You can now sample all the naughty tracks on these two R-rated albums featuring the Celebrated Knackers & Knockers Band.

Visit iTunes and type in the band's name.

REVIEW
FOLK - The Australian/Tony Hillier
Rooted in the Country and Sing Us Anothery, Dirty as Buggery
The Celebrated Knackers & Knockers Band
Rouseabout Records
AS a legacy of the lewder side of Australia's artistic heritage, award-winning folklorist Warren Fahey's risque companion CDs hardly merit comparison with, say, Pompeii's soft-porn frescoes or India's Kama Sutra temple wall carvings, but they are of genuine historical value and certainly several cuts above Kevin Bloody Wilson's albums. Not that there's any scarcity of depravity or profanity contained in the 50-plus combined tracks, as the R-rated stickers on each sleeve denote. Most reflect an inordinately high level of political incorrectness, and many have racist, homophobic and sexist overtones that will offend. Saliently, the songs and recitations have been collected from an array of bona-fide sources. Sounding like out-take from Fahey's box set Australia: Folk Songs & Bush Verse, many pertain to the nation's rabble-rousing past, and record colourful colloquial local language that is in danger of disappearing down the dunny. Lavatorial humour reaches a literal nadir in ditties such as Passengers Please Refrain While at the Station, Five Old Ladies, The Hole in the Elephant's Bottom and What's the Gentlest Tissue? Many of the raunchier ballads, some of which could not be listed here even if space allowed, will be familiar to members of Australia's sporting club fraternity, especially participants in rugby singalong sessions. Many were no doubt sung with gusto by men in shearing sheds, droving camps and outback pubs of yore, and during the world wars. References to pudenda, prostitution, horizontal recreation and antisocial diseases are rife throughout Rooted in the Country and Sing Us Anothery, Dirty as Buggery. Musically, the songs are rarely less than interesting and all are delivered with requisite swagger and no small measure of vocal and instrumental expertise by Fahey (Major Bumsore) and his musical associates, the Celebrated Knackers and Knockers Band (the Larrikins). Many of the accompanying tunes will be recognised from other more polite and sedate settings or as parodies of popular songs. Mature men (and some women) are unlikely to be corrupted or subverted by Rooted in the Country or Sing Us Anothery, Dirty as Buggery. There is, however, a danger that exposure will evoke raucous laughter and have listeners singing along with these hoary old chestnuts. Certainly, Fahey's latest and bravest offering is in danger of receiving a rap on the knuckles from the PC police.