‘Hidden deep in the furor/What we do is secret.’ Shouting those lines, Darby Crash of the Germs sketched out an alluring vision of punk. It was a raucous musical underground, a chaotic cult formed by self-selecting initiates dedicated to effrontery and outlawry. But how could punk be secret? Darby Crash was declaring it out loud, […]
Tim Johnson’s interest in punk rock is manifested in prints, paintings, texts, photographs, super 8 films, musical performances, and collected recordings and ephemera. In a concentrated series of works made between 1979 and 1983, Johnson depicted Australian, English and American punk musicians and fans, using his own photographs or pictures from the music press. In […]
This research was originally delivered as a paper at the European Australian Studies Association annual conference, Toulouse 1999. Conference convenor Xavier Pons drew together speakers on Patrick White, Murray Bail, larrikin movies of the 1970s and a remarkable range of other topics from European scholars. I’ve taken the opportunity here to correct a few minor […]
Sometime in the not-too-distant past the city of Donna, Texas spawned the unknown band ERIKKKLAPTON. They were a bunch of high school kids hammering out songs—‘Monkeyfuck evasions’, ‘Wonkaballs’ and ‘Oil mutant’—in a garage. Their chronicler, Fernando A Flores, tells us that ‘no songs were ever recorded nor did they ever gig—the only people who ever […]
At All Tomorrow’s Parties (26 October 2013, Palais Theatre, Melbourne), The Scientists took the stage immediately after Television had performed their Marquee moon album. A tough act to follow, so Kim Salmon adopted the only feasible tactic; a fast-paced, high-energy set that demanded the attention of an already-satiated audience in a cavernous theatre. Seven months later, […]