TEXT & IMAGE
ISSUE ONE _09.13
ABOUT
TEXT&IMAGE is a Brisbane based creative hub located in West-End. Working on anything and everything creative, specialising in communication design, illustration, photography and commercial art. Brisbane is changing. The one-time tourism trap and freight corridor is growing into something new. Text and Image magazine chronicles the transfer of Brisbane’s blossoming golden age to the arts and culture scene. We want to know who is doing fresh, original work. We want to show people who are making money as well as waves. www.textandimage.com.au
CONTRIBUTORS/ FEATURED
_DANE BEESLEY Dane made his reputation as one of the foremost rock photographers in Brisbane. He worked for Rolling Stone, the Herald Sun and is regular attendee in the VIP bars of every major music event in the country. www.photodane.com
_JOHN LUPO AVANTE John is an established painter, illustrator, muralist and tattooist. Originally from San Francisco the soft spoken Californian moved to Australia three months ago. www.jlatattoos.com www. poteryofline.com
_MARTY CAMBRIDGE Right handed and scared of spiders, Marty spent his formative years staring at a map. A n adventure seeker, Marty has travelled to a few leftfield destinations including a two month solo venture to Pakistan. Back in Brisbane and ready to write, Marty is excited to discover the best his hometown has to offer.
_VLADS’ VORTEX Vlad is an up and coming visual artist whose work was well received at the Brisbane Raw exhibition earlier this year. www.vlads-vortex.com
_MANDY B Mandy teaches poetry at Griffith University and is a researcher in creative writing at QUT. She was the poet in residence at the State Library of Queensland last year and has performed and been published widely. www.mandybeaumont.com
_ANTHONY LISTER _GRANT MARTIN Founder / Creative Editor
_DANE BEESLEY Founder / Photo editor
_BEN MARKS
Lister work is exhibited in galleries throughout the world. He fetches top dollar for his pieces and while he lives in Sydney nowadays he was originally from Brissy. www.anthonylister.com
_LUKE PEACOCK
Art Director / Frenchy
Luke aka the bird is a Qsong award winner and was also a finalist in the APRA Professional Development Awards in 2011. This Brisbane singer/songwriter’s music has been described as catchy, soulful rock’n’roll tunes.
_MICK NOLAN
_BEN HIGGINS
Founder / Managing Director
_ANAIS LESAGE
Senior Writer / Doof King
_SHANE BERNARTD Tattoo Journalist / Fixed Gear
After completing the requirments for a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Ben Higgins will be undertaking Post Graduate studies in Art History at UQ in 2014. He is a practising artisit with a passion for writing about art.
ISSUE ONE _Content
_8 BRISBANE HISTORY
The Ballad of Peter Bertam
_10 GALLERY REVIEW Born to concrete
_14 ARTIST
Anthony Lister
_18 PHOTOGRAPHY Dane Beesley
_22 INTERVIEW
John Lupo Avanti
_24 COMPANY PROFILE Ellaspede
_28 ARTIST
Vlad’s Vortex
_30 MUSIC
Vic Simms
_32 SHORT STORY Mandy B
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93 BOUNDRY ST, WEST END BREWNETTECOFFEE@GMAIL.COM
Adele Outteridge | Wim de Vos ARTWORK FOR SALE Private Tuition • Classes •Workshops Book Arts, Printmaking, Drawering (including a drawering a day project) Painting, Papermaking, Perspex.
35-51 Mollison St., West End, Qld, 4101, Australia. Phone/Fax: 07 3844 8469 (+61 7 3844 8469) E-mail: delidge@uq.net.au
www.studiowestend.com TEXT&IMAGE _ISSUE ONE _5
DIY performance space ... TEXT&IMAGE _ISSUE ONE _7
BERTAM THE BALLAD surviving aOF tigerPETER attack in Brisbane city
Art work by GMD for Text and Image to commemorate the site of the tiger attack back in November 1888
BNE HISTORY _Martin Cambridge
A
blood-soaked, half scalped man was seen stumbling through Brisbane city, followed in hot pursuit by a full-grown Bengal tiger. Six months later after recovering from his injuries, Peter Bertram shot and killed a man in his back yard. Turning around to light a cigarette on the corner of George and Turbot streets it’s hard to imagine the set of events ever took place. It’s 9.30am and the last of the stiffs are slowly rolling into their final day of salary plus super for the week. I can’t help but imagine they’d be moving a lot fucking faster if they were here on the morning of November 21, 1888. The Higgins Great Menagerie of Wild Performing Animals established itself in a small alley on Turbot street, in what was then a very different Brisbane city. After spending his youth in California with a pet grizzly bear, proprietor, Charles Higgins touched down in Toombul after acquiring two Bengal tigers. Charles claimed Sammy and Jimmy were trained, playful and would lie around his home like your regular, domestic rat catcher. The performing tigers became a major drawcard for Higgins and were paraded alongside a Russian bear, leopards, panthers, cheetahs, monkeys and snakes. In the middle of the fucking city. Peter Bertram, in his mid-20s, was Higgins’ right hand man and the main animal keeper for the travelling zoo. On the day in question, Peter was going through his routine of responsibilities and it came time to clean Sammy and Jimmy’s cage. However, this Wednesday morning Jimmy was about to flip routine on its mundane head. Seizing an opportunity to explore the river city, Jimmy made a dash for the exit. What happened next is perhaps the most interesting piece of trivia in Brisbane’s short history. Sensing he was in serious danger, Peter reacted instinctively and legged it from the cage, sprinting for the alleyway that led towards the city’s main produce market. Jimmy chased after him and as if propelled by a catapult, the 200kg plus, full-grown male, leapt through the air pouncing on the hapless animal keeper. Bertram lay motionless just outside the alley as Jimmy crouched next to his trophy. Petrified bystanders scattered like flies, from the majestic feline who was snarling and growling in a most terrifying scene. A few minutes passed and seemingly Jimmy was satisfied with his work and began to stroll into the city. Peter, suspecting now was his chance to flee, stood and started to sprint in the opposite direction. Naturally, Jimmy turned and again pursued his
prey. Like a right-wing-media frenzy chasing down asylum seekers, it was a no contest. This time Jimmy seized the man with his jaw. Peter was now at the mercy of a feline he had helped raise since a cub. Jimmy began to maul Peter in the street, driving his razor sharp claws into the man’s neck and back. Now slashed and bleeding profusely in front of a horrified audience, the animal keeper must have been reciting what he thought would be his last words. And when Jimmy opened his jaws above Peter’s skull, it seemed his time was up. In this time, Charles had come running to the street and without hesitation jammed his fist into Jimmy’s jaw to stop the certain fatality. Also on the scene was courageous bystander Valentine Spendelove, who grabbed Peter’s arm and pulled him out from under the bloodthirsty animal. Jimmy latched onto Charles’ arm, the strong jaw and sharp teeth causing severe gashes that began adding to the river of blood flowing down George street. Undeterred, Charles held onto Jimmy and with his free hand began to create a diversion by striking the ground and the animal with a stick. The distraction allowed enough time for Valentine to move Peter from where he lay bathed in his own blood to the safety of the other side of the road. After a struggle, Charles was able to gain control of the tiger before muscling him back up the alleyway where Jimmy was finally restrained inside his cage. Peter and Charles were both taken to hospital following the event, with Peter’s injuries expected to be fatal. Both were eventually discharged and Charles went back to running the menagerie but Peter would never work with the animals again. In case a tiger attack in the CBD didn’t blow your mind, this piece of Brisbane history comes with an unbelievable epilogue. Just over six months later Peter shot and killed another man in his backyard in Toombul. He was charged with intent to murder, with the court recording Peter had obtained mental deficiencies and had a weak mental condition as a direct result of Jimmy’s attack. Staring directly across from where Jimmy spent his few minutes of freedom now stands the Brisbane Magistrates Court. With the image of a fully-grown Bengal tiger terrorising the city filling my mind, I flick my cigarette onto the street where Peter and Charles’ blood once flowed and wonder what other secrets are hidden below the bitumen
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_SWEENEY REED (1945 –1979) Rose I 1977 Embossed etching, edition 7/10 16.5 x 15.5 cm (image) Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Gift of Pamela, Mishka and Danila McIntosh 1990 © Estate of Sweeney Reed
GALLERY REVIEW _Benjamin Higgins
BORN TO CONCRETE UQ ART MUSEUM A
n art form that wittily taunts the presuppositions of the establishment, Concrete Poetry can be seen as an amalgamation of both poet and typographer. Be it a single word or combinations of the strategic manipulation of spatial and visual elements by the artists’ allows for an equal partnership of communicative abilities between the textual and the visual. Born to Concrete examines concrete poetry’s progression in Australia and Brisbane within the context of an expanding international art movement. Currently on display at The University of Queensland Art Museum in St Lucia, Born to Concrete has evolved out of an exhibition of the same name, held in 2011 at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, augmented by the respectful addition of fifteen primarily Brisbanebased artists from the university’s collection. Revealing artists’ work from the late 1960’s through to present day, Born to Concrete highlights the versatile artistic methodologies of the visual poets, through their multidisciplinary sensibilities. Printmaking, Letraset, sculpture, found objects, typewriter text, photocopies, digital video, offset printing, and mixed media are just some of the many techniques the visual poets employ into their practice. Works like indigenous Brisbane-based artist Vernon Ah Kee’s Austracism, 2003, a computer generated digital print, highlights not only a reliance on new technologies but is also indicative of a narrowing between concept and realisation, thereby quickening the process of fabrication. Concrete poetry’s origins can be traced to separate Swiss and Brazilian initiatives in the early 1950’s, but it flourished on its own terms within Australia. Each artwork comprises a vernacular engagement with the movement. Ah Kee’ Austracism points directly to social issues within Australia, driven by the antagonising repetition of the colloquial boganism ‘I’m not racist but’. Gordon Hookey’s arresting five piece concrete bomb set, variously labelled, terrified, paranoid, petrified, distressed, wind up ya arse, pointing to the fearful ideological mindsets and on-going fraught race relations. A collaborative work by openly gay Brisbane artists Luke Roberts and Scott Redford, finds stronger contemporary relevance than in the moment of its creation in 1992. Laconically inscribed with Marry Me six times on a piece of Masonite, behind six stacked copies of John Updike’s novel Marry Me: A Romance, the work speaks to what has now become high profile national debate on same sex marriage. As a survey exhibition, Born to Concrete demonstrates the movement’s complex history of transmission, its wit and playfulness, and its relevance to Brisbane as a city that did, and continues to, contribute towards cultural production that destabilises mainstream agendas
_Born to Concrete was curated in joint partnership with Katarina Paseta and Linda Short from the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne and Gordon Craig and Michele Helmrich from the UQ Art Museum. The exhibition runs from the 6th of July to the 6th of October 2013
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_VERNON AH KEE (1967–) Austracism 2003 Ink on polypropylene board, satin laminated, edition 1/3 120 x 180 cm Collection of the University of Queensland, purchased 2010 Photo: Carl Warner Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
GALLERY REVIEW _Benjamin Higgins
“
CONCRETE POETRY CAN BE SEEN AS AN AMALGAMATION OF BOTH POET AND TYPOGRAPHER
”
_GORDON HOOKEY (1961–) Bomb – terrified 2008 Bomb – paranoid 2008 Bomb – petrified 2008 Bomb – distressed 2008 Bomb – wind up ya arse 2008 Cast concrete, paint and mixed media 5 parts, each 31 x 21 x 21 cm Collection of the University of Queensland, purchased 2008 Photo: Carl Warner Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
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ARTIST _Anthony Lister
“
”
IM JUST REACTING TO A WORLD THAT’S TRYING TO CHANGE ME ANTHONY LISTER
TEXT&IMAGE _ISSUE ONE _15
W
hat was the first piece you sold, who bought it and how much did it sell for?
The first piece I recall selling was a painting called ‘daytura’ and it was sold to a random person who saw it when i entered it in a local competition in my neighborhood in Brisbane. I’m not sure exactly how much it sold for but it couldn’t have been more than $100 in 1997.
When did you realise that you could make it as a professional artist? It’s so pretentious to think that I’ve made it but I know that I stop delivering pizzas in second year university so I guess around 2001.
Why did you move to the States after uni? What are the short falls of the Australian scene and do artists need to move overseas before they can start making a decent buck? I moved to New York to complete my studies and get a better idea of the world. My intention was never to be an example for younger artists nor write a rule book on making it in the art world. If Australia had any downfall it would have something to do with the education system.
CanDo Campbell has beefed up Queensland’s anti-graffiti laws by threatening artists with up to seven years jail and confiscating their computers and cameras. Will these laws stop painters or re-new their sense of anti-authoritarianism? Its disgusting that art is considered a crime and punishable. If graffiti is art and art is a crime let god save us all.
Your work contains strong antiauthoritarian themes. What do have against people and institutions that hold the power in our society?
You are arguably one of Australia’s top visual artists. How do you feel knowing that you now command a degree of authority within the art world? I’m not sure which art world you’re talking about but if you’re talking about the one I think you are, I’m as powerless as everyone else and command only myself to do better than I did the day before. You can take the boy out of the street but you can’t take the street art out of the toy.
What percentage of you work is reserved solely for gallery exhibitions? Do you still make time to get out and paint in the street?
I’m not trying to change the world, I’m just reacting to a world thats trying to change me. They killed John Lennon for it, I guess you’re not living until you’re ready to die.
It’s about 60/40. 40% gives a fuck 60% couldn’t careless.
You tend to use a lot of sexual imagery in your work. What is the relationship between power and sex?
Sigh. I got involved in this thing to take control of my own environment for my people. It’s never been about money or fame, it’s always been about communication to me.
The only thing I rely on is my hand and my mind. Sex and power are two things use ambiguously to reference the abusive nature of sexual context in advertising and the lack of power that most people obliviously submit to in society.
Successful graff artists are selling work of tens-of-thousands of dollars these days. Do you think street art is at risk of become overly commercialised?
What are you working on at the moment? When is your next show and can you give us a taste of what you’ll be exhibiting? I’m working on shiny flowers and swords. My next show is in Sydney at Olsen Irwin Gallery. To describe the taste it would be sweet at first then have echoing tones of bitter concern and contemplation
ARTIST _Anthony Lister
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PHOTOGRAPHY _Dane Beesley
TEXT&IMAGE _ISSUE ONE _19
10
TIPS FOR FESTIVAL PHOTOGRAPHY DANE BEESLEY 01
A cigarette in the hand is worth 2 in the mud at a winter festival; take care of your essentials.
02 Bartering becomes your currency. Where once a 2 Lt Water bottle could disguise everything from Giggle Water to Cossack Juice now the only safe smuggle aid is a lens cleaner bottle, which goes through unchecked. Buying German beers or French waters is simply not an option for most photographers. If you can’t buy, barter. If you can’t barter, steal. There are no friends, there are only obstacles and enablers, choose your accomplices accordingly.
03 Find friends in high places. Smile at the bouncer, learn his name, he’s your mate, you’re friends now. When you enter the VIP bar make him feel special and later when you arrive with three new friends, Bruce will turn a blind eye.
04 Now lets get to work, make sure you’ve got batteries (charged over night), film or memory cards, a fast lens or two and you are ready to roll.
05 Plan your shoots because when that tour manager you can’t remember buys you a Jack Daniel’s and you realize it’s not only Jack Daniel’s, you’ll need a map.
06 There is always a bar more VIP than the VIP bar that you are in. This is a holding pen for groupies and hangers on, open doors, shake hands; find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
07 Sleeping is a luxury. Plans are safety nets. Live dangerously; fuck the safety net. Don’t plan where to sleep, this will get in the way of finding interesting photographs.
08 And when you wake from that tipi, clean your teeth with that lens cleaner.
09 An after party is always followed by an after party party or two more.
10 Leaving the festival is only the beginning of a new adventure. Get your images to your editors as fast as you can. Drive the band to the airport for the tour manager who is missing in action. Lie through your teeth. You’ve earnt it, after all, a picture tells a thousand words, you’re welcome to a few
PHOTOGRAPHY _Dane Beesley
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INTERVIEW _John Lupo Avanti
JOHN LUPO AVANTI BOLD COLOURS, THICK LINE WORK, A SURREAL STYLE BUILT TO LOOK GOOD ON SKIN
F
rom illustrator to animator to t-shirt design, John Lupo Avanti is comfortable drawing on any surface. But he reckons there’s a magic in ink on flesh. John grew up in Oakland, a working-class, Ghetto suburb in southern San Francisco. “The place used to be pretty rough,” John said. “But in the last ten years it’s become a bit of an artist hub.” Before John picked up a tattoo gun he was working as an illustrator and graphic novelist during the day and cooking at Eli’s Mile High Club, a punkrock bar in the evening. “It was my barber that got me into tattooing. He’d been in my ear for 26 years about how I should start. He used to take pity on me because I was this struggling artist and he’d say you should be like this guy Mike, who was another of his customers.” Turns out this Mike was Mike Malone, a big name in the international tattooing scene who, along with Sailor Jerry, pioneered tatts as an art form and helped bring them into the mainstream.
“When you’re from somewhere that isn’t very well known and then you find out someone big came out of the same area you kind of feel like you have a connection to something bigger than yourself.” John’s first gig as a trainee ink-man was at Ocean Avenue Tattoos in San Fran. “I wouldn’t say I had the most traditional apprenticeship. I started out serving customers and cleaning and then started tattooing after a year or so.” Doing the hard yards as an illustrator has help John build a reputation for quality workmanship faster than your average artist. His style is strictly traditional. His lines are bold, his palette is simplistic, with lots of black. “I like to use flat, almost 2-dimensional images that have surreal elements to them.” “I‘m not trying to take my illustrations and make those into tattoos, instead I make images that are designed to be tattoos. They are images that are designed to look good on skin
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IN A WEST END WAREHOUSE THE CREW FROM ELLASPEDE HAVE MERGED MODERN DESIGN TECHNIQUES WITH THE NOSTALGIA OF THE 50’S ROCKER SENSIBILITY.
COMPANY PROFILE _Ellaspede
T
he style was first made popular back in the 50’s and 60’s when greasers and rockers would take time out from combing back their pompadour haircuts to race between the transport cafés that dotted the post-war landscape of Britain and America. The riders were rebels, who disregarded the conformity of consumer culture opting instead for the freedom of the open road. Now Brisbane’s modern motor-heads can experience a taste of the lifestyle. Tucked away in a warehouse between the Brisbane river and Montague road two mates with engine grease in the veins and exhaust fumes in their lungs have set about reinvigorating this classic 1950’s style m otorbike.
TRIUMPH BASE, LOW SLUNG HANDLEBARS, REAR MOUNTED SEAT, BORED OUT MUFFLER, BUILT FOR SPEED AND NOISE. THE CAFÉ RACER HAS HIT THE STREETS OF BRISBANE.
Ellaspede directors, Leo Yip and Steve Barry, met back in 2006 when they were studying industrial design at QUT. While nowadays the lads waking hours are filled with thoughts of fast rides and streamlined design their initial careers started along a different path. After graduation, Leo worked as a consultant designing consumer electronics while Steve built medical equipment. But like the ton-up boys of post war era, wanderlust got the better of them. “I kind of got to the point where I’d spent all this time in high school and university but I’d never taken the time out to do something kind of fun. So I thought I’ll take a year off, and the plan was to go travelling and maybe do some design work here and there.”
After trying their hands on a few small projects the boys settled on a mutual interest in bikes. “Steve comes from a very heavy automotive background and he’s been modding cars since before he had a licence”, Leo said. “I’ve always wanted to have a bike but I wasn’t allowed to get one till I was 21. It was a Yamaha TW200, built out of a custom workshop in Sydney. I was cool having that bike, it was a bit of a head turner, and no one had anything like that in Brisbane at the time.”
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It was the experience on the back of that Yamaha that drew Leo to the conclusions that he could build something similar. Together with Steve he rebuilt a café racer and displayed it at Artisan Gallery in the Fortitude Valley. It wasn’t long before Brisbane’s petrol heads started to notice the lads potential. “After the show we had all sorts of people calling us up and asking if they could buy one of our bikes or if we could mod bikes they already had and we thought there was a business behind this.” One and half years down the track and Ellaspede is roaring along. “We’ve always got a something on the go and at any given time four shells line the workshop space, all at varying degrees of completion.” Their clients come from a wide range of backgrounds but for most the process is the same. It starts with a donation bike, maybe a relic that’s been sitting idle in the garage for a couple of years or something fresh from the show room. Leo and Steve then meet with the client to discuss their desired alterations and then they get to work. Sometimes a customer may only want a small, cosmetic mod, like a new dial or an elongated fuel tank that may only require a few weeks work. Other times they’ll want a full re-build. “It all really depends on what they want.” While they lads specialise in the old-school café racer style, they refuse to be constrained by nostalgia. “If a client wants a bike built purely for speed we are happy to do it for them, but most modern bikes can hit the ton.”
COMPANY PROFILE _Ellaspede
“FOR US IT’S LESS ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
Nor are they set on reviving the greaser, rockabilly subculture. “The culture is still around, but we’re less about building this pastiche style. Instead we are more contemporary. We’ve grown up with skate culture, with pushies, with surfing, which has heavily influenced the sorts of bikes we design and build.”
AND MORE ABOUT
Their clients are similarly open-minded. “Some will come in and really want that café racer feel and that’s something we can provide. Others will come in and say, “I want a bit of a bobber, a bit of a street tracker”, smash them together and we design them a bike.”
FUNCTIONALITY AND
“And that’s the difference, we’re not specifically pigeonholed with the types of bikes we build. We’ll happily build anything.”
AESTHETICS.”
However, the pursuit of speed is never far from the lads’ minds and this attitude is typified by 50cc scooter currently perched in the workshop. “We’re gonna see if we can get that to the ton,” Leo Chuckles. “But for us it’s less about the performance and more about functionality and aesthetics.”
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VLAD’S VORTEX IS SINISTER AND SILLY. HE IS DARKNESS GIVEN SHAPE AND LIKE THE BED SHEETS THAT SHIELD A FRIGHTENED CHILD, HIS DARKNESS OFFERS PROTECTION.
ARTIST _Vlads’ Vortex
V
lad was born from the mind of a 10-year-old girl. Part a demonic Dracula and part sweet side-kick and like an imaginary friend he was never far from the mind of his creator. “I’ve always drawn him,” the creator said.
He has travelled the world with his creator, from their childhood home in the industrial midlands of England to Australia’s southern cities. Now he finds rest in the creator’s northern Brisbane studio. When painting Vlad, the creator draws heavily on Russian typography and symbolism, the type found in Soviet propaganda posters and Slavic literature. Like Max Schreck’s 1922 vampire the
viewer never witnesses Vlad’s acts of cruelty or kindness but instead senses them through the shadow they cast over his surrounds. Sometimes Vlad is a creature of darkness, a haunting aspect that creeps in the dreams of frightful babes. Other times he is a plaything, a friend and confidant. But mostly he is the image of a thousand unspoke words and emotions. Brisbane had its first glimpse of Vlad the 2013 RAW exhibition. The kind words he received there have coaxed him out of the shadows. He’s not so shy anymore and creator said his dark grimace will start appearing more often
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We all should.
is Vic Simms. You won’t have heard of him. I’ll put a fifty on it. Though he is, undoubtedly, a national treasure. He is also my friend and I call him Uncle.
boats. He owns it all, as a traditional tribal elder. It’s his birthright. Bidjigal land, on which he was born, raised and stringently confined, until Buddy Holly came to town. The man’s name
real estate in Australia. Part of a small bunch of houses atop a wide open grass slope, serving as an amphitheatre to the stage of Botany Bay and, in a recent time, the arrival of the first
the occupants priorities lay somewhere away from mowing the lawn and straightening the fence. The beauty of this place is that it’s probably one of the most sought after pieces of
Recently, I stood at a piece of ground where a rock’n’roll legend was born. “Right here by this gate” he told me. It was a rusted, crooked gate. A kind of back entrance to a home where
Vic got locked up when he was 13. While in the clink he taught himself to play guitar and cracker prison records. At the time the Department of Correction took this justly deserved royalties. Now Vic is back on the streets and some of Australia’s top musicians have teamed up to help him seek vengeance.
MUSIC _Vic Simms
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I’D ALSO LEARNT OF THE INCREDIBLE CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE
”
MYTHS SURROUNDING THIS ALBUM AND THE MAN WHO MADE IT. LUKE PEACOCK
W
hen I stood with Uncle Vic in his home of La Perouse, I thought about how and why I wound up there, with him. About two years ago I was working at 98.9fm in Brisbane. I was transferring a pile of analogue recordings from First Nations artists on to a digital archive. One DAT that showed up on my desk, like most of them, had no label of its contents, save for a post-it note, which read ‘Do Not Touch’.On it was ‘The Loner’, an album written and recorded by Vic Simms. It blew my mind. I hit record on the computer and play on the DAT machine and listened to every word. I started writing down the words to a particular song; Poor Folks Happiness. I got stuck on one of the phrases, so I asked around the office to see if anyone could figure it out. Eventually, the Boss came downstairs, handed me his mobile phone and said “here, call him”. By this point, I’d learnt that ‘The Loner’ was impossible to get an original copy of. I’d also learnt of the incredible circumstances and the myths surrounding this album and the man who made it. ‘The Loner’ was recorded in 1973 in the kitchen of Bathurst Goal, notorious at the time for a series of large riots. In an attempt to restore some positive public relations, Vic was granted one hour to record the entire album, with a band he’d never met. We were as surprised as each other to be speaking on the phone. I know what he was thinking; “who the fuck is this kid from Queensland ringing me up at home, rabbiting on about some songs I recorded 40 years ago in prison?” I asked him if he could tell me what the phrase was that was puzzling me. I also asked for his permission, should I want to play, or record ‘Poor Folks Happiness’. He said yes, so I did. I went into the studio at work and knocked out my own version of the song. I then posted a copy to Vic. I still knew little about Vic Simms the man, but I did know by then that he speaks the truth, so I was stoked when he phoned me up and said that he liked my recording. So much in fact, that he suggested I record more. “Kinda like an EP” he said, “call it “The Loner Revisited or something”. I was so honoured. I told him that I’d love to, though if I were to do it, I’d have to do it properly and, at that point, I didn’t have much time or money to do it properly. “No rush” was his response. Enter Simon. Simon Homer runs Plus 1 Records, the label that Halfway is signed to. I play keys in Halfway. I told him about my cool little story at a barbecue and gave him a burned copy of “The Loner” that I had sitting in my car. Everyone that Simon spoke to after that had the same reaction as he did; “that’s fucking cool!” While Simon began fishing for ways to make the project happen, my five years at 98.9fm came to an end. The job had served me well, but I just didn’t wanna be there anymore. I was sitting on my friends front deck in Bardon, scared, broke and wondering what the hell I was gonna do with myself. Then Simon rang me and gave me my answer. Rock’n’roll saves the day! We sat and met. “You’ve gotta get a band together” Simon told me. He rattled off an impressive list of peeps who could potentially be involved. I thought about it for a while. “Let’s get the boys from the Medics!” The style of music we were looking at wasn’t exactly in the Medics bag, but I’d seen them play and knew the guys had it in them.
It was an attitude that took me. Also, of course, they’re a Black band, which was a must. Their first reaction was the same as most others “really…?”. Yep! We met around a table of beers at the Bardon Bowls Club and after a few, they were pumped. So was I. When we got together for our first rehearsal, I was nervous. “Is this gamble gonna pay off?” It did. They got it. And after two or three practices they were nailing it. I was bloody happy. Then I texted Uncle Vic. He was filthy. And I’d fucked up. If you’re gonna do something like this for someone, don’t leave them in the dark. I’d left it too long between phone calls and Vic had decided that, like countless times before, he’d been done over. He replied in no uncertain terms that he’d have no part in it. I was devo’d. But I rang and rang and finally Vic answered his phone. He gave me a piece of his mind and I took it. After all, we still hadn’t even met face-to-face. I decided not to back down. I told him it was gonna happen and it was gonna be awesome and he should at least be on my side or it was all pointless. I convinced him to catch a train up from Sydney, to come up and meet my family, to stay at my house, to meet Simon and to meet the boys. The night before Vic arrived, I was at the Bardon Bowls Club and I won two meat trays. Barbecue at my place! I invited everyone around. And Vic invited his friend and brother, Roger Knox, another musical treasure, who happened to be in town. We sat under my house and listened as Uncle Vic and Uncle Roger told some of the best yarns we’d ever heard. Of their prison tours together, of departed comrades and of Uncle Roger surviving two plane crashes in one day. Wow. The best thing about that weekend was that Vic and I got along famously. He was as relieved as I was. By this point, word had got around about our project. Russell Hopkinson - an avid music fan and drummer for You Am I - was just one person to voice their desire to play on the recordings. We already had a rhythm section, but I wanted him involved. Rusty and Vic knew each other. Rusty was the only person I knew that actually had an original copy of “The Loner”, along with some even rarer Vic Simms recordings. So I asked Rusty if he would produce the album. We found a small window of time that suited all parties and he flew in to Brisbane for the main sessions. We had a list as long as my arm of musicians wanting in. All sorts of musicians. People I admired, people I idolised and people that would add a lot of weight to public interest in the album. Unfortunately though, I just couldn’t find a place for them without it sounding silly, like ‘We Are The World’ or something. Some players I just couldn’t say no to, through either their stubbornness or mine. Over the four days of tracking, we had some very cool guests drop in and play. I could name them, but I wanna wait till the records out… Spend five minutes with Vic Simms and you’ll have a story. His life is full of them. I’m so proud to create and share this story with Uncle Vic. Especially the soundtrack
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SHORT STORY _Mandy B
L
ately I’ve been terrified of what sleep will bring me. For the last three weeks since the heat in my chest left me, since she left me and since I hit the age of 36, the nightmares have been coming at me thick and fast. They’ve been waking me at all hours of the night, full of past regrets and chucking big handfuls of winds and storms at me for what is around the corner. They’ve been sitting and waiting patiently every night for sleep to come, gnawing around the edges of my ears and my eyes, as I sit on my balcony cradled in the fresh air at the start of another Brisbane winter, slowly sipping on the cheap bottle of whiskey my love brought me home from her last trip to New Zealand. I’m sitting here, ignoring calls from the whores I’ve taken home over the last few weeks for the feel of skin beside me, for the want of another, for the taste of that glorious moment when, after fucking, I can curl up like a small child and drift into nightmare free sleep - the kind of sleep that only comes after hissing and hollering, after the warm glow of sex escapes you and falls over the sheets and makes her race to the bathroom to piss for fear of infection, that makes your legs lay full of tension and strong worry, lay like flat dough before the yeast makes it rise. There’s this one girl who has been calling me all week. Telling me that I owe her something. A nice night on the town. Flowers from the market. A trip to the city. Some kinda response. She calls after 8 at night when she knows I’ll either have a few beers under my belt or have swallowed a few valiums to bring in all the soft beauty beneath my feet. She calls and sits silent for a while, always. Waits for me to say her name. When I don’t, she screams her past at me. Screams at me all kinda images of the night I picked her up down the street and took her home to fuck her on the kitchen table, all sullen and dry and taking in the late night smells from the bin next to the fridge. And she keeps screaming, and I keep sitting and listening and waiting for her breath to run out and turn to tears. And it does as I hang up and wait for the next call to come. Turn on my stereo, roll a cigarette. Start to open the unpaid bills that have sat on my table for weeks. And the next call comes, and rings out my hallway, all sharp and insistent and wanting, as I pick up the phone and listen to her mid sentence telling me she could have loved me like she’s never loved before. Telling me the night that she spent with my Vodka breath between her legs, and her heels pushing into the base of my spine, was the most beautiful night of her life. Tells me she remembers the moon on my back all pale and smooth and waiting for her ashen kisses. Tells me she found some pleasure in the night. And this keeps on, and I still can’t remember her name or how she took away my number and a different version of the night. And I think to myself, as I’m sitting in silence sucking back a long neck beer and playing with the warts on my legs that I’ve had since a child, that tonight when she calls again, I will talk to her.
I will tell her she’s not the first crazy bitch I’ve taken home to fuck on my kitchen table. How the fat on her thighs made wet rough noises when she straddled me. How that night, I went through her small sequined purse and looked at her driver’s license when she went to piss and noticed that she was 10 years older than she’d told me. How the redness she is now probably getting on her arse is just like mine, and how she really should get it looked at. That the doctor on Main Street bulk bills and looks sweetly at you when you’re bent over taking her gloved hand at the base of your groin when she’s looking for all those nasty sores and cuts that women like you give men like me. She calls. I don’t tell her. I never do. I just sit quietly and listen to her tears and her lighter striking up another smoke. I listen to her young children crying for warm milk in the kitchen she’s sitting in. And it’s echoing like an empty collage cafeteria. I’m guessing it’s all veneered and stacking up with dishes and has dirt collapsing in the corners. I sit here and listen. Hear the faltering in her voice from all the past bruises under her skin. And I wonder if she has ever been loved. I know I’m not the only one she calls, and I know that one day she’ll meet some other sad dirty broken hearted bastard like me in her fashion. He’ll take her home and make her sit on his face, and she’ll think it’s fucking glorious as her thighs swallow him whole. He’ll remember her name when she calls and he’ll ask her over to sit in his lounge room and hold her hand in some woeful and tender way. Ask her to stay, all night. So I quietly hang up, as she’s going on about the way I kissed her and the light starts to flicker above me showing the grey small flicks in my hair, and I say to myself - this ageing man’s fucked way to many a broken hearted woman. As my heavy glass sits empty at my feet, I decide that I’ve had enough of her calling tonight and maybe forever. That this, this calling my unit at all times of my night to make me love her, is making me tired. And that in these times she calls there is drawing to be done and pots to be scrubbed. I wonder if any man has found those thighs sweet or remembered her name as I look at my watch and the phone starts to ring once more. And it keeps ringing as I sit silently in my old plastic chair with the small picture I’ve started to scribble on the table, and I think about the way I cried, when, with these artists’ hands and storm clouds, I brushed my only love’s hair into straight lines on our West End deck the afternoon before she left. And the phone. And I look down the hallway into the dark where the phone is screaming down my walls. And I sit. And it screams. And I finish my whiskey
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COLOURING IN PAGE
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Return of the mac
Printed by The OMNE Group courtesy of Ross Hariss
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