You own the record
store, play in at least a couple of bands and run a record label - what
do you answer when people ask you what do you do for living?
I guess my main source of
income is my record store. Before I opened it I seriously thought about
trying to work as a professional musician, possibly even overseas. I thought
it would only have been a short term venture at the best, and I thought
that if I was gonna open a record shop I'm gonna open it at the right
time for me. So that's what I mainly do. Secondly, probably the record
label, but that's not a pro-active thing - it's something I do if I need
to bring something out by myself or somebody who has a band I like needs
to bring a record out, but I'm not actively trying to sign bands up. And
thirdly, and very distant third, is playing music live.
Some time ago you said
that you won't play live that often. Were you sick of Perth audience?
Yeah, this is going back
pretty much as long as I could remember. People in Perth always had a tremendous
capacity for taking their own bands for granted. Per capita, I think most
of the best Australian bands have come out of Perth in last ten or fifteen
years. Going back to The Stems, Triffids and onwards. What was the last
time that really good band came out of Melbourne? I can't remember any,
except maybe Even, unless you like "foot on the monitor" rock'n'roll kinda
stuff. They are pretty good at producing those kinda things, but really
most of the best A class bands have come out of Perth. I think it's very
easy to get jaded playing in Perth, because even in healthier days there
weren't that many great venues to play. People have very short attention
span and they get bored very quickly. That's not really blaming the audience
so much - that's just a fact of life. But if you're playing music and putting
some kind of emotional commitment, you want some either appreciation or
feedback. You need some interaction. It's not always enough to have fifty
people clapping.
Do you think that's because
the whole place is so laid back?
Yeah, it is. What we need
around here is someone like James White and Contortions who actually, if
he doesn't like the reaction, goes to the audience and punch somebody hard
in the face. But for my kind of music it wouldn't be a right thing to do.
What if there's no one
in the audience?
If there's no one it makes
it hard - punch somebody at the bar.
How long you've been having
this shop?
It was eight years in September,
this is the third location and it's a good one. If I could change anything
I would make the shop a street-level shop and get rid of the stairs, 'cause
that pisses me off and I know it pisses other people off.
Did you notice any change
during years in what sells?
Absolutely! It's incredibly
different. For the first couple of years my best selling bands were The
Stone Roses and Led Zeppelin, and then the biggest selling band was Ride
and the second biggest selling band was Led Zeppelin, but after the first
two or three years the focus switched almost completely from English to
American music on the back of Nirvana and all post-Nirvana Sub-Pop bands.
And then from there it's kinda gone into this lo-fi, post-rock kinda thing,
and these sort of things people buy now. My biggest selling bands are Tortoise,
Sebadoh, Polvo...
When you say biggest selling,
how many units of each do you sell?
In terms of biggest sellers
I probably sell more local stuff. In terms of sheer chart scoring points
kinda thing, like first Beaverloop CD sold 150 copies at least, which is
pretty tidy quantities. But some things like Smog sold 50 copies of the
second last album, so that's pretty good. Stuff like Polvo sells all the
time, I've lost track, but it would be 50ish.
Do you deal with distributors
all over the world and have you had any bad experience with them?
I pretty much have a bunch
of small independent distributors and just get the stuff from them and
it's good because not too many other places know about them and also they
have things that most other places don't carry. The worst experience I
had almost exclusively involved freight companies. Getting stuff from Germany
was good for a while. They had some amazing, but very expensive, products.
Once a package with exclusive to Germany Nirvana singles got sent to Israel
and Indonesia and when it finally arrived here some 20-25 CDs were stolen.
It happened around Christmas, so I lost the trade and then they delayed
the shipment, so I stopped getting it.
When did you get involved
with the 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 like saving 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.
Was there any good pre-punk
band in Perth?
There was heavy rock in
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 you've been writing
for that paper?
Once a moth 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 tough Creem and Trouser Press
were available in newsagents.
Have you seen The Scientists
and Victims often?
I saw Scientists probably
more often, but even more than that The Triffids and The Manikins, as they
both played for a bit more. I saw Victims once, at their last gig, and
that was one of the scariest experiences of my life. It was completely
out of control. The skinheads 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 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 "Murder Punk"
CDs, than in these new punk bands like Offspring and Green Day.
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 band 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 came from
Perth and to make it you had to leave. And as soon as they do, local audience
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 the 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 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 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 very practical degree as Medicine or Law. You can use 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 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 good experience. We never had any recordings,
except one of Louie Louie gigs. Then I started working at Dada's 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.
Didn't you play guitar
at their reunion gig?
There are a couple of reasons
for that. I didn't have a bass equipment any more and my guitar playing
is probably better than the other two guys and that's not a put down. I
think the band started as a guitar band without bass, so I thought three
guitars would not make a difference. It seemed to work OK, all I could
hear on stage was white noise, so I guess we were doing alright. We played
quite often at our time and there were some good songs that I think would
be good, even now, to bring out, but the band is a bunch of people who,
as a cohesive unit, are somewhat disorganised. I didn't like what happened
after the reunion gig between some of the members, but I liked the playing
for sure. It's not something that I wanna talk about, so perhaps we should
not.
What was the biggest hurdle
in setting up the shop?
Getting enough money to
get enough stock just to make it look like a shop was open for business.
The record companies are really conservative and they make you pay up front
with a bank cheque, not even with a personal cheque. One company's minimal
order was $5,000 worth of stock. We ended up negotiating down to a grand,
which is still a lot of money, because nobody's heard of you when you start.
In the beginning I relied on word-of-mouth. I advertised a little bit,
have some handbills made, went to gigs and put them on car windscreens.
It's kinda against the law now.
Were you ever scared of
going out of business?
Of course! The day I can
remember opening the door, they had a movie titled "What If There's a War
and Nobody Came", I thought what if somebody had a shop and nobody came
into it. I had pretty much a gun pointed at my head, the guy could only
give me a lease for two years, so I had a two year commitment. I was frightened
for the first six months, I would've owed more money than I had. Luckily
I re-invested every penny back into stock. At one point I was living on
$30 per week, just enough money to buy food. The first day I had a small
party opening for good friends and I sold some stuff, like Herman Hermits'
record.
How big is your personal
collection?
It's been a while since
I did the count, but I suppose I have 4,000-5,000 LPs and maybe 6,000 7"s.
I have a few CDs as well, but I still prefer records.
Do you have a time to
listen to all that?
I don't really any more.
One of the unfortunate things about having a business where you play music
all day is that when you get home you have to listen to it. I don't know
anyone who loves it as much as I do, but I do get sick of music. If I do
listen to music at home it's always something completely different, something
avant-garde.
At work, do you play the
stuff you want to sell, or whatever you feel like?
I pretty much play what
I'd like to listen at the time, unless somebody wants to hear something
else. Often somebody would ask about music you play and you'd sell it without
even trying, really. Some customers put their fingers in their ears if
you're playing something a little bit raucous, but no one's actually asked
me to turn it off. Somebody once complained about what they saw as a sacrilegious
Painters and Dockers poster, a mock up of the Last Supper. He asked me
to take it down because it offended him, but other than that...
Did you take it down?
No!
Are the Summer Suns your
main band?
It isn't any more. I think
we will play no more shows and it's pretty unlikely to do any more recordings.
We've been playing for about ten years, but we were more of a band in theory
than in practice. We didn't play too many shows and did a few recordings.
It's the first band where I am the main songwriter. I played in another
band called The Holy Rollers, after The Tarantulas, who were like The Velvet
Underground influenced band. I joined them as a bass player and that was
a really successful band in its time. We appealed to the same crowd who
liked the Triffids and we'd play a gig to 300 people regularly. I left
them because I was starting to write my own tunes in a completely different
style. I've written my own material since the age of 13 or 14, nothing
that I think would be preferred in public now. I consider myself a pretty
late developer. At 24 I started to get somewhere.
How do you write songs
these days?
It can be quite excruciating
now. Back in the days of Summer Suns when I was writing 60's influenced
music, I used to often write in my head, driving in the car around and
I would just write whatever lyrics came into my mind and then get home,
work out proper tune on a guitar and put a proper set of lyrics to it.
Then again there was stuff like "Honey Pearl", it was the first single,
on which I worked for three years before I thought it was right to record.
Funny I had that luxury because if you spend all your time on things like
that you'd end up like the Blue Nile - they make one record every ten years.
Summer Suns have released 4-5 7"s, one 10", one vinyl LP and a mini CD.
We worked with variety of labels. One was on Easter Records(sold 1,300
copies), one was on Waterfront (1,000 copies), a couple on House of Wax,
Bus Stop(sold out) and Get Hip. All of the people on these labels have
heard my stuff previously and they liked it, so they asked me to bring
something out. When the label likes you it's a winner.
What made you start your
own label?
Just liked having control
over every aspect of recording, knowing where all the money is going. It
is stressful. Music industry is stressful, except the music itself. Easter
was a vinyl label, while House of Wax started out as a vinyl label, but
did a few CDs as well.
Do you press your vinyl
and CD releases overseas?
I always use the local ones.
There's a place in Perth that will do custom pressings but they send it
to Sydney anyway. It pretty much all goes to same place. I have vinyl pressed
in Australia - Corduroy did one thing. Pretty much everywhere there've
been faults with some pressings, so they had to get re-done. The difference
is that American pressings are twice as loud comparing to the local ones.
I think that the Americans have more of an idea of mastering, cutting and
stuff like that.
What was the latest release
on your label?
The Stems' live CD. It's
selling pretty well overseas, but pretty slowly in Australia. That's the
way things are, that kind of music is still popular over there.
Have you had any offer
of touring overseas?
Absolutely. I've got an
offer from one of the American labels to tour the U.S. I just have to play
a bit on my guitar, get the band together, rehearse a bit... It's good,
but anybody who knows me knows that I'm sick of playing that kind of music.
I'm not really interested in that kind of pop, I just couldn't face it.
Having listened to nothing but it, and playing nothing but it for ten years
I feel like I've mastered it, feel flat out. I just don't really enjoy
playing it and music to me is very emotional thing. I used to listen to
that kind of music because it cheered me up, now the sad music only cheers
me up. It's the same with writing. The only thing that makes me feel good
now is listening to slow stuff like Smog, Red House Painters, Low or Palace
Brothers. I can't listen to the DBs, R.E.M., Big Star that used to be my
lifeblood almost.
Have you tried writing
different material?
That's what I'm doing now.
I just have to get all the pop bugs out of it 'cause it's too melodic to
my liking. Bashful is me and a cello player Vivien. We don't have any drums
at the moment. I probably won't be playing with Jamie (drummer for local
heavy band Pb) any more, because I think that our styles of playing are
incompatible for what I'm trying to do. You can get more misery out of
a cello than you can out of drum kit. Our basic style is an attempt to
create something sad and beautiful. We are going to record and release
something on vinyl, probably 50 copies, and that's gonna be it. After seeing
Smog play I reassessed my own repertoire. I'm just not that happy with
the standard of my own writing. It's probably a good thing, I feel pretty
complacent writing the power-pop stuff. I just think I haven't got a complete
grip on this sadcore music.
You are the co-author
of "Swampland" - have you got any royalties for it?
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 that
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 thing 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 Don (Mariani, The Stems, DM3.P.) and it didn't work out that well.
Everybody who's got 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 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, incredible song, and
it just goes to show you the quality of people in Perth in terms of their
song writing.
Do you compare Australian
to overseas music these days?
No. It's like with film
and literature, there's only two categories: good and bad, or stuff that
you like and stuff that you don't like. I never said: It's pretty good
for an Australian record. I think to me the most interesting music at the
moment, and has been for the last five years, is coming out of America.
And Australian bands are reacting to it somewhat, but still America is
where it's at. England hasn't done anything good for ten years. Music industry
works in a way where something is thrashed and popular for two months and
then thrown away like yesterday's newspaper, and if you look at 60's, 70's,
80's and 90's, the American bands always stood the test of time. The English
ones hardly ever, with the exception of The Beatles. But even with them,
compared to the American garage bands, some of the latter were way better
as well.
Early 80's saw a 60's
garage revival in Perth. Tell us about it.
It's the same everywhere,
it sprang up at the same time. Perth had The Stems, though. People started
getting dressed in 60's clothes, buying "Pebbles"/"Nuggets" compilations
and buying bands influenced by the 60's, but playing in the 80's: Rain
Parade, Bomp! bands, etc. It's the same with the lo-fi stuff now. There's
this unwritten rule whereby people just discover things at the same time.
I was talking to the guy from Smog and said: "I think people in America
would be amazed at how popular stuff like Slint is", and he said: "Well,
Slint is popular everywhere.", which is true.
Is there anything you
liked as a teenager, but can't stand now.
I still have great affection
for bands I liked as a kid. As you get older, you get sentimental about
certain things. I could still listen to The Monkees single and enjoy it.
The thing that saddens me though is that people of my age still listen
to what they liked as kids and nothing else. Their record collection stops
in 1972 and they just don't feel the music after. Like, music is something
they do between the ages of 16 and 21, and after that you go suburban and
don't listen to the music. People don't feel the cutting edge any more.
Generally, do you think
music was better in the past?
I have this saying that
best music has already been made. People listening to Slint probably wouldn't
realise how big an influence Television is on them. But when I listen to
"Spider land" I hear "Adventure" mucking around. So, you see patterns repeating
from one decade to the next as you would. There's still some great music
around. I can still put on an album by a certain band and feel the real
sense of excitement probably in the same way when I heard Television or
Grand Funk. I always thought that there are many good bands, you just have
top look harder to find them. One of the things I want with this shop to
do is to help people get hard to find stuff, and not to go into mail-order
thing as I used to do when I was at their age. I'm trying to cater for
that 1% of the people who can't find the stuff they're looking for in the
mainstream shops.
Were you ever surprised
by someone buying some particularly obscure record in your shop?
Sure. Especially if I get
something in that I think is so obscure, and nobody would buy it, and I'll
have to take it home. Like the Guitar Wolf - they're getting bigger now,
but who would've heard of their first album at the time. Well, somebody
got in and bought it, and that person actually saw them live in Japan!
That amazes me. If you stock good quality music eventually one day someone
will come and find exactly what they're looking for. On the other side,
considering the stuff we sell here, it's kinda disappointing nobody bought
the band called Acetone. As my American friend said in reference to somebody:
"I think that guy is too good to be successful", and sometimes that's true,
cause they are so far ahead of their time. When I got the first Superchunk
records I felt in love with it immediately, but people wouldn't fire a
shot at it. Then, eventually, the penny dropped, so they sell all the time.
Same with Sebadoh. I don't sell as many fanzines as I used to, but comics
and books sell pretty well. The best-sellers are probably the beat generation
stuff, like Kerouac, Burroughs, Leary... I thought that there may be someone
who's into books as well as into music and there's a trend in America where
shops are becoming more like mini-marts, stocking all kinda leisure entertainment
things. I don't ever wanna go quite like that, but a mixture of books and
music is quite good.
You've just set up the
Smog gig in Perth. Will you go into that sort of things in future?
Yes, as long as there's
a band I really like, and even if I lose the money it wouldn't feel that
band, because I figured it was worth it to me just to see that band. At
this point I wouldn't go into it as a full-on thing, because I would probably
have to put on gigs by some shitty bands just from the financial point
of view. There's another gig that might happen in January, but that's wait-and-see.
Can you manage to have
a decent life-style just by having a shop?
Nah, it's not that I'm not
making enough money to have a life-style, I'm making enough money to live.
It's just about having some kind of life after the shop. I'm pretty much
working seven days a week for the last few months, and it doesn't allow
me to do some small things at home like washing up or gardening. If I work
here less hours my neighbours would appreciate it, because my garden would
look like it's still alive. It's the worst garden in the street.
Does your business suffer
from the most recent stock market fall-downs?
It's not the Australian
dollar going down - it's the change in the government. Since The Liberals
got elected people started to get worried what's gonna happen. And 90%
of my customers are unemployed, public servants and students - they were
the three groups Howard was targeting when he first got elected.
As soon as people heard about all different sorts of cuts in a budget they
decide to hang tight until they get regular income. The last year has been
the hardest in the history of the shop. Things are getting good again,
but it has been a very difficult year.
Have you ever considered
giving up?
There have been times when
I've broken down and cried because I've worked like Christ to get the shop
running in a really efficient way, and I've been let down by my suppliers
and all that's very dispiriting because people don't think that it's someone
else's fault if they come in and don't see what they expect to see. It's
happened all too many times in the last few years.
What do you think of this
opposition to imported CDs and is going to cause any trouble for Aussie
artists?
Record companies are pushing
the line of opposition saying there won't be money for this, we'll lose
money on that... What money is poured into Australian art now? Basically
in my lifetime and in my experience of the music industry, which goes back
quite a while now - 20+ years - record companies have not given a flying
fuck about Australian bands unless they were certain to make money. They
would never nurture a band, they would sign somebody who would make a quick
instant hit. The only way record companies can survive the deregulation
process is to specialise in Australian bands because they are the bands
that they will have a monopoly on. Nurturing Australian bands can be a
saviour for the music industry, but they are saying they haven't got money,
which is bullshit.
Do you have many record
collectors coming to your shop and what's the biggest sum of money spent
in here?
Some of my mail-order customers
average $3-400 a purchase, although someone came in once and spent around
$500 on 60's albums. Record collectors are coming mainly from Europe, looking
for prog-rock stuff, like Buffalo. Ironically, you used to be able to buy
those albums for $3 second hand, now they cost a few hundred. From America,
you get punk collectors looking for Victims singles.
Was that your review of
the Summer Suns LP in Marcy?
Yeah, I thought that
was a really great joke. I reviewed my own thing and I wasn't forceful
in my praise, I gave it a bit of sticks. That was not to be taken too seriously.
Harvey is probably the fanzine I've written for most, I did a thing for
The West Australian Review once, when I reviewed a bunch of singles, that's
going back a few years now. Writing is something I've lost interest in
since spending time at Uni, like reading books. I don't read as much as
I used to.
Did you ever get bad reviews
for your records?
I can only really think
of one. The guy who wrote it was obviously really nasty, because he reviewed
The Flamin' Groovies and gave them a nasty review in Option. I vowed that
if I ever saw that guy I
would punch him as
hard as I could, not even so much for my review, but for The Flamin' Groovies
one. I also vowed that I would never buy Option again while he wrote for
it or was still alive. He doesn't seem to be writing for it anymore. I
mean, you can put something down, but both those reviews were unnecessarily
personal. He's obviously someone who's never had a girlfriend in his life.
Is there anything else
you would like to say or talk about?
My personal crisis...
Is there a particular
reason you like sad music?
Yeah there is. I broke up
with somebody a while ago and I think that changed my perspective on a
lot of things in my life and the music that I enjoy. I think that's still
affecting me now, even though maybe less than before.
Do you think it's healthy
to listen to that sort of stuff when you feel that way?
For me it's therapeutic,
but maybe some people would wanna commit suicide. But for me, it helped.
So, the music never gets
you down?
Nietzsche once said that
without music life would be a mistake, and that's how I feel about it as
well. There hasn't been time, no matter how low I felt about things, relationship
or life in general, that I haven't been able to put something on and be
uplifted by it. "Lust For Life" is one album that really picks you up if
you're feeling down, especially the first track. I think that being able
to wallow in something like Smog song "All Your Women Things" is really
therapeutic.
I think we better end this right here.
Originally published in Uzurlikzurli #3, February ‘98