GANGgajang

GANGgajang came together in Sydney in 1984, a pop rock band assembled from people who had already paid their dues elsewhere. Frontman Mark 'Cal' Callaghan, singing and playing guitar, came over from the Riptides, while bassist Chris Bailey and drummer Graham 'Buzz' Bidstrup had both served in the Angels. Kayellen Bee handled vocals and percussion, and the ranks soon swelled with Geoffrey Stapleton, late of the Aliens, on keyboards, guitar and voice, and Robbie James on lead guitar.

Their self-titled debut in November 1985 ended up their best seller, but the song that stuck was "Sounds of Then (This Is Australia)", out that December: a sun-baked, wide-screen anthem that made the top 40 on the Kent Music Report and then refused to fade from the national memory. A decade on it was selling Coca-Cola on television, and in 1996 the Nine Network used it for its station ID promotion, a second life most bands never get.

The albums arrived at their own unhurried pace, GangAGAIN in 1987, Lingo in 1994 and Oceans and Deserts in 2002, while the big song kept growing. The National Film and Sound Archive took it into its Sounds of Australia collection in 2016, and in 2024 the band opened the Australia Day concert at the Sydney Opera House with William Barton, broadcast live on ABC TV.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.