Purely in the interest of scholarly research into the social history of Australia , this blogger bought some bawdy records in a Townsville op shop , receiving some funny looks and nervous laughter at the counter . One of them , shown above , looks as if it was produced by Sydney's saucy Kings Cross Whisper conglomerate in a Queensland Government provided factory.
In his riotous book about the roaring sixties and the Kings Cross Whisper paper , which ran nudes and personal ads, and diversified into mail order marital aids , several sex shops , a gardening magazine and a fishing newspaper , one of its founders, the late Terry Blake , described how it got into the business of party records.
Interest in records kicked off when a case of party records from a Melbourne mate was bought and , advertised in the Whisper , sold well . Terry picked up the story thus :
"It had then decided to go into the record business on our own It was all pretty harmless, double meaning stuff , but once again we ran into the wowsers and maybe something a little more sinister.
"It had then decided to go into the record business on our own It was all pretty harmless, double meaning stuff , but once again we ran into the wowsers and maybe something a little more sinister.
"The big record companies refused outright to press our records , and when we bought our own plant , we found it impossible to get the masters made.The only people in that side of the business all had big contracts with the record companies and, remarkably, had no time at all to make masters for the outside competition.
"We eventually had to do that ourselves . Lots of money? A go to woe record production plant? Yes and no . We were learning about O.P.M. (other people's money ).
"We put it on the Queensland Government for a grant to start up a new secondary industry in Southport as part of their decentralization scheme . They came good , even supplied us with a nice new factory .What we neglected to mention was who actually owned this record company. And just as well .
"Southport happened to be right in the middle of the electorate of Russ Hinze , noted moralist and the crazy who wanted to castrate rapists. What with all that blubber ,I doubt his heart would have survived knowing what a big help he'd been to Kings Cross Whisper Party Records. "
The Party Records label appears to be a send up of the above painting of Nipper the famous dog in the His Master's Voice scene , listening to his dead owner's voice on a phonograph horn. After losing the right to buy a large chunk of Australia , the Chinese will probably lodge a strong protest about the title on the Party Record so , under plain wrapper, we are sending a copy of this post and the record to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop so she can brace herself for the Chinese long play fireworks.
