C/D, S/D : TISM

They have a web site up at http://www.tism.com.au/

But then TISM were never about breaking new ground anyway, or even music to begin with. They just mock and sneer: at music, themselves, and anyone who can be arsed listening to them. 'Music's crap, we're crap, you're all crap. The joke's on you, SUCKERZ! Now go buy the album'.

Their first single was released with all 4 sides of the 12" sleve sealed up so you had to ruin it to get it out. Thats the kind of humour they have... I liked it and them for a long time but it can wear a little thin if you hear it too often.

That said, "TS Eliot, He Wanker" and "Fosters Carpark Boogie" are pretty bloody funny/great songs.

Surely one of the least exportable bands ever, I'd have thought, given the endless references to Z-grade celebrities and specific locales...

Actually, there was one more recent song where they warned "Don't get off the train at..." and denigrated just about every Melbourne suburb, which was fun. Anyone know what that track is?

Don't get off the train at Richmond
The skins want your Doc Martins
Don't get off the train at Camberwell
The writers want your Air Jordans

Don't get off the train at Essendon
You'll get attacked for your moccas
Don't get off the train at Frankston
You'll get attacked by the rockers

Don't get off the train at Eltham
The yodel yobs want your lederhosen
Don't get off the train at Caulfield
The yid boys want your copy of The Chosen

Don't get off the train at Broadie
The petrol heads want your Torana
Don't get off the train at Laverton
The gorilla gang wants your banana

Don't get off the train at Broadford
The bikies want your leather jacket
Don't get off the train at Kooyong
Tennis toughs want your racket

Don't get off the train at Box Hill
The skaters want your ramp
Don't get off the train at Noble Park
3174 want your postage stamp

Don't get off the train at Ringwood
The Goths want your mascara
Don't get off the train at Windsor
The sandmen want your pyjamas

There are no "yodel yobs" in Eltham! Mind you Greensborough's crawling with them and that's only a couple of stops along the ine.

You know, they're not unlike Half Man Half Biscuit, but with more choreography!

xpost: As someone raised in Greensborough, I'm ashamed that I'm not sure what "yodel yobs" are.

Yes, they are a strange counterpart to Half Man Half Biscuit.

Another name. :) I've always been posting but changing the name field, but I grew out of that. Presumably I will grow back into it again.

Aint they painters and dockers with balaclavas?

DEFECATE ON MY FACE!!!

I THINK I GOT SATURDAY NIGHT PALSY, YEH YEAH!!!

also /= DAAS.

The drunken Aussie I met in Kyoto told me they were "law students or something."

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/66/Derm_cover.jpg/200px-Derm_cover.jpg

their worst album by some considerable distance :(

First death. How fucking depressing.

their worst album by some considerable distance :(

-- energy flash gordon, Sunday, 9 March 2008 15:22 (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

rong. Some gems on there, and 2pot Screama alone is superb.

Wait, it's not as good as the others, is it? Forget I said anything.

:(

V sad to hear about Jock's passing, yeah. He was only 56 or something - but thinking on that, that makes me realise how on in years the TISM guys must all be by now, crikey.

I loved them at the Big Day Out in 1994 or so - they were playing at the same time as Sonic Youth, so RH Barrassi kept shouting "go and see Sonic Youth! They're from New York! We're only from Glen Waverley!"

Crowd went bonkers and stayed on. The fact there was a crazy mud filled moshpit may have helped matters.

^ this. Great gig, that.

btw 56?! Woah, old dudes.

No I think I got that wrong actually, he was only in his 40s :(

51.

Forty years of livin' - then death,
That's all that's left;
Forty years - then death.
Forty years - all that's left.

:(

Dude should ask for his money back, they recorded that before he joined, he could have taken it as a guarantee.

Very true. He only got half that. SOMEONE CALL TODAY TONIGHT!!

Lovely Jock obit in the Age today.

This one? This is the first thing I've seen that tells me it's Tokin Blackman, not Jock Cheese, who died!

He also enjoyed a quietly satisfying career playing Chicago blues as the front man of his own band, Blind Lemon Chicken.

Kit: rite yea, I got confused too - Jock isnt Jock Cheese, just to muddle matters.

As someone stated earlier, is this the first time a TISmer's been officially "unmasked" so to speak?

They listed all their real names in the credits of the John Safran episode they appeared in, and Ron came slightly out when he wrote a book about the American Civil War a few years ago. Apart from that, this is the only consensual example, but one of them did get outed by a paper for marrying Skase's niece or summat.

http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=735 !

Also: Adam earlier touched on them being "borderline slanderous" and to me that has always appealed (I never thought of the Negativland comparison). The book they released that had to be censored with black texta all throughout due to slander was pretty good. Nasty refs to Derryn Hinch, Amway, Bert Newton etc. Would love to see an unedited copy but I hear they're impossibly rare.

Thought this was more widely known :

http://tinyurl.com/6ea5nm

http://tism.com.au/

http://www.thedc3.com.au/
http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/i-was-the-guy-in-tism/id406582652

MOVEMENT.

Also fascinating that DC no longer even prentends to have not been in TISM.

TISM deserved bigger status. Funny shit, good tunes.

best video ever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiHdpAVIHgo

Also fascinating that DC no longer even prentends to have not been in TISM.

don't think he did when he was in Root!, not really

do think it's a shame he didn't just keep using that name when they split

"How can people like reggae?"

He asks a good question

don't think he did when he was in Root!, not really

He seems to have stepped it up a bit more, now that he's basically saying 'oh hai my name is Damian Cowell and I was the guy in TISM'.

Sucks though, it'll be a while before he can just say his name & get instant recognition.
"Hi i'm Damian Cowell" -- blank look. "Humphrey B Flaubert?" --- "Ohh! Awesome pleased ta meetcha."

First time I ever saw them was on Hey Hey It's Saturday when I was little and they were all wearing Ku Klux Klan outfits.

Was that Saturday Night Palsy? I remember that! Daryl got the shits with them iirc.

Brown/black outfits, or are we talking about different performances?

"Ohh! Awesome pleased ta meetcha."

More like "*stunned silence*....[thinks: bbbbbut you're so OLD]"

best video ever?

Maybe. THis is pretty great, though probably much greater if you're from Melbourne and a bit older than me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYwQ9wOOLxA

They also appear in the pretty fucking bleak movie Holiday on the River Yarra, also notable for having a 16yo Claudia Carvan in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wgvDe66NcI

Hah, I clearly havent been keeping up to not have been aware of these developments!

THis is pretty great, though probably much greater if you're from Melbourne and a bit older than me.

Well that makes me feel REALLY old because for me, "Thunderbirds" was a much later TISM single from after I stopped following them so much. I was into them when TS Eliot and all that stuff came out.

Thats depressingly long ago.

Is that clip shot down on the riverfront near the maritime chapel.. thingy?

Thunderbirds is probably the most wholesome clip ever to be shot in Melbourne. Can't think why Ringwood Sec College is in there btw, not that TISM was full of school teachers or anything.

I didn't get into TISM in the Truckin' era because I thought they were a sports/country band, although I was acutely aware of them at the time. Hot Dogma is where I came in (think I might have done the awesome Lucky Cunt anecdote upthread).

Oh, I didn't. Okay. So Lucky Cunt was taken off the shelves by the police the day after it was released. Day after that, I went into Au-Go-Go (Lt Bourke St) with three mates and the bloke there produced a few copies from under the counter for $13 each. Still got mine and will treasure it always.

Yeah my ex had the Ken Done version of that. And the book. And a copy of "Form and meaning reach ultimate conclusion" which according to wikipedia is quite rare now, which suprises me - thats all the songs I know the best.

http://www.jedduff.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/drooling-homer_full1.jpg

The next EP, Australia The Lucky Cunt (1993) was TISM's most controversial release to date. Courts issued an injunction order of the CD when the Ken Done Society threatened legal action over the artwork,[2] which parodied Done's signature style and depicted a koala sucking a syringe. The matter was settled for an undisclosed amount of money "fairly close to the amount that Radiohead spends on buying friends"[5] and was re-released with new artwork as Censored Due To Legal Advice.

That Wikipedia article is thoroughly entertaining.

TISM's first concert was on 6 December 1983, almost 12 months after dismissing their bedroom recordings. The Get Fucked Concert at the Duncan McKinnon Athletics Reserve in the small suburb of Murrumbeena was considered a complete failure which caused the band to officially split up. They reformed the following year and have considered every subsequent performance a "re-union gig".[2]

Yeah I love "the get fucked concert".

Trayce if you're not into the electronic TISM you might at least enjoy the bonus disc that came with www.tism.wanker.com, really great old-sk00l TISM with simple songs and poetry. 'Describe the Worst Headjob I've Ever Had? Fantastic!', 'The Last Australian Guitar Hero' and 'Opposite Day' are all excellent musically and lyrically.

^^^ Att: Shock Records Faulty Pressing Do Not Manufacture Might be my favourite TISM disc.

Still pissed I got rid of my twofer Machiavelli and the Four Seasons/Machines Against the Rage release.

My fave album will always be Truckin'.

I think they played the Monash Ball at the Palace in like 95 or something...at one point Barassi & Flaubert were dancing on the bar totally starkers in their balaclavas... one of the best concerts I ever saw!

I found the Hey Hey clip...turns out it wasnt Klan outfits but it's still hilarious! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4janHITY8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I had a copy of beasts of suburban and i sold it to Second Spin for booze money, lol :/

Veg: I saw them play the Palace in ... 92 or 93? Was just after I moved here anyway. They hadnt played in quite some time, sold out the venue. Came on to a stage covered in cardboard trees, proceeded to cut them up with petrol-powered chainsaws.

Room was filled with 2-stroke fug and flying bits of cardboard. Absolute fuckin chaos. Best gig ever.

Oh god, we were both wrong. Maybe I've got it muddled with a Big Gig appearance or something.

Playing Truckin' right now, amazed at one line in 'If you're Not Creative, Get Stuffed' which I'd completely forgotten about and daren't repeat here.

Second Spin just closed btw ;_;

Closed about a month ago yeah.

Thats a diff Hey Hey show to the one I sae them on - they ran round and round ramps with lawnmowers.

I replayed their seminal-to-young-me C0untd0wn Rev0luti0n performance on rag3 the other year, where they basically just ran around and headbutted each other in lieu of miming. (Actually AA you were going to send me DVDs of all those four weeks of retro!)

And a copy of "Form and meaning reach ultimate conclusion" which according to wikipedia is quite rare now, which suprises me - thats all the songs I know the best.

Not that rare, it had a second pressing! I have the original blue cover, but not the poster. Shop I bought Hot Dogma from also took the interview 7" out and wanted an extra $35 for it >:(

Easy for ppl to still know all the songs though, it's stayed in print as part of Gentlemen, Start Your Egos, and the box set, and the Shock reissue of Gentlemen, and the Mushroom reissue of Gentlemen... OK, so Murdoch's probably landfilled those by now.

Still pissed I got rid of my twofer Machiavelli and the Four Seasons/Machines Against the Rage release.

Nah, that's no loss - you'd be worse off if you'd ditched the earlier Four Seasons/Gold! Gold! Gold! twofer, or the original Machines Against The Rage/All Homeboys twofer

amazed at one line

...for a moderate figure?

Yeah that's the line.

(Actually AA you were going to send me DVDs of all those four weeks of retro!)

agh so sorry I completely forgot about that. Just last week I found all the DVDs and put them in a secure place, so if ever I can work out how to copy DVDs I will do you them relatively speedily. There's R0ck Ar3nas and Rec0v3r1es in there too.

Cool-o. Think I had a 40-minute TISM gig in late one night too.

agh I deffo missed that.

boooo

yep, live at "The Club" in Melbourne, October 1988. also had a short Chi5el set, and a full, never-before-broadcast H00d00 Gurus gig, and the ep of C0untd0wn Rev0lution where the hosts staged an on-air protest against miming. AND MORE!

I remember one of those protests, what were they thinking etc.

The "extras" on this DVD disc are interviews with the crowd before and after the concert, an option called "Ron-Cam" which is an edit of the footage where Ron Hitler-Barassi is always in shot

Brilliant.

Arrr.... I'm jealous of all you louts who've seen *any* of their live shows.

I've seen them heaps! Not since the mid 90s tho.

best gig was the Big Day Out 93 (94?) appearance where we were all pogoing in the mud. I think RHB lost 90% of his clothing in the moshpit.

Is that when they had the giant balloons on their heads?