Before Year Zero – The Seventies and early 80s
It’s a well-known fact that many of the punk bands that emerged in 1976 started everything at Year Zero. Once you became a part of the punk movement, any previous bands you were involved in suddenly ceased to exist. Taking my cues from such inspiring people as Joe Strummer and John Lydon, that was good enough for me too. So officially I did nothing until forming CYST, my first punk band in 1982.
Just as Joe Strummer had the ‘101-ers’, and Mick Jones ‘The Delinquents’, and Steve Jones and Paul Cook ‘The Swankers’, here’s a round up of what I was doing in the Seventies and early ‘80’s before punk changed my life and music forever.
THIRD CULTURE (1980)
Band pic (L-R) Cameron Borg – rhythm guitar/ Ray Johnson – bass, vcls / Wog Dog Corry – lead gtr / Maggot Meyers -drums, vcls
Pic (c) Ray Johnson 1980
Talk of starting a band in Grade 9 at school in 1978 lead to my very first band with a bunch of misfits I encountered at North Rockhampton High School. The band comprised of Ray Johnson on bass and vocals, Maggot Meyers on drum duties, Wog Dog Corry on lead guitar, and myself on guitar. An easy band to get nostalgic about now, mainly because we were so naïve and enthused about being in our own group.
Wog Dog gave us all Beatle nicknames “John (me), George (wog dog), Paul (Ray) and Ringo (maggot)”. Ray nicknamed me Cameron Ramone, probably from his fascination with The Beatles more than a homage to The Ramones, but I’m not really sure? I remember we rolled around laughing at The Ramones when they appeared on Countdown – they were so spotty and illiterate, so maybe it was a pisstake – who knows?
Ray had a band mantra “There’s only The Beatles, KISS and us”, which is charming and so ‘70s in its own way. We all dug The Beatles, and when John Lennon was murdered we were all the more determined to start our own group. Ray also loved Meatloaf and KISS, wog dog loved KISS, Iron Maiden, The Runaways and The Go-Go’s, maggot was a certified Cold Chisel freak, and liked anything from Blondie to Zappa.
Pre-punk in 1978-1980, I remember being enthused by mainly Aussie rock bands – everything from AC/DC, skyhooks, the angels, the saints, cold chisel etc. I loved The Beatles esp. John Lennon, hadn’t yet discovered Bob Dylan, and was the only kid in school to hear The Clash’s London Calling album the day it was released, and liked early KISS, Cheap Trick , The Runaways, and Joan Jett solo too!
Several years earlier (1976-1977) as a 12-13 year old kid growing up in Melbourne the first band I ever dug was ABBA! If punk is about honesty there you have it!
We started practising earnestly in a downstairs room at maggot’s house. Ray was a natural on the bass, as was Wog on guitar, with Maggot off key on vocals and loose on the drums. I only knew three open chords that hurt my fingers to play! Ray and Maggot shared vocals, I got to sing “hound dog” by Elvis Presley! Wog dog recorded at least two practice sessions, since irretrievably lost in his subsequent divorce settlements.
These are the songs I can remember from that period, though I am sure there were others I have forgotten.
LINEUP
Cameron Borg aka Cameron Ramone – guitar
Maggot Meyers – drums, vocals
Ray Johnson – bass, vocals
Wog Dog Corry – lead guitar
ORIGINALS
Life’s the greatest rip-off (Cameron)
I don’t care (Cameron),
Had Enough (Maggot)
COVERS
Hound dog (Elvis Presley)
I wanna hold your hand (The Beatles)
Then She Kissed Me (Crystals)
Start me up (Rolling Stones)
Alone with you (Sunnyboys)
Knockin on Heavens Door (Dylan)
Wild Thing (The Troggs)
Jailbreak (AC/DC)
I love playing with fire (Runaways)
GIGS PLAYED
Peter Mundt’s 18th Birthday Party – somewhere in suburbs of North Rockhampton 1980
Harvest Inn, Musgrave Street – one song
Grosvenor Hotel – Target Christmas Party – one song
PHOTO
Party – North Rockhampton 1980 (Pic © Raymond Johnson)
RECORDINGS
Two Harrison Street rehearsal tapes – presumed lost
CONVENT REFORM (1981)
Sadly soon after the only full live show Third Culture played, Ray and Wog Dog secretly defected and began rehearsing with a new band. Maggot soon got wind of it, and after our obvious initial disappointment over our friends’ betrayal we saw it as an opportunity to get a harder sounding group going. In hindsight the boys were probably appalled by my and Maggots’ disasterous skills, but having a chat would’ve been a braver option than simply running away.
But hey we were just a bunch of kids at the time, and those things seemed a hell of a lot more serious then than they do now. Maggot and I regrouped and recruited two new players – John Kendricks on vocals and guitar, and Michael Tsang on lead guitar. As there were three guitarists and I was the least capable, I dropped back to bass, which in hindsight was a Godsend. In fact I didn’t play guitar again in a band until I formed MILDRED in 1994!
We rehearsed solidly and consistently, playing heavier songs – stuff like AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Rose Tattoo and more standard ‘70s rock drivel courtesy of Hendricks and Tsang (Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones). Rehearsals ended up descending into huge drinking sessions, pretty soon it was obvious Michael Tsang (a PNG student) was hopeless at handling the piss.
After one gig at one of Maggot’s legendary parties, sanity prevailed and Maggot hung up his drum sticks for the time being, Tsang left dejected and hungover, and John Kendricks and I decided to recruit a drummer and new lead guitarist.
LINEUP
Cameron Borg – bass
John Kendricks – guitar, vocals
Maggot Meyers – drums, vocals
Michael Tsang – lead guitar
GIGS
Party at North Rockhampton 1981
PHOTO
Maggot and I at this time at a High School colleague’s party – 1981 (Pic © Cameron Borg)
RECORDINGS – None
THE JOHN KENDRICKS EXPERIENCE aka NO OFFENCE (1982)
By pure chance John and I had got the address wrong to see a drummer in Frenchville. We accidently went to the house next door, and met a slightly older guy (19 years old maybe?) playing amazing drums, and his younger brother Greg Ward.
He introduced himself as Robbie Ward, and after a quick chat we knew we’d found our drummer, as a bonus his brother Greg was an accomplished lead guitarist, and we quickly started rehearsing three or four nights a week in the garage attached to Rob’s Gran’s house. With constant practice and having better musicians to play with, I soon picked up the bass really quickly.
We played a large repertoire of songs, everything from The Police (Rob’s hero was Stewart Copeland, and he was perfecting his style), The Jam, Kinks, Who. Actually a lot of stuff that’d be called Mod now, but then it was just a bunch of great (mostly) English songs.
We played a big party out in a hall on the Talbot Estate that had 100’s of people attend, and we soon got a taste for playing live. With the town locked up by the local Musos Club, it was hard to break the monopoly and find venues to play at, so we started running our own shows.
This club and by default Rockhampton’s music scene was ruled over by an ageing group of progessive rock musicians and their young underlings , all with their own monopoly of the town , making it impossible to find gigs if you didn’ t join their club and pay allegiance to their own version of rock n roll despotism. They were anti anything new, were obsessed with chords and scales and having the ‘ right’ instruments, making it a very blinkered and insular fan club.
Undaunted we rented the St Johns Ambulance Hall ourselves, and threw a gig combined with the traditional pissup, and were starting to become known. Greg left the band to relocate to Bundaberg, which was a shame as it was great to have the two guitars and his talent on lead guitar, which reduced us down to a three-piece, and to John’s credit he knuckled down and tightened up his playing a great deal.
Around this time one of the most important events happened to my music and in my life. I watched the ABC program “Rock Arena” which presented a Malcolm McLaren special, which of course included footage of the Sex Pistols. It was a pivotal moment, I finally got to hear and see the Sex Pistols – the band that everyone I ever asked about had always dissed out on, and they were more than fantastic, they were a life changing revelation!
Somewhere in another suburb of Rocky, a young Richard Dale saw the same program, and although it’d take a few years for our paths to cross – we discovered punk rock the very same night! It would be accurate to say we felt the same inspiration and impact from seeing the Sex Pistols as had happened in the UK six years earlier, and had inspired the whole ‘76 wave of punk bands to form in their wake, for example; inspiring Woody Mellor to leave the 101’ers and join The Clash as Joe Strummer!
You got to remember – this was all pre-internet days, the worldwide web didn’t exist for the public. No email. Everything was slow, and cultural and music things took sometimes 5 years or more to transition from the UK and USA to Australia. Our only news on the punk bands were microscopic articles and reviews in the NME or Melody Maker magazines from the UK, which were all sent by sea mail, and took six months to hit the Australian newsagents.
Luckily for Dick Dale and I, the NME had published a punk focussed magazine called “Punk Lives” – it took 6 months to reach Rockhampton from London, but was full of articles and photos of the emerging 2nd wave of UK punk that kicked off in 1982
This was also before the advent of CDs, the main formats were LP records (or albums), which for some reason people these days call “vinyls” but they were never called that, 7” singles, or cassettes. For a brief few years in the mid-‘70’s eight-track cartridges were very popular too.
I recall getting hold of the Sex Pistols album required placing a ‘special order’ through the local record store, and several months wait, as even “Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Sex Pistols” was not an easy LP to find and purchase in 1982. Of course the wait was well worth it, making most of the music I’d previously been listening to and playing completely redundant and boring!
So straight away – new short haircuts were in order in the band, John also jumped in, partly for the novelty but also he could sense the excitement of doing something new and different in a town that was still stuck in the songs and mentality of the sixties and early 70s.
We started designing and screening our own t-shirts, and I taught myself to play bass properly by learning every song on the “Never mind the bollocks here’s the Sex Pistols” album. We soon added Sex Pistols songs to our set list, in addition to The Jam songs we already knew, and dropped the dinosaur rock songs like a hot spud!
This punky three-piece played three shows at The Oriental Hotel (later renamed The Savoy, and then The Harmony) – with the new punk songs dividing the audience into fans and outraged punters. John Kendricks booked the band (renamed NO OFFENCE from the long winded and hopelessly 60s inspired JOHN KENDRICKS EXPERIENCE) into the CIAE (now CQ University) refectory for two shows (an afternoon matinee and a night show) and soon disappeared into the night with the cash. A sad end to a great lil band.
LINEUP
Cameron Borg – bass, vocals
Greg Ward – lead guitar (first 2 shows)
John Kendricks – guitar, lead vocals
Robbie Ward – drums
GIGS
St Johns Ambulance Hall, North Rockhampton 1982
Talbot Estate shed, Rockhampton 1982
The Oriental Hotel – 3 shows – 1982
CIAE Refectory – 2 shows – 1982
PHOTOS – (probably in Robbie Ward’s archive – stay posted)
RECORDINGS – (rehearsal tapes possibly in possession of Ward Bros.? – inquiries being made)
CYST (1982)
Having dabbled in punk there was no turning back and Year Zero had begun. I began discovering as many punk bands as I could, and was busy adding The Clash, The Slits, Generation X, X-Ray Spex, the Damned, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Dead Kennedys, PiL, and Flipper to my music collection.
As well as the new 2nd wave of punk bands in the UK, which included amongst others, the Newtown Neurotics, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Abrasive Wheels, GBH and The Exploited, and heaps of bands which appeared on the NO FUTURE, RIOT CITY and Anagram labels!
It was always exciting to save up some cash, and order a box of vinyl from Alternative Tentacles in the States, so we became aware of Bad Brains, Flipper, MIA, DOA, Husker Du, The Butthole Surfers, the Germs, and many more great bands very quickly!
CYST became my official 1st band, everything else having been blanked out as if it never existed. Year Zero had begun. Rockhampton had only ever had one punk band before CYST, The Rejects, who existed briefly in 1979, a bunch of naughty Catholic schoolboys, who enjoyed the early punk image of safety pins and slashed suit coats, and were miles ahead of everyone by playing Radio Birdman, Stooges and Ramones covers.
Sadly they only played a handful of self-run shows in Church halls and parties, and were already ancient history in 1982.
THE REJECTS were fronted by Dave Burrows on vocals, and as luck had it one of my best mates from playing football was Dave’s brother Mick.
I first met Mick when as an outsider from the local Catholic School he crashed the North Rocky State high school dance dressed as Johnny Rotten – in 1978, and I always admired him for his bravado and audacity.
Being a long-time Sex Pistols fan Mick was a natural to start a punk band with, and with The Rejects connection it was a done deal. Mick took up guitar not knowing a note, but in every respect it didn’t matter as he had attitude by the ton.
Mick was great at turning old op shop suit coats and jackets into punk rock works of art. In ‘82 slashed suits, spray painted jackets, hand-made t-shirts and hand screened original designs, with accompanying chains, safety pins and badges were very cool indeed. At least we thought so… and we stood out like sore thumbs in the streets of Rockhampton.
Maggot was recruited for the drums, as he was the only one I knew mad enough back then to want to play in a punk band, although punk was definitely not his thing. He was more happy listening to 10cc or Chicago than the Sex Pistols! As part of the deal he brought in a mate Lee Spindler, as the group’s singer. Lee was perfect, a right nutter who was AWOL from the Air Force, which added some extra element of mystery to the band.
CYST rehearsed at Mick’s house in Campbell Street, droning on for hours until the cartons of beers won. The band was a great laugh, and we played one official show also at Mick’s house, all I can remember is playing ‘anarchy in the u.k.’ six times in a row, though we would’ve had some dodgy originals that I cannot remember – it was no different to a rehearsal except people were there! When Lee took off to escape the RAAF service police, maggot lost interest and Mick and I decided that we’d had a great bunch of fun, and called CYST a day!
LINEUP
Cameron Borg – bass
Lee Spindler – vocals
Maggot Meyers – drums
Mick Burrows – guitar
GIGS
Party Campbell Street Rockhampton 1982
PHOTOS (being sourced)
RECORDINGS
None