Formed in Adelaide, Australia, during early 1985, this intense guitar outfit consisted of Jeff Stephens on lead guitar, Paul Gilchrist handling vocals, and Giles Barrow on rhythm guitar. Their approach blended the raw Detroit edge of the Stooges’ earliest work with traces of Ramones-style playful simplicity, and the band took its name from the lab rodents featured in the Ramones film Rock ‘N’ Roll High School.
The debut recording mixed three originals with three covers, among them ‘Pipeline’ and a fiery reading of Bo Diddley’s ‘Let The Kids Dance’, revealing an emerging group of notable promise. Exploding White Mice soon built a formidable live following, and their 1987 double a-sided single of John Kongos’ ‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’ appeared poised to reach a larger audience, although the seasoned cover band Party Boys’ version drew greater notice. The self-titled debut album, Exploding White Mice, sharpened the band’s pop instincts to the point where mainstream acceptance looked increasingly attainable, confirming their status among the country’s strongest trash pop acts.
