Hamish Fitzsimmons — bass, vocals
Toby Richardson — guitar, vocals
Mike Staude — guitar
Chris Gorman — drums.
The previous lineup of Mustang! (with John Henderson on guitar instead of Mike) was interviewed by David in April, with the assistance of native guide Mark Cooper. A carton of a well-known intelligence-increasing drug was consumed in forty-five minutes.
Hamish: “Chris and I started the band out of the remains of Raw Sewerage with John Campbell, our first guitarist. We started as a three-piece. Raw Sewerage broke up after a spectacular night supporting the Hard-Ons at the Ozone.”
That was reviewed in X-Press, wasn't it?
Hamish: “Yeah. It was also reviewed by the management of the Ozone. That same night, we decided to form Mustang! and go for a completely different direction — tunes, playing songs under twelve minutes ...”
Toby: “Then John and I joined the band and made it what it is today.”
Ah, this was the corporate merger between Mustang! and Pool Flotation Device.
John: “In Mangoes, I remember.”
Toby: “An inspired, inspired few hours brought us together.”
Hamish: “Chris and I met John and Toby and decided they were much funnier than any other people we'd met who were playing music and we wanted to be in a band with them.”
Tell us about Pool Flotation Device. I saw you once at the FreakZine launch, the disaster show ...
John: (pause) ”Yep, that's accurate.”
Chris: “John doesn't talk about PFD any more.”
Who else was in the band?
Toby: “Tim the drummer.” (Now in O.)
Hamish: “And Toby's brother Mark.”
John: “He was only there for a period, though; he only played with us twice.”
Chris: “You only played twice!”
Toby: “I'd like to say that we thought Mark'd hold us up but his amp blew up. That was it.” (laughs)
Hamish: “So, what do we think about other Perth bands? Well, it's funny you should ask that, Dave ...”
Chris: “What do we think about most Australian bands?”
That they're not as good as Mustang!, perchance?
Hamish: “Oh, no. We find that we don't have much in common with other Perth bands at all — neither musically nor personality-wise. They seem hung up on being cool rather than having a good time; acting like fuckin' English ... staring down at the sandshoes, wearing stripy English rock star shirts ... not being fat ...”
Chris: “What's the story on that, John? Why aren't you fat?”
John: “God knows. I drink enough beer.”
Toby: “Oh, John does the right things to be fat.”
Chris: “It's just his metabolism, isn't it?”
Hamish: “It's one of Nature's cruel blows that John can't get a beergut.”
John: “Oh, these guys are working hard on my fitness programme. They buy my beer, they pay for my pizza.”
Hamish: “We try, we try.”
What was the first Mustang! show like?
Hamish: “Which one was it? The old lineup played with some shit bands ... The first one was five houses down the road where my girlfriend used to live, and it was a classic show. That was when we realised, 'this is it!'”
Chris: “That the chemistry was there. That we were rock gods and the world lay at our feet.”
What's some of your early history in rock'n'roll?
Hamish: “Chris and I met in year eight, when we were twelve years old, and we formed our first band soon after. I can't remember what it was, they were all terrible. This is the first good band we've been in.”
What were you into when you were twelve?
Hamish: “Shit. Brother McGee, well, he was into us.”
Toby: “You were good little choirboys, hey?”
Hamish: “Being at a good Catholic school.”
Chris: “I was into the Thompson Twins, Bruce Springsteen and the Cars.”
Hamish: “I remember Chris used to do this thing, remember that solo you used to do with Bruce? You used to sing a good song of Bruce Springsteen.”
Chris: “'I'm Going Down.' We used to sing all of the harmony bits. They were special. My mum liked that. Hamish was in the Stool Pigeons for a long time.”
That band? They were so fuckin' bad! (Note: this is an example of a journalistic faux pas, and should not be duplicated — ed.)
Hamish: “Thanks, Dave. Come on ... we were satirising ...”
Chris: “They were good for the time.”
The Stool Pigeons attained some degree of fame in Perth ...
Hamish: “No, I'm not going to say anything about it!”
Chris: “Except that you weren't in them.”
“That wasn't me, that was my twin brother.”
Hamish: “It's funny you should mention that, Dave. It's a sore point we don't like to bring up very much.”
Chris: “So you've met Gary, his brother, then?”
John: “Big Gary.”
Chris: “Not as big as Hamish.”
Hamish: “God rest his soul. Poor Gary. Never did have any taste in music.”
So why is Mustang! good and all the other bands you've ever been in bad?
Hamish: “Because this is about our time.”
Chris: “In the other bands we were learning our craft; now we've got time for the art.”
Hamish: “I dunno ... I think people in Perth are just trying to copy other bands ...”
Chris: “I don't hate metal bands, but not these funk-metal bands. Not these nice metal bands.”
Hamish: “Bands that try to do every form of music within the space of five minutes — get a reggae bit, a funk bit, a metal bit, world-music, a country-and-western bit ...”
John: “In case you haven't noticed, our craft is rock'n'roll.”
Chris: “Loud, live rock'n'roll. On-the-stage rock'n'roll.”
John: “Loud, no-nonsense, pants-down rock'n'roll.”
Chris: “There's no room for pants in this band.”
Hamish: “There's none of this slim-hipped, no-arsed, stripy-shirted English pop sort of thing. We try to get fat, get rid of fringes ...”
You're not ashamed of fat arses?
Hamish: “We got fat arses? Whaddaya mean, fat arses? Who you calling fat-arsed, buddy? Um, we're not ashamed, no.”
Chris: “Music by nerds, for nerds. We're cool nerds. We're the sexiest nerds in Perth.”
Toby: “I think that's the essence of Mustang! We're all geeks with style. We're just individual personalities.”
Chris: “Each member of this band has his own personal following and fan-club.”
So when's the TV show happening?
Chris: “We'll see how the cartoon show goes first, Dave.”
Hamish: “We've been making the cartoon show ourselves and it's coming along quite well. We've got about two seconds so far. It's basically Toby moving his arm like this. It's gonna be a hottie! We haven't thought up the rest of the story yet.”
Toby: “It's a good hour's poetry.”
Hamish: “It's one of the greatest moments in cartoon history. Took us about three weeks to do.”
Toby: “I think it's heading back to early Disney. I'm talking nineteen-twenties here.”
Chris: “Well, that was its peak, wasn't it?”
Hamish: “When they'd have two seconds of someone moving their arm like this and the credits would come up. Boy, that was good for us.”
Chris: “Maybe we can do a drawing for the article.”
I have a feeling this article should consist entirely of photographs.
Chris: “I think photographs sum up Mustang! really well.”
Toby: “Yeah! That's one interest we've all got.”
Chris: “We've got large photo collections. John keeps the archives.”
John: “A lot of Polaroids.”
Hamish: “Polaroids are very special to this band's heart.”
John: “We were young, we needed the work.”
Hamish: “I was told they were art shots.”
Chris: “Art shots?”
Toby: “I think the ideas behind them make them art shots, Hamish.”
John: “I just don't get how that donkey had to be hurt.”
You could have met Constable Care in person.
Hamish: “I've always wanted to get one of his T-shirts. Just that chiselled jaw ...”
“Don't drivel and tell dirty jokes/ When you're out driving with your folks.” That was today's.
Hamish: “I don't know why people crack jokes about New Zealand or Tasmania being backward ...”
Chris: “Did you hear about the Berlin Wall? It went down.”
Hamish: “Did you know that I was there when it happened? I was pissed out of my brain somewhere in West Berlin and someone said the Berlin Wall was being opened up. Just after I was having been going through seeing Einstürzende Neubauten and realising that they were the most fuckin' poor thing ever ...”
Chris: “How's the interview going, Dave? We should have drunk the carton first, then done the interview. I need a glass, I can drink faster out of a glass.”
Tell me about the Mustang! shirts: “Beer Makes You SMART.” I was so happy when I got that shirt. It's made my life what it is.
Chris: “That's one of my slogans. That's the motto of my life, basically.”
Toby: “Beer makes you funny and funny means smart.”
Hamish: (laughs) “God bless you, Tobe!”
Chris: “See, Hamish, no wonder we let this guy join Mustang! Second six-pack. You understand people better.”
Talk about your tape.
Hamish: “We released a tape last year and it was really poor.”
I've been told it's really badly recorded, but the songs are OK. What about the other tape, by the Premium?
Chris: “That was John Campbell and Mark Richardson, Toby's brother. We just did that for fun. Drink and eat a lot, then play. I was in Willa Benola with Mark. John did all the vocals and overdubs and we just put it out and no-one bought it.”
How's your future?
Hamish: “The biggest thing is getting out of Perth. There's something about Perth, y'know.”
Chris: “I like Perth.”
Hamish: “Yeah, but it's a terrible place if you're in a band.”
It's a good place for bands to start, 'cos it's so isolated that little bastard bands can start up that are unlike anything anywhere; trouble is, they can't be sustained by Perth.
Hamish: “There are bands our age that have been playing for four years and still pulling just over a hundred people to a show. I mean, why bother?”
Toby: “There's not any interest in it.”
There's a few people that really care, but not many of 'em.
Hamish: “I think we've all planned to go to Melbourne soon for an extended period. We can get gigs over there with some decent-sized bands, I hope. You only get one chance to play in a world-class band.”
Chris: “I've ruined my life for this band.”
Hamish: “Yeah, see, he's made a big sacrifice.”
Toby: “Are you sure it wasn't this band that ruined your life?”
Chris: “It ruined a lot of things, Toby.”
(talk of Cooper's Sparkling Ale)
Hamish: “I saw the Bats — remember when, uh, you went out and hugged Robert Scott, the Bats had Cooper's on their rider? That's one of the most advanced ...”
Chris: “Yeah, we're very good friends now. Good pals. Robbie.”
Hamish: “I really liked the Bats.”
Chris: “They were incredible. Such a classic, happy, up band.”
Hamish: “The Clean are another classic, a big influence on Mustang! I got to London and read this thing advertising the Clean and the Bats in this really small venue the size of the Shenton Park. Also missed Killdozer.”
Chris: “Oh, that's disappointing. They are the funniest band in the world, Killdozer. You could put their lyrics down on paper and they'd still be funny. Steve Albini is a special man too. He's a one-off.”
You can talk about Mustang! reclaiming the world for geeks, but Steve Albini's been there and done that, man.
Chris: “I pretend Hamish is my hero, but it's really Steve.”
Toby: “Hamish looks visibly disappointed.”
Chris: “I'm just ... He's skinny! The really good thing about Steve is that he's really skinny.”
Hamish: “Chris ... I'm ...”
Chris: “I like Hamish a bit more 'cos he's fat.”
Hamish: “I'm not fat! What d'you mean, I'm just filling out.”
Chris: “Those jowls wouldn't really count as fat. It's getting old.”
Hamish: “No ... that's fat.”
Toby: “Hamish is just getting comfortable, same as me.”
Hamish: “I'm just checking how I look with jowls. I'm gonna hit the rugby field again soon, so it'll all have to go by then.”
Chris: “Not in those year eight days, Hamish. Out on the rugby field, get nowhere near the ball.”
Hamish: “Yeah, we used to get beaten one hundred nil. The day we got beaten a hundred nil was one of the biggest milestones of my life. It's almost impossible to score a hundred points in a rugby game, but some school managed to do it to us.”
That's great. How were you as a rugby player?
Hamish: “Gutless.”
Chris: “Yeah. I don't like playing sports.”
Hamish: “Our biggest ... Before we got Toby and John in the band, Chris and I were about to go to London to get Mustang! going again, but we found better people than we could have found in London, because the people we would have found in London would have been English.
“We thought it was poor living in Perth and I have this friend in London who's a really full-on guitarist, so we were going to go and get together with him. Even in London, he's finding it really difficult to get in bands.”
Chris: “We didn't think we could find anyone compatible — not as in musically, but as in people we'd really like and appreciate and adore a lot. I like every other member of Mustang! more than I like every member of my family.”
Toby: “Oh, Chris! That's different, y'know, 'like' and 'love'. Family's different, Chris.”
Chris: “I didn't choose my family, but I chose you guys. I'm glad you can laugh at me opening up to you, Tobes, but ...”
Hamish: “Oh, he's going to start sobbing in a minute.”
Chris: “Toby's a bit unconfortable with it, but I can understand that. When you get a bit older and more mature, Toby ...”
Toby: “What, you mean when I get as old as you are, which is a year younger than me?”
Chris: “I don't mean old in years, Toby.”
Chris, tell us about yourself. What's your favourite colour?
Chris: “Blue.”
What was the first record you bought?
Chris: “Kiss, Unmasked.”
Hamish: “Yeah, that's funny, I bought Double Platinum.”
Chris: “No, sorry, it's all on me now.”
Hamish: “Oh, right, sorry.”
Do you still like it?
Chris: “Yes, I still have it. It's very crackly, but I still play it sometimes.”
Hamish: “I've got a collection of the first series of Kiss cards. I've got a full set. Remember Kiss cards?
What do you each do by day? Hamish, you're a philosopher and anthropologist ...
Hamish: “Oh, well, I want to be.”
Toby: “One hour a week!”
Hamish: “Usually a pissed hour. 'Le' me tell you a few things, maaate ...'”
Chris: “I'm on a pension.”
Toby: “That doesn't suit the rock'n'roll image.”
Hamish: “He's too nervous to work. Look at his leg, it's nervous already.”
Toby: “I'm in my second year of Fine Arts at Curtin. Means I paint a picture every couple of weeks.”
What is the meaning of this thing called Mustang!?
Toby: “It's about good times and music with your friends, I think. It's really interesting.”
Chris: “We need an accomplishment somewhere. I enjoy the adulation it brings. John's got laid out of it. Bitch magnet! Bitch magnet!”
John: “These are lies. I cannot substantiate any of these accusations. No, no. No.”
Chris: “You can't, but we can!”
Toby: “I think the attitude of the public is pretty dismal. Where are the girls yelling 'MUSTANG!', y'know?”
Hamish: “There were only guys yelling last night. And let me tell you, that's a worry.”
How does golf fit in with Mustang!?
Chris: “It's very important to one half of the band. The other half of the band hates it.”
Toby: “I played golf the last three days in a row. I enjoy golf. I love Sevvy Ballesteiros.”
Hamish: “Chris and I enjoy golf insofar as it relates to Caddyshack, the greatest film ever made.”
Toby: “If only golf was like Caddyshack.”
The next section was recorded at the Shenton Park later that evening. Voices identified are Chris, Toby, David, Mark Cooper (Coop) and Mark Richardson (Mark).
Toby: “... more so with cricket than with rock'n'roll.”
David: “Tell us about cricket.”
Toby: “I'm a champion cricketer, Dave, and have been since I was ten. When I was ten, I had a bowling average of 3.5 and won the Melville Association Trophy and this year I won the Suburban Turf Association Trophy for First Grade with an average of 12.5.”
Coop: “And he plays guitar good, too.”
Chris: “Damn good. That's why he's in Mustang!”
Toby: “I feel that if I improve my rock'n'roll abilities to the level of my cricket, I might be some sort of genius.”
David: “What sort of genius?”
Mark: “The right sort of genius.”
Toby: “People admire you so much more easily in sport than in rock'n'roll. In sport, it's so damned obvious: if you do well, you do well.”
Coop: “There isn't the intellectual pull in being a sporting hero.”
David: “There's no post-modernism in sport.”
Coop: “Exactly!”
Mark: “That's why it's so much better than music.”
Chris: “Music's good when people don't try to improve on two guitars, a bass and drums.”
Toby: “And that's exactly what Mustang!'s all about!”
Coop: “Chris Gorman is Lou Reed!”
Chris: “I attempted Lou's latest hairstyle, but it didn't work too well.”
David: “He plays The Blue Mask every morning and every evening. I bought that record and haven't played it since.”
Chris: “I've got this shelf where there's all the records I bought in high school I don't play any more, and every one of Lou Reed's albums is in that shelf at the moment.”
David: “What about the Velvets?”
Chris: “Well, White Light/White Heat's a good one, and the double live one. That's one of the funkiest guitar-playing records ever, that one. Sterling Morrison is so funky. He drove the Velvets.”
Coop: “Well, he was the one who actually kept them in time. Fuckin' hell, the drummer didn't.”
Toby: “I think the thing we've got to understand about Lou is that he is the badness that makes bad good. He is. Lou is so bad that he's fuckin' brilliant.”
Mark: “Did I tell you I played golf with Baldie the other day?”
Chris: “Andrew Craw! The enigma behind the whole Perth scene!”
Toby: “Andrew Craw, he was my inspiration in rock'n'roll. Almost at the same time as Mark was. See, Andrew Craw, I believe he's a prophet. Songs like 'Stanley', and, erm ...”
Chris: “'Dogs'.”
Toby: “... 'Dogs', and 'Jazz', and what's that other one? 'It's the back of it/ It's the front of it' ... Willa Benola, I think that's where the real inspiration was. I really wish Andrew would commit his whole life to rock'n'roll.”
Chris: “Naah, he's too old, he's burnt out.”
Toby: “He could wear a toupée, he'd be okay.”
David: “He can't wear a toupée! Wash your mouth out!”
Chris: “He could wear a toupée, but the sides of his head would be bald.”
Coop: “Andrew Craw is the definitive man with no hair; if he had a toupée, that would fuck everything up. The world would collapse if Andrew Craw had hair.”
(Pizza arrives. Did you know that you can get pizza delivered to the beer garden of the Shenton Park Hotel? Takes some effort, but it can be done. They do ask for a phone number, though ... duh.)
Coop: “Does anybody in the band actually like Mustang!? That's the next question.”
Chris: “I have a very low opinion of Mustang!, but I have a very low opinion of everything I do.”
Toby: “I think Mustang!'s pretty good, really. Compared to most things, Mustang! is pretty cool.”
Coop: “Mustang! is better than cot death. Mustang! is better than nuclear war.”
Chris: “We're energy and rock'n'roll, that's all it is to Mustang! That's all we're interested in. That's all we care about.”
David: “Yeah, but do you get laid?”
Chris: “Well, I do get laid, but it's nothing to do with the band. Have you got two pieces of pizza there?”
David: “Yep.” (This creation is the Self-Sandwiching Pizza: get the works with anchovy and olives and minus pineapple, then lay one slice on top of another slice and eat it. Heavenly.)
Coop: “That's the act of a complete arsehole! You know that, don't you?”
David: “No, you fold them together and you bite them in one go ...”
Coop: “No, that's called taking two slices at once, David.”
(all laugh) Chris: “You fuckin' wanker! You bastard!”
Coop: “You're a complete arsehole!”
David: “I am not an arsehole, I am an aesthete.”
Coop: “No, you're an arsehole!”
Chris: “I can't believe you did that. I thought you were a good guy until you did that. Well, I'm going to grab that piece, then!”
Coop: “No, hang on, we're going to get democratic now. We'll have to divide that into four — leave him out, for a start — Thank you, sir. You're a gentleman and a scholar, unlike some ...”
David: “You've just never had two slices together. It's sooo fuckin' good, man. Look: two slices together is aesthetically perfect. It's like saying no-one should be allowed to enjoy sex because some people don't get laid. I mean, really.”
Coop: “OK, fair enough, point taken. It's a nice analogy, by the way.”
Chris: “This is quite good for a Pizza Hut pizza, isn't it?”
Toby: “I think it's the extra prawns that make it good.”
Mark: “Mark, have you got a job yet?”
Coop: “No. This is something that Mark ... A human being's worth is defined ...”
Mark: “Be a useful member of society.”
Coop: “A useful member of this wonderful society that we're all members of.”
Chris: “Why are you such a sponge, Mark?”
David: “Yeah. I kill Jews at Auschwitz — what do you do for a living? Huh?”
Coop: “I like you, Chris, you're an amazing dude.”
Chris: “From one sponge to another!”
Mark: “I don't blame Mark; he's a product of our welfare society. In fact, you're a victim, mate.”
David: “Listen: the welfare state is the only reason why Australia is heaven.”
Toby: “Coops, you should be in a band, 'cos you're good for nothing else. How many pars did you get today, Mark?”
Mark: “I got one on the first hole. I got one on par five as well.”
Toby: “I only got two. Played pretty fucked. I got forty-five. Made a few good drives.”
Mark: “Forty five, I got about fifty-seven. It was appalling.”
(chat, chat ...)
Coop: “That was the best happiness night of all time. This should be on tape. The night that Leisal met Toby, after the Bats gig. Everybody was classically happy and stuff. That was the best happiness night of all time. The Bats are the classic happiness band of all time.”
Toby: “I've got to admit, Leisal probably caught me in my best mood of all time.”
Coop: “Yeah. Everybody loved each other and she said Toby had the world's most interesting face.”
David: “Why are Mustang! going to take over the world? I know how you're going to do it, but I want to know why.”
Toby: “We like people.”
Chris: “People like us. We're intelligent, we're smart, we get up on stage, we put a good show on for the crowd, we play our hearts out. We work hard on ourselves, put a lot of thought into what we do, we try hard, get up on stage and we do it!”
(Toby actually falls out of his seat laughing)
“See, we should have started the Mustang! interview at this stage. But Hamish was such a wuss.”
David: “Tell me about music.”
Chris: “We're sort of New Zealand/American cross, we're sort of into the rock thing, but the melodic sort of ...”
Toby: “I just love playing music, I'm just really into playing music.”
Chris: “We're all into different things. The thing about Mustang! is that it's a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas.”
David: “Tell me what I don't know about Mustang!”
Chris: “Do you know about the work we do for the poor? Fifty percent of our income goes to the poor in India. We've got money coming in every week. We get cheques from all over.”
Toby: “We're there for the poor people.”
How do you do a truly great interview? You get five people who all feel reasonably comfortable with each other around a table with a coupla cartons of Carlton Cold (say that six times fast!) and just let the tape roll ... Then edit like hell.
I did a ’Stangers piece about two years ago which was brilliantly funny but has sorta died of old age ... This one was done just after John Campbell left and includes new guitarist Brooke Kelly. August 1994, just before they and I moved to Melbourne.
Chris: “You don’t smoke, do you, Dave?”
Hamish: “He says that to everyone. Thank Christ this country has a health system great enough to cope with the people who have debilitating illnesses from smoking.”
So ... tell me about this band of yours.
Hamish: “That’s what you said last time! You know how that degenerated!”
Chris: “We’re not drunk this time.”
Yeah — it only got really good when we got down the pub. We discovered that you can actually get a pizza delivered to the beer garden of the Shenton Park Hotel. They still ask for the phone number, though ... duh.
Chris: “That was the day Benny Hill died.”
Hamish: “What a blessing!”
Chris: “No wonder we got so drunk.”
Hamish: “One of the greatest things that’s ever happened to comedy.”
Your beer’s on the middle shelf.
Hamish: “I thought you were plying us with booze tonight, David.”
Chris: “We have to come up to interview standard first.”
So, new guitarist, huh? So, tell us about yourself, Brooke.
Brooke: “Brooke Kelly. Kid Kelly.”
Hamish: “We’re really happy about Brooke because he’s an asthmatic, too, and every guitarist in Mustang! suffers from asthma.”
Brooke: “Everyone who plays a stringed instrument has a breathing problem.”
Where did you find Brooke?
Hamish: “Well, it’s the standard Mustang! story — meet someone, become friends with them, and if we’re friends with someone then we hang around with them, then it’s likely they’re eventually going to be in the band. Mainly if they play guitar. Which is what has happened, all the time. We’re most happy. You’re looking a bit ill, there, Dave, inhaling thirty-six milligrams of Lucky Strike. Do you sort of forget your own name after an inhalation of one of those, and say, ‘Hiii, my name’s Daaaisy’?”
I smoke ’cos a cigarette after work’s cheaper than a beer after work.
Chris: “That’s very practical.”
Hamish: “But you can’t say, when push comes to shove, ‘Look, I’ll let the smokes do the talking.’ It doesn’t quite pan out in the Aussie way of things, y’know. You go to the pub, you have a shouting match with someone and you let the beer do the talking after a while.”
What’s your pedigree, Brooke?
Brooke: “Um ... I’ve never really played in a band before. I’ve played on stage with friends and stuff.”
Hamish: “The Kelly Gang.”
Brooke: “My dad’s sort of been in a pub rock band with my brother. It’s in the blood, I suppose. I suppose I’ve grown up around music, but I’ve never really been in bands.”
Hamish: “We auditioned Brooke by playing all of the Xanadu soundtrack and seeing if he could match up with all those licks; and he scrubbed up pretty well.”
Brooke: “It just so happens that that was one of my personal faves as a child prodigy.”
How old are you now?
Chris: “Fifteen.”
Hamish: “Well, it’s not far off!”
Chris: “There’s me, thirty-two, and down at the other end there’s Brooke, fifteen.”
You’ve been aging very fast.
Hamish: “That’s seven years in the last three months, Chris.”
Chris: “I’ve been hard at it. It’s been hammer and tongs the whole time.”
At least your teenage acne’s gone.
Chris: “Yeah. I’m into middle-aged acne now.”
H: “Hits-the-booze acne.”
So when’s Mike dribbling his way over here?
Hamish: “Dribbling’s the word after his good news. The Bob Forster thing. As Chris said, it vindicated Mike’s whole involvement in bands. A dream come true for him.”
Chris: “It’s the greatest day of his life. This guy from RTR interviewed Robert Forster and asked him what his favourite Perth band was.”
Brooke: “And how did he know about Mustang!?”
Chris: “Ahh, fuckin’ Mustang!, it’s ...”
Brooke: “The name!”
Chris: “The name!”
Brooke: “It’s a mark of quality. It’s an institution.”
Hamish: “Hey, did you hear about our rival Mustang!?”
The Aboriginal country band in Melbourne? Tell us about them.
Hamish: “The fifth member of Mustang!, the great Brett Woodward, rang them up and said, ‘there’s this other band called Mustang!, they’re coming over here, they’ve got the name registered’ and all this bullshit, and the guy said, ‘ahh, no worries. Are you their manager?’ and Brett said, ‘Uh ... yyyeeah ...’ and the guy said, ‘you manage a lot of bands?’ and Brett said, ‘nnoo,’ and the guy said, ‘oh, two of my sons won Golden Guitar awards at Tamworth and, mate, do you want to manage them?’ But Brett respectfully declined, having too many commitments as far as rock writing and Los Mustangos! are concerned.”
(Mention of Andrew Masterson’s brilliant Age piece speaking of Bob Mould’s most recent new band, ‘Beaster’ ... ahem.)
Bob Mould is gay; how does this affect Mustang!?
Hamish: “We don’t know him. We certainly don’t take any offence to that.”
Brooke: “I just read the other day that the bass-player out of the Breeders is lesbian.”
Kelley Deal is a Republican, which is much scarier. The Christmas Melody Maker had Kurt Cobain interviewing Kim Deal and asking her what it was like coping with a sister with this deformity.
Hamish: “Well, that’s true. It’s like someone below the age of thirty-five voting Liberal or something. (Hamish is a Labor voter since birth.) Alexander Downer looks like the real suckhole who got head prefect at school or something.”
Chris: “Got head-butted.”
Brooke: “Hey, I got head prefect at school!”
all: “Wahey!”
Brooke: “That was in Darkan and only two people went for it.”
Hamish: “And you neglected to mention that there were only three people at the school.”
Brooke: “I actually went to the same school as Paul out of Worm Farm. Darkan is about two hundred kilometres down south. It’s what the band is named after.”
Hamish: “I told all these people that our new guitarist is from Darkan, and they all go, ‘oh, nooo ...’ I have to always suffix it with ‘the town, the town!’”
Brooke: “The story behind them is that they drove through the town once, apparently ...”
Hamish: “And they got attacked and hassled Deliverance-style. One of them was told, ‘Boy, you sure have got pretty lips ... would you like to squeal like a pig?’”
Chris: “And he loved it, hence the name Darkan!”
Hamish: “How about the CD, when’s it coming out? Well, funny you should mention that. It’ll be out by the time we get to the big smoke.”
Tell us about the Melbourne move.
Hamish: “It’s an exodus. It’s one of those loser things: ‘yeah, we’re gonna move to Melbourne and make it!’ Then you get to Melbourne, play about two gigs with shitty lineups at shitty venues and come back with your tail between your legs.”
(pause for phone call from a very late Mike Staude)
Hamish: “Is Staude really smashed out of his mind?”
He was at 75 Carr Street, not Cowle.
Hamish: “What, he borrowed their phone?! Imagine Staude rolling into your house really pissed and going, ‘can I use your phone?’”
Chris: “In his best trackie top.”
He could define a whole new style there.
Hamish: “He already has. I walked past one of those real wank-boy alternative clothing shops and in the window was one of those trackie tops, and my reaction was (à la Colonel Klink) ‘SCHTAAUU-DEEE!’”
It’ll be track-suit tops and vinyl jackets. It takes a certain sense of style to carry off a brown vinyl button-up jacket.
Hamish: “Whenever you’re wearing one of these things, you feel like you should be reaching for a shoulder-holster.”
Brooke: “We’ve got two track-suit tops, two vinyl jackets.”
As Chris Hann said: “Ten records died to make this jacket; don’t take it lightly.”
(Staude pours himself in the door)
Hamish: “Mick, so what do you think about the good news?”
Mike: “Well, green and purple, I don’t know about green and purple.”[1]
Hamish: “Yeah, besides that. I mean Bob Forster.”
Chris: “Oh, he’s getting all shy now.”
Hamish: “Ha! Let me point out that Mike’s rolling on some deodorant now under his clothes, after a splash of Ventolin. And his man-bag.”
So, Robert Forster! Have you heard him say these words?
Mike: “Well, I hooked up with Richard Forster (Salty & Delicious zine). I figured, ‘get in through the back door.’ They’re relatives. Just like Paul Williams (Molasses) and Kimmy Williams. Nephew. Hey — Molasses rock. I reckon they’re the best band for fuckin’ ages. I think it’s appropriate that we’re leaving and they’re beginning. What about Kitty Magic? Can we talk about Kitty Magic?”
Hamish: “Can we talk about other Perth bands that we really hate and we can bag, ’cos we’re leaving?”
Mike: “Nah, we’ll talk about Perth bands that we love.”
Chris: “Let’s focus on the positive.”
Hamish: “You ever seen that Vincent Ward film, Map Of The Human Heart? I must admit, I love Vincent Ward’s work. Been a big fan of his oeuvre for quite some time. But in Map Of The Human Heart, Arvik as a boy looks like the drummer from Kitty Magic. A bulked-up Arvik. So let’s get onto stuff we like to bag, which always spices up a ...”
Mike: “East Perth!”
Chris: “I just seem to like everything and everyone nowadays.”
Chris, you’ll be a great member of the music industry. Brown vinyl jacket, loves everyone ...
Chris: “I think a lot of people are impressed. A lot of people.”
Hamish: “That’s the sort of outfit people wear when they come out of being in prison for fifteen years.”
Chris: “Hamish took my metal wristband off me, I’m not allowed to wear it.”
Mike: “This is from Life In Focus.”
Chris: “They do a lot of work for single fathers, like when the mums get chucked in prison for shoplifting and stuff.”
That guy (Chris Bignell — election leaflet on pin-up board) worked at Life In Focus. He ran in the State election as a good Christian.
Chris: “Yeah, a good Christian who lined his pockets. No, no, it’s true. They were on Howard Sattler. Hey, I love Life In Focus. They love to sponsor Perth rock. They sponsored me and Sassy Gav’s expedition to Melbourne earlier this year. We did a lot of charity collecting, hanging out in front of post offices and shopping centres in Hilton and places like that. Made a lot of new friends. Hugged a lot of people. They helped me because I helped them. It was a reciprocal thing.”
Hamish: “I can’t believe Sassy Gav got so pissed that night with Lorne. Was he pissed or just sick?”
Chris: “No, that pizza gave him food poisoning, on top of drinking twenty-five cans.”
Mike: “Geoff (from O!) had three loaves of bread at his place, all of which were mouldy.”
I dunno, these kids, they just don’t know how to run a household.
Chris: “Those crazy, wacky, zany O! guys.”
The great thing about the scene at the moment is the kids all coming to shows and getting into it.
Hamish: “They’re even getting into Mustang!, which is weird.”
Did you see this month’s Rolling Stone? Michael Dwyer wrote an article on Perth bands. All the Jacuzzi International bands[2] were missing, oddly enough — what a surprise.
Chris: “Isn’t it strange how that happened!”
Hamish: “The article was basically the WAMI[3] bands that kissed butt. The JI bands weren’t in there because they’ve never been involved in that.”
Mike: “Everyone I’ve talked to so far has concluded that if they had been included, they’d have been mightiy dismayed and may have given up.”
The scene is differentiating itself, and that’s good.
Hamish: “It was like a press-kit thing, where he just got the press-kit and wrote it all out.”
Chris: “So they can put it back into their press kit. Just telling it like it is because they probably haven’t worked it out yet — Lamia and Yummy Fur have exactly the same background in their photos.”
Hamish: “I was happy to see the panel van thing in Rolling Stone. Boy. They had some fuckin’ amazing sin bins and shaggin’ wagons in there. If the van’s-a-rockin’, don’t bother knockin’, I believe.”
Brooke: “The statistic in there: one in four women between the age of twenty-five and thirty-five lost their virginity in the back of a panel van.”
Chris: “Well done Australia!”
Hamish: “That’s why I love this country.”
Mike: (playing with beans) “These handy rip-tops are good.”
Hamish: “You can scull them. Does anyone mind me talking about V. Balsara and his Singing Sitars? Have you heard that record yet, that my old man had? It’s this Indian guy playing hits of the ’60s on a sitar with the full instrumented backing. ‘Dr Zhivago’ ... but the outstanding track was ‘Strangers In The Night’, which was quite moving because he does all the vocal parts on the sitar ...”
Mike: “Did he play ‘Knights In White Satin’?”
Hamish: “No, this was before that, mate. This was real music. He plays ‘Yummy, Yummy, Yummy’ too. The band’s playing and then you hear the ‘yummy, yummy, yummy’ bit come in on the sitar. It’s moving.”
Mike: “I bought the Rolf Harris Book Of Aesthetics.”
Hamish: “Yeah. Rolf Harris wrote an art book, which is quite outstanding.”
Mike: “It was the best art book I’ve ever seen. I don’t know much about art ...”
Hamish: “... but you know what Rolf likes!”
Brooke: “What does Rolf like?”
H: “Photorealism, Hockney, brut, he’s into van Gogh too. I used to go out with a Canadian girl — this was in the heady days of swinging Blighty — and this girl went, ‘yeah, I’m staying with this Australian guy ...’ and it turns out her friend was renting the granny flat at the bottom of this big place in Maidenhead. And I went out to meet her, and this Australian voice went, ‘yeah, yeah, I’ll open the gate for ya,’ and it turned out to be none other than Monsieur le Wobble-board.”
You met a star.
Hamish: “Hung out with. I said, ‘hey, Rolf, let’s listen to a few records.’ We put on Led Zeppelin IV, and I said to Rolf, ‘hey, you know that song “Stairway To Heaven”?’ (all laugh) ‘It’s bullshit, isn’t it? I reckon you should take the wobble-board to this bastard.’
Mike: “Rolf reckons he’d never heard it before he did it.”
Hamish: “I said, ‘Rolf, get out the wobble-board, y’bastard, and go ...’ (makes wobble-board sounds) It was good, we had a jam with the wobble-board. I was on wobble-board, but he was on didgeridoo.”
Are you claiming that this is the truth?
Hamish: “It is the truth. I met Rolf ’cos the girl I was going out with was staying with Rolf. And it turns out he has a daughter called Bindi, which is a great Australian name for a dog.
“I knew his career was flagging, it was the least I could do. I don’t wanna sorta blow my own trumpet, but I just want to say that I am totally responsible for Rolf Harris having a hit with ‘Stairway To Heaven’.”
Chris: “It wasn’t something that thought-out; it’s just like, a couple of Aussie blokes overseas, having a beer ...”
Mike: “A foreign country.”
Chris: “... hanging out in their thongs and stubbies and singlets ...”
Mike: “What about ‘Sun Arise’?”
Chris: “Alice Cooper does a great version of that.”
Mike: “Does he?”
Chris: “Yes, he does. On Killer, I think.”
Mike: “And who wrote the lyrics to ‘Sun Arise’? Harry Butler[4].”
Chris: “See, it’s all connected, it all fits in.”
Mike: “Harry Butler was a very good friend of mine’s Dutch teacher. When I was translating all the Bailter Space lyrics.”
Hamish: “Mike did the complete Bailter Space lyrics into Dutch. That was part of Mike and my year of bad craziness.”
Hamish, tell us all about William Holden, with reference to that great song of yours about him.
Hamish: “William Holden was one of the last stars of Hollywood.”
(all laugh)
Chris: “I don’t wanna hear this. I’m not handling it, I’m telling you now.”
Mike: “This is not art ...”
Hamish: “William Holden wasn’t about art, let’s face it, he was about being real! He was about being casual, about looking good ... you ever seen that film The Counterfeit Trader? Bill Holden at his most fan-tastic! No-one in the last ... except for Bob Mitchum, of course — we had a whole album about Bob ...”
Mike: “Your solo album.”
Hamish: “... but no-one’s done it like William Holden since. No-one’s set up a safari shootin’ ranch in Africa with Stephanie Powers like William Holden did.”
What’s in this second lot of recording?
Mike: “‘Bill Holden Casual’, Jon’s epic called ‘Moisty’ ...”
Is that the one with ten false endings?
Mike: “It’s the one based on a Blue Tile Lounge song based on a Baked song based on a Bailter Space song ...”
Hamish: “... which is based on a Rapeman song ...”
Mike: “... which is based on a Joy Division song. ‘Poor Queensland’, we had to do that.”
Chris: “Just wait ’til you hear the poetry involved in that.”
Mike: “It’s Hamish’s life story in a song. We had to do that.”
Brooke: “One of the few I know. And love.”
Mike: “And ‘Hey Kingsley’. There’s four songs. They’ll never see the light of day. We’ve moved on. We recorded them two weeks after we started that lineup of Mustang!”
Did you do the vocal on “William Holden” in one take or did you wank around with it?
Hamish: “Yep, one take.”
Mike: “It sounds classic. It’s the best vocal on it.”
So when’s your CD coming out? Now, this was two lineups ago and it’s only just being mastered ...
Hamish: “Well, at least I think we’ve realised they’re dinkum about it, seeing as they’ve actually mastered it ...”
Chris: “We’re not doing it for money ’cos it’s mostly Toby’s songs anyway.”
Mike: “We’re doing it for Toby’s money.”
Hamish: “We’ve got another CD recorded which we’re going to have to whip one of the guitar tracks off and get the Kid to re-record it.”
Chris: “We’ll have to change all the vocals so I’m singing all the songs.”
You said you weren’t going to bring this CD out as a CD, but as compilation tracks.
Hamish: “Well, that was Mike’s idea. Just offer these songs around and get them out that way.”
So: what is this thing called Mustang! all about?
Hamish: “Let’s face it, Dave, we’re a band that likes the cheese board being passed around after dinner. I think that says it all. Remember the cheese board? Doug was saying that he was really worrying about the cheese board being passed around before dessert, which I think is an etiquette faux pas.”
Mike: “Yeah, I cleaned up all the plates, all the side plates, and Mrs (???) said, ‘Uh, Staude ... there’s cheese to come yet.’”
(all laugh)
Hamish: “I think Mike did the right thing, clearing the side plates, because you finish dessert and the cheese board comes out!”
Chris: “You have a coffee and cheese.”
Mike: “Yeah, they chucked the cheese board out before dessert.”
Hamish: “No, no, no.”
Chris: “A bit too free and easy, that household.”
Brooke: “Are we talking about cheese?”
Mike: “Cheese boards. Claret cheese, blue vein ...”
Brooke: “I always thought it came out before. Before the whole thing.”
Mike: “That’s down in Darkan, mate, not Perth.”
Hamish: “It’s between the last bottle of Hermitage or Cab Sav and the port, the cheese board comes out.”
Brooke: “Couldn’t you bring it out earlier on ...”
Hamish: “It’s just not done. It’s just not done.”
Chris: “God bless you. Out of the mouths of babes ...”
(chat about Craig Hallsworth and the Healers)
Chris: “I was the person who used to go to all the Healers gigs and yell shit at them every time they’d get Lorne up on stage.”
Hamish: “Remember just after I got back from Europe, that total night of bad craziness that we had ...”
Chris: “Oh, I don’t remember any of that.”
Hamish: “Well, of course you don’t. That was why it was full of bad craziness.”
Chris: “I remember reversing into a parked car when I was leaving.”
Hamish: “You were there that night, weren’t you, Mick?”
Mike: “I don’t remember, I was in the van.”
Hamish: “Yeah, all Mike could hear was, ‘Fuckin’ bullshit!’ ‘Yeah, good one!’”
Chris: “When the Healers played at the Northbridge Festival one year, Craig kindly offered to punch my head in after the gig.”
Hamish: “It was very big of him.”
Mike: “Oh, did he really? I had a chat to him after that gig as well. That was before I knew you, of course, Chris.”
Chris: “That was before I became the less intolerant me. The one that likes everyone now.”
Hamish: “And is liked.”
Chris: “Yes, I’m very popular.”
Are you going to grow back the Afro, Chris?
Chris: “I’m trying, David. Some nights it works, some nights it doesn’t.”
Mike: “We saw Q Magazine today and there’s a special on the Afro.”
Chris: “Mick Taylor’s got the best one.”
What happened to your previous guitarist?
Mike: “It’s called bad vibes, Dave. We got plenty.”
Chris: “We’ve got the touring machine now.”
Hamish: “This is the Henry Rollins tour-tour-tour. This is the penultimate Mustang! lineup.”
Mike: “The ultimate one is with the saxophone player.”
Hamish: “Free jazz. The Roland Kirk.”
Chris: “We can’t discuss that yet.”
I really loved what’s now the previous lineup of Mustang! ...
Hamish: “But you said you loved that show last Sunday night, and that gig John didn’t play.”
Mike: “He played on three songs.”
Chris: “He played on his songs. A lot of the time he was looking at me and drinking beer and I was pulling strange faces at him.”
Hamish: “We used to get this bullshit about the other guys being really great, but Toby wouldn’t play on songs, and John wouldn’t play on songs, so I figure it wasn’t them being great, it was three guys dedicated to rockin’ being great. And now we’ve got four guys dedicated to rockin’.”
Chris: “We just want everyone to pull together, we don’t want someone anti- the band.”
Hamish: “This big ego-personality thing is just so poor.”
Mike: “John believed in tension.”
Chris: “He’s an artist. He’s a very tortured artist. But obviously, we loved his work to ask him to join the band in the first place.”
Hamish: “Rejoin the band. I think it was that we didn’t know any other guitarists at that point.”
Mike: “Dick Fische (Richard Sewell) wasn’t available.”
Jon was in the first Mustang!, the three-piece of him, Hamish and Chris. I never saw that lineup ...
Hamish: “We thought at the time that it was pretty atrocious. The First Six Months tape was pretty good, I thought. Well, funny. But we’d wanted to get our shit together ... there was a lot of bad craziness.”
Chris: “The first Mustang! was me and Jon being really strange and fucked up and never playing good gigs.”
Hamish: “And me being fantastic.”
I must admit, I was scared on Sunday when you pullled out the flying-V bass again.
Hamish: “The flying-V bass is Mustang!”
Chris: “That’s here to stay.”
Mike: “I thought it was gone.”
Brooke: “I thought that was its final gig, actually, when I saw it being treated that way at the end.”
Hamish: “That’s how ... I’ve done worse with that bass and it’s always come through for me, so I can’t just spit it in the face. That guitar has been very good to me. I’ve treated it like shit ...”
Chris: “It’s like a woman.”
Hamish: “Like a crazy woman. God knows I’ve had plenty of them.”
Mike: “Hamish is the only guy who knows how to handle it.”
Hamish: “And crazy women. What were we talking about? Previous lineups of the band. Then we got Toby and John (Henderson). Jon went to go to Albany, Chris and I both liked Pool Floatation Device a lot, we both liked drinking a lot and having fun ...”
Chris: “We used to go to Mangoes every Tuesday. It was very beautiful. We started out good, but so many times as we found out, if you’re interested in hanging out with people and having fun, as soon as they join the band they pull a big ego thing and they get all bossy and want to ruin the fun.”
You getting a sense of foreboding yet, Brooke?
Brooke: “Oh, I don’t know ...”
Mike: “He knows. We’re the bosses.”
Hamish: “It’s like having a kid brother in the band.”
Chris: “We were out buying clothes for him today.”
Brooke: “What did you buy me?”
Mike: “I got you a great Emu Export T-shirt.”
So how was it when Toby left? Did you actually sit down and write a whole pile of songs to compensate?
Mike: “Yeah. It’s like doing your homework, you just have to do it. So we did it. The new songs were better than the old ones. They’re the right length, they’re snazzy ... Toby left, we knew we needed new songs. Good songs. Jon was there, Hamish wrote three new ones ...”
The Toby lineup sounded like it was limping for a long time.
Hamish: “Yeah. Toby wouldn’t want to play any new songs. He wouldn’t want to work on them.”
Did Toby leave or was he pushed?
Hamish: “Oh, it was pretty mutual.”
Mike: “He left. At the airport in Sydney, I said, ‘what’s going on?’ and he goes, ‘I’m not interested any more.’”
Hamish: “Touring with Toby was just unbearable. I didn’t have much to do with it ... Chris and Mike had more to do with it and they were just going up the wall.”
Chris: “Didn’t interfere with my fun.”
Mike: “Didn’t interfere with my fun either. But five pairs of jocks over twenty-one days ... I couldn’t work it out.”
Chris: “Especially in Sydney.”
Hamish: “The humidity was almost evil in Sydney. I wear boxer shorts and I was showering twice a day and I was still feelin’ a bit sticky. You’ve got to bathe ... and change ...”
Chris: “My favourite memory of touring with Toby was me and Mike doing his washing for him.”
So how did that first tour go?
Mike: “Classic!”
Hamish: “We had a fuckin’ great time!”
Chris: “That was the best experience of my life.”
Hamish: “The best gig we played was at the Punter’s Club with the ’Baits — Spiderbait and Christbait — then at the Vulcan in Sydney.”
Mike: “The last Sydney gig was good. The Cosmic Psychos one was good. The good gigs were fantastic. The only bad one was with Defryme.”
Hamish: “We played with Defryme, they had this huge fuckin’ PA and they wouldn’t let us use the foldback. This was in the big room at the Esplanade and they said to keep the PA right down. They said, ‘we paid for the foldback, you can’t have the foldback,’ so consequently we didn’t know what the fuck was happening on stage ...”
Chris: “We had some wild times with the crazy guys from Ammonia in Sydney. That was pretty good. We played our last gig and they’d just got there, we saw them play the night before — Hamish didn’t ...”
Mike: “And, get this, one of them hadn’t had a piece of fruit for three days!”
Chris: “Don’t pre-empt my story, Mike.”
Mike: “Sorry.”
Chris: “Anyway ... they said, ‘come back to the hotel room, have a few drinks,’ we thought, ‘wahey! last night of the tour, a bunch of Perth boys in town, let’s paint the town red,’ and so we went back to the hotel room and met up with them, and their idea of drinks was going down the 7–Eleven and getting Slurpees. They’re like Icees, crushed ice and flavouring. Then the bass-player, Simon, was going, ‘I can’t believe I haven’t eaten a piece of fruit for three or four days, what’s going on, my life’s falling apart, what am I doing to myself?’”
Mike: “Hey, get a fruit rider!”
Chris: “You need a fruit roadie to take care of all your fruit needs.”
Hamish: “That time I saw Buffalo Tom, and the guy said, ‘hey, Alan, can I have an apple?’ and I thought, ‘fuck, he’s getting some crack cocktail off his roadie,’ and this guy tossed him a piece of fruit, and I just went, ‘Get FUCKED! You fuckin’ dickhead! What are you doing? Get a dog up ya!’ What a sack o’ shit! I couldn’t believe it!”
C’mon, you gotta keep fit for full-tilt rock’n’roll. Aerosmith are the greatest straight-edge band in the world. Orange juice and working out!
Chris: “Yeah, they’ve had their fun!”
Hamish: “That’s the best thing about these old rock’n’roll bands who did all the drugs, saying, ‘don’t do it like I did.’”
Brooke: “Did anyone get a gig out of those Sony nights?” (Perth bands playing for Sony execs stopping through town a few months ago)
Mike: “Favourite Game, Ammonia and someone else.”
Hamish: “When you do something like that, it just gives you a small use-by date, y’know.”
Mike: “Oh, do they?”
Mustang!: indie as fuck!
Hamish: “Yeah! Damn right!”
Chris: “Hey — we’re here, we’ve got a platform, we’re gonna use it! We gotta tell the kids, y’know, don’t fuckin’ sell out, do what you want to do, have a good time!”
Yeah, otherwise you’ll die! Like KURT DID!
Hamish: “Do drugs, don’t sign to a major! Unless, of course, they offer you such a ridiculous amount of money where you can buy a house and settle down. Then sign to a major. The Jesus Lizard said to Warners, ‘give us a million bucks and we’ll sign,’ then, as David Yow said, ‘they laughed; we laughed; and it was all over.’ And now they’re on Warners — ’cos they laughed!”
Or you could do like Sonic Youth did — don’t sell out, just become really bad ...
Mike: “That’s debatable.”
Hamish: “I was really encouraged reading reviews of the new one when some dickhead says ‘it’s not a patch on Goo or Dirty’ and I’m going, fuck, this album, could be pretty good! Dirty’s one of the worst ... Remember when ‘100%’ came out? At the Big Day Out, people were going (punches the air in time). That’s bad. That’s a bad thing.”
Mike: “It’s a great ad.”
Hamish: “Yeah. They should release that as an ad for McDonald’s or Hungry Jack’s: ‘A hundred per-cent/ Aussie beef ...’”
Chris: “‘I should give to you sweet child ... I’m just waiting for you to say/ This Aussie Burger’s mine ...’ We worked out the whole song.”
Mike: “The last song on the new album should be an ad for Swan Dry.”
Hamish: “They were in Perth for about a day and they got into Swan Dry! That’s fuckin’ great!”
Mike: “It doesn’t take long, mate. It’s a great, great beer.”
Hamish: “That’s why this state is the greatest state in the whole world. I’m proud to be a Sandgroper, how about you guys?”
Mike: “Yep. That’s why we’re going to Melbourne.”
People from Perth just go to Melbourne and take the fuckin’ town over.
Hamish: “Yep. Scientists ...”
The Woozy people.
Mike: “Nicky Winmar.”
Hamish: “Barry Cable. Brett Woodward. Kim Salmon!”
Chris: “Andrew Masterson. Brett Woodward.”
Hamish: “Did we mention Brett?”
Chris: “He’s actually probably the best person to interview for Mustang! ’cos he’s the funniest.”
Mike: “As funny as you, Chris?”
Hamish: “Funnier.”
Chris: “I’m not a patch on that guy.”
Mustang!
Chris: “We’re going to be as big as the Kryptonics.”
What have the last two years in Perth been like for Mustang!?
Hamish: “Shit.”
Chris: “Great. I had a lot of fun times.”
Say from August ’92 onwards, when Mike joined.
Chris: “That’s when it got better.”
Mike: “The fun times. Party times. Less tension.”
Hamish: “Mike brought the fun back into the band. Mike was my call. I take full responsibility.”
Chris: “I got all the weirdos.”
Mike: “Hamish caught me when I had a broken hand.”
Hamish: “I worked Mike through his injuries and stuff. I’ve known Mike since I was four.”
Mike: “Have you seen the Perth band Ash?”
Brooke: “I have. A Black Sabbath sort of thing.”
Mike: “Anna Zanella.”
Brooke: “They’re with her?”
Hamish: “Bup-bauwr.” (a universally applicable conversational sound-effect ©H. Fitzsimmons — the sound of someone else’s clanger hitting reality.)
Chris: “They’re gonna rock the foundations.”
Hamish: “As soon as Verona fired Anna, they were ringing every band they could think of trying to get gigs with them.”
Mike: “They rang me saying, ‘how’s it going, what you been up to?’”
Hamish: “They rang me and said, ‘you guys wanna play a gig with us?’ I said, ‘I dunno, speak to Mike.’ The promoter over east (Steve Pav) wanted O! to play just before Pavement, but Anna said, ‘no, no, Ammonia have a bigger media profile ...’”
Mike: “Ammonia are getting four-fifty and O! are getting one-fifty.”
Chris: “No-one’s going to see Ammonia.”
Louise (Dickinson) says that Ammonia might fluke a hit one day.
Mike: “That’s a pretty good call. Louise’s last analysis of Perth music (Lemon #16½) was one of the best I’ve seen for ages.”
Everyone hated it, but ...
Mike: “... it was pretty spot-on.”
Chris: “I like some of the bands she slagged.”
Mike: “The Blues are gonna win the Premiership.” (snicker — ed)
Hamish: “Buuull-shit! The Dockers, mate. The Dockers ’95.”
Brooke: “I don’t reckon they’ll go any good for at least three years. I think they’ll start off pretty reasonable, but nothing special.”
Mike: “For the first half-season, they’ll be in the top eight.”
Fremantle are gonna be a top team.
Hamish: “I think it’ll take ’em about five years. I think the Freo people who play for the Eagles will go down to the Dockers.”
They won’t be able to handle blow-wave football.
Mike: “I think Ben Allen will be playing for the Dockers next year and he’ll be fuckin’ classic. Nicky Winmar ... one of the Jakoviches ...”
Chris: “The formation of a Fremantle team is even making me think of putting my boots back on to help them out.”
Exactly. They’ve got spirit already.
Hamish: “Which Jakovich playing for the Eagles will go to the Dockers?”
Brooke: “Alan. He keeps getting fined for abusing people.”
Mike: “He’s crazy and feisty.”
Chris: “And that’s the sort of person that Freo needs.”
Brooke: “I’d just like to drop into the conversation that anyone that would like to play for West Arthur Football Club ... they’ll get paid.”
Hamish: “Is that Arthur River?”
Brooke: “No, that’s Darkan’s football team.”
Hamish: “Have you ever been to Arthur River, the town?”
Brooke: “Yeah, yeah. They used to pay me twenty bucks a game to go down there last year.”
Mike: “Do you know how to play sport?”
Brooke: “Hey, I’m a sports champion!”
[1]The Fremantle Dockers strip. The AFL commissioners have mistakenly let in a team that not only won’t consist of blond permed pop-star wannabes but will be bloody brilliant, and the 1995 or 1996 Grand Final will be Dockers vs Eagles or Dockers vs Crows. Sorry to have to tell you this.
[2]Including: Mustang!, Baked, O!, Wooden Fische, Blue Tile Lounge, Worm Farm ... bands with a close association with Club 96, JI Headquarters. A good sample of the best Perth had to offer at the time.
[3]The semi-industry bands that swept the WA Music Industry Awards this year.
[4]The naturalist, not the ziner.
2012 note: Why the fuck was I expressing an actual opinion on football? Where the hell did that come from?