Australian Crawl

In the mid-1890’s Alick Wickman, a young Solomon Islander with a fondness for water sports was something of a living legend in Melbourne. While holder of the World High Diving Record - he dived over 200ft into the Yarra River - he developed a unique arm over arm freestyle known as 'the Australian crawl' that would eventually become synonymous with Australia’s early domination of international swimming. And then, nearly 80 years late, from Melbourne came yet another Australian Crawl - a rock band. From their start in 1978 until they disbanded in the mid-80s, The Crawl stood as a bizarre anomaly against the largely punk and political scene Down Under. Consisting of James Reyne, Guy & Bill McDonough, Simon Binks, Paul Williams, and Brad Robinson, The Crawl was sculpted as the Melbourne The Beach Boys; a reflection of the beach, the open-air and good vibes. But their debut album, The Boys Light Up, also contained recountings of automobile accidents (Indisposed - Remastered) and vicious attacks against shallow materialists (Beautiful People - Remastered). Their combination of light, breezy tunes with significantly darker subtexts (not unlike Brian Wilson's best work) left their debut album on the Aussie charts for no less than 104 weeks. Significantly, all of The Crawl's 4 studio albums and their EP all reached the Top 5 on the Australian pop charts, granting them a level of fever-pitch success shared by only a handful of Aussie artists before or since.