ICTV EPISODE 12: THE DARLINGHURST SOUND

CW: Like a sort of inversion of Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, the Darlinghurst Sound was a vague concept contained only by geography. And it wasn’t just restricted to Darlinghurst itself, but included the handful of suburbs that surrounded it in Sydney’s inner east: Woolloomoloo, Kings Cross, Surry Hills, maybe Paddington. I could look at a map of the area and pinpoint all the venues, or at least venues that used to be venues, and rattle off a list of all the bands that lived where. Hot Records had its office on Victoria St, opposite the Tropicana, just up from where I myself lived, and though the Celibate Rifles, one of the label’s leading lights, were most definitely a northern beaches thing, the Laughing Clowns and bits of the Wet Taxis lived in the area. Triple-J was then on William St. The Hoodoo Gurus lived in Surry Hills, as did the Sunnyboys. Many of these people, like myself, were migrants from other places like Brisbane or Perth. Died Pretty lived in Darlinghurst; Tex Perkins lived there, and the Johnnys. The Scientists. Ian Rilen had lived in Darlinghurst even longer than Rob Younger. The Green Records empire run by Stuart Coupe and Roger Grierson were based in the bottom half of a terrace house in Woolloomooloo; the top half was occupied by Regular Records. The Craven Fops of course were there, and the Frontier Scots – for a while I shared a place with Scout-master Andy Wilson – and Upside Down House. The Machinations. Severed Heads, and their label Gap. Sekret Sekret. Tactics. The Triffids during their brief tenure in Sydney on the Hot label. The M Squared label had its studio in Surry Hills, Pel Mel lived nearby. The sounds coming out of Sydney's inner east were pretty diverse.  

DAVE FAULKNER (HOODOO GURUS): The thing is when the Gurus formed we rebelled against that whole dichotomy in Sydney. There was this inner city scene and there was this outer suburban scene and in the inner city there was this split, there was the M Squared art rocker bands, the synthesiser in a suitcase sort of bands, and there was the Radio Birdman sort of legacy with all the Detroit rockers, and we just didn’t identify with either party, we just went somewhere else and we didn’t really want either audience.

I actually started playing in R&B groups in Perth. I got a job in a bank and bought some equipment and promptly joined a professional band but at the same time I fell in love with the Ramones’ first album, and really wanted to start playing guitar. So eventually I got out of the R&B band after about six months and formed a punk rock group, one of the originators of the Perth punk scene, the Victims with James Baker, and it was pretty wild and we didn’t have any expectations of success or even employment necessarily, we just thought we were going to make a racket and have fun and we sure did.

As it happens I got to see a whole lot of bands in England that I really admired and they were pretty average players and not that entertaining and then I saw all of these ones in New York that I hadn’t heard of and was generally blown away by. It was more about who could play and who had something to say. Like the Buzzcocks for example, who are one of my favourite groups, were pretty average on stage, didn’t really compel me. A lot of that punk scene, the leftover punk scene in ’79, was nothing to write home about. But I went to New York and I saw the Fleshtones and the Cramps and the B52s and Talking Heads and that was much more vibrant scene for me and I just realised that there was a lot more out there and I discovered rockabilly as well which was a bit late in life but got there eventually – all of these different influences started crowding around me and broadened my whole horizon.

BRAD SHEPHERD (HOODOO GURUS): On the first day I got to Sydney it was like hallelujah baby! I met Clyde Bramley on the first day I moved to Sydney. I was playing in band in Brisbane with Ron Peno from the Died Pretty and it was kind of, for want of a better word, a supergroup in Brisbane in hindsight, anyway I came down to Sydney with Ron and he sort of introduced me to some mates of his from Sydney and I met Rob Younger the first day I got to Sydney and that’s a pretty big deal, and Clyde as well, and I sort of moved into Clyde’s house the next week and he was living with Richard Bergman from the Sunnyboys…

DAVE FAULKNER: Whoever else was there on the couch that day.

BRAD SHEPHERD: So it was just like living in a musical or something. It was just surreal.    

BRETT MYERS (DIED PRETTY): I was obsessed by the Velvet Underground, that was my sort of band, I sort of discovered them in I guess the mid-70s and music was never the same again. It was everything that I had sort of looked for, had all of those cliches now, like it was just sort of glamorous and dangerous and beautiful and all of that sort of stuff at the one time and I just loved it. I was really obsessed by them and we just used to play, I wouldn’t say half our set was Velvets covers but I would say a good whack of it was. Although I used to write. I was always writing, I’d say about half the set was originals and about a third was Velvets and the rest was just little bits and pieces that I liked.

Although the Brisbane scene at that time was pretty exciting, you know, there was the GoBetweens and the Leftovers, the Saints had just left and there was the sense that something actually could happen. The Saints had gone over to England to make records, the GoBetweens were obviously fantastic, things were really interesting. But you could only play so many times, there were only so many venues and they were usually closed down by the police and it was a really depressing atmosphere. Going to Sydney was just fantastic. There were venues that weren’t raided by the police.  You could walk around without getting beaten up and it was just great.

RON PENO: That’s going back to, also at that time at the very start still hanging up from the Radio Birdman and the Hellcats, I had a Doors fixation also, you know, so a lot of those early songs of ours are sort of rambling I wanted the band to be one of those free-from and let’s ramble on for hours and jam and initially we did, the first half a dozen shows or the first six months of our existence we did ramble on a lot, and “Mirror Blues,” a song like “Mirror Blues” would go on for like half an hour or something on stage. That’s what I wanted and fortunately I soon tired of that.