by Tex Perkins
We had original songs like ‘Cough it Up’, ‘This Here Country’ and ‘Cheap Funerals’, but we also did a lot of covers. The first gig’s set list included Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ and ‘Dirt’ by The Stooges. And because The Cramps were THE band for me at the time we did covers that The Cramps covered like ‘The Way I Walk’ and ‘Green Door’, songs by Johnny Burnette and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and music inspired by the trash culture of Russ Meyer and John Waters films. For Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums anything with a simple structure to it was good, and from there we found a rockabilly groove as our knowledge grew.
Let’s face it; we were pretty terrible, but at the time it was hard to tell. Now, when I listen back to recordings of early Dum Dums shows it’s all harsh tinny feedback, also the tunings were dodgy at best. And that’s just the singing.
But it was my first real band. It was shambolic – and glorious.
The most important thing was the primitive simplicity of it – and the trashy humour. Put those things together and it was perfect . . . in its own way.
I hadn’t bothered writing anything of note since school, but when you’re in a band you need songs, so you don’t so much ‘write’ them as explain them to your band mates and then you see where it goes. That’s what I did anyway.
One of the early Dum Dums song was a thing called ‘Cough It Up’. I probably ‘wrote it’ with this explanation.
‘Okay, I need an intro . . . maybe just stay on one note for a while . . . maybe some cymbals sizzling . . . then I’ll do a spoken word intro about a heavy smoker getting some bad news at the doctors . . . okay, and when I say, “DOC WHAT CAN I DO?” and he says “Nothin’!” you guys break into a 12-bar . . . really thrash it out! . . . and I’ll cough all the way through . . . okay?’
And that’s pretty much what we did.
The first good song I was involved with was a tune Ian Wadley brought to me. I wrote the lyrics and it became ‘This Here Country’, a kind of a cowboy song parody. A great band from Melbourne, The Sacred Cowboys, had done a similar thing with ‘Nothin’ Grows in Texas’. Ours was much sillier.
One of the next ‘songs’ I ‘wrote’ was a thing called ‘Ten Wheels For Jesus’. Musically I arrived at the song’s riff one day as I was fooling around on a guitar trying to play Alan Vega’s song ‘Magdalena’. Unable to play that song my inept fingers led me in an unintentional direction, where I suddenly thought, ‘That’s not “Magdalena”, but that’s not bad.’ Lyrically, the idea was to sound like the religious rants of an evangelical disease-ridden truck driver. When a truck driver has only ten wheels it means he is carrying no load. He is free, he’s unhindered and unhinged. The other influence on that song was the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, but we were too good to really play like that.
During those years I was just looking around at everything that was going on. The first time I’d seen The Scientists was a bit like the first time I heard The Cramps. It was OF COURSE. THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE. I had heard the ‘Swampland/ Happy Hour’ single and liked it but when I saw the band live it ticked all the boxes. They looked and sounded like the perfect rock band. Wild hairdos, weird clothes and a gang mentality. The Scientists had The Stooges’ heavy riffing, the swamp sound of The Cramps and Creedence Clearwater Revival, plus Kim playing slide guitar and harmonica and Tony doing the fuzz guitar. I worshipped them. The first time I saw The Birthday Party was the same, and they were incredibly exciting.
The Birthday Party were impressive and I knew it was unique and everything, but with The Scientists the penny dropped harder for me.
Our first gig as Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums was at the New York Hotel in Brisbane. It was this ornate carpeted place, not particularly rock’n’roll. The New York could hold maybe five or six hundred people, but the most significant thing was the height of the stage. It was maybe 12 feet above the dance floor and around the sides was a mezzanine/balcony section so there were a lot of good vantage points.
This was the first of those sweet gigs that Greg Wadley’s connections won us. We were on the bill with a Sydney ska band called The Allniters who were kind of a big deal at that time and were managed by a fast-talking, in-your-face guy called Roger Grierson. The Dum Dums went on first.
I was nervous, much more nervous than the last time I’d been on a stage (which was the first time, with Corpse of Christ). Now I was the frontman, I clutched that microphone stand like it was part of my life support system!
I managed to make it to the end of the set without throwing up or passing out. The Wadleys were disappointed I didn’t display any of the reckless antics they’d seen at the Pork gig. But that would come soon enough.
After we played, this Roger fellow came up to me and said he liked the show and that we should come to Sydney and play some gigs. He just gave us his phone number and urged us to get in touch.
Let’s pause. This is a pivotal moment in our story, dear reader.
If Roger hadn’t seen us that night nothing may have ever happened. Well, something might’ve happened but maybe everything that DID happen, wouldn’t have. To be honest I’m astounded Roger felt that way about us because I’m pretty sure we were terrible, but like Greg Wadley maybe he saw POTENTIAL.
Brisbane was a real slog for a band like us, despite Greg’s connections. Apart from a gig at the New York or one of the other larger venues, or swinging a support spot with a touring band, there weren’t many places to play or opportunities to grow. You could put on your own gigs, hire a hall, put a PA in and do everything yourself. We’d done that a bit already but in Sydney there was what seemed like hundreds of gigs. So we rang Roger and hey, he wasn’t lying. The gigs were waiting for us. We got hold of a Dodge van with no back seats and piled everything into it. We taped DUM DUMS down the side in masking tape and got on the highway. I was 17. The big town down south beckoned. In the end it was like the Ramones had told us: LEAVE HOME.
MY CITY OF SYDNEY
Sydney in the early ’80s was just wonderful.
Coming from early ’80s Brisbane, this place seemed like New York! It was a real city with cool people – and by ‘cool people’ I mean people that weren’t complete arseholes. In Brisbane I was still this awkward kid dragging my childhood and past around with me. But moving to Sydney I had a clean slate and everyone responded to me differently. It really felt like I was starting my life over again. I was no longer in a place where everyone was spitting or sneering at me or putting me down in some way.
I’m not saying that what happened in Brisbane wasn’t important. All that struggle helped make me what I am (a deeply scarred sociopath with anger management issues).
But in Sydney I found an acceptance and a respect I had never known before. Everyone I met in Sydney at that time – I love all those people to this day. Those people embraced me. I was this punk kid, new to town, but there was none of that ‘You’re that dickhead kid’ I’d always get in Brisbane. In Sydney I was a 17-year-old singer with a fresh start in a rock’n’roll band.
Sydney circa 1982 was humming. There were so many venues in the outer suburbs as well as a really healthy inner city underground scene. People look at me like I’m from another planet when I say that a band could play five or six nights a week in Sydney. There were suburban venues and scenes everywhere – and so many other places all over the city.
And around the centre of Sydney was just magnificent. The epicentres of the alternative, underground scene were the Southern Cross Hotel down near Central railway station in Surry Hills, and the Sydney Trade Union Club a couple of blocks over.
The Southern Cross – which later became the Strawberry Hills Hotel – was run by this cool old guy (well, he seemed old to me) called Ron Audas and he had help from his son Gary. It was a small place but pretty much every local and interstate band I wanted to see played there. Music was performed seven nights a week and it was free to get in . . . I think.
The Sydney Trade Union Club – the Trades – on Foveaux Street was indie-rock central
. I ended up playing there many, many times. EVERYONE went to the Trades. You joined up, got a badge and went crazy. The place was open till 7 am. Bands were on the top floor which held several hundred people. Then on the middle floor had cabaret and pool tables and stuff, and the ground floor was for the pokies and serious all-night drinking. This was where you ended up after floors two and three had closed down for the night.
Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums played all over Sydney. In the early days we were unprepared for the effect we had on people. We were a little irreverent and I don’t know if a lot of people knew how to take us. The truth was we weren’t asking to be taken seriously. Spectacle and humour were more important to us than good songs and great playing. So in those first months in Sydney the few people who came and saw us thought, ‘What the fuck are they on about?’
That was summed up by one gig I will always remember at this place in the middle of the city just off Pitt Street. There’s a shopping arcade that runs through to George Street called the Strand Arcade and downstairs was a really popular nightclub at the time called Stranded. We were the support slot for The Scientists.
So I’m leaving the stage after our set and making my way to the band room when this fellow steps in front of me and screams:
‘I HATE YOU!
‘I HATE YOUR BAND!!
‘YOU MADE A MOCKERY OF ALL MY FAVOURITE MUSIC.
‘FUCK YOU!!!’
And then he stormed off.
When I get back to the band room everyone looks up at me and asks, ‘What did Dave Faulkner say to you?’
‘Who’s Dave Faulkner?’
‘The guy from the Hoodoo Gurus. They’re the biggest band around.’
‘Oh, him? HE LOVES US!’
Dave’s was probably the most hysterical reaction we got, but it was not altogether uncommon.
Were Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums for real? Was this a joke band? No one could get their head around the fact that I seemed to be right into what I was doing . . . but taking the piss at the same time.
Affectionate disrespect was a difficult concept in the post punk scene.
The first time I met Kim Salmon, then fronting The Scientists, he approached me, not aggressively or condescendingly, but genuinely curious as to whether we were serious or not.
I couldn’t tell him. I’d never thought about it.
Over the next 12 months or so The Dum Dums changed personnel a few times over. The final line-up had no Wadleys and not even any Gregs.
Marco, Ceril and Fruitcake were a ‘crack unit’, a far cry from the wobbly twang of the early Brisbane line-up – this was fast, tight rockabilly. These guys could actually play. Thankfully we could also still piss people off.
Sometimes we’d play a support set for one of the bigger bands on the scene like The Johnnys, The Cockroaches, The Allniters when they ventured out into the suburbs. At these band barns the beer cans were thrown so often when Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums were on, we grew to hardly notice them. One night I said to the crowd, ‘Hey look, throwing cans is one thing, but if you really hate us throw money! A fifty-cent piece could really hurt!’
‘Ha ha,’ went the band. ‘Good one Tex.’
Next thing, coins of all denominations are being hurled at the stage with vicious intent! We played two more songs in a hail of shrapnel and then split. The rest of the band were not happy, but we made an extra $47 that night.
The Dum Dums continued on for a while and then at some stage Marco got the shits and without a word just left town. I think his decision was partly based on me not doing my share of the lugging-equipment-side of things, but I think it was more the old story of the guitar player getting jealous of the attention the singer’s getting that they feel should be directed towards them.
Sorry Marco.
Bye bye Marco.
The Dum Dums stopped dead after that. However, there were a few gigs booked so when Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums fell apart I hatched a plan to honour those commitments and get the money I could sorely use.
Now all I needed was a band . . .
BEASTS OF BOURBON
Since coming to Sydney I’d found myself gravitating to older dudes – musicians that’d been around the block once or twice.
These elder statesmen of the scene became like big brothers to me . . . and I mean the best kind of big brother, not the kind that hold you down and fart in your face.
Spencer P. Jones and Boris Sudjovic were two such characters. These guys looked out for me and I looked up to them. So when I mentioned the vacant Dum Dums gigs, Spencer and Boris were only too happy to get on board.
The P in Spencer P. Jones stands for Patrick. When I first met him he had just arrived in Sydney to join The Johnnys, a rock’n’roll band that dressed as cowboys. The Johnnys didn’t play country or western; they played New York Dolls-style rock’n’roll that had cowboy song titles. They’d been a three piece, but Jonesy was called in to broaden their horizons, musically and otherwise. In retrospect it was more a handing over of the keys. Rod Radalj would leave The Johnnys soon after Spencer arrived. Rod has been a founding member of The Scientists, the Hoodoo Gurus, The Johnnys and the Dubrovniks but every time, just when the band starts to get somewhere, Rod splits.
Back then Spencer was hungry for everything and one of the funniest, most mischievous scallywags around. We became friends right away. He was a Kiwi, although you’d never know it. By the time I met him he’d been on the Yob Continent for over a decade and there was no trace of THAT accent. Look, I love New Zealand – it’s a great little country we Aussies could learn a lot from . . . but that accent. Fuck me. But I digress.
Spencer Jones was, and always will be, family to me. You know how you can treat your family badly and still expect them to be there? That’s Spencer. In the 35 years that followed our initial meeting we would endure some truly shitty times when we didn’t think much of each other but I will never not, at the heart of it, love Spencer. After the dung has been flung between us, we’re still family.
Spencer and I shared a flat on Crown Street in Darlinghurst for a time. We were harmonious flatmates, as we rarely saw each other. The Johnnys worked a lot. In fact that year we first met they did more shows than there were days in the year.
One day I was trying to clean up the kitchen. Our frying pan was thick with fat, so I thought I’d heat it up a bit to make the fat easier to remove. I went to the lounge room to grab some plates and when I returned there were flames three feet high roaring from the pan. Without thinking I threw the frying pan out the window, scaring the shit out of the Vietnamese family in the flat below. Spencer had come into the room just as the pan left my hand and, as the family’s screams took flight, he shot me a look and deadpanned, ‘Tex, that’s the only uncool thing I’ve ever seen you do.’
I’m sorry to say there would be many more.
Boris Sudjovic was the affable one in The Scientists. Brett Rixon hid behind a curtain of hair and would only speak when absolutely necessary. Tony Thewlis had a fuzz box and Johnny Thunders’ hairdo so he didn’t need to say anything either.
But Boris I got to know and like. He was a big guy with big hair and he wore shirts louder than the bands he was in. Boris was another brother I feel grateful to for being a good friend back then. We would run into each other at the Southern Cross Hotel or the Trade Union Club at all hours of the day. He had my back and I had his. That made him a perfect band mate.
These gigs needed doing and all of us, as usual, needed money. No big deal.
But the venue needed a name for the band.
Now a few weeks before there’d been an article I’d seen in a magazine about The Gun Club – a band we all really liked. The photo of the band that went with the story had them sharing a bottle of whiskey and the headline was ‘Beasts Of Bourbon’. I looked at it and said ‘there’s a band name’. Now I’d been put on the spot for a band name, that one seemed pretty good . . . for now.
So we put together this band and called it The Beasts Of Bour
bon.
A lot of people think that the name came about because we were bourbon drinkers – but we weren’t. When it came to alcohol the Beasts were fuelled by beer. Believe it or not, people used to drink Foster’s back then.
People also think it was our play on ‘Beast Of Burden’ by the Rolling Stones but that’s bullshit. At that stage I hadn’t even heard that song.
Honestly, at the time we thought it was a throwaway band name for a bunch of guys who’d gotten together to play a couple of shows and we’d have it for maybe two or three nights then we’d move on with the rest of our lives.
So it was that Spencer, Boris and I, along with Fruitcake, played the Southern Cross Hotel in Surry Hills one night in June 1983 as The Beasts Of Bourbon. Along with a few tunes from the Dum Dums set, we fleshed out the rest of the show with covers of Cramps, Gun Club, Stones and Stooges songs. That first gig was easy and fun. It had a heaviness that had always eluded the Dum Dums. People loved it.
After that gig more offers rolled in, and it was very easy to say yes.
The Beasts line-up changed at each of the remaining gig commitments. Fruitcake was replaced by, believe it or not, Richard Ploog of The Church and then he was replaced by James Baker.
James was actually 11 years older than me so less a big brother and more a kind of father figure. A cheery, bleary, boozy father figure.
He and his partner Susan would often give me a decent meal when I was broke. They were among the few people I knew that had a nice clean house and they often shared it with me. I loved them both and without their generosity things would’ve been much harder for me in those early years in Sydney.
Me on stage with the Beasts, 1984.
James had been a rocker since the early ’70s, and in his travels had managed to be in New York at the time the Ramones and Television were taking off. Then he’d landed in London when the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Damned were starting. When I met him he must have been in his late twenties but he was (and still is) an eternal teenager, a true rock’n’roller and one of the coolest, most easygoing guys I’ve ever known.