Real Wild Child!:
Australian Rock Music 1950s - 90s

This CD-ROM is a totally amazing & fun musical resource that was inspired by the exhibition of the same name that was held at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum a while back. The CD-ROM has been compiled with the co-operation of many of Australia's major & some independent music labels, plus the resources of the ABS, Triple J FM, the Powerhouse Museum & many music publishing houses as well.

Starting the CD-ROM off, you're presented with a cool opening sequence which unfolds into a suburban street scene type of affair, with artwork by Reg Mombassa which is suitably eccentric & great to look at. Over the top of the buildings flies an angel figure which you can click on for help or to adjust the volume of your speakers, plus a menu of the relative icons & their functions is also included in the help display.

Returning back to the street scene & you simply move the mouse cursor around to move along the street. A skateboarding figure represents you & is cruising along the street itself & over the top of a manhole. This is a cute way of exiting the program, just click on the manhole cover which moves the cover off the hole & the next time the skateboarder cruises past, he drops halfway into the hole & an option pops up asking whether to drop out or keep looking.

There are 7 different eras for you to check out, each introduced with a short movie clip explaining the various bands & events of major importance. The various eras are represented by:

• 1956 - 1963 Milkbar
• 1964 - 1968 Girl's Bedroom
• 1969 - 1973 Hippie House
• 1974 - 1977 TV Studio
• 1978 - 1983 Hotel
• 1984 - 1989 Nightclub
• 1990s Garage

Once you enter each era's representative building, you're shown a collage of exceptionally well put together references to that eras musical past & there are also cultural icons as well. For instance, in the Nightclub area, various Australian social figures are present doing some strange manoeuvering. Move the cursor over them & they'll say some of the things you'll know them for such as Christopher Skase using his oxygen mask & former Prime Minister doing his famous America's Cup day off saying. Still other important figures are present such as former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam & a whole swag of others besides.

Moving the cursor over some objects will take you to different areas of the CD-ROM, such as when you mve the cursor over the milk bottle, which will change it to a dollar symbol. Click on the bottle once this happens & you'll be given the relevant prices of the period you're in & other social information.

To the music though & there's an absolute boatload of great bands represented, like Johnny O'Keefe, Brian Henderson (these days the Nine Network's chief newsreader) who was the presenter of Australia's first major TV music show Bandstand, right through artists like Russell Morris, to Midnight Oil, Hunters & Collectors & The Divinyls to today's classic Australian bands like silverchair & Regurgitator.

There's an amazing amount of stuff packed onto this CD-ROM, with profiles of hundreds of bands, more than 100 movies & over 200 samples of recorded material. You could search this CD for hours & still not see everything. The pinacle of this CD-ROM is in the ultra cool index, which makes searching the CD-ROM so much easier. From the street scene, you simply click on the phone box & you're shown a true index-like menu screen from which you can search using multiple options.

Overall, this is by far the best CD-ROM I've yet looked at as far as music is concerned. It's not only a lot of fun, it can be used as a serious research tool for those looking at popular culture information aside form music-related areas. The only failure here was in searching for fairly obscure Australian bands, but then that's not really what Real Wild Child! is all about. It's basically a document of the bet Australian music has managed to produce & details that exceptionally well.

Requirements for your computer system are also quite reasonable, with Macintosh systems requiring a 68040 processor or higher, 8MB RAM minimum application memory free plus Mac OS 7.5 or later, plus a double speed CD-ROM drive or faster. On the PC side (it's a hybrid CD), you'll need a 486DX2/66 or better, Windows 95 or NT4.0, 8MB RAM (16MB recommended) again a double speed or faster CD-ROM drive, plus a sound card. On the display side for both Mac & PC, you'll require a 256 colour 640 by 480 screen (Super VGA for PC).

Any music fan should definitely own this CD-ROM, as it's not only fun, but very useful. Real Wild Child! is distributed by Roadshow Interactive. Check out the Real Wild Child website.