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All Music Guide:
An interesting one-time-only band, New Race was proof that good music can occur when "teachers" and "students" get together. In this instance, the "teachers" were ex-Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and ex-MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson, who joined forces with "students" Deniz Tek, Rob Younger, and Warwick Gilbert, the latter three members of the seminal Australian punk band Radio Birdman. Tek was a Michigan native who'd emigrated to Australia in the early '70s, bringing his love of high-energy Detroit proto-punk with him. After Birdman's demise, he contacted Asheton and Thompson to come to Australia and form this ad-hoc touring outfit. New Race toured Australia once in 1981, playing mostly small halls and releasing one legit live LP and a few lo-fi bootlegs. While the resulting record, The First and the Last, benefits from a significant amount of in-studio sweetening (backing vocals are added, guitar solos overdubbed), it's still an exciting, guitar-fueled rave-up. Fans of the early-'70s Motor City sound or early Aussie punk wouldn't want to be without it.
Wikipedia:
New Race was a punk/proto-punk super-group based in Sydney, Australia formed in April 1981. New Race was a concept band featuring three members of Radio Birdman: Deniz Tek, Rob Younger, and Warwick Gilbert, along with their inspirational mentors: Ron Asheton of The Stooges, and Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson of the MC5.
New Race played one tour of the East Coast of Australia which consisted of 16 shows. Many of these shows were recorded in anticipation of a live album at the end of the tour, and it was these recordings which formed the band's only "official" album, The First and Last. There are two quality "bootleg" albums, also from these recordings, released on French label, Revenge Records. The three albums include Radio Birdman originals, songs from the MC5 and The Stooges as well as songs from Deniz Tek's post Birdman band, The Visitors and Asheton's post Stooges band, Destroy All Monsters along with one original song, "Columbia", credited to the entire band.
At the conclusion of the tour both Ron Asheton and Dennis Thompson returned to the United States to pursue new musical avenues.
