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John Botica – Australian Musician

John Botica began life as a musician at the age of fifteen. His first band of note was the mid 1980’s Sydney based heavy rock band called Ironheart. John spent around three years with this band until eventually leaving in 1986 to form The Labrats with drummer Brendon Venner and bassist Mark O’Connor, John reluctantly taking on the lead vocal duties, something which he had not done since 1978 whilst playing in his first three piece outfit called Bad News.

After a year and a half of performing their unique brand of blistering heavy rocking punk in venues all over Sydney the Labrats eventually travelled to England where they performed on the London underground circuit up until their disbanding in 1990.

A year later John returned to Australia where he and Venner formed yet another three piece called Full Moon Radio. Although this band had a rather short lifespan it did manage to record a reasonably impressive self titled mini album which appeared on the AMO label and was distributed through Mighty Boy Records.

In 1992 following the breakup of Full Moon Radio, John found himself as the lead guitarist for His Majesty, a band which was formed by ex members of ACDC and the legendary Masters Apprentices. It was with this band that John worked with American songster Tiny Tim with whom he appeared on three albums.

In 1995 he joined ex Widowed Isis violinist Marvin Druid in the forming of The Sunshine Crowd, another rather short-lived band that recorded an as yet to be released album which was produced by Jim Hilbun of the Angels. Following this John rejoined His Majesty who had since changed their name to Good Time Charlie. In 1997 the band recorded an album titled “Adults Only” and twice toured South East Asia promoting it.

In 2000 Good Time Charlie was offered an exclusive management contract by a particular Sydney production company which at the time was in the middle of producing a documentary on the bands travels and exploits. John had no option but to decline this offer as it would have prevented him from promoting his own music, which was in stark contrast to the predominantly commercial pop sound of GTC.

Following his departure from Good Time Charlie John once again brushed the dust off his vocal chords and formed the first line-up of his band called “John Botica’s alibi” and immediately went to working on the production of his debut album titled “Between the Shadows”. John had the good fortune of gaining the interest of Sydney based record label “Laughing Outlaw Records” on which the album was released in Australia on the 24th of March 2003.

John is currently working on the finishing stages of an all acoustic album titled ‘Struth and Friction’ due for release early 2005.

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