Rock'n'Roll (Moonlight Publications, 1996)

Ian McFarlane
Encyclopedia of Australian Rock & Pop (Allen & Unwin, 1999) p.93

Noel McGrath
Australian Encyclopedia of Rock (Outback Press, 1978)

Keith Glass
"A Life In Music", RHYTHMS magazine

Keith Glass page in the Show Net website

Please email webmaster@milesago.com if you have extra information or corrections, or to report any broken links.