Shine On

You Zoo Freaks out there know a solid rock anthem when one comes roaring through the speakers, and right about now The Screaming Jets are letting Shine On from the All for One album roll on. That track has a way of settling in, all bluesy grit and that drive to keep pushing forward no matter what the road throws at you. It is one of those songs that started simple and then grew into something bigger the more the band played it live. Dave Gleeson has talked about how Shine On picked up this massive middle section over the years on stage, the kind of thing that just evolved from the energy of the room until it became the version they wanted locked in. It is not some polished studio invention; it is the sound of a band figuring it out in front of the people who showed up to hear it.

Paul Woseen wrote the thing, and he was not shy about where it came from. He put it down on the train running from Newcastle down toward Sydney, heading to a rehearsal with a band he was in called Steve Grieve and the Mourners before the Jets really took off. At that point he already knew he had to get out of the steel city if he was going to find out what he could do with music and with himself. He called it one of the first songs he wrote that was not total crap, which is a pretty honest way to put it. The lyrics still carry that feeling: cold steel rails in front of me, my steel city left behind, miles and miles to go, another lonely stretch, and then that tunnel that swallows you whole until the light shows up again. Gleeson has said the song turned kind of autobiographical for the whole band. Paul was the one with the deeper roots in that 60s and 70s English rock and blues scene, stuff like The Jam, so he brought a different edge. Over time it came to mean the Jets themselves heading out into the big bad world and still aiming toward the light. Even after all these years of tours and line-up shifts, that idea of shining on through still sits at the center of it.

The song came out as a single in 1991 off the debut album and made it to number 36 on the ARIA charts. It sat alongside Better and Stop the World as one of the tracks that got the band noticed beyond the pubs. Grant Walmsley later called Shine On the dinkum Newcastle song, the one that really captured the place they came from. There is a photo of the original lineup out at the BHP site in Newcastle while they were shooting the video for it, Paul standing there with Dave and Grant in the middle of the steelworks that shaped so much of the town. It is not some abstract anthem; it is tied to the trains, the mills, the working life, and the decision to leave it behind to chase the music. The band still plays it, and the middle section that grew live remains one of the parts that sets it apart from the original recording. That is the kind of detail that sticks with the people who have followed them from the early days.

How the Jets even got started is pure Newcastle rock story. Dave Gleeson and Grant Walmsley met up at St Francis Xavier’s College in Hamilton back in 1981 and first played together for a school dance at the Newcastle Town Hall. They formed a group called Sudden Impact a few years later, which turned into Aspect. Paul Woseen came in around 1988, bringing his bass and that choirboy background mixed with hard rock instincts. Richard Lara and Brad Heaney rounded out the lineup, and in 1989 they became The Screaming Jets. The name itself has a story that fits the band. Dave was humming the Johnny Warman song Screaming Jets one day while they were loading gear, and Brad suggested it. There was a block of hash sitting on the ground nearby, and that was enough to lock the name in. Their first show under the new name, or at least the first one that counted, was at a Newcastle pub billed as The Love Bomb. Within months they won the inaugural Triple J National Band Competition, which got the industry looking their way. They packed every room they played in Newcastle, then moved to Sydney, signed with rooArt, and started cutting the tracks that would make All for One.

Those early years were about putting in the work. They had already done hundreds of gigs by the time the debut EP The Scorching Adventures of the Screaming Jets came out in late 1990, with C’mon leading the way and Shine On already in the set. The full album followed in April 1991, recorded at Paradise Studios, and it shot up the charts. Better became the big hit, but Shine On and the rest of the record showed they had more than one gear. The band took the album on the road, headed overseas, and built the reputation that has kept them going for decades. Paul and Dave stayed the constants through the changes, and the songs they wrote back then still fill the rooms. Shine On in particular carries that sense of starting out alone on the train and deciding to keep going anyway.

The whole thing is classic Australian pub rock with the steel town edges still sharp. You can hear the blues influence Paul brought in, the drive from the Angels and AC/DC that Dave and Grant grew up on, and the plainspoken determination that comes from knowing the mills are waiting if the music does not work out. For the Zoo Freaks who dig deep cuts and the stories behind them, this one rewards a close listen. It is the sound of a band that formed out of schoolmates and local gigs, wrote a song on the train home from a rehearsal, and then turned it into something that still works live all these years later. The Screaming Jets have kept that spirit going, and Shine On remains one of the tracks that shows exactly where they came from and why they kept moving.

If you want more on the band and the music they are still putting out, head over to the official site at screamingjetsofficial.com.au. You can also catch them on Facebook at The Screaming Jets, on Instagram at thescreamingjetsofficial, and on X at @screamingjets. There is a solid fan group on Facebook called The Screaming Jets Official Fan Page at this link where the people who have been following them since the All for One days share stories and photos. And of course you are already here with THE ZOO, where the Zoo Crew keeps spinning the records that matter to the Zoo Freaks. Shine On keeps doing exactly what the title says.