The ROCKMELONS

Country :
Australia
Town :
Sidney

Genre:
Electronic, Reggae, Funk / Soul, Pop
Style:
RnB/Swing, House, Synth-pop, Reggae-Pop, Disco


Members:
Vincent Dale (k) 1983-1989 Ish
Byron Jones (k,b,bv) 1983- Les Ukuleles, No Heavy Lifting, Ish
Jonathon Jones (k,g,d) 1983- Les Ukuleles, No Heavy Lifting
Ray Medhurst (k) 1983- ---
Mary Azzopardi (bv) 1987-1989 Afrika, The Rock Party, Ian Moss Band, Margaret Urlich Band, Mondo Rock
Stephen Atkins (turntable) 1985-1988 ---
Peter Blakeley (v) 1984-1987
Sandi Chick (v) 1983-1985 Johnny Batchelor Band, James Freud Band, Al and The Gators, One Franc, Fake
Deni Hines (v) 1991-1992
Peter Kennard (g,perc) 1983-1988 John Kennedy's Love Gone Wrong
John Kenny (v) 1984-1990 The Schmoos, Joe Hooker Band, The Hounds
Wendy Matthews (v) 1987-1988
Geoff Stapleton (k,g,perc) 1983-1985
Doug Williams (v) 1992- Powerhouse, My Old School, Missing In Action, Marcia Hines Band, Renee Geyer Band, Hip Hop, Duffhead, The Black Mass, Doug Williams and The Black Mass




















TALES OF THE CITY (1988)

Credits:
Backing Vocals - Danny deCosta , Karen Boddington , Mark Williams , Mary Azzopardi , Wendy Matthews/ Co-producer [Production Assistance] - Robert Racic (tracks: 3 to 5, 8, 9)/ Dulcimer [Electric], Guitar, Drums, Keyboards, Programmed By, Vocals [Voice Box] - Jonathon Jones/ Effects - Raymond Medhurst/ Keyboards - Vincent Dale/ Keyboards, Effects [Vocoder], Backing Vocals, Programmed By - Bryon Jones/ Lead Vocals - John Kenny (tracks: 1, 2, 4 to 9)/ Producer - Robin Smith (tracks: 1, 2, 6, 7) , Rockmelons, The (tracks: 3 to 5, 8, 9)
Notes:

Tracklist :

01 New Groove
02 What's It Gonna Be
03 Jump
Lead Vocals - Wendy Matthews
04 Thief
05 Dreams In The Empty City
06 Get Back In The Grooove
07 Rhymes
08 Boogietron
09 Money Talks

Link to download :
http://rapidshare.com/files/5558805/tales_of_the_city_256kbps.rar.html

"80's Techno-Pop has never sounded so good as this album. I am a BIG BIG Fan of this style of music as some of my favourite artists include Pseudo Echo, Bananarama, Rick Astley, Madonna (early years), Irene Cara and the list goes on. Tales of the City features both Peter Blakeley and Wendy Matthews at their finest. Both simply went down hill after their departure from this group, particularly Wendy. From the opening, this masterpiece catches us with the electric rhythms of "New groove". The perpetual dance flavour keeps our legs moving with "Rhymes", "Jump", "Thief", "What's it gonna be", "Boogie-tron", "Dreams in the empty city", "Get back on the groove", and "Money talks". At the time of release, the album was sold with an extra EP called "six on the floor". The EP featured an extended six-track dance mix of their popular singles. Today many record shops have hundreds of those dance compilations sitting on rows of racks. Nothing ever can come close to this one."

The Rockmelons forged funk, soul, and hip-hop into a musical mix that helped change the traditional Australian rock scene during the late '80s and early '90s.Founder Ray Medhurst recruited brothers Jonathon "Jonno" Jones and Bryon Jones and, with keyboardist Vinnie Dale and three vocalists - Peter Blakeley, John Kenny and Sandi Chick - the fledgling band would perform at their own dance parties in warehouses around Sydney. Guest performers often swelled the band to ten or more members on stage at any one time. The Rockmelons' debut single, Time Out (For Serious Fun) featured Sandi Chick on lead vocals and was released in 1985. Their second single, Sweat It Out" featured Peter Blakeley on lead vocals, before he left to pursue a solo career. John Kenny took lead vocals on their next single, a cover of Al Green's Rhymes while New Groove featured new vocalist Wendy Matthews Their debut album, Tales Of The City, was released in May 1988 and peaked at number six on the Australian charts as well as picking up an ARIA Award for Best Debut Album in 1988.





















FORM ONE PLANET (1992)

Credits:
Backing Vocals - Mark Williams (tracks: 1, 3, 4, 7) , Toni Mott (tracks: 3, 4, 7, 8)/ Keyboards [Additional] - Joe Chindamo (tracks: 4, 5, 7) /Lead Vocals - Deni Hines/ (tracks: 1, 4, 9) , Doug Williams (tracks: 2, 5, 7, 8) /Mixed By - Carmen Rizzo/ Producer - Rockmelons, The (tracks: 1, 3 to 10)
Notes: All instruments performed by Jonathon Jones except were specified

Tracklist :

01 That Word (L.O.V.E.) (4:09)
Horns - Dean Frazer/Producer - Donovan Germain/ Vocals [Toasting] - Cutty Ranks , Nardo Ranks
02 Stronger Together (4:44)
Backing Vocals - Fonzi Thornton (from Chic)/Guitar - Nile Rodgers (from Chic) /Guitar [Solo] - Jonathon Jones/Piano - Michael Bartolomei/Producer - Nile Rodgers /Remix - Rockmelons, The
03 Form One Planet (4:13)
Backing Vocals - Doug Williams , Elizabeth Mavric/Rap - Eric Sebastian
04 It's Not Over (6:28)
Vocals [Outro Solo] - Doug Williams
05 Love's Gonna Bring You Home (5:56)
06 Rain (4:08)
Backing Vocals - Bryon Jones , Todd Hunter/Lead Vocals - Johanna Pigott
07 More Tales Of The City (4:35)
Keyboards [Additional] - Larry Muhoberac
08 Dance Floor (4:19)
Backing Vocals - Mark Punch/Keyboards [Additional] - Larry Muhoberac, Michael Bartolomei/Rap - Eric Sebastian
09 Ain't No Sunshine (3:17) Bass, Piano - Eric Codee
10 Bubble And Squeak (3:53)
Lead Vocals - Kye/Vocals [Dancehall Calls] - Rik

Link to download :
http://rapidshare.com/files/5495893/form_one_planet_224kbps.rar.html

The Rockmelons re-emerged in 1991 with new vocalist Deni Hines and scored a hit with a cover of Bill Withers' Ain't No Sunshine. Their next single, That Word (L.O.V.E.), peaked at number four in June, while their second album, From 1 Planet, peaked at number two.

Biography :
The Rockmelons were Australian pioneers in the dance/electronic field. In the beginning the Rockmelons were the underbelly of the musical shift happening in Australian music at the start of the Eighties, when pub-rockers INXS started to "swing" and pop groups like the Models and Pseudo Echo played with "groove". Fuelling that sound was the American funk, soul and hip hop Australian radio wasn't playing.
Sydney's Ray Medhurst was a fanatical fan of that music. He recruited The Jones brothers, Jonathan and Bryon, to help him try to play that kind of music live. Like Ray they were relative musical novices and brought in an old schoolfriend, Vinnie Dale who had a bit of musical knowledge and was able to help them translate their ideas into something like reality.
For Ray's twenty-first birthday party Ray and Bryon had rung up a local venue with a bunch of ideas, pointed them to bands to hire for the night, and staged an 'event'. Now they started applying that kind of entrepreneurism to "their" music. Instead of going out to find an audience they brought the audience in. Ray was living in a warehouse, and the fledgling Rockmelons held a party at which they provided the entertainment, experimenting with blending the live energy of a band with a disco nightclub atmosphere. That party developed into more parties, at Ray's and other people's places and at actual venues. A Rockmelons performance became a bit of an event. They added two djs who would scratch and dub records, leading into the band's live performance, all very novel and innovative at the time. As well as writing original material Medhurst and the Jones brothers were also organizing everything, acting as their own managers.
Playing their keyboards and synthesisers around Jonathon's self-constructed and designed electric dulcimer, after a while Ray decided to add some vocal interest to their instrumental creations by vocodering his voice on some songs. Jonathon also was responsible for drum programming and sequencing, at a time when these were only just being developed technologically in Australia. The band found themselves at the end of a lot of stick by playing live without a drummer. Even though Jonathan was more than a capable drummer, the Rockmelons would persist on performing drummerless for several years.
When the novelty of Ray's vocodered started wearing off they decided to bring in a series of guest vocalists. By the time they released their first single 'Time Out (For Serious Fun)' the Rockmelons were using three singers - Peter Blakeley, John Kenny and Sandi Chick. Sandi sang on that first single. By then they'd also added a guitarist/percussionist. Sometimes there could be ten or more Rockmelons on stage.
Even that first single happened unconventionally. Wanting to learn about recording techniques, Bryon and Jonathan were offered some free time at Alberts studios. As they fooled around for the next two days they came up with what became 'Time Out (For Serious Fun)'. Before embarking on a solo career, Peter Blakely took lead vocals on the second single 'Sweat It Out'. The third featured John Kenny, and for the fourth,'New Groove,' they introduced another name, Wendy Matthews. It was this fluid Rockmelons which put together its first album, 'Tales Of The City', winning the 1988 ARIA for Best Debut Album.
The second Rockmelons album 'Form One Planet' changed everything. For three tracks they introduced Deni Hines on vocals. When their Deni-led version of 'Ain't No Sunshine' became a pop hit, a second Deni track 'That Word (L O V E)' was released as the follow-up. Although mark Williams also made a major contribution to 'Form One Planet (especially on "Stronger Together", which was an underground dance hit in the UK) in most people's minds, and through pressure of their success, Deni became the Rockmelons' official lead singer. With that, some of the Rockmelons' uniqueness disappeared. Success also meant touring, and with that some of the pleasure disappeared for the founding Rockmelons.
When subsequent singles with other singers failed to make an impression the Rockmelons' unit postponed their own recording and performing career until some unforseen date and started applying their talents and skills to the benefit of others. They wrote and produced hits for CDB, recorded and produced Marcia Hines' '99 album 'Time of Our Lives', and worked with hit dance duo Kaylan. In late 2001 the Rockmelons were as surprised as anyone else when their record company suggested a new album, the first in ten years. Festival Mushroom Records research suggested that a Rockmelons album would be well received. 'Rockies 3' was the result as a diverse collection of irresistible grooves, soul-drenched melodies and infectious vocal hooks and performances.
Despite their success, the Rockmelons took a long break in between albums. Instead of churning out new material like most acts, they took time to work on a number of other projects including production work for some of Australia's most successful new and established acts. In their absence, the music industry has gone through some big changes, especially in Australia, where trends have turned around from rock-driven sounds to a more rhythmic approach. It therefore sounds like a perfect time for the Rockies to re-emerge and remind audiences that they were at the forefront of this wave of acceptance for groove-based and melodic sounds in Australia.
In more recent years Bryon Jones had been closely associated with executive producing albums for Australian Idol winners.
(http://www.whiteroom.com.au/howlspace/en3/rockmelons/rockmelons.htm)



Albums :
Tales Of The City (1988)
Form One Planet (1992)
Rockies 3 (2003)

More info :
http://www.ganggajang.com/geofpgs/otherbands/therockmelons.htm


REPOSTED ALBUMS

Virgin Dance (http://saltyka.blogspot.com/2006/10/virgin-dance-against-tide-1984.html)

Against The Tide (1984)---http://rapidshare.com/files/5495664/virgin_dance.rar.html

DOUBLE (http://saltyka.blogspot.com/2006/06/double-blue-1985-dou3le-1987-and-kurt.html)

blue (1985)---http://d.turboupload.com/d/1240673/double_-_blue.rar.html

dou3le (1987)---http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0NMDJRCO

OMD (http://saltyka.blogspot.com/2006/09/some-omd.html)

all mixed up vol.3---http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=d00ac089a7ae441f70320bcbb059f145

lost mix 1---http://www.badongo.com/file/1761855
lost mix 2---http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BDA3O7I2
lost mix 3---http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZK6OYINQ

Enjoy!

Ps: Im going to continue to upload your reqs...and :Flesh For Lulu /Adventures /Tennants /Mary's Danish/Quick/Breathe/New Musik....