The GTK Tapes Vol 4 - VA - Australian Rock 320kbps {FP}

The series title was an abbreviation of the phrase "Get To Know". GTK is one of several significant popular music programs produced by the ABC, and like the later establishment of Double Jay, GTK was created to address the perception that the Australian youth audience was being poorly served by commercial radio and TV and that much important international music and especially Australian popular music was being ignored by commercial TV and radio at that time.

"GTK is a pleasant little island in an ocean of A B.C" (Australian Broadcasting Commission) declared former This Day Tonight production assistant Ric Birch when he became, in August 1969 the youngest producer of a national television program in Australia
it was more than pleasant - it was truly revolutionary. In a country where 'pop music1 was dismissed by the mass media as a sort of teen disease useful only for scandal headlines, this perfectly positioned ten minute stab - at 6 30pm, just before Bellbird, four nights a week -abruptly introduced middle Australia to an emerging rock counter-culture, without a screaming girl in sight
GTK did not dispense the hits of the day, nor. with any great frequency, the hit acts. Certainly the nightly viewers -always devoted and dismayed in equal parts - were served up the readily familiar likes of Zoot, Axiom, Doug Parkinson In Focus, Autumn, Jeff St John, Sherbet, Country Radio, the La De Das, Blackfeather Billy Thorpe, Chain, Hush, Max Merritt & The Meteors, Russell Morris, Daddy Cool, Spectrum, and Flake, but they were also exposed to new, challenging contemporary acts such as Company Caine. Pirana Tamam Shud Bakery, Sun, Third Union Band, Synus, Glenn Cardier Kahvas Jute. Band of Talabene No Sweat Gunga
Dm; Mother Earth, Human Instinct, Langford Lever, Duck, Jeannie Lewis, Friends, Wendy Saddmgton, Wild Cherries, Band of Light, Gary Young's Hot Dog, Moonstone, Mighty Kong, Home, Buffalo, King Harvest, Headband and Carson
And the music was just part of it. In between the exploratory sounds were interviews, reports and, sometimes, just meandering snatches which brought long haired freaky people into the nations lounge rooms - dancers, poets, film makers, photographers, fashion designers, painters, actors and suffers
It has to be said that there was a deathly seriousness about much of it. A rock-is-art stance which set itself in opposition to the bubblegum, teen idol face of the 'pop scene1 The counter-culture was too young and too self-conscious to trust itself with levity, so a certain ponderous tone was inevitable
If you make allowance for that, the GTK years - to late 1970 under Birch and from January 1971 to November 1975 under producer Bernie Cannon, with odd episodes produced by Bruce Wilson, Albie Thorns and Bernard Eddy -constitute the most precious and astonishing repository of rare (often pncelessly so) Australian rock
Track Listing

01 - Don't You Know That I Do (Sherbet)
02 - Ginger Bread Man (Brian Cadd)
03 - Munge (Chain)
04 - Boogie (Friends)
05 - Down At The Station (Daddy Cool)
06 - Nile Song (Human Instinct)
07 - Johnny B. Goode (Johnny Farnham)
08 - Message (Renee Geyer & Sun)
09 - Wishing Well (Sherbet)
10 - Sunset Song (Mighty Mouse)
11 - I've Grown Tired Already (Syrius)
12 - Speak To The Sky (Rick Springfield)
13 - Come Back Again (Daddy Cool)
14 - Make Your Stash (Spectrum)