Photo courtesy of Jeremy Belin
The first time I heard Judy Is A Punk.
The first time I saw the Ramones play.
The first time I heard Yo! Bum Rush The Show.
The first time I saw Killing Joke play.
Life changing.
And Monday 2nd May, 1988.
It’s the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1. No Peel, though, who is in hospital with kidney stones, so his mate John Walters stands in to present the regular diet of new noise. The fairly predictable outcome after a Peel show would be for me to accompany my remaining student grant down to Penny Lane Records or Probe in Liverpool’s city centre.
Time would be of the essence so the exhilaration of a double economics lecture would have to just wait until next week. Or the week after. Walters was on fine form, playing The Mary Chain, The Cramps, Electro Hippies, Bhundu Boys, Laurie Anderson, Yeah Yeah Noh, Mahalia Jackson, Roxanne Shante, The Primitives, Terry Fox (the track played was called The Labyrinth Scored For The Purrs Of 11 Cats which features 70 minutes of, yes, cats purring – Walters wisely limited airtime to a few seconds) and Earl Bostic to name a few.
In amongst all that lot was version of The Crystals’ Then I Kissed Her. Arabic version. I wasn’t sure exactly what the band’s name was as they would be introduced as: “those are The Hards as I think we should learn to call them, not as you might imagine on Stiff Records but on Waterfront”.
I can’t remember how he introduced the album Dickcheese…..
This Beeb censorship did leave me with a practical problem, though. Call me naïve, but I didn’t know the actual name of the band. No Google. What was I gonna do? Ask the wonderful but sometimes scathing Probe folk if they’d heard of a band called The Hards and face the ritual humiliation of the musically well-educated?
Anyway, I digress.
The Hard-Ons hit my punk rock kid sweet spot with a perfectly executed punch (bowl).
They didn’t just excel at high velocity, melodic surf punk rock, they were peerless. Ache To Touch You, There Was A Time, Think About You Every Day, The Girl In The Sweater, What Am I Supposed To Do….who else could write songs like these? I gleefully played them incessantly to the annoyance of my student neighbours.
The Hard-Ons were the outsiders with guitars slung low, almost vertically low, heads down, hair shaking, playing the most irresistibly catchy tunes at the speed of light and the volume of a jet engine.
They resonated.
We live in a state of transition, our bodies and self like flames that are passed between candles, burning at different rates, taking different paths. We might not feel this change day by day. Change can be uncomfortable, especially when we try to break out of the preconceptions of who we are supposed to be. Breaking new ground is essential for our own personal growth, for our own enjoyment, for our own relevance, to provide an outlet for the effect of our own impermanence.
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
― Nelson Mandela
Tim Rogers joining the Hard-Ons for their 2022 album I’m Sorry Sir, That Riff’s Been Taken was an inspired and defining moment in the Hard-Ons’ own shapeshifting. Tim’s vocals immerse you with their expressive soul, their persuasive flair, their power and their beautiful fallibility. Tim’s fit with the Hard-Ons made complete sense to me. On these two albums and live, he’s offered an additional dimension to the band’s phenomenal songwriting and exhilirating playing prowess. Perhaps Tim was the catalyst to encourage the band to look at the Then and to look at the Now, and to break new ground of their own in new and different places using the instinct, fearlessness and self-belief that’s carried them through life. Perhaps. As Ray said to me in a podcast episode that we recorded in November 2021, “The Hard-Ons is a band with nothing to lose"
Whatever the catalyst - large or small - it worked. The band is playing with a liberation that’s rejuvenating, perhaps even healing, them. With I’m Sorry Sir and their latest album, Ripper ’23, the Hard-Ons have produced their best ever work. No perhaps or maybe. It’s familiar but not familiar. There is even a piano on the final, 5+ minute closing track, Ordinary Things which – and I’m going to put my hat in the ring – is the best track they’ve ever written. Boy oh boy, that is one fucking vivid melody. Heather Shannon’s piano glides effortlessly through those minor chord progressions. If ever there’s a compendium of the best closing tracks, Ordinary Things should be on it.
When things are going to shit around the world, there are some bands, there are some people who give you comfort that things will be ok. Talking about music and life to such a generous, knowledgeable, observant and funny guy is as life affirming as it gets.
Where the fuck do I begin?
Try the beginning…..
Ray
I can't really discover too many new bands, only because there is just so much music around. You can't really discover everything. Plus, there's no rule that says you have to discover music that's around now. You can discover music from the 17th century if you really want to.
Science hasn't worked out how to travel back in time, I mean there's always science fiction movies about time travel, but you know, nothing's happened…. unless you go to, I don't know, Boise,Idaho, then you go back 10 years, you know what I mean? {laughs}
So time travel doesn't exist, but the closest thing I think we can get to it is through being absolutely immersed in music or art. And
I've been discovering and rediscovering female soul singers from the 60s. I've been listening to Tommie Young, Doris
Duke, Freda Payne, and that kind of stuff. I'll listen to records when I get time away from my kids, and I'll just really listen to it. It’ll get to the point where I know every little drum beat on certain records that I really love. And I'll hear the drummer doing something different the next verse and all that, I’ll fixate on that one little drum pattern, one little bass line, like, you know, listening to every tiny little sound.
For example, when I listen to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul - in Nowhere Man, there's one bit where it sounds like Ringo hits the rim a little bit and so the snare pops out, you know. That sticks in my head and so I will fixate on really minute details on one record and I’ll just live with that sound for years. Sometimes I will sit with one band, and then one record for about six months, and I’ll just really live that record.
Photo courtesy of Jo Forster
And then in that time, my friends have gone:
“I've listened to this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. What have you done?”
“Well, I've listened to Doris Duke's debut album, side one.”
“Is that all?”
“No, just the first three songs actually”
But I really, really listen to them to the point where I think I can play the whole thing, you know, but it's just how I do it. Do you remember a band called The Stupids?
Giles
Oh yes, I do indeed!
Ray
So Steve (Snax) Murray, the bass player. He had this house in Brighton and he said, “I'm gonna cook for you. I'm gonna slow cook some beef with potatoes and stuff”.
And Steve is so easygoing, if he was any more laid back, he'd be dead. So I said “What do you mean slow cook? How slow?” He goes “really slow”. I go “Well, how slow is that?” “You can time me with a sundial”. I go, “Oh, right”.
So anyway, he starts chopping up carrots. And two hours later, he goes, "I've chopped the first carrot". Right? So anyway, it took him about eight hours to to cook, you know? He said, “Can you get me the mushrooms out of the cupboard?” I go “Alright". And I go “Here's your mushrooms”. I go “Hang on, there’s fungus and mould growing on these mushrooms". He goes, “Well, that doesn't count because they're already fungus.” I go “yeah, but this is a different fungus growing on the fungus”. He goes “Well, but it's fungus we can eat”. And I go “But that's mould. It's like when you get bread. Would you eat mouldy bread?". He says “Okay, well, no, because it's bread. But this is a mushroom and this is fungus so it doesn't matter.”
That argument took about two hours, but that’s a long story to say that that's how I listened to music - really slowly, I just absorb it. So it's like, you know, some people like slow cooking, other people cook a lot faster. And then they go on to the next meal the next day. I get fixated on things. But the big problem is that a lot of my friends tell me about these bands and by the time I get to them, 10 years have gone past.
Seriously!
My friends got into rockabilly, like, I got photos with my friends back in the early 80s, like ’81 or ’82, and they’ve all got duck’s arses, you know, they look like Elvis. And they're getting into all this wild rockabilly stuff. So that was 1981 and I got into rockabilly, probably in 2001 - 20 years later, I finally get into rockabilly. Kind of a long time, you know? I really envy people who are discovering new music all the time. I wish I could do that.
Giles
I love hearing different versions of songs. Like album versions and single versions or where one’s a little bit faster than the other, or a bit more aggressive. The other thing is when you’re at a live show and there’s a wrong chord, or a drum fill is slightly different to the studio fill or there’s something slightly out of key I love that sort of stuff. I just think it shows that it’s human.
On the music discovery, I’d say that I've started to listen to music much more deeply and with much more intention. I’m taking my time with it more. And it's not always easy because our lives are busier and also there is just so much music out there, that it feels like a race to get through it all. And that’s not how it should be and it’s unfair on the artist. We gotta give artists the respect by properly listening and not skimming.
Ray
I think there are two things with the way music is presented now. One is that there are a lot more interesting videos accompanying music which started happening with MTV and whatnot, you know, all those years ago - 40 years ago. So to me, that's a distraction, and it might not be a good distraction. And the other thing is, of course, you know, digitally presented music means that people have more choice to skip things and whatnot.
Whereas a record we have side one and side two, it's a lot more “non-negotiable”. So yeah, you are forced to go down the path that the musician has made for you. First song side one and that kind of stuff. So the musician actually leads you to, you know, a certain way of listening to something. And I'm all for that kind of stuff personally but I'm probably just showing my age. But when I listened to a song like Devo’s Freedom Of Choice, there's a song called Gates of Steel. And I studied that song. I studied it for probably 30 years. I got fixated on it. And then I noticed that the whole thing is a build up. There's one bit where there's this insane drum roll and that's the only time that there's some kind of valve to release the pressure, but the rest of the song is just like a coiled spring. It's so taut! I was listening to what the drummer was doing and he's wound it up and he’s not letting go. It's insane. And I like doing that with music. I mean not everyone listens to music in that way, deconstruct the song and put it back together and work out what's going on. I like doing that kind of stuff.
Some people just enjoy the music.
Sometimes the right answer when you're listening to music and you ask yourself what you think of this song is just “I like it” and that might be the only answer you really need. Whereas my answer might be, you know, “I like it and these are the reasons - there’s this part and that part and, oh yeah, listen to what's happening here.”
Talking of coiled springs, were The Fall a band you admired?
I think The Fall are a really unusual band in that they had somebody who was vocally extremely limited - Mark E Smith - which a lot of people would consider to be the weakest thing about any band, but to me, that's the signature signpost to the music and it's the thing that ties the entire back catalogue - which is very significant - together. I've never heard anything like his singing. The first time I heard Totally Wired, I just curled up in my bed crying “I don't want to hear that ever again.” And then it came out on the radio and I couldn't get away from it! And then at school, I was talking to my friends about it. They said “Do you like that band The Fall?” And I go “Oh, yeah, the radio station’s playing that song Totally Wired over and over again. I don’t know if I like them, but that song’s doing something to me”. Rough Trade put it out in Australia as well and I ended up buying the single but I just couldn't get away from it. But Mark’s singing delivery was like some school kid who's pissed off, delivering an anti-human soliloquy. He's got Brix in his band who’s got this insanely wonderful voice and it seemed like he was like “You're not singing. It’s my band.” I thought that was really weird. But yeah, his voice was such a unique, actually great, thing. I think The Fall were one of those bands where the driving force is that man's voice and I think it's wonderful that he carved career out of being him. I also bought records by Brix’s band The Adult Net and I thought they were incredible.
Giles
I always thought The Adult Net was very underrated. Brix also did an album with Marty Willson-Piper towards the end of the 90s called Lost Angeles, which was basically hidden for years and years and years. It resurfaced last year I think. It’s classic surf pop, you know, very California, glam and underbelly.
It’s such a great record.
Ray
It’s weird that she's not a household name. There are a lot of really, really talented people that have got something that's so unique and they’re full of artistic talent in a unique way. Brix is one of those.
Then you’ve got people like Jarboe (ex-Swans), I thought if she had a solo career doing something like this, she could be as big as Nick Cave, really. I mean she could play the type of venues that Diamanda Galás was playing, you know, that kind of stuff.
Giles
I'm glad you mentioned Jarboe. She's the most wonderful person. I don’t know if you’ve seen that documentary about Swans called Where Does A Body End? There is a sequence in it from their so called last tour – which is basically the last time that Jarboe played with them before her and Michael sort of split up – 97 I think. And they show this clip of them playing I Crawled where Jarboe leads the vocals.
And honestly, it is astonishing.
I have never seen a performance like it. Terrifying and disturbing. I asked her what was going on and she said “well actually, you know, I was completely immersed in these personas. She goes from this really high pitched, squealing young girl who's facing these demons and this really horrific situation and then the band comes in and she goes from this squeal deep into her stomach and produces this guttural growl like you've never heard, which just gets more and more powerful the longer she does it. She looks like she’s in a trance. And then she goes back to her keyboards, looking like she’s just given her absolute everything for this band. It’s jaw dropping.
Ray
Did you ever see Swans with her in them?
Giles
No, I saw them in London in 2015 I think, so well after.
Giles
This made me think about change and how our tastes change – with what we like, what we enjoy, what we relate to…but – and I know this might sound a bit inane and obvious – but music is something that you never, ever fall out of love with. You can find music changes with you, whether it’s emotional changes, how you're feeling today.
It's just always there for you, isn't it?
I saw Swans play in 92 in Paris.
Ray
Prong played Espace Ornano and had a full house of 800 people but when Swans played the night before, there were only about 40 people there. It was quite a shock. My friend who took me there said that Parisians boycotted this show due to what happened when they came over in 87.
They had a dispute with a promoter about something and had a big fight. They were supposed to play for the usual hour, but ended up playing for about 20 minutes and walked off the stage and there was a bit of a riot because people were so angry at them. So it ended up that Swans fans boycotted this show next time around, which was the 92 show I went to. But I mean, I had no such problem with any boycott. I'm Australian, so I just went to see them.
Giles
She did say when she first joined the band, which was I think, I think around about 83 that she faced a lot of abuse – kicking and spitting - from some fans who held her responsible for changing the sound and dynamic of the band.
What a mentality. Absolute shit that, isn’t it?
Ray
That's just stupidity isn't it? I mean, the moment you're conceived in your mother, you change and by the time you come out of your mother, you look nothing like the little thing that was in there and then in 20 years time you look nothing like the little kid you once were.
So those people should look at the mirror and go hey, hang on a second, I look different to what I looked like in 1990. You’ve physically changed and you've probably mentally and emotionally changed. And you don't want art to change? Art is all
about change. Art was supposed to reflect life. And life
is changing all the time. But hang on, you don't want the the artistic project that you've come to watch to change? That's absurd.
Ray
Of course, yes. You don't fall out of love with music. I did read an interview with the lead singer of The Strokes. He said that he heard that Australian band Jet, and he said they made him hate music.
And I thought that was a funniest thing I'd ever heard.
The reason it was really funny was it was as vulgar and mean spirited as it possibly could be.
Because music, you never fall out of love with music, even if you listen to the worst record on the planet.
But this guy said, “This band is so bad. It makes me hate music.” And I thought what he said was brilliant. I have no beef with Jet, but when I heard that, I thought, God, this guy knows how to make a point. His insight was powerful because he knows how everyone feels about music. And it’s exactly what you said, you can't fall out of love music because it's what the French call raison d’etre. Right? You know, the reason for living?
I don't know about you, Giles, but I don't believe in God. I was brought up as an atheist, because my father was Buddhist and there's no God in Buddhism. There is human spirituality, but there's no God. And it's arguable if there's even human spirituality in Buddhism. There's just quite a lack of motivation to do anything in that religion {laughs} – “try and win that game!” “Nah”…”Try and have a bit of ambition!” “Nah, ambition just leads to disappointment”
That’s Buddhism in a nutshell {laughs}
Giles
I was reading something recently, and I did think the writer had a good point well made, actually. They were talking about how we're continually obsessed with improving things, making things better or doing things better, like “if only I had done that better”. And it's like, you're constantly striving for this sort of improvement and it just leads to unhappiness because you're never satisfied even if you’ve done something really well.
Ray
There’s a bit of truth in that. It's like you wake up in the morning, why make the bed - you're gonna get back in – yeah, but not for not for another 12 hours – ah, that’s not that long {laughs} But you know, if there's no God, then there's got to be something else.
And I think that's why human beings invented culture - to take the place of God.
Because if there's no God, there's a void and inside the void, there's a sign saying, “When you die, that's it. There's nothing else. Okay?” Well, if that's the case, I'm gonna have a whooping good time while I'm still here."
And one of those things would be culture. And out of all the things that we can do - paintings, reading, writing, movies, any of those fascinating things that human beings get up to in the world of art - music seems to be the most immediate, you know, in a lot of ways, and they're fantastic signposts to our lives throughout our own history.
And it's like, you know, people say, “Well, what about poetry? Have you read TS Eliot?” “Yes, of course, I have. It's incredible. But for God's sake, I’ve listened to The Smiths and that's pretty good poetry but on top of that, there's a GREAT beat as well, you know”. In terms of how powerful it is, it's a Thor's hammer, you know, you've got rhythm, you've got words, you've got melody and you can't beat it. No wonder you can't fall out of love with music, Giles, you know, and the way you absorb music is entirely up to you, isn't it? I mean, you'd go as far as becoming a journalist. I've gone as far as becoming a musician, you know, but some people are just happy to listen to music at home or go to concerts. But really, we do take it for granted.
But you're totally right, Giles, it's well put, you know, it's impossible to fall out of love with music.
Giles
Another artist I should mention is Aja Monet, who has just produced the most stunning album, and Aja is first and foremost a poet.
And she said that poetry is the poor person's art, you know, because literally, it's a pencil and paper and you go write.
And I guess we’ve made music more democratic now as it's much easier create your own music – you can basically create a track on your phone now, as opposed to “art”, which still has this elitist creativity structure around it, you know, which is still hard to penetrate for new artists who aren't part of that establishment.
That’s at least how it feels to me, I might be talking rubbish, but that’s the feeling I get.
I appreciate there is an “industry” around music but it feels like music and poetry are more democratic.
Ray
I think so. Especially nowadays. Yeah, at one stage, we found bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and bands like that. You’d listen to them on the radio, you'd listen to Tarkus by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. And the LAST thing a little kid like myself thought, when I first heard that was, I can't wait to form a band {both laugh}. And I can't WAIT to make a record about a mechanical armadillo. That's ridiculous. Whereas, the first Ramones record, right, the first Saints record, and even the second XTC record, or all the Buzzcocks records, you listen to them and go “I can at least attempt that.” I think that's brilliant. Brilliant. And it had to happen. You know, that dam bursting with punk. It had to happen. And all of a sudden people are like, “Wait a minute. You don't have to play guitar like Jimmy Page to be in a band.”
Giles
Talking about The Saints, can you describe what it meant to you to play that tribute to Chris Bailey at the APRA Music Awards in 2022 (they played The Saints’ Know Your Product to close the awards)
Ray
The Saints provided a musical blueprint to a lot of people including us. And for us, it was extra special because they were Australian. But if you listen to the first Saints record - I'm pretty sure you've heard (I'm) Stranded the album - I think that's more of a blueprint for band like the Hard-Ons than even the first Ramones record because of the sheer velocity. The snare shots for example: if you listen to (I’m) Stranded very carefully, the snare goes whack – whack – whack - whack and then he'll go whackwhack – whack – whackwhack - whack. It's almost like super fast surf music. And that just adds one extra layer of chaos. And chaos, I'm telling you Giles, chaos is a really underrated element in punk music. Somehow with modern day punk bands, especially pop punk bands, that chaos seems to have been left behind. But we found that chaos to be a big element in what we wanted to do. When you think of a drummer nowadays, you think of that big snare hit - whack, whack, Whack, whack - but with bands like The Saints that snare wasn't really a big hit. So that first Saints record, it's like the guitar was the heartbeat, pulsating going chaka chaka chaka chaka - like this. It was a rocket ship. And all the other instruments were being sucked up into the vortex with that guitar.
It's an incredible sound. Another way to put that record is that the guitar player, the drummer and the bass player are in a deadly race to finish the song first. So when you hear it, you go, what's going on? It sounds like they're racing each other.
So when bands are trying to play faster than each other, that adds more chaos.
And it's an aural illusion. It sounds faster than it actually is. Because you'll be counting like this but in your head when you listen to it sounds like this. Because everyone's racing each other.
And I'm not just talking out of my bottom.
I've discussed this with two people. One is Captain Sensible from the Damned. And the other one is Rob Younger, the singer from Radio Birdman. I've asked them “How do punk bands differ from rock bands? And let's get a blueprint and and discuss why that is punk as opposed to rock. And The Saints’ first record obviously always comes up in this discussion. And that's a really unique blueprint, Giles. I don't think anyone's been able to figure out how it came out of seemingly nowhere. It's brilliant.
And another reason why The Saints and their first record were a life affirming and life changing blueprint for us was that The Saints were from Brisbane, and Brisbane, back then, was a cultural wasteland - it was basically a police state. It was a far right government there and the Fun Police were out. Even as late as 1987, the police were confiscating Hard-Ons records and Dead Kennedys records from the record shops for because of obscenity laws and that kind of stuff. Really arbitrary things. So, it was a very right wing place to grow up. And so for something like that band and record to come from that place was like a rocket from people from nowhere.
All the guys in the Hard-Ons were immigrants and we were basically somewhere, but for all intents and purposes to Australian people, we were from nowhere just living here.
We were aliens and and the Saints music is a desperate cry of alienation. For me. I mean, even the title of the first song and the title of the record, (I'm) Stranded, it's about being left behind, alienation. It's about not belonging, it's about being isolated, alienated, and not being part of something comfortable, it's very uncomfortable. When they were making it, they didn't even envision that there'd be this punk thing happening around the corner. If you talk to someone like Ed Kuepper, he hated the way the record companies were pushing him to look punk and that kind of stuff, because he didn't quite relate. But to have those feelings, to feel powerful because you are an alien and because you're isolated and not part of the mainstream, is something that they instilled in the Hard-Ons. So it was a real honour, a big honour for us to pay them this tribute. That music came from Australia, a relative cultural backwater in those days, (1976), you know, and as immigrants we related to that whole thing. I tell ya, it's, that's the sound of Australian punk.
I don't know if we've talked about this before, Giles, but Australia doesn't have a very strong sense of who they are. The Australians have centuries of white settlement. But before that, there's 65,000 years of Aboriginal people. But for the whole time I’ve been in this country, myself being an immigrant here, I've been basically been told about life from Australian settlement onwards.
Giles
So has that 65,000 years pre-white settlement period been erased from history?
Ray
Yeah. So, when I came to Australia, it was 1974. I remember learning about Captain Cook, Governor Arthur Phillip, I remember reading about William Dampier. I remember reading about all these European explorers coming here, Abel Tasman, you know, all these explorers. But nothing about Aboriginal people at all. I think Australia has improved, but Australians need to figure out who they are – and they’ll never figure out who they are until they they actually address this inequality between the original Australian people who are the Aboriginal people and the rest of Australia.
Giles
I feel exactly the same way about the UK. No acknowledgement of its role in the slave trade. Black history is talked about one month a year. There are amazing social enterprises like The Black Curriculum that are going in to places of education to embed black history into kids’ education here and try to bring a better cultural and national identity. As much as I love TBC, this shouldn’t have to happen.
Ray
I totally agree. The Belgians, the French and the Dutch would have to just go “Wait, where did we go 200 years ago, 300 years ago, where were we?” The UK has been enriched by Pakistani and Indian people coming there. But they came there because the UK went there first, you know. So, the way you have to address those things are similar to how Australians have to address their issues, because that past is horrible. When I came to Australia, I found a country full of contradictions. It was a very contradictory country.
They'd say things like “it's a land of the fair go” - I don't know if you've heard of that phrase - but that was the big catch cry back in the 70s along with it’s “the land of milk and honey”. Basically it meant everyone's valued, as long as I have a go at being “good”. But what they didn't tell you is that if you're Aboriginal, or you're a racial minority, then you've got less of a fair go.
They never say that.
When the Hard-Ons went to Europe in 1988, talking to people from Germany and Switzerland, places like that, they really thought that those TV shows like Neighbours and things like that was typical of Australia, but I wanted to tell that they should come to where we live. I mean, if you look at London, you’ve probably noticed the difference between, say, Holland Park and Brixton, and if you went to Paris, you will find similar differences. But the clichés that the Australians love to give to the rest of the world was that it was this bountiful, lucky country, but it's full of contradictions. And Australians can't work out who they are because they can't get through their head that what they did to come to this place was at the expense of the Aboriginal people.
Photo courtesy of Jeremy Belin
Giles
So is it fair to say that The Saints empowered or emboldened you, Blackie and Keish, to form a band yourself?
Ray
I think so. In the case of The Saints, they were a bunch of kids into music in Brisbane, a very conservative place, and wanting to play this blistering music. In the case of the Hard-Ons, it was a bunch of immigrant kids in a in a white country. So, your band becomes like a sword you know, like a weapon. Your music is your Excaliber, you know what I mean? I think it's brilliant. I think what music does is it empowers people to not solve problems, but to scream, you know, just say something. It says something about who you are.
Giles
On their second album, I think No, Your Product is one of their best. That whole album is something else. I might even like it better than the first.
Ray
Yeah, it's brilliant. That's Algy Ward from Tank and The Damned on bass. To me, what they've done is like, they've done this blistering explosive first record. And the second one has always been fantastic, and it's almost like they said “if we want to be a little bit more sophisticated, we can take it up a notch. Here you go, listen to this.” It's astonishing.
Giles
I love their use of use of horns as well. Really unexpected, especially in 1978, but gives it such a welcome dimension.
Ray
I don't blame you for liking the horn, yeah. It's such a devastating weapon far as music is concerned. You think about it, it’s a little bit like guitar, it will provide you with all the rhythm you want AND all the melody you want. And it's as loud and obnoxious as fuck if you wanted it to be.
So, yeah to answer your question, it was a real honour and we knew Ed (Kuepper) would be listening to it.
But here’s the thing, we thought the song was written in the key of E and then they sped the tape up. So it sounds like it's being played in F. So we played the song in F. And it was really hard for me to play, because when that song is in the key of F, then I can't play superfast by bringing the open strings into play. So I just tuned the bass into F rather than E. So I was cheating.
a
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Ray
Ed later, through a friend, told us that it was actually recorded in F (which in itself is really unusual) and they didn't speed it up. And I thought, “Why the hell would you want to do that? Why would you want to make it that hard on yourself? I mean, make it easy!” {laughs)
Giles
What was your take on the anarcho-punk bands back in the day, like Crass and Flux of Pink Indians?
Did you get into them?
Ray
Yeah, I did. When I was listening to Crass, I would have been 16 or something. So I'd only been in the country for like, seven years, so I didn't even feel like an Australian. Whatever the anarchist thing that was happening in the UK, I didn't absorb it 100% but I love Discharge to death. But some of it didn't resonate with me 100% - things about nuclear war and stuff, yes that did resonate, but when it came to the UK centric things regarding Thatcherism and stuff, it didn't resonate with me that much. Bands like Dead Kennedys - absolutely everything they sang about resonated with me 100% and I'm obviously not American, but they sang about those left wing political ideals in a way that made a lot of sense to me by being very, very humorous, cutting and sarcastic, for example. Crass - I loved their music to death and I found them one of the most unbelievably unique bands ever. The drumming on a lot of those records, I was like, “What's this kid doing? It sounds like he's playing marching music”, you know what I mean? And that guitar sound which was set back in the mix, you know, when you hear it. So for example, You listen to the Ramones first album, or The Damned’s first album, or Discharge’s first record, or even if you listen to UK Subs’ Another Kind of Blues, the guitar is a juggernaut. But on the Crass records, that guitar is kind of set back a little bit and what is right at the front and centre of the mix is the vocals. And not only vocals, but really, really angry vocals, that are, in a lot of ways, shouting at you. This is a very angry man. And a very disturbing band, you know. It’s a totally different deal to say Damned Damned Damned where all the instruments, including the vocals become this one, piercing arrow and you just get hit with it. Whereas with with Crass, it's the vocals that are right at the centre, and everything else is kind of standing behind going “See, see, I told you so, you go and get them Steve and Steve's up the front doing you know “the name of the band is Crass, not Clash”.
Ray
There is so much anger up the front from this one guy. And there's only one vocal line. If you listen to the first Ramones record, or the first Damned record, Joey Ramone and Dave Vanian sing every line twice, so it's double tracked. If you listen to Blitzkrieg Bop, “They're forming in a straight line”. Joey sings that twice - you listen to it and there are two vocal lines going through it. Neat Neat Neat, New Rose. All those songs, two vocal lines. So why did they do that? It's so that they can mix the vocals a little bit back in the mix, but you still want the vocals to be heard. So how do you make it be heard? Well, make the singer sing it twice. Now there's a problem with that. Because people like Aretha Franklin don't sing twice because what she sings is soulful. She's singing just for you and she wants it to be personal. If you sing everything twice, it's like a school chorus. And that's brilliant, but what happens is the vocal lines become merged with the rest of the music and it becomes this behemoth, this rampaging monster. And, to me, that's the beauty of punk rock. You've got three four people in the band, and they all play their part in this rampaging monster. Get the singer to sing everything twice so they become part of this moving process, put them in the back of the mix, set the guitars up the front punching people in the head. Whereas Crass do it totally the opposite. What's the most important thing about Crass? Well, obviously they thought it was their message, so they put the vocals right up. If I take all the mid range out of Neat Neat Neat for example and put the volume right up, then guess what? The vocals disappear and you’ve got all guitar. You can't hear what the guy singing. Take a Crass record and do the same, you still hear all of Steve's vocals. I guarantee they did that. That's not an accident that it is done like that. That's purposeful and it is incredible. And on top of that, in the background, you've got Penny who sounds like he's playing high school marching drums in some parts of it. So it's almost like Penny’s drumming is really augmenting what Steve is singing, rather than the other way round. It's insanely clever. There is no other punk band like Crass.
Giles
Those observations have put a totally new light on Crass for me. Wow. Hadn’t thought of it like that. I remember hearing Reality Asylum for the first time with Eve Libertine on vocals. That has to be one of the most terrifying pieces of music ever. But yes, the vocals right up there so that the message is clear and very intentional.
Great observation Ray.
You mentioned Dead Kennedys earlier. I can never decide on my favourite album but the one I do keep coming back to is Frankenchrist, perhaps because it’s such a departure from their other stuff. The whole album kinda reeks of a decaying, corrupt world on the brink of apocalypse - Reagan in power in the US, fear of of nuclear war, I think Chernobyl had happened, Tipper Gore and the censorship stuff and tht’s not even touching the shit that was going on in the UK. Ray’s guitar feels in one way very claustrophobic but the echo and the abundance of minor chords add to the feel of decay and running out of time
Ray
Yeah, it came on the on the heels of Plastic Surgery Disasters, which is one blistering explosion after another. This album, the pace is a lot slower and the guitars are way more spacey. There's nowhere near the distortion that's on Disasters. It’s almost like Ray’s playing with the idea that he's in a surf band, you know? To me, that makes sense. That surf guitar sound is an American guitar sound. It's American people saying we're American, this is our sound, but we're using the Americana sound of surf music to say, hey, our country that was we thought was going to be great after World War Two, well, all the candidates are dead, you know, all those hopes and dreams, well they're gone and look what we're left with. It sounds like a ghost playing a guitar. It's a ghost of an idea. The Great America is dead. And the Dead Kennedys were, to me, by the time they put out Frankenchrist, saying America is dying or maybe even already dead. And this is what a ghost sounds like when it's dead. The surf guitar is a beautiful sound from the past that's come back to haunt them in a new, devastating era of Reagan. The first album was a great introduction to how they felt about things. The second record, which was In God We Trust was like “I don't think you heard us. This is how pissed off we are.” And then Plastic Surgery Disasters was like “the world is collapsing. This is a sound of hell opening up. Right where America is.” It's so blistering and then you look at the front cover and there's a withered hand. And you just go “this is so wrong. The world is dying”, and the next record “America is dead”, you know? And then after Frankenchrist, there’s the final Bedtime For Democracy. That sound went back to the original blistering sound, and I find that record kind of like the band’s epilogue, they’ve said everything throughout their career.
Giles
I think Jello had said that they knew they were going to split while they were recording it and it was kinda like tying up loose ends
Ray
I keep coming back to Plastic Surgery Disasters but when Bleed For Me starts off with that ominous bass, you know something really fucking fucked up’s gonna happen.
Giles
Riot. Halloween. So good.
Ray
Yeah, there it was. Halloween was like Jello saying conformity sucks – “Why not every day? Why are you so afraid? What will people say? At the Halloween”… you know, it's like, why act like a clown during Halloween? Why put on a disguise just for that moment? Do it every day if you feel like it. If you want to dress like a clown, do it every day. Brilliant.
Giles
Do you have a sense for the influence that the Hard-Ons, Dead Kennedys and those other, highly impactful bands in the '80's punk scene are having in new bands coming through? I do appreciate that it’s difficult to be objective about your own band!
Ray
Yeah, it's really hard for me to be objective about the Hard-Ons, but, I mean, obviously, we have our friends coming up and saying, you influenced us, you know. There’s a band that went to the UK recently called C.O.F.F.I.N. and we gave them their first ever shows. They say that we influenced them a lot. Do you remember a band called the Celibate Rifles?
Giles
I do, yes! I was a big fan.
Ray
They’re friends of ours and the lead singer, Damian, said that we were a really good representation of Australia in a band form, because we have three different skin colours. And I think a lot of people really liked that. If you call yourselves the Hard-Ons, then you're basically saying to the rest of the music industry that we're not interested in being part of getting in the charts, we’re not ruining anything because we've already chopped our feet off, you know, it's gone {laughs}. There's absolutely no chance that anyone could say “Hey, you've sold out”…”Sold out, waddya mean, sold out ? We’re called the Hard-Ons, you idiot!" So, if you put it in the context of 1984 when we played our first gig, then we were getting banned from concerts and having difficulty getting posters up and things like that, but we just didn't care and, really, that sense of freedom is really underestimated. I remember talking to some friends who were playing in bands, they said they have to tailor their music to get it past one guy who was a programme director of a radio station in Sydney in Australia called Triple J Radio. Have you heard of Triple J? So, yeah, very powerful. But there's one middle aged man and he is in charge of programme directing, so they had to kind of make him happy. And if he played your song on the radio, then it really, really helped your career. To people like the Hard-Ons, that's just slavery. I mean, at what point do people decide they’re going to sing for their supper? Because that's what it is, right? But for us, it was freedom of expression.
We have had to put up with neo-Nazi skinheads. We have had to put up with censorship.
The reason our first three albums were very vulgar was because we found the whole idea of fighting against this huge thing that was happening in the world, which was censorship at that time, you know. People like Jello Biafra getting thrown in jail for obscenity, right? We wanted to be a part of, you know, fighting that kind of stuff. So, we’d have band meetings, and we’d say “who haven't we offended? Who can we offend now?” So, Nazis, people with excessive self love and all that kind of stuff. We found a lot of people to be quite pretentious but we thought, “that's fine, but you're leaving yourself open to ridicule from a bunch of teenage idiots like us”. So that's what we wanted to do through our name, our song titles and stuff. But, you know, I think a lot of people don't understand how brutal the early 80s were for things like censorship, racism and that kind of stuff. And in the end, the only thing we could do was just go and answer it with art, you know, so yeah, when we got Nazis at our shows, we put out a record with the three of us dressed in the KKK garb (this was All Set To Go - Giles), you know what I mean?
So, we went head on into it using our art.
So, I guess some people find that inspirational. I mean, without being big headed or anything, we were becoming really popular, we were still young and playing to a lot of people, we could have easily changed the name of the band to make it more palatable for the masses, and make this our job. But instead, we went the other way, and put out a record called Smell My Finger, you know what I mean? It's like, we came to a fork in the road, we just went, “where are we gonna go? Are we gonna become more palatable or are we gonna become even more obnoxious?” Becoming more palatable to the mainstream was unpalatable to us, because we just wanted to be artists. I think a lot of people liked that attitude in a lot of ways. Sometimes I do feel like a sacrificial lamb, you know. You look at the bands that came after us, who became incredibly successful in the charts, who said that they were inspired by us, but they managed to cross over to the mainstream by maybe looking at the path that we’d taken, you know, and thinking “Okay, this is all really good. But maybe we won’t call ourself the Hard-Ons or the Green Piss Flaps, or this and that, we’ll call ourselves something else”. And let's see if we can make a career out of it.” And I think they did learn a lot from what we did wrong and what we did right – all in their eyes of course, because I don't think I could have changed what I wanted to do at the time. To me, it was one big package, you know. I love drawing for the band. You know, we're all very sarcastic, and we just loved riling people up because it was part of the artistic process, you know?
"The lead singer from the FUCKING RAMONES likes us!
Well, at that point, I could have died quite happy!"
Giles
I mean, you made the choices that were right for you at the time, right? And you still do that – some choices you make now are probably looking at things with a different lens, others aren’t, but at the time, it must have been instinctive that, you know, we don't want to be part of the mainstream, we're not going to change to fit a mainstream career path. And I think the influence that you've had – and still have – reflects the sincerity of those decisions.
Ray
Yeah, but I tell you what, Giles. I think the reason we became like this was because the three of us went to a school called Punchbowl Boys High School, which is a very, very underprivileged school. The amount of kids that left that school and went straight to jail, we must have held the record. It was a really tough school. It was a really happy school for me - all my friends are from there - but it doesn't change the fact that we were from a really underprivileged background, and in my case, I migrated here in 1974. In Keish’s (de Silva) case, he immigrated from Sri Lanka in 1975, the year after, and then in Blackie’ case, his parents were political refugees from Yugoslavia - he was born in Australia, but his parents were thrown in prison for political reasons, so they had to come here as political refugees, you know. And so, from that point, one thing that the three of us really valued, especially Blackie, was a sense of freedom, the ability to whatever the hell you wanted to do. And whatever we had to save for ourselves, we wanted to have maximum freedom to do so. And what better way than play absolutely blistering rock and roll. That's what we wanted. We used rock and roll - and punk in particular - as a vehicle to say something without any sort of restriction whatsoever. And, unfortunately, a lot of it ended up being quite obnoxious and vulgar. In a way, part of me is quite sad that that's what people remember us for from those early days. But if you listen to the songs, they’re REALLY catchy!
Ray
I remember meeting Joey Ramone and he said, “I'm a fan”. I was like, “ermm, you're the singer from the Ramones”. And he asked us to tour Australia with The Ramones. He asked us about our songs and how long we've been playing for. We talked a lot and he said he had a radio station in New York and he was playing our records. I asked him how he discovered the Hard-Ons and he said he was in Japan on tour and this young Ramones fan came up to him and she gave him a cassette of the Hard-Ons, and said "you have to listen to this". Anyway, he liked them and he bought our records when he went back to New York. And then the next time they came out to Australia, he asked us to tour with them. And, he didn't say anything about us being vulgar. All he wanted to know about was our songs. So, this guy is in the world's greatest melodic punk band. And he's saying that he likes our songs.
The lead singer from the FUCKING RAMONES
At that point, I could have died quite happy!
The lead singer from the FUCKING RAMONES
At that point, I could have died quite happy!
likes us
likes us
