Throughout 1998, a group formed at Melbourne's Rock n'Roll High School (RNRHS for short) asked another student Simon, if he would like to play Bass with the 4 piece guitar group Melissa's Partisan.
    Simon accepted the offer and has some fun while with the group. He played 5-6 shows with the band. During early to mid '98, the band recorded 4 songs for a demo that band had wanted to record. Things still seemed okay for Simon. The band while their new bass player had joined when asked about the bass player, got the feeling this bass player was a bass player as opposed to other bass players whom have been in the band.
    Unfortunately, it came to pass the band members were not seeing to eye to eye on certain issues. Throughout the period that Simon was in the band Melissa's Partisan, Simon never really had an opportunity to write songs for the band and when opportunities arose never felt that his songs were getting attention or suitable time, as other newer songs being written. Also it seemed to becoming apparent that he was hired help and not a concrete addition to the group.
    Other events occured and Simon when asked, felt the time was right to depart the band and pursue new and other musical horizons.
    These new horizons were to bear testimony his listening of both high energy incendiary rock (made infamous by bands such as Radio Birdman, New Christs, Stooges) and the class/intelligence of the increasing popular Insurgent/Alternative country sound, best practiced by groups and/or performers such as Son Volt; Whiskeytown; Lucinda Williams, etc.,etc.
    Through listening to these groups and performers Simon, discovered or rediscovered timeless country performers such as Hank Williams; Johnny Cash; Flying Burrito Brothers; Donald Lytle, oops, best known to those of you whom might be unaware as... Mr. Johnny Paycheck (Hmmm... Melissa's Partisan... "you can take your band and shove it..."); Patsy Cline; Emmylou Harris and the ever fabulous Larry and Lorrie Collins (The Collins Siblings).
    You may wonder though, how does a bass player, write insurgent or alt-country tunes on bass guitar, the answer is, he can't figure it out either. More importantly he finally started learning guitar soon after this and for the next year things moved fast.
    The first spurts of songwriting were indeed strange and fast. By the end of 1999, the Australasian Brewery Boy (a lad, whom lives in Australia, was born in Asia and hangs around way too much beer) has some songs to play of his own and his favourites by plenty of other artists. Through these songs he likes to bring incendiary rock attitude to a form of music, which at present has artists performing fine music but he believes are not quite willing to display or engage themselves or the music in the darkest, highly negative aspect of incendiary rock, that this music is most famous or infamous for.
    So what kinds of songs does he play and write. He doesn't mind a sad country waltz, an upbeat honky tonk tune and songs that plumb the depths of his emotions and observations on things, which he feels free to reveal through songs.

So who's that Australasian Brewery Boy... "he's that goddamn cowboy who loves punk rock!... Real punk rock that is!"

LITTLE RAMONA
Publicity officer for the Australasian Brewery Boy

Contact: Simon Li
Phone:
Email: slagain@hotmail.com