PRIMARY (1989)

After the demise of JUNKYARD in October 1989, I took some time out and headed north again to visit my Townville friends, and to try and find some inspiration.

Staying with Tracey Lewry and the NOISE crew at the Esplanade in Townsville, and fortunate enough to see the vast leap forward The Madmen had made – both musically and in terms of material they were tackling. Townsville at this time had a vibrant independent scene full of talented individuals, whereas Rockhampton was a redneck conservative backwater.

After a few weeks of total drunken excess, and catching up with Tracey, Tim, Ruth, the NOISE guys and my other Townsville mates, I was ready to return to Rocky and give a new band a shot.

It was very easy to get Alex interested as we both were missing the fun that we’d had with JUNKYARD, and we managed to convince Carl Drochman to drum for us.  Carl was also keen on being re-christened with a punk nickname, so during a drinking session I came up with Captain Carl Chaos for him! In the early days everyone called him Chaos, but as the nickname has stuck around for several decades he is now known universally as Capt Carl. I’m guessing he was probably named after Captain Sensible from The Damned!

We all deliberately decided that we would step back from the thrash and hardcore of JUNKYARD and go for a more tuneful approach, incorporating more melody and tuneage in our choice of songs. I remember at this time being more interested in learning new material than trying to write new originals, although Alex was in good form busting out new songs every week.

We also experimented around with how the group should look visually, adopting different stage looks at each show, and again being worlds apart from anything that was going on in Rockhampton, which of course was not very much!

In February 1989, with a few drunken practices under our belt, we approached the Savoy Hotel to convince them to give us a Tuesday night residency. We had to audition one afternoon, so we chose our catchiest songs and rounded up every cool girl we knew – so to the management’s surprise our audition was packed with all these great girls!

We started to party hard after the audition, and before we left that afternoon, the management sent us out via the nightclub part of the pub. To our surprise there was a table waiting for us loaded up with jugs of beer, apparently we had to help rate the next group of entertainers to audition for the management, which happened to be three new strippers!  Hard work but someone had to do it!

Alex was in his element, details omitted for privacy reasons, and we all left at some late hour with the wobbly boot definitely on!

So we proceeded to play every second Tuesday night, after the strippers had done their “set”, with management obviously very happy with the 80 or so people we would pull on an otherwise quiet night. We charged $2 on the door per punter, and the pub owners kept us supplied with free beers.  We met a lot of cool and very interesting people in Rockhampton’s emerging independent scene – people that we would never have met if there hadn’t been this central meeting place.

We named the band PRIMARY after the Cure song, and our audience were comprised of more females than males. I made some great friends during this period of my life, and we had a bunch of fun playing our Tuesday nights at the Savoy Hotel.

I remember going up the street to Delalandes music store to buy strings for Alex before the first gig, and my very first meeting with Johnny and Cherri Busby, and their mum Barb.

As I was paying for the strings, this young kid and I started talking – I told him I was playing up at the Savoy, and he showed me the brand new Rickenbacker guitar that he’d just bought!

Little did I know that Johnny and his sister Cherri would become great friends to me, and that they would find success and fame later on as members of their bands The Clergy, St Jude and Halfway!  Some meetings just stick in your head for all the right reasons!   And even though they were underage Johnny and Cherri did sneak into one of our Savoy shows to check the band out!

Rob and Shaun were two Uni students who saw every show we played, and used to sit up the very front, usually trading friendly insults with Alex. They were really supportive and kept a steady flow of beers coming up to us as we were playing onstage.  They were throwing a big party in North Rockhampton, and the deal was we’d play until the beers ran out.  They had also hired a professional DJ who set up under the house. For some reason Capt Carl didn’t come along, so Alex and I set up our amps and guitars upstairs and proceeded to play the Sex Pistols “never mind the bollocks” album live – song by song!

Everyone deserted the DJ and we had a great time.

Little did we know Rob had stockpiled considerable quantities of home brew, and as per our deal we stayed and played until the beer ran out – which was a week later!  Rob’s flatmate Penny had an amazing collection of early Australian punk on LP, original pressings of Boys Next Door, Models etc. She became our friend as well and made us feel very welcome by preparing huge lavish vegetarian banquets, and talking about the glory days of punk rock in Melbourne when she was growing up.

After the beer finally ran out, we all chipped in for some wine casks, as everyone was enjoying each other’s company and no-one wanted the week long party to end!

We were scheduled for our third show at the Savoy as part of our Tuesday night residency. We were regulars now during the week at the Savoy, with friendly bar staff, and a meeting point for all the cool people we’d meet on Tuesday nights, so there was always a good scene at the pub any hour day or night

Alex and I met up with Carl about 10am that morning and for some reason he was sick of playing and wanted to cancel that night’s show. The second show Alex had to hide Carls’ boots during the sound check to stop him from leaving as well, so we decided that we would play anyways and it was Carl’s choice if he wanted to drum or not.

We hurriedly made up flyers for “Alex and Bollox presents…” and then drank for 12 hours straight until we were due to play. The results as you can expect were disasterous.  Instead of the tight punky band of the past, the large crowd of over 100 people were treated to two drunken punks playing a shambolic noisy set and relishing it.  Management were aghast, they hatched a plan to keep us plied with free beer all night if we didn’t return to the stage!  A plan to which we heartily agreed it must be said!  After the bar shut at 1 p.m. we were then taken to every niteclub in Rocky and kept plied with free beers until dawn. They were good blokes those Savoy managers!!

After the hangovers settled, Alex and I realised we were drummerless yet again, and we knew to stay in Rocky we’d be playing to the same 70 people each week, with chances that it was unlikely the Savoy would book us again anyway!

We made plans to move to either Townsville or Brisbane, luckily sanity prevailed so we decided to move to Brisbane.

LINEUP
Cameron Borg aka Bollox – bass, vocals
Brett Nash aka Alex Papsmear – guitar, vocals
Carl Drochman aka Captain Carl Chaos – drums (2 gigs)

ORIGINALS
Song in E (Alex / Bollox)
The Angry Song (Alex)
Anarchy by Alex (Alex)
We don’t care (Alex)
World Won’t Listen (Bollox)

COVERS
Teenage Riot (Sonic Youth)
Flip Your Wig (Husker Du)
Divide and Conquer (Husker Du)
Orange Crush (REM)
It’s Not You (The Cure)
10:15 Saturday Night (The Cure)
In My Eyes (Minor Threat)
Minor Threat (Minor Threat)
Steppin Stone (Monkees)
C’mon Everybody (Eddie Cochran)
Something Else (Eddie Cochran)
Mongoloid (DEVO)
Ha ha ha (Flipper)
Almost Past Caring (The Madmen)
Public Image (PiL)
Grinding Halt (The Cure)
Ask (the Smiths)
London (the Smiths)
Deeana (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)
Beat on the Brat (The Ramones)
The entire “never mind the bollocks here’s the sex pistols” album (Sex Pistols)
(Can’t remember the rest but sure there were more!)

GIGS PLAYED
Savoy Hotel Rockhampton Feb 14^th 1989
Savoy Hotel Rockhampton Feb 28^th 1989
Party – North Rockhampton Mar 1989 (Alex & Bollox only)
Savoy Hotel Rockhampton Mar 14^th 1989 (billed as “Alex & Bollox”)

PHOTO
Live pics taken at Savoy Hotel, Rockhampton Feb-Mar 1989
© Angela Philipoom, Leslea Biglia, Catherine Austin

RECORDINGS
Rehearsal recording of “It’s Not You” (Cure cover)

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