Publicity photo for 70's Australian pop group 'Sherbet'.
My friend John-Paul is not frightened or intimidated by this. He explains:
Sherbet were huge in Australia in the 1970s. Their biggest hit was Howzat! I don’t know anything about them beyond this song which I can sort of hum the chorus to. My question though has to be: what the hell made them think this photo shoot was a good idea? When you swallow the little bit of vomit in your mouth and look at this photo more closely all kinds of secondary questions start developing. Check out the guy on the right. Woah! Easy partner. Actually if you think about where all these limbs are going, and what was involved in setting this photo up (did they cover themselves with the bubbles, or did they help each other?) the mind boggles. I’ve read a little about Sherbet since seeing this photo and none of the biographies mention them as being Australia’s first openly gay band so I have to assume they were straight. Presumably then this photo was intended for a female audience.
Ladies craving more Shebert can see them performing Howzat here, posted on Youtube by a user called nzoz1976. This appears to be a person who has uploaded hundreds of songs that were popular in Australia and New Zealand during the 70′s and 80′s – all of which might be useful to John-Paul on his insane quest:
What I’m going to do infact is review every number one from the day I was born (9 March, 1973) until now (ish). I’m not sure exactly how this will shape up. I have lots of ideas, but I won’t know which ones work until I give it a go.
If I remember correctly Witney Houston and Bryan Adams were number one from about 1991 to 98 so that ought to be a pretty easy era. And I’ll be fascinated to read JP’s analysis of this.
Ummm…. wow.
Comment by Deborah — June 14, 2009 @ 7:39 pm
here’s my take.
bloke in the centre on belly: his idea.
bloke at far left, blokiest: thinks this is a stupid idea.
bloke second from left: finding it surprisingly enjoyable, especially now that he has a handful of testicles. none his own.
bloke second from right: young, impressionable, and probably went on to make other homoerotic covers
bloke at far right: has discovered he likes the young bloke spreading his legs that way.
Comment by Che Tibby — June 14, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
My mate used to play ‘Howzat’ over and over, must have been late 77 or early 78. But he was devoting very near 100% of his time (including school hours) to the vital issue of how to get into the pants of the cute girl in his street, so I’m picking no significant gay thing going on. Not sure what effect this promo pic would have had at the time if we’d seen it – would we have assumed it was just like Burt Reynolds doing a Playgirl shoot? I really don’t know, but we weren’t very bright so don’t rule it out. Basically, the sexual frustration was at such a level that some other bloke’s leg would probably have just about done.
Comment by Psycho Milt — June 14, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
From Physical: “There’s nothing to talk about unless it’s horizontally.”
And they reckon the poetry of love is dead.
Comment by John-Paul — June 15, 2009 @ 11:56 am