ictv episode 3. punk wars

ROGER GRIERSON (THOUGHT CRIMINALS): Well, there was an awful lot of energy, a lot of people who – from different backgrounds – all drawn together with a common purpose, which was you know, have fun, make a racket, and just be a little bit different. I mean every generation goes through this particular thing. But I thought that the whole sort of 1970s sort of punk rock explosion was one of the most exciting times in music. All around there were just people forming bands and organising their own things. It was the central DIY philosophy that really, that sort of energy, that really underpinned everything. I don’t think it was necessarily a reactionary thing, it was more a case of people going out and being able to forge their own path. And just sort of not be beholden to the rules, as they were, or any sort of virtuoso experience, you could just get up and do it.

HELEN CARTER (DO-RE-MI): When I started living with Roger and the Thought Criminals started happening, I’d go along to those gigs and I looked at those people playing and I thought, this is a lifestyle, you know, to me it was a kind of lifestyle and then once I picked up the guitar, it’s kind of peculiar, I never once had any doubt that I could do it but I think I was very lucky because I could have been surrounded by people who said, Look, you’re a girl, don’t worry, but by the same token with punk, I did have a lot of particularly English role models, I could look and say, you know, the Slits are doing it and the Modettes are doing it and the Au Pairs are doing it and of course Do-Re-Mi was compared in the early days to that.

ED KUEPPER: You did it yourself by sort of booking halls, lying about what you were intending to do. We always managed to get halls by saying that we were going to put on 60/40 dances, which were the acceptable way of promoting a show in Brisbane suburbs I suppose.

ED WRECKAGE (LEFTOVERS): I guess my interest was in inverting people from the sheep mentality, showing them that they could be different and that they didn’t have to be scared of it, art was always a big feature, I mean a style of art we used ourselves as art and the music was part of that as well.  We were trying to create an atmosphere, basically an aura that we could carry anywhere, it’s easy baggage to carry, you know, it didn’t need a big light show or stage act, we were it, we were the act and we’d do it on the street if we wanted to. Sitting in a gutter there were four of us that were all having fun and not ashamed of it, a lot of people, they don’t speak their minds… you know, not too much in their lives to be different.

MICK HARVEY: It was clear to me at school that Nick had the confidence to put himself forward as a front man or character.  He couldn’t sing to save his life at the time, some may say he still can’t... he also started writing... and it was clear to me that he had potential to be a writer and performer. 

DAVE GRANEY (MOODISTS): The Boys Next Door seemed so dramatic, they would come to Adelaide, through ’78/’79, they came through with the Suicide label, with the Teenage Radio Stars and X-Ray-Z and they were playing this new wave stuff. Then they would come back 6 months later with their “Shivers” record out and they wouldn’t be playing that, the record would have come out and they would have already moved on and they were playing this Roxy Music type stuff, then that record came out and they were playing Captain Beefheart/Pere Ubu-type music, they were incredibly fast-moving…

BRUCE MILNE: We were very fortunate in Melbourne at the time because public radio started and 3RRR was called RMTFM at the time, and they were pretty open to having people come in and do shows. Their idea of punk was sort of Elvis Costello and things, but there was a room to get in there.  And of course a lot of fanzines then started at the time, that was really important, because information wasn't as fast as it is now.  Trying to find out information about groups you were hearing about around the world, you were writing letters to people, swapping records and you wanted to put it down and put the information out to other people and keep the information flowing.

KEITH GLASS (MISSING LINK) When the Boys Next Door started out they were a really funny off-kilter sort of band, that didn’t want to go along with any of the cliches of the rock’n’roll business of that particular time. Which I thought was just great, and that was the main, I guess, the main reason why I liked them, plus I thought Nick sort of had, some sort of early Elvis thing going for him. And, people over the years have taken the Birthday Party, and Nick Cave, you know, to be this kind of Gothic type thing, and it really isn’t that at all. The Birthday Party were a comedy band in many ways.