The Eastern Dark
Where Are All the Single Girls: Complete Studio Recordings

The Eastern Dark were and still are a fragment of a heart torn and migrated to Australia, never to return. Or just another noteworthy story to be told.

It was 1984 when James Darroch, bassist with the almost-established Celibate Rifles, left his old comrades in search of new paths to travel, encountering Bill Gibson, who had also previously wandered in the garage punk scenes with the Lime Spiders, and Geoff Milne.

The beginnings were typical of any self-respecting band, when you first sniff each other out to understand how deep the affinities are and how solid the foundations: locked in a garage for entire days, tuning styles, grinding guitars, basses, and drums, and going through every rock’n’roll classic that came to any of the three’s minds.

For them, the classics to memorize and carve deep into their hearts were the Ramones, and their initial trials tackled the entire repertoire of the New York brothers: no Elvis, no Beatles, and no Rolling Stones, just Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy. I fell in love with them instantly; it was the most classic of love at first sight.

Days and days spent in that little office bore the desired fruits, so the guys took the next step: choosing the band's name.

Now, if one wants to do things right, choosing a band's name is a daunting task, much more so than picking a name for your baby; it’s certain that if you sit around a table and start brainstorming, nothing good will come out of it. On the contrary, the perfect name is the one that emerges in the most unexpected way, when one isn’t even remotely thinking about naming the group, but instead reading a book or enjoying a film and something leaves an impression, and after days, weeks, months, that something resurfaces, and the epiphany happens: of course, how foolish not to have thought of it before, this is THE name.

Now, it so happened that James was an avid comic book reader, among them the strips of The Phantom – known here as L’Uomo Mascherato – and when he had issue 134 "The Guardian Of The Eastern Dark" in hand, there was the epiphany: The Eastern Dark. Bill and Geoff agreed, perhaps drawn by the dark eastern shadows that hid human sacrifices and slavery against which the Phantom fought.

That sinister name turned out to be a harbinger of misfortune.

But not at the moment, which was then about getting out of the garage, going around clubs, and securing gigs.

Initially, it was not easy at all because it was one thing to play in the Celibate Rifles or the Lime Spiders, another for the completely unknown Eastern Dark, and so the first performances took place in small venues where the audience certainly did not rush in, and that little which happened to be there maybe didn't even listen to them; in the worst cases, they were the background for a beer enjoyed at the bar amongst friends. They played songs by the Dictators and the New York Dolls, even Alice Cooper, but the Ramones remained above all other passions.

Certainly, they did not give up, James, Bill, and Geoff; on the contrary, they always showed gratitude to those who offered them space and a slice of their time. But they never forgot the moments spent in the garage trying and retrying the raw and dirty canvas of the Ramones, so they invented a beautiful story, that of starting each of their concerts with a song of the brothers par excellence: out on stage, they'd present to the audience and then … one-two-three-four, one time it was "Beat On The Brat," the next evening was “Cretin Hop” and so on, concert after concert. I fell in love with them instantly; it was the most classic of love at first sight.

Rob Younger fell in love with them too.

It was time to put the meat on the fire and it was time for their debut, it was a single that remains engraved in the rock’n’roll annals, still under the sign of the Ramones: "Julie Is A Junkie b/w Johnny And Dee Dee". Julie was a friend of Judy and Jackie; Judy and Jackie one day ended up in Berlin and joined the Ice Capades, a gang of local misfits, and the story does not say how it ended, maybe dead; Julie, however, was a minor character in the film "Rock And Roll High School," the musical that starred the Ramones; James, Bill, and Geoff spotted her in a scene and wrote this song about her. Johnny and Dee Dee were them, period. Rob Younger was there in the recording studio with the guys.

It was 1985, and there could be no better way to debut.

There were even new tracks. Rob Younger was enthusiastic about the Eastern Dark and began working to produce an EP.

There were new dates. The guys had secured a week's worth of gigs in Melbourne; now it was getting serious. They set off towards the destination on March 4, 1986. The van they were traveling in had an accident and ended up off-road. James died instantly, Bill and Geoff sustained serious injuries but survived, following several months spent in the hospital. When they left the hospital, they didn't want to even hear about a "new" formation of the Eastern Dark, finished once and for all on March 4, 1986.

Posthumously released, a few days after James' death, was the beautiful EP "Long Live The New Flesh," the best possible testament of a band that had proven to be magnificent. On the cover, photos of James, Bill, and Geoff when they were little; etched onto the grooves were five tracks, "Walking / Over Now / I Don’t Know The Reasons / No Pictures / Julie Loves Johnny", each more beautiful than the last. The cover ripped a piece of your heart; the songs took that piece of heart to Australia and there it never let it go.

The seven tracks of the single and EP were included in a collection released in 2000, "Where Are All The Single Girls?", beautiful and essential.