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When did you get involved with music in
general?
I suppose when I was in high school. I got a part-time job in a record shop. I
hung around The White Rider Records all the time, they asked me to give 'em a
hand and I agreed. They were the first shop in Perth to sell disco and probably
the first to sell punk as well. We're talking mid-70s, '73, '74, '75. I started
getting into music when I was about 5 or 6. My cousins, who were a few years
older than me, had this portable record player and they used to come to my house
with their collection of singles, like The Monkees and stuff like that. I
listened to the transistor radio all the time.
Was Perth more isolated then than now?
Yes, but when you're a kid you don't really question. I probably started my
record collection when I was 7 and that was from bubblegum singles like The
Lemon Pipers, and you might hear something on the radio and wish you could get
it. If you're adventurous you look at the record store and you might find it.
Back then there weren't record stores - you'd go to a place that sold white
goods and they would have a selection of singles on like a whirly gig rack. The
singles were $1 and LPs were $5.95. I never seemed to save enough money to
buy an album.
Were you in high school when the whole 70s punk thing started?
Yeah, I suppose the first punk record I heard was the Ramones' first single
Beat on The Brat, and I had never heard anything like it before. It must've
been 75 or 76. To me it was like a novelty record, but then other bands came
along, like The Saints and The Victims, who used to distribute their own singles
out of the box basically. Hard to believe that those singles which I saw
discounted in some record store for 50c are now probably worth a few hundred
dollars.
Were there any good pre-punk bands in Perth?
There was heavy rock in the late 1960s, early 1970s. I was lucky enough to go to a
few shows, but being a little kid I didn't go out much. I saw a band called
Bakery, an incredible band. They made an album and a couple of singles, and they
were influenced by Deep Purple, had a tremendous guitar player Peter Walker and
a Scottish drummer who used to throw sticks up in the air and managed to catch
them without missing a beat. Also Fatty Lumpkin, who were somewhere between a
heavy band like Deep Purple and something more arty like Jethro Tull. At the
time Led Zeppelin toured over here, and I saw Santana, blues guys like Willie
Dickson, people like J. J. Cale. I didn't see The Rolling Stones, but they
played only for 40 minutes or so.
You didn't play in any of the first Perth punk bands?
No, I didn't really think my playing was good enough. One of the things about
punk that I add my bit to it is that punk tells you that anyone can do it. I
think anybody can, but please don't! I started writing for Adelaide music paper
Roadrunner. I wrote a Perth column for that. At one point I gave up
playing guitar and I gave away all my spare strings. I went to see The
Scientists and said to Kim Salmon: "Here, have these." That's how I get to know
him, and some time later I decided I was gonna pick up the guitar and do it
rather than talk about it.
How long were you writing for that paper?
Once a month for a couple of years - just record and Perth scene reviews. I
liked Nick Kent and Lester Bangs - I read more of his stuff in NME, even
though Creem and Trouser Press were available in newsagents.
Did you see The Scientists and Victims often?
I saw The Scientists probably more often, but even more than that The Triffids
and The Manikins, as they both played for a bit more. I saw The Victims once, at
their last gig [Ed. note: Kim is
referring to The Victims reunion gig in 1979], and
that was one of the scariest experiences of my life. It was completely out of
control. The skinheads were breaking bottles everywhere. There were several hundred
of them and somebody ended up getting stabbed and some marines came in; they
were in town and they ran away. They literally ran away, because all the
skinheads were giving them a hard time. The gig closed down when the door of the
nightclub got smashed off its hinges, somebody got stabbed, the ambulance came
in, and that was it. Perth was a much more violent place then than it is now.
There were a lot more skinheads and they would often travel in packs to gigs,
smash things up...
Is there a band you like that regrettably didn't get released?
Yeah, The Teeny Weenies were good enough to warrant a release, The Tarantulas,
The Manikins never really released something that could've stood the test of
time. They did some cassettes which were pretty good, but they were one of those
bands who were underdone in terms of bringing out anything long lasting.
Likewise, if not more, were The Rockets, an incredible band, probably the
closest Perth's ever had to a Radio Birdman or MC5 sound, but they had huge
problems. They released cassettes, but nothing on vinyl. Somebody should
probably try and get those recordings into a proper compilation CD. There seems
to be more interest among my customers in early punk, like the "Murder Punk"
CDs, than in these new punk bands like Offspring and Green Day.
[Ed. note: At the time of this interview,
Kim had his own record/CD store, House Of Wax Records, downstairs in Hay Street,
Perth.]
Has the idea of moving to Melbourne or Sydney ever crossed your mind?
No. As I always say, my roots are here. I've checked all those places and met a
few people, but I've never been tempted to move.
What was happening in Perth after the first wave of punk?
The Triffids were getting quite big and the music took on a cerebral aspect.
It
was more new wave rather than punk. There were arty bands - The Teeny Weenies
who were really minimal and wacky, something like the B-52's, although they are
probably more serious than that. And there were bands influenced by The Cure, Joy
Division...
Was Perth always ignored by the eastern states media?
I think so. It's the distance thing that's the biggest problem, but so many good
bands have come from Perth and to make it you had to leave. And as soon as they
do, local audiences seem to respect them and come to see them twice as much. Your
audience used to double if you put on your hand-bill "Back from Eastern
States tour" - they're gone over there, they must be good. That gives me the
shits. I had this idea to take a break with the band for a month and then just
put out a hand-bill saying that we're back from the tour and watch the audience
double.
What did you do in the meantime?
I worked for a year or so in White Rider, then decided to work in the public service
for a while. I went to Uni, left, came back and finished my B.A., majoring in
English literature. I never thought about career, it's just for my own education
really. It's not a very practical degree, such as Medicine or Law. You can use a B.A. for
all sorts of things or you don't use it at all.
When did you start your first band?
First one was with some members of the Triffids, called the Real Dreamers. We used
to jam a bit, played one party and broke up. It was 77-78. Then Kim Salmon was
looking for a bass player and we ended up forming Louie Louie. We played for a
while and he wanted to relocate to Sydney. I didn't wanna move, so he took the
drummer and with another guitar and bass player, formed a band and re-called
themselves The Scientists. After that I played in a rockabilly band called The
Rising Suns, which was a good experience. We never had any recordings, except one
of the Louie Louie gigs. Then I started working at Dada's
[Ed. note: Dadas is one of Perth's longest
running import record/CD retailers/importers] and with the guy who runs
the shop set up the record label Easter Records. I assisted this amazing band
called Tarantulas, heavily influenced by The Stooges. We wanted to put out their
single and I said if they wanted somebody to play bass on a record, I'd be happy
to do it, so I joined after the jam.
You are the co-author of Swampland - have you got any royalties for it?
[Ed. note: Swampland is a
Scientists track, co-written with Kim Salmon]
That's right, I wrote the lyrics. I get performance royalties every time the
song's played. I haven't received any money from CD releases or any of the
things that came out. I have to look into that, I'm probably owed a little bit
of money.
Have you still got a tape of Louie Louie and will you release it?
It's just a bizarre band, because we were one of the first bands to get into
that 1960's Pebbles/ Nuggets thing and we did Standells and Easybeats covers
before bands in Sydney started doing the same kind of thing. But we also covered
all sorts of things like Leonard Cohen, and even Garry Glitter, and so it was
like a real hodge podge of style. Swampland was written in Louie Louie and we
wrote this great song called Hopeless Case which is real Big Star-ish, really
slow style. I think it's the best song we ever wrote together and I hope that
one day that gets recorded. Kim Salmon should record it. I still see him every
once in a while, when he tours. We usually hang out a little bit and catch up
and that kinda stuff. He's probably the only guy I've collaborated with where
it's actually come off. I've tried collaborating with Dom (Mariani, The Stems,
DM3) and it didn't work out that well. Everybody who's got a strong personality
and strong opinion about their music is a lot harder to accept a certain lyric
or certain chord change. I'll probably just keep going my own sweet way, just
keep writing my own stuff.
Did you hear much of the Saints and Radio Birdman at the time when the Victims and
Scientists were happening here?
I can remember the first time I saw The Saints on TV before I heard the record
and I thought it was amazing. It was (I'm) Stranded on TV - mindblowing. The
first time I heard Radio Birdman it didn't really do it for me, but I heard it a
while later and I really liked it a month later. I taped it and listened to it
in my bedroom before I went to sleep. Around that time I got into the MC5 and
The Stooges. I felt that was the kind of thing I could listen to as well. It was
a time when people were coming into shops and buying records, rather than the
DIY ethic. There weren't that many people playing punk music; there weren't that
many bands. Punks used to go out and buy the right records. Bands like The
Saints, The Victims and Radio Birdman sold reasonably well.
What about some smaller bands, like Fun Things?
I only heard about them 10 years later. I had no idea about what was happening
in Brisbane at all. Even Roadrunner didn't seem to talk about it very much. And
it's probably the same for the East Coast. They probably didn't pick up The
Victims for a long time, nowhere near as much as now. I think that Television
Addict is probably as good as (if not better than) 99% of all punk stuff
anywhere in the world at any time. It's fucking incredible, an incredible song, and
it just goes to show you the quality of people in Perth in terms of their song
writing. |
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