In 1984 The Scientists exchanged a promising future as Australian ?pub rock? icons for relative obscurity in Britain, all on the strength of one glowing review of their Mini LP ?Blood Red River? from NME?s Barney Hoskins.

They had already conquered Sydney?s inner city rock scene and were well and truly Sydney?s premier underground hard rock act. The singles ?Swampland? and ?We Had Love? as well as ?Blood Red River? had all topped the indie charts. Their long hair, their tacky post psychedelic threads, their Jackson Pollock approach to playing rock?n?roll and the fact that live, they were an unstoppable, out of control beast on alcohol, marked them out as different to the rest…

Track Listing: (55:29)
Set It On Fire (K Salmon) (2:51)

Blood Red River (K Salmon/L Fearon) (2:35)

Revhead (K Salmon/B Sujdovic) (4:40)

Burnout (K Salmon) (2:41)

The Spin (K Salmon) (3:38)

When Fate Deals Its Mortal Blow (K Salmon) (2:36)

Swampland (K Salmon/K Williams) (4:10)

This Is My Happy Hour (K Salmon/T Thewlis) (3:35)

We Had Love (K Salmon) (4:49)

Clear Spot (Don Van Vliet) (3:01)

Nitro (K Salmon/B Rixon/T Thewlis) (3:28)

Solid Gold Hell (K Salmon) (3:32)

Murderess In A Purple Dress (K Salmon) (2:39)

Backwards Man (K Salmon) (6:20)

Demolition Derby (K Salmon/B Sujdovic/T Thewlis) (4:54)

The Musicians:
Drums – Brett Rixon
Bass – Boris Sujdovic
Guitar – Tony Thewlis
Vocals & Guitar – Kim Salmon
Technical Details:
Tracks 1-6: Recorded At Richmond Recorders Melbourne In 1983
Produced By Kim Salmon And Chris Logan

Tracks 7 -8: Recorded At Palm Studio Sydney In 1982
Produced By Chris Logan And Kim Salmon

Tracks 9 -10: Recorded At ABC Studio Sydney In 1983
Produced By Peter Watts And Kim Salmon

Tracks 11 -12: Recorded At Honey Farm Sydney In 1983
Produced By Peter Watts

Tracks 13 -15: Recorded At Soundworks Brussels In 1984
Produced by Paul Delnoy

Of Interest: These are the album’s liner notes written by Kim
BLOOD RED RIVER 1982-1984 (SUB)URBAN MYTHS

So much has passed since the sounds on this CD were first generated that it feels as though they were created by a different set of people. But it is in fact Boris, Tony, Brett and I who are guilty. It was indeed us who travelled some 2000 kilometres across Australia to form a band never having played together before; who decided to grow our hair long to be different from everyone else in the early eighties; who got bottled off stage by a disgruntled crowd of 1000 at the Parramatta Leagues Club after 15 minutes of supporting pub rock stalwarts, The Angels; who, prompted by a good review from Barney Hoskins in the NME, left behind a promising future as Australian ‘pub rock’ icons ourselves to languish in relative obscurity in the UK; who got booked into a whole pile of European festivals by a long haired chap called Willhelm in a Dutch agency called Mojo because he took one look at our photos and thought, “these Scientists [with their long hair] are kindred spirits”; who had fewer rehearsals than the number of songs in our repertoire over our entire history; who did a couple of European tours by rail, getting the clubs to provide backline; who would methodically all walk off in four different directions on arrival at each foreign station to have Leanne, our tour manager, round us up; who hated the idea of playing to an audience that was more inebriated than us; who believed that we were the greatest rock and roll band in the world with absolute conviction and no irony.

THE BOYS

It was Tony Thewlis who I spied one night playing some absolutely superb guitar with some absolutely godawful band at Hernando’s Hideaway in East Perth. He thought the Scientists I was offering him a place in was the earlier brash ‘pop’ group he saw on national pop TV show ‘Countdown’. He moved to Sydney to join up but when it dawned on him it was something else entirely, he began extracting all manner of dissonant, jarring, downright rude sounds from his guitar, probably to piss everyone off as much as anything else. Tony found his entry into the maelstrom one day listening to Like Flies On Sherbet by Alex Chilton. After that…..try and get him to not be spontaneous! He would refuse to play anything vaguely approaching a rock solo. He would be twice as inebriated as the rest of the band – he didn’t drink beer so matched our beers glass for glass with cider or wine. He was quite a sight with his Johnny Thunders-style teased hair throwing his guitar at the floor, the ceiling, his amp or even audience members (this stopped when Boris’ girlfriend, Pip, ran out to retrieve it from a thieving punter) all whilst wearing a fur coat on inside out.

Drummer, Brett Rixon, brother of two years running Penthouse Pet of the Year, Cheryl, had on his wrist, a self-inflicted tattoo of a safety pin with two lines representing the bridge of skin the prong passed under. He was described by one Robin Gibson of Sounds magazine as having “the demeanour of an assembly line misfit blankly contemplating murder”. He did have a dark sense of humour. For example, there is a tape in existence of him in a ‘discussion’ with Boris on the relative personality merits of two chaps they knew, one of whom had attempted suicide by hanging. Brett’s argument against the other chap was that, “If you were to find him dangling you’d give his leg a tug”. But Brett had an understanding of the brief. It was with me and a fellow called Kim Williams back in Perth in a band called Louie Louie that we first successfully got onto the ‘primitive’ tangent – Swampland was originally a Louie Louie song and a co-write with Mr Williams.

Boris Sujdovic liked to act dumb to be left alone but was actually a smooth talker when it suited him. Importantly, his laidback disposition made it very easy for him to adapt to the idea of two note bass lines. In fact, he was the one that started all this by persuading me to reform the Scientists in Sydney with him on bass. He was the tallest and meanest looking of us but was actually the one most likely to make a friend at the bar. He was also the member most likely to have a joke at the expense of the others. Band members often acquire nicknames amongst themselves. Boris’ was ‘Ogre’. (My nickname was Wilf. Obviously I didn’t pick it. The protocol with nicknames is that you don’t get to pick them or change them if you dislike them. I acquired mine through a trick of the light giving me a ‘codgerish’ appearance in one photo. I think I said something to the effect of, “Fuck, they’ve made me look like Wilfred Bramble [of Steptoe and Son]“. It was either Brett or Boris who could not resist it and that was the end of it. From then on it was Wilf this or Wilfy that.)

I believed these guys were the perfect raw materials to work with (or just leave alone as the case may be). I thought I had it sussed. All they had to do was go on being themselves and let me point them in the right direction, that is, compose the right kind of material.

THE MANIFESTO

First off, we did not want to align ourselves with anyone. We wanted to be left alone to do what we wanted without the encumbrances of so-called ‘artiness’, rock and roll traditionalism, ‘pure perfect pop’ craftsmanship or anything else that might stand in the way of our intentions. These were not to bury rock ‘n’ roll but to strip it back and rebuild it to our specifications (a bit like a ‘hotted up’ car). We loved rock ‘n’ roll’s tradition but despised traditionalism, hated artiness but naively believed what we were doing was art (when it worked). We believed we were on a mission to take rock back to its most basic primal essence. Only then could we add our own flavours which would be spontaneously concocted out of Companion fuzz boxes, beer, various chemicals, anarchy and whatever else was handy at the time. At times it would be beautifully simple, at others quite tricky getting it right. Real rock ‘n’ roll was dumb and sophisticated, serious and funny. A paradox. You couldn’t hide behind a joke. You had to be prepared to go out and be a joke. The path of riotousness was the path of righteousness and only we were on it. We didn’t just believe, we knew that we would be misunderstood first, worshipped and adored later. Clinton Walker, author of Stranded – The Secret History Of Australian Rock And Roll was the perfect example. At first he didn’t get us and thought we were ‘daggy’ but then later went on to sing our praises, over and over, for magazines such as RAM and Rolling Stone. We did not want to change the world. It could sod itself. We wanted only to be left alone… and admired from a distance.

PERTH

We left Perth behind. It had rejected the Scientists’ first incarnation so the reincarnated Scientists rejected Perth without giving it a second chance.

SYDNEY

In 1981 Sydney’s inner most suburbs of Darlinghurst and Surry Hills were home to a rock scene whose mecca was Detroit, home of The Stooges and MC5, even though Surry Hills and Darlinghurst were as far away from blue collar Detroit spiritually as they were geographically. But of course no-one knew that or even cared. Radio Birdman was every Sydney ‘underground’ band’s mentor. This ‘Sydney’ legacy didn’t mean much to westerners like us. We simply didn’t buy it. Inner city Sydney was, however, a tantalisingly wicked place for a bunch of Perth suburban boys who got taken in very quickly and nurtured down an inebriated path from their home in Nickson Street, Surry Hills to the Southern Cross Hotel, to the Sydney Trade Union Club and out into the oblivion of Sydney’s pink bat-ridden night.

Early in 1982 we got a Friday night residency in neighbouring suburb Ultimo’s Vulcan Hotel. We were still working on our sound and image but Tony could always be relied upon to ‘chuck a wobbly’ and Brett and Boris were presenting a very granite-faced deadbeat hair in the eyes demeanour as we thrashed our way through a set that each week had fewer chords and more noise. Although we replaced the mandatory ‘Detroit’ buzzsaw guitar three chords with atonal guitarscapes and two note bass lines our shtick was too ‘dumb’ to be art rock. Thanks to a supposed but actually non-existent allegiance and some wild shows it wasn’t long before the Vulcan was packed with paisley-shirted and mini-skirted regulars singing along to Swampland.

MELBOURNE

Occasionally we would go down to ‘arty farty’ Melbourne which in the absence of its beloved Birthday Party lapped up a sound as loud and as ugly as ours. For instance, I remember doing a show opening for a bunch of brass playing ‘penguins’ called the Hot Half Hour at the Seaview Ballroom in 1982 before we even had a record out. Greg Perano, fresh out of Hunters and Collectors, had some clown with him who was heckling us and our hair. The jibes quickly changed to cheering once we began making a noise.

‘OZ’

Releasing Swampland as a single ensured our reputation spread to Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. Then when a video for Blood Red River seemed to be followed by a demand for us outside the sacred sanctum of Sydney’s inner city we found ourselves playing more and more frequently in the beach suburbs to the “deadset mate” and “filth” brigade. In a complete turnaround, agencies that gave us the bums rush when we first graced them with our presence were trying to get us onto their books. Dirty Pool offered us a tour supporting The Angels which culminated in the infamous Parramatta Leagues Club bottling incident. Sydney’s 2JJ were very supportive and gave us a ‘Live at the Wireless’ slot from which we derived We Had Love, probably our finest recorded moment to that point. We Had Love even charted briefly on AM radio somewhere in Sydney!

It seemed to me at the time that suburban pub rock Australia was indeed promising itself to us. But before it could be had we were in London leaving the way open for The Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty, Painters and Dockers, and a plethora of post-punk rock bands to fill a new demand for ‘underground’ hard rock.

Some images that I have from those Sydney times are: Brad Shepherd biting beer cans in half up against the stage at the Paddington Town Hall; big holes in the low fairy light studded ceiling just above Tony’s spot at a venue called the ‘Talking Tables’, Brett’s winkle picker-clad feet entwined with a pair of stilettoed fish netted feet protruding from under the toilet door at the Strawberry Hills/Southern Cross; Boris and I rabbiting on with amphetamine-fuelled drivel into the night leaving for Sydney in our friend Peter Simpson’s Commercial van after conquering Collingwood’s ‘Tote’ Hotel one more time; James Darroch dancing his arse off and looking very Mickey Dolenz-like up the front at the Vulcan; Ron Peno mocking and admiring us with in a tarty red wig: and last but certainly not least, a floor full of gyrating punters lifting off the ground in unison, each trying to out do his or her neighbour just as the loud bit of We Had Love kicked in.

1984 – UK AND EUROPE

At the time, it seemed as if none of us did anything for the first year in the UK but stand in queues and pay exorbitant VAT- inflated prices when we got to the end of them. In retrospect, and at the risk of boasting, I can only be amazed at how far we got in that small amount of time. Firstly, we had a local release for Blood Red River on Rough Trade. Next we virtually walked into All Trade Booking Agency and got a whole stack of shows at places like Dingwalls, The Electric Ballroom, The Lyceum and The Clarendon Garage. As well, Tony and I rather cheekily wrote Kid Congo a letter telling him we were going to support the Gun Club on their UK tour. There was no talk of this with the agency – we just did it ‘off the bat’ and that seemed to clinch it taking care of exposure over the rest of England for us. The next step was for the Dutch fellow previously mentioned to walk in to All Trade and see our photo and then book us into ‘Futurama’ in Belgium and the ‘Pandora’s Box’ festival in Rotterdam. At ‘Pandora’s Box’ we found ourselves in front of a huge jampacked room which moved back a full metre the moment we launched into our set. After that we got our picture taken a lot and I ended up having to do loads of interviews for foreign mags that I would never be able to read unless they were in the three sentences of Deutsche that I know. As Boris pointed out to me, this gig set us up for Holland and Belgium over the next couple of years. It wasn’t long after these festivals that we made it to Paris and then Hamburg.

Back in the UK, our audience at this stage was comprised partly from the network of Cramps and Gun Club fans who had been alerted to our existence by the tireless efforts of Scotsman and Next Big Thing writer Lindsay Hutton and partly from a curiosity amongst punters as to what kind of act could draw the particular kind of adjective from the ink of the three British trade papers, NME, Sounds and Melody Maker, that we did. I was quite happy at that stage of my life to be referred to as the “lowest form of uncaring anti-social filth” in what amounted to a music tabloid with a circulation of hundreds of thousands so long as they meant we were great. We got quite a bit of coverage and most of it was positive in that kind of way. At Pandora’s Box a Belgian chap called Paul Delnoy asked if he could make a record with us on his label. He did not seem to have enough English to understand ‘no’ (we were tied up contractually) which is why we ended up in Brussels at the end of the year trying to make up another record from scratch that didn’t overlap with the material we were working on for our next proper album.

We were there a week in Paul’s studio and the usual scenario went like this:
Me: “What’ll we play guys? That thing I showed you last week or shall we jam on something new?”
Tony: “I don’t ‘jam.”
Brett: “I’m feeling concave. I need a burger.”
Boris: “Get the guy a burger. I’ll have one too.”
Tony: “Does it have to be a burger? They’ll put onions in mine for sure. They always put onions on when I specifically ask them not to in the English-speaking world so I haven’t got a hope here.”
One hour later, after everyone has eaten:
Brett: “I’m too stuffed to play. Let’s go to a bar.”
For about half an hour of that week the band managed to be in the mood to play something and the tape happened to be running. It was rough as buggery but in my humble opinion there was enough power and feeling committed to tape in that time to make up for the rest of the dicking around. That session became the Demolition Derby 12 inch.

Images I have in my mind from the time are: Peter Weening from the Vera in Groningen with loads of plastic bags full of Indonesian takeaway for us to eat on our first visit, our next visit and the one after that (and hopefully my next visit – it wouldn’t be the Vera otherwise); Boris, in a fit of pique, smashing up his amplifier into pieces so small they could fit into a jar backstage at the ‘Opera Night’ gig in Paris; Tony’s account of an elderly concierge lady bursting into his room with a blow torch to thaw out the pipes; endless riders of Grolsch; endless ratatouille provided by a procession of Dutch and Belgium promoters; standing behind Joe Strummer every week in the Barclays Bank queue watching him deposit thousands of pounds at a time; the rabbit warrens a band had to find its way through to get to the stage at those bigger London venues just like in Spinal Tap; and Boris, Tony and I getting into a fight with some abusive Dutch yobs who persisted in calling us kangaroos outside the Melkweg in Amsterdam. These ‘yobs’ turned out to be the club bouncers and we ended up being turfed out onto the exit bridge in the middle of the snow whilst having the fire hoses turned on us. I still have the burgundy satin shirt with it’s ripped tail from that incident.

This is how I remember some of what happened to me, Boris Sujdovic, Tony Thewlis and Brett Rixon as members of The Scientists from the beginning of 1982 to the close of 1984. What happened after 1984 will be included in the follow up release to this one entitled: The Human Jukebox 1984 – 1986

Recently a scientist (a real one) asked me what the deal was with the Scientists early stuff. He liked everything post “Swampland” but wasn’t sure about the lyrics in all those early songs with titles like “That Girl”, “Girl” and “Pretty Girl”. My answer was that I didn’t write those lyrics. The songs were written thus: James Baker, the original Scientists drummer, would announce that he had a song and “sing” the lyrics for me to play back to him. From his atonal renderings I would invent a melody with an appropriate chord sequence and perform it, to which he would say, “Yeah, that’s how it goes” or, “No, not like that”, if he didn’t like it. In defence of James’ lyrics, the “girl songs” were part of his celebration of rock and roll of which dumb lyrics were, as far as we were concerned, “de rigueur” along with other things not normally revered, like playing too loud, posturing and “not giving a shit”.
Perth, being the most isolated capital city in the world, does harbour some parochialism. My main memories of it feature a huge inferiority complex about what was referred to as the “Eastern States”, i.e. not some hierarchy of levels of enlightenment but all that was to the east in fact, everywhere in Australia! Getting to the Eastern States meant a three-day drive across the desert or forking out for an airfare comparable to an overseas flight – and that was just to get to Adelaide! It was in the realm of dreams. Why waste dreams on going somewhere that was pretty much the same as home? We didn’t need the Eastern States!
1975 was a big let down for me. There I was in Art School (Western Australian Institute of Technology Faculty of Fine Art) waiting for the non-stop drugged out free love-in that I’d heard about as a nipper in the sixties only to get patronised by a bunch of ageing hippies (actually 20 something fellow art students). By the time I was able to go to the party it was over!
Reading about a far off place called CBGB in NYC and its leather-clad denizens, all with names like Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell and Joey Ramone, got me thinking. The article, by Charles Shaar Murray in NME, was titled “Are You Alive To the Jive of ’75?” I immediately went searching for Punk Rock. What I found were “The Modern Lovers” and “The New York Dolls” albums.

I recalled seeing an ad with a photo round ’74 stuck up in 78 Records. It had two very glammy, almost tranny, looking dudes with fancy writing saying what looked to me like “Blink City Boys” and they were looking for members. That always struck me as unusual for Perth. Thinking back, I wondered if they were “punk”. Whatever. In the meantime, I drafted some school friends into a band and called it “The Cheap Nasties”.
Over the course of 1976 I devoured all that was punk. All that was punk was evolving fast. At the start of ’76 the punk universe consisted of the Dolls, Stooges and Velvets. While I waited for the Ramones, Heartbreakers, Television and Blondie to get records out, the Punk Axis had shifted to London with the Pistols et al. There was a new band to read about each week in the British trade weeklies. Then there was the call from 78s to tell me the Ramones LP was finally in! Bringing it home and putting the needle in the groove and hearing that mix of bubblegum, buzzsaw guitar, tribal drums and Joey Ramone’s “Hey Ho Lets Go” was one of the perfect moments of my life. The Cheap Nasties’ repertoire had varied (a little too much perhaps) from the more melodic “poppy” end of the punk spectrum to fairly psyched out jarring Stooge/Modern Lovers style thrash-outs. The compromise of directions no doubt stifled the band’s potential?. As one might expect of a band that was pursuing something unknown, there was more than one idea of what that thing was.
This, of course, led to warring factions, namely the other guitarist and myself. The band split. But not before getting out and doing shows prior to the end of 1976. There are those who claim to have been in punk rock bands before us. The thing is none of them, including the Slink City Boys ever really made it out of their bedrooms.
The Nasties precipitated the beginning of Perth’s very own punk-scene. James Baker was amongst these people. He, of the pudding-bowl haircut, had travel experience, had seen the Ramones, Heartbreakers, the Sex Pistols, and The Damned (he’d even smoked a joint with Joe Strummer). With this worldliness and cool image he was looked up to. Also amongst our fans were Rod Radalj and Boris Sujdovic, a pair of Slavic yobbos who just decided to learn to play the guitar and bass respectively.

My friend Dave Faulkner, or “Flick” as he was now known, was conspiring with James, who it turned out, was the drumming half of the Slink City Boys and a bass playing chap they called Rudolph. They called their collaboration The Victims. They all moved into a squalid fleapit of a house in East Perth. They cleaned out all the “hippy dirt” from the previous residents and painted over all the bad art on the walls dubbing the place “Victim Manor.” It took about a month for them to let the “Manor” slide back to such a filthy state that none of them except for Rudolph could live there. There they threw a party where they performed their first show and instantly became the darlings of “the scene”.
Over the next year The Victims acted out a drama parallel to that of the Sex Pistols, being banned from various venues and the bass player cultivating a drug habit. They also managed to have a truly original interpretation of the Punk sound. They left a couple of recordings, including the classic “Television Addict”. In their time, due to having no regular venues to book them, The Victims found a jazz club called “Hernando’s Hideaway” and managed to secure a Wednesday night residency there. With a place to hang, and for its new bands to play at (supporting The Victims), the “scene” soon sucked up all kinds of dubious trash from the suburbs and grew.
With the split of the Nasties I soon found myself in Rod and Boris’s band The Invaders. I was not allowed to play guitar but had to sing each of us playing what we were worst at. Our drummer, a chap known as Johnno, and Rod were always fighting. Eventually, Johnno left which coincided with The Victims split early in ’78. Seizing the opportunity we snapped up James who joined on the condition that I did play guitar.
We had a jam. James came up with some “girlie” lyrics. It wasn’t the Iggy I was hoping for but I was able to hang a nice melody on them. The combination of that and the punk racket of ragged two note bar chords and floor tom-heavy drumbeats were like a collision between the Stooges and Herman’s Hermits. Straight away, “a sound”! With a song under our belts we convened on the verandah of “Victim Manor” and brainstormed to find a moniker that would capture our caveman essence. The Troggs was already taken so we opted for irony and came up with The Scientists.

Come 1978, anyone and everyone were into punk. And Punk Rock claimed to destroy Rock ‘n’ Roll. We were the next thing beyond punk (just plain contrary in hindsight). We chose to take the next step that, to us, was to go through the rubble and pick up the things we liked and reassemble them. It was all very post-modern. But being unaware of that term at the time we didn’t give a shit. We just wanted to rock!
The truth of the matter was we were perverse. We revered the stylish loser, the unsung hero, the uncompromising unconventional unseen dandy, and the misunderstood misanthrope. Cyril Jordan, Walter Lure, Reg Presley, the Ashton Brothers (not the regular circus brothers but the Stooges) and Arthur Harold Kane were our mentors. Anyone could admire a Johnny Rotten, an Iggy or a Johnny Thunders but it took a real understanding to see beyond the obvious layer of showbiz (or so we thought). Our heroes were incurable. They couldn’t help it. They were rock ‘n’ roll to the core. And so it was for us.
People had got The Victims. They didn’t get us. We were loud, loose as buggery and yet had pop melodies and wore moptops. And loud shirts. Were we punk? Old school rock? Or making some kind of art statement? Nobody could tell. There was something at the time going round called “Power Pop”. We were most definitely not that! What fans we had liked us for any one of the above reasons and probably got us as much as our detractors. At first we didn’t care but soon it became apparent to us that we were becoming musical lepers around town. This only added to our righteousness.
Our first recording was a demo made in the “loft”, my “apartment” in the part of Perth now gentrified and called Northbridge. It was never released but it features the original line-up. In many ways this recording is truest to the ethos of The Scientists in the Perth years (see bonus tracks 12, 13 and 14).
I don’t recall there being any dispute about “Frantic Romantic” being our single. I do recall it being particularly easy to compose. I guess that’s an omen to why it was such a monster hit in six dimensions and throughout most of the galaxy. Pity about Earth?(or Perth for that matter).

Being a “guitar-head”, I was on the quest for the perfect sound. I had a clear idea of the sound I wanted. It was somewhere between Steve Jones and Johnny Thunders but better. I had five different amplifiers over the course of the first year in the Scientists. I dragged Rod and Boris with me on this. I think Boris had an HH slave amp with an Orange head and Rod an HH VS guitar head. James had a red drum kit.
By the time we got into Sweetcorn studio to record “Frantic Romantic / Shake Together Tonight”, Boris was no longer in the band. A bloke called Denis Byrne was. For five minutes? but long enough to be on our first single. This was my and Rod’s first time in a recording studio. The Steve Jones sound was eluding me and I was spiralling down a well of despair. I was so pre-occupied I don’t know what the others were thinking. Someone called in our friend Chris Tuna (who’d mixed our loft tape) who I have to say earned the title of producer by saying my sound was cool. He lifted the “vibe” completely and the rest of my memories of the session are fantastic. There were tambourines, handclaps, double tracked guitars; it was an overdub fantasy.
Soon after recording the single, Rod and Denis respectively followed the dangling carrots of The Rockets and The Paper Dolls. Rod felt more at home and Denis was being offered a guitar spot, i.e. they left!
One night at “Hernandos” I drunkenly allowed a tall geeky curly headed chap called Ben talk me into having the band try him out. Effete Bowie fan, Ian Sharples, lived in the same share house as James. Ben could share the lead stuff on guitar and could sing harmonies. As well as being a bass player Ian could string more than two words together and was able to add a touch of sophistication (not too much I hasten to say) to the lyrics. He wrote the words to “Pissed on Another Planet”.
Somewhere along the line Perth stopped hating us. We secured a Friday night residency at a pub in North Perth called the Governor Broome. A residency was perfect for scene makers to have somewhere to hang. People got a chance to know us and some even got to like us.

Various US fanzines had praised “Frantic Romantic” likening us to the New York Dolls, those Mexican Ramones – The Zeros and, of course, The Heartbreakers (Johnny Thunders not Tom Petty). NME said we made “A pleasing Noise” with “na?ve jangling guitars and a Brian Jones haircut”. Hip US label, Bomp, took 500 copies of the single. The round trip world flight tickets must have gotten lost in the mail?
Someone in the band must have had the disgracefully un rock ‘n’ roll trait of being able to save because it wasn’t long before we were back in the studio, this time doing an EP.
We got in a chap who had produced a cassette tape for “rival” band, the Mannikins. He was also rumoured to have worked on Queen sessions (now there was a recommendation for punks like us?I don’t think). It soon became apparent that he thought we were crap. He wasn’t going to put anything on tape until we “improved”. I just wondered how the Stooges or the Damned could have gotten anything done if they had guys like this around. We sacked him! We figure he’d worked on the Queen session sweeping the floor. It wasn’t long before Chris was back in the seat saying, “Sounds cool to me”. I borrowed Dave Faulkner’s newly acquired 50s Les Paul Junior and a tough rockin’ sound was ensured. At one point “fellow new wavers”, the Triffids, came in wondering when the acoustic guitar was going to be put to tape!? We took great pleasure in telling them, “There ain’t gonna be any acoustic guitar on this record, baby!”
The results were compiled onto an EP for local label White Rider Records at the time but have since been repackaged with the single as “The Sweetcorn Sessions” and later as “Pissed On Another Planet” not to mention several bootlegs.
Sooner or later it had to happen …… The Eastern States! It was Doug Thomas, the owner of Adelaide’s Umbrella records, who liking our single, thought he could get us some shows and knew someone who could do the same in Melbourne. James knew a booker in Sydney so a national tour got thrown together. We just piled into a Combi and my Valiant Regal, took off across the Nullabor, into “Oz rock” oblivion. Not once but twice!

The Eastern States were crap. They only had two records. “Candy O” by The Cars and “Regatta de Blanc” or whatever the first Police album was called. I heard them on every PA at every soundcheck for the entire tour. There were only two good bands. The Lipstick Killers and the Wrecked Jets (OK, OK, the Marching Girls, Japanese Comics and The Dagos were all right as well … and the Sputniks I’m told). Jo Jo Zep’s roadies seemed like pirates and I made that connection that the “crew” is in fact a modern day crew of pirates. If you don’t believe me, look at the shaved heads, tatts, missing limbs and bandannas.
Eastern States bands had got the wrong end of the “new wave” stick. There was Flowers who were really just a T-Rex cover band with some Ultravox thrown in, Mi Sex were a bunch of brickies in eyeliner, Roland Howard from The Boys Next Door told one of us, “I can see that you are very good at what you do but don’t you think people have heard enough of this kind of thing?” (Perhaps, if one compares a song like the Boys Next Door’s “In a Catholic Skin” to our song “Pissed On Another Planet” one can see that we were indeed coming from very different places in more ways than one). We had to do it though. Just to show those Eastern States bastards how it was done.
We drove back to Perth in one and half days, stopping only to refuel, eat, go to the toilet and watch ourselves on TV (explanation to come) in front of some bemused truckers in some godforsaken Nullabor roadhouse.
Perth was crap. The Rockets had usurped us at the Broome, The Mannikins were the darlings of the underground, there was a plethora of hideous clubs like Blazes, Adrians, The Perth Underground, but nowhere for us! The scene had been taken over by trendies and skinheads. Everything had turned ugly.
We decided to go three piece with just Ian, James and I. Our dedicated followers often remarked that this was a very good move. Our sound cleaned up no end and got a bit tougher with it. Any positive moves were a bit late though. We struggled to even find a gig. One booker even laughed at us when we told him we’d been on TV. “Pull the other one,” he said.

We entered a songwriting competition held by one of the University radio stations. The prize was free recording time. The judges actually acknowledged that we were the best entry and that technically we won the competition but they decided to award the prize to The Triffids because we already had studio time booked. I ask you. How typical is that? This could only happen to the Scientists!
Anyway, all was not bad. We did have financial backing from three devotees, Kim Williams, Rob Samson and Clint Walker (an artist not the writer…or the actor) to go to a place called Shelter Studio and record what became known as the Pink Album.
After doing so, we decided we’d had enough. The mixing of the Pink album was left in the hands of jingle writer and producer Peter Simpson. Perhaps we should have stuck around but we were just too tired.
As a teenager I used to tell fellow high school students, just to annoy them, that I would appear on the nation’s main pop show “Countdown”. Australians don’t like people to get ideas above their station and that feeling is ingrained early.
I shall end these notes saying that we got to appear on “Countdown” on the very last day of our second Eastern States eight-week stint. And just as we were leaving THEY PAID US!

To look at the career of the Scientists is, in essence, to look at the career of Kim Salmon, one of the most vibrant musical talents to emerge from Australia in the 1970s. Not that he was the only one. Nick Cave, for example, may have made more of a splash outside of the country, but Salmon is arguably just as important ? if not more influential. His first group, formed in 1976, was the Cheap Nasties ? which already gives some indication of his distinctive “trash” aesthetic (? la the Trashmen, the Ramones, etc.). The Nasties were the first punk band to emerge from the remote city of Perth in Western Australia. Salmon has claimed they really weren’t much good, but they did give birth to the Perth punk scene ? from which many of Australia’s finest musicians would emerge. When the Nasties came to an end the following year, Salmon went on to join the Invaders. The Scientists rose from the ashes of this (also unrecorded) band in 1978. The lineup included Salmon on guitar and vocals, Boris Sujdovic on bass, Rod Radalj on guitar, and James Baker, from the Victims, on drums and lyrics. Membership in the Scientists would mutate several times over the years (Dennis Byrne, for instance, would soon assume bass duties).
The name of the band came from Salmon’s childhood interest in science, specifically nuclear physics. To judge from some of his later lyrics, he was also a big science fiction fan (“It Came Out of the Sky,” etc.). The first single was “Frantic Romantic” (backed with “Shake (Together Tonight)”), proto-punk garage pop in the vein of Australia’s Easybeats or Northern Ireland’s Undertones (with Salmon sounding a lot like the Kinks’ Ray Davies), and wasn’t necessarily representative of the bigger, darker noise to come. As a preteen, Salmon liked to listen to British pop/rock like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As a teen, he moved on to heavy metal like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. He would discover American underground rock later and it would have a more indelible influence on the Scientists’ sound.
This version of the group toured Eastern Australia and followed up with a self-titled EP in 1980 (with Ian Sharples on bass and Ben Juniper on guitar). The Sweet Corn Sessions, released in 1988, would combine this EP (recorded in Perth’s Sweet Corn Studios) with “Frantic Romantic.” In 1990, the material would again be reissued as Pissed on Another Planet, with different artwork. The group finally released a self-titled LP in 1981 as a three-piece (with Salmon, Baker, and Sharples). Shortly afterwards, however, they broke up. Fortunately, it was only for a short time. (In 1995, this lineup of the band would reunite with Juniper for a one-off gig in Perth.) By this time, Radalj and Baker had left for Sydney, where they hooked up with Dave Faulkner, another Perth refugee and ex-Victim, in a precursor to the Hoodoo Gurus ? Le Hoodoo Gurus (which began life as the Gurus before Radalj and then Baker had joined).
Around this time, Salmon formed a band called Louie Louie with Kim Williams, who had produced the first Scientists album and co-wrote “Swampland,” but the project only lasted a few months. Salmon and Sujdovic then re-formed the band as Scientists, and Salmon became the primary songwriter. In 1981, they also migrated to Sydney. Salmon’s musical interests had since segued to American proto-punk like the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart, and Television. As with other seminal Australian punk rockers like Radio Birdman and the Birthday Party, the Stooges would prove to be particularly influential. The ultimate goal was minimalism, to pare things down to their primal essence and to avoid pretense at all costs ? to the extent of writing purposefully “dumb” lyrics, as Salmon has described them. The result was primitive, psychotic, feedback-drenched swamp blues with a hint of twang (Hank Williams’ legacy had also worked its way into the equation). The new lineup (Salmon, Tony Thewlis, Brett Rixon (from Louie Louie), and Sujdovic) would release the EP Blood Red River in 1983 on Au-go-go, one of Australia’s premiere punk labels. By this time, Salmon had also fallen under the sway of Suicide, and it showed as the band was growing heavier in the bass department, more rhythmically repetitive and hypnotic, more dissonant and distorted guitar-wise (? la Link Wray), and increasingly manic and malevolent vocally (somewhat akin to the Cramps ? but with an unmistakable Aussie accent). The title Blood Red River would also be used for the 15-track compilation released by Sympathy for the Record Industry in 2001. Scientists soon developed a following in Sydney that surpassed their fan base in Perth. They continued to tour and made a video in support of Blood Red River. Their next release was the EP This Heart Doesn’t Run on Blood, This Heart Doesn’t Run on Love, followed by another tour.
Just as the Birthday Party and the Go-Betweens had found success in London, Scientists would make the same move in 1984. They would next release the LP Weird Love ? one of their best ? and EPs Demolition Derby (a Belgian import) and Atom Bomb Baby (recorded live in London) and, as a single, “You Only Live Twice” (virtually unrecognizable from the James Bond original). But their timing, unfortunately, was off. With a few exceptions, the British press ? most notably the NME ? did not welcome them as warmly as Salmon had hoped. By following in the wake of the Birthday Party, they were perceived by some critics as copyists, even if they had been working on their sound for just as long ? and from a different lyrical and geographical perspective (the Birthday Party had formed in Melbourne).
The next few releases consisted primarily of archival material. You Get What You Deserve (1985) combines Atom Bomb Baby, Demolition Derby, and the B-side from “You Only Live Twice” (“If It’s the Last Thing I Do”), and Heading for a Trauma combines four new songs with Demolition Derby, a few older singles, and a radio session. Drummer Rixon and Sujdovic (whose visa had expired) had since left the band (Rixon would die in 1993 of drug-related causes). Rubber Never Sleeps, a tape-only release consisting of live material (from 1978-1983), came next. Then Weird Love (1986) was re-recorded as a three-piece (with Leanne Chock replacing Rixon) along with “Nitro” from the This Heart EP and the original version of “You Only Live Twice.” It was the first Scientists recording to be released in the United States and Big Time did the honors. (The label would also release recordings by the Hoodoo Gurus and the Lime Spiders in the U.S.)
Scientists spent much of this time touring Europe with Alex Chilton, the Gun Club, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Alan Vega (from Suicide), and others. Their next full-length, The Human Jukebox (1987), consisted of new material, but only Salmon and Tony Thewlis now remained from the lineup that had come from Sydney (they were joined by Nick Combe). It was the beginning of the end. Scientists broke up that year, and Salmon moved back to Perth. Gone, but not forgotten, Scientists’ excellent cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Clear Spot” would be included on the 1988 tribute release, Fast ‘n’ Bulbous.
Although Scientists had called it quits, the irrepressible Kim Salmon most certainly had not. He would go on to form a new, somewhat similar group that year, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, which would incorporate soul and funk into the mix. Throughout his career with the Scientists and the bands to come, Salmon had also been involved with the Beasts of Bourbon ? basically Tex Perkins’ brainchild ? (as guitarist and lyricist) from 1983 until the end of 1993 (ex-Scientist Sujdovic was a member as well). Salmon’s other projects have included Salamander Jim (again with Perkins), Kim Salmon’s Human Jukebox, Kim Salmon’s STM, Kim Salmon and the Business (an extension of the Surrealists; similar approach, different lineup), and Antenna (a techno-pop project with old Perth-mate Dave Faulkner). He has even worked as a solo artist on occasion (as with the single, “Lightning Scary”), but appears to prefer a group dynamic.
No matter what he may do next, Kim Salmon will always be ? or certainly always should be ? remembered for the musical ground he broke with the Scientists. At their best they were so far ahead of their time, they transcended the very notion. The proto-grunge they were cooking up in the late ’70s/early ’80s prefigured the music Sonic Youth, the Spacemen 3, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion would be cranking out a decade later. In 1993, they received their own tribute compilation in the form of Set It on Fire!, which featured covers by Mudhoney and the Laughing Hyenas. Mudhoney would even perform a live version of “We Had Love” with Salmon in Australia. Henry Rollins, whose group the Rollins Band has toured with him, has gone so far as to declare the man a “national treasure.” It only seemed right and natural when Sub Pop released the Scientists compilation, Absolute, with material hand-picked by the band, in 1991. A debt had been paid, and America had another chance to discover what Australia had known for a long time (Sub Pop’s release of the compilation, The Essential Radio Birdman: 1974-1978, in 2001 would help to right a similar wrong).