Seeing as how this excellent thread has been reopened, here's a few stories about my band, Cobbers. Firstly, in the early days of the band (1968 onward) we hated the name "bush band" but it was one that everyone was using then to call a folk band that played anything like Australian music. We always though it very restrictive and also, to us, a true bush band was the sort of unrehearsed wonders that happened at festivals and sessions. Once it became rehearsed and professional, it lost that "bush" flavour. It's all semantics, I guess. As to the instrument, one of the earliest ones I saw was just after leaving school in '64. I was at a camp and one of the older blokes had one. It was a simple branch with about a dozen or so tops on it and was played quite quietly, not like the future developments that could rival a full drum kit. Around '69 we played at a wedding in Buxton, Victoria, a tiny town of a pub and a service station in those days. The pub owner's daughter was getting married and so there were people coming from all over. One big timber cutter and his wife came in and asked to join the band. He had the biggest feet I'd ever seen and played a tea chest bass and she played a very loud lagerphone. The amazing feature of her instrument was two saucepan lids on the top of the stick that were held apart by a spring. Every time she hit the ground, they crashed together. That was in the days before we acquired a p.a. so we just had to follow the beat she set. It was a great night. In the seventies, when we were playing the uni circuits and went through the high volume period that was needed to be heard above several thousand drunken students, the lagerphone was too quiet to be heard properly, so Christy plated on a stage made out of a pallet which had a pick-up fitted and was routed throught the pa. It was also miked in two places. No wonder we're all half deaf now! In 1979 when we went to LOndon, we played at the Cafe Royale and as there were four bands on and we were doing the floor show they ashed us to perform down on the dance floor. We didn't mind but we pointed out that we would need a piece of board to play on to protect the floor. The manager, who was pretty officious said, " My good man! This floor was laid in the seventeenth century. It has survived the blitz and stilletto heels. Nothing you could do to it would hurt it". It was about fifteen seconds into the first song when the chips started flying. We finished as the roadies were trying to gaffer down the larger pieces. The night before, we'd been to see the Dubliners at Luton and they were returning the visit that night. When we had arrived, this same manager had said to us, "There were some Irish people who had called to see us. They said they were Dubliners or something. I sent them away". You can see why we didn't feel too sorry for the bastard. The next week we played in Dublin and half way through the show, the power of the vibrations that the lagerphone produced brought one of the speaker boxes crashing down off the wall onto tyhe tables. I warn you, folks, they can be dangerous!