Roy Gardnerra's video: Real Wild Child - History of Australian Rock N Roll Quiz 3 3

The "third wave" of Australian rock began around 1970, by which time most of the major local pop groups of the 1960s had dissolved and former solo stars like Normie Rowe had faded from view. Few acts from this era attained major international success, and it was even difficult to achieve success across Australia, due to low radio airplay and the increasing dominance of overseas performers on the charts. A pivotal event was the 1970 radio ban, which lasted from May to October that year. The Ban was the climax of a simmering "pay for play" dispute between major record companies and commercial radio stations, who refused to pay a proposed new copyright fee for playing pop records on air. The dispute erupted into open conflict in May 1970—many commercial stations boycotted records by the labels involved and refused to list their releases on their Top 40 charts, while the record companies in turn refused to supply radio with free promotional copies of new releases. An unexpected side-effect of the ban was that several emerging Australian acts signed to independent label (who were not part of the dispute) scored hits with covers of overseas hits; these included The Mixtures' cover of Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" and Liv Maessen's cover of Mary Hopkin's Eurovision song "Knock, Knock, Who's There". Despite commercial radio resistance to the more progressive music being produced by bands like Spectrum and Tully, acts as diverse as AC/DC, Sherbet and John Paul Young were able to achieve major success and develop a unique sound for Australian rock. From 1975, key agents for the increased exposure of local music were the nationally broadcast ABC-TV television pop show Countdown, which premiered in late 1974, and Australia's first non-commercial all-rock radio station Double Jay, which opened in January 1975. Hard rock band AC/DC and harmony rock group Little River Band also found major overseas success in the late 70s and early 80s, touring all over the world. Meanwhile, a score of Australian expatriate solo performers like Helen Reddy, Olivia Newton-John and Peter Allen became major stars in the USA and internationally. Icehouse also formed in the late 1970s. (extract from Wikipedia 2011)