The Ugly Stick's Australian Cousin – The Lagerphone

The Ugly Stick's Australian Cousin – The Lagerphone

by Dale Gilbert Jarvis

photo: Item 3390 - National Capital Development Commission, Australia

We in Newfoundland and Labrador might be able to claim the name “ugly stick” as a local invention, but similar percussion instruments were known in Europe as far back as the 1500s.   The French Foreign Legion marching band had a similar instrument called a “Chinese hat” - while British Army marching bands used a stick covered with bells called a “Jingling Johnny.”  Today in England, folk musicians still play a version of the ugly stick called a mendoza or a monkey stick.  Other names include thunderstick, Ompa-stick, gazunkaphone, pogocello, and clad-hopper. 

Mike Madigan of The Sharecroppers is a well-known Newfoundland musician, entertainer, retired educator, and ugly stick enthusiast. The first time Mike saw an ugly stick, or something like one, was around 1975. He and a fellow teacher had gone off to Europe, backpacking. They found themselves in the little town of Hamelin, Germany, the same town made famous by the Pied Piper of yore. In the centre of Hamelin there was a kiosk, and inside of that was a Bavarian band playing music. Mike remembers,

This guy had this thing on a stick. It didn't have bottle caps, but it had washers of some sort. It had a horn on it, and it had a bell that he would ring. It didn't have a boot on the bottom, and it was much taller than the average ugly stick, it was probably seven feet high. He was just banging that and keeping the beat with a stick.

The German musician that Mike Madigan saw in Hamelin might have been playing the “Teufelsgeige” - the ominously named “Devil's fiddle.”

If any place matches the fiery passion we have for the Devil’s fiddle, it must be Australia. There, it is known as a “lagerphone,” after the beer or lager bottle caps used in its construction. There are also similar Aboriginal instruments made using shells instead of lager caps. Bush bands playing Australian folk music have been using lagerphones since the 1950s. 

Legend credits one of the first lagerphones to a nameless travelling rabbit-poisoner (rabbits were introduced to Australia, and a menace to local species). Our friendly rabbiter showed up at an open-mic Red Cross fundraiser in New South Wales in 1952, bringing with him a broom handle adorned with old bottle tops. With piano accompaniment, he rattled himself up a prize and vanished into the night. One audience member was so impressed that he made his own, paired up with a button accordionist, and started a band. The rest is history!