Ian Moss

Cold Chisel is a rock band that originated in Adelaide, Australia. It had chart success from the late 70s up until its most recent album release in... 2011, with nine albums making the Australian top ten. However, its success and acclaim was almost completely restricted to Australia and New Zealand. Originally named Orange, the band was formed in Adelaide in 1973 as a heavy metal cover band by bassist Les Kaczmarek, keyboard player Don Walker, guitarist Ian Moss and drummer Steve Prestwich. Seventeen-year-old singer Jimmy Barnes—known throughout his time with the band as Jim Barnes—joined in December 1973, taking leave from the band in 1975 for a brief stint as Bon Scott's replacement in Fraternity. The group changed its name several times before settling on Cold Chisel in 1974 after writing a song with that title. Barnes' relationship with other band members was volatile; as a Scot he often came to blows with Liverpool-born Prestwich and he left the band several times. During these periods Moss would handle vocals until Barnes returned. Walker soon emerged as Cold Chisel's primary songwriter.
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Mushroom Records is an Australian record company formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne in 1972. After its sale in 1998, it merged into Festival Mushroom Records. From 2005 to 2009, it was operated by Warner Bros. Records, and Michael Gudinski started a new label called Liberation... Music, where a lot of old Mushroom bands ended up. The label's inaugural release was an ambitious triple LP recording of the 1973 Sunbury Pop Festival, and over the next few years they signed a number of important Australian acts of the period including Madder Lake and MacKenzie Theory. Mushroom struggled to survive for its first two years and reportedly came close to folding on several occasions, but the label was dramatically pushed to the forefront of the Australian music scene in early 1975 following the massive success of Skyhooks, whose debut album, Living in the 70's, became the biggest-selling Australian LP ever released up to that time. Around the same time, Gudinksi was convinced to sign expatriate New Zealand band Split Enz, who had recently relocated to Australia.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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