Melbourne Rocks

Melbourne's been rockin' hard ever since young Normie Rowe picked up a guitar, scarpered from his local church choir, and formed a high school band. The writing was well and truly on the city's walls by the time "Shakin' All Over" conquered the nation in 1965, and here we pay tribute to the many who followed, from John Farnham ("You're the Voice") to Neighbours escapee Kylie Minogue ("Can't Get You Out of My Head"); and from Crowded House ("Better Be Home Soon") to those lords of fusion, the Cat Empire ("Days Like These"). Melbourne's edge is sharpened by the Birthday Party and Cosmic Psychos, in Next Steps.

No rockin' Melbourne list would be truly essential without the Birthday Party, whose core members can be traced back to Caulfield Grammar School in the early '70s, before they ripped a gash across the global post-punk canvas with intense, pitch black tracks like "Fears of a Gun." Meanwhile, the punk-spattered underground of the '80s spawned the Cosmic Psychos, acknowledged as a formative influence on the Seattle grunge scene before storming towards the new millennium on the back of "Can't Keep a Good Man Down" from '97s Oh What a Lovely Pie. You'll find Primitive Calculators, Powder Monkeys and more in Deep Cuts.

We complete our overview of Melbourne rock here, by ricocheting from the synth punk of Primitive Calculators — part of the "little bands" movement/experiment in the late '70s, when certain groups would play one gig, shuffle members, then play another — to early-'80s new wave outfit MEO 245 ("Other Places") and old school blues rockers Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons ("Ain't Go No Money"), whose legend spans three decades. And with the Powder Monkeys' "I Like Pills" we remember the boundless energy of local hero Tim Hemensley, who died in 2003.

Australia's indie capital; the city that Molly Meldrum calls home; the metropolis that embraced Nick Cave. Melbourne is many things to many folks, and if you're after great rock, it'll never let you down, thanks to a rash of superb venues across the suburbs — from the Espy and the Tote to the Rod Laver Arena — and a reputation for excellence that is set in stone. Pop took root in Melbourne in the '60s and spawned its chronicle, Go-Set, Australia's first rock rag; Skyhooks arrived in the '70s, along with the hugely influential Sunbury music festival; then the Hunners and Men At Work picked up the torch in the '80s, presaging the rise of indie rock in the '90s — the Meanies, the Living End, Dirty Three — and beyond, to the young guns of the 21st century (Cut Copy, Jet). Look no further . . . the keys to the city are right here.