The
Hard Ons
This article originally appeared in NFH #16 in
the spring of 1989
Chances are you have
an opinion about the Hard-Ons, even if this is the first time you've ever heard the band's
name. As the Sex Pistols did, the Hard-Ons have geared their approach to go straight up
the nose of anyone with a conservative, moralizing posture. Of course a lot of other bands
have done this in the past, too, and most of them haven't had an impact because they never
had the music to hold anybody's interest. The Hard-Ons don't have that problem; they've
consistently put out one great record after another. The problem for the rest of the world
is that the Hard-Ons are starting to become a known commodity, and it's only a matter of
time until the Tipper Gore crowd hears of them. And all hell will split loose. But the
Hard-Ons will come through.
The Hard-Ons are a
three piece band from Punchbowl in suburban Sydney; they began in 1982 with Ray on bass,
Keish on drums and vocals, and Blackie on guitar. Their earliest recording was a four song
ep on Vi-nil Records called "Surfing On My Face" in 1985, and shortly after that
there were three more tracks on the Why March When You Can Riot? compilation on
Aberrant, chosen because Bruce Aberrant used to see the Hard-Ons quite often and he liked
those songs the best. The Riot tracks all made it onto the Hot For Your Love,
Baby lp of last summer, while the ep has been reissued on Waterfront. All this stuff
shows the Hard-Ons playing great punk/pop material in a vein similar to the early Ramones,
with the trademark lyrical lunacy that guarantees that you will either think they're
hysterically funny or hopelessly childish.
In the fall of 1987 I
saw the Hard-Ons play with ancient legends Rocks at the Sutherland Hotel in a Sydney
suburb. Rocks apparently have been around for about 8 years, but despite a few
impossibly rare singles, they haven't really gotten any recorded material out where
people can get at it. This is a pity, because they have a really strong set of
Ramones-like speed punk that would really sound good on an lp. The band is a three
piece, but feature a sound as full as the Hard-Ons. The crowd didn't seem that into
them, however, as they just stood and watched for the most part. When the Hard-Ons
came on, it didn't take long for the slamming to start in earnest, with the crowd
pulsating right up onto the stage, knocking over mike stands and crashing into the
drums. The show was great and energetic; special raves for "All Set To Go" and
"Wog Food", but there really were no weak moments. Vocals are a little
hard to catch, as drummer Keish sings, and at the pace he plays, whether or not his
mouth is in front of the mike is pretty much a hit-or-miss proposition.
The Hard-Ons hooked
up with the Waterfront label after 1985 and have been with them ever since. The sound has
become harder and faster over the years, but the Hard-Ons still mix some of the best
pop/punk songs you'll hear in with their powerful brand of hardcore. One of the big
attractions of the band to me is that when they thrash (which they do with the best of
'em), they still seem controlled; Keish sings on all their stuff, never resorting
to shouting through a song. On their most recent lp, endearingly titled Dickcheese,
the band used a blend of about half punk/pop stuff and the other half thrashier songs with
lots of squealing leads ("guitar wanking", as they call it). From excerpts that
Ray sent me of their forthcoming lp, it sounds like the emphasis is going to be on a
leaner sound more like the earlier material (though he may have deliberately sent just the
poppy tunes, since I always rave about them the most). Live the Hard-Ons are a vortex of
energy, exciting their crowds to a sweaty frenzy of stage diving and pogoing.
The Hard-Ons can take
almost full credit for the wave of metal-punk bands sweeping through Australia these days
as they defined the style and served as the inspiration for most of them. Bands like
Asylum, Thrust, the Hellmenn, Massappeal, the Mothers, and the Iron Sheiks all clearly
derive a lot of their concept of what a band should be like from the Hard-Ons approach.
In addition to their
great music, in Ray the Hard-Ons have one of the more creative punk graphic artists
around...I've littered this article with gig flyers he's done for the Hard-Ons as well as
for other bands, and he's also done all the Hrd-Ons record sleeves as well as many for
other Waterfront releases.
Overseas their
popularity is growing and they have licensing deals all over. There have been two US
record releases, a version of the Smell My Finger mini-lp on Bigtime, and last
summer's Dickcheese lp with Taang!. In Britain they are on Vinyl Solution. This
past fall they toured Europe and the US, their first time out of Australia, and I asked
Ray where they played and how that went.
Ray: We played
in Wales, Holland, England, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, and the east
coast of the US. In Holland and Sweden people thought we were too loud and fast. In fact,
in Amsterdam we were mentioned in a newspaper article about excessive loud noises. But we
killed in England, Wales, Germany, Belgium and France. The US was fun, too, especially
'cos we toured with Bullet LaVolta. In England, Germany and France lots of people knew us.
It was great being Aussies abroad. You know, Australia is much easier going than most
other places; sometimes people didn't really understand us. But mostly it was really fun.
Ireland was horrible. I got my bollocks kicked in by skinheads.
NFH: How did
it come about that you released two lps, Dick Cheese and Hot For Your Love
pretty much at the same time? Usually that sort of thing happens only as the result of
changing record companies.
Ray: We didn't
wanna release Hot, but Vinyl Solution, our label in the UK, wanted something right
away and Dickcheese wasn't ready, so we gave them Hot, a collection of rare
shit. Then Waterfront and we both go "but some dipshit is gonna import them" so
there will be Australians paying import prices for an Aussie record, so we released it in
Australia too as Hot For Your Love, Baby, whereas Vinyl Solution refused to release
it like that 'cos they didn't like the cover. So I had to draw up a cover for it - a
drawing of three Disney characters, 'cos I love Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and all that
shit. So anyway, in Australia Dickcheese came out 3-4 months after Hot,
whereas overseas it seems like roughly the same time.
NFH: How did
you get hooked up with Taang! in the US, and what happened with your first US 12"
record on Bigtime?
Ray: Bigtime
fucked us around 'cos they censored us. They wouldn't let us call it Smell My Finger
or have the cover artwork. There are more offensive things than an old woman picking her
nose, like pollution, etc., but can you expect anything else from a major label
cocksucker? We got hooked up with Taang! 'cos Curtis (who runs Taang!) liked the band, so
we said yes. They have some great bands on that label, like Bullet LaVolta.
NFH: Are
magazines and radio overseas ignoring you because of your name? You have more records (and
better ones) than a lot of other bands that have managed to get quite a bit of ink here.
Or is this just my impression? It seems like Aussie mags are starting to get comfortable
with it. A US mag here had a little blurb about the Hard-Ons in which they mentioned the
name several times, but then said they couldn't print the title of the new lp? What do you
think when you hear stuff like this?}
Ray: I don't
know what's happening overseas 'cos I don't live there. I think censorship sucks. There
are many more offensive things than our lyrics. I don't think any of my friends find our
lyrics offensive. We have a right to call our lp anything, including Dickcheese. I
guess we live in such a fucked up and immoral world that people have to at least act like
they're doing something morally right. Australian magazines are a bunch of elitist
dipshits. They don't like to write about us because we're unfashionable.
NFH: In almost
every interview I've ever seen with the Hard-Ons, you are asked to explain your lyric
content. The answer that the lyrics are a parody or sarcasm is OK for those who
understand, but do you ever think that there's any need to rethink the approach given how
often it's misinterpreted? For example, when Reagan tried to use lines from "Born In
The USA" to promote himself, Bruce Springsteen got really pissed off, but a lot of
people shared Reagan's interpretation...should Springsteen have known that would happen
and gone about things differently?
Ray: When it
gets to Reagan using our lyrics, we'll call him the total moron that he is for
misinterpreting it. We don't give two fucks about it really. Do things have to be so
boring that you have to explain and analyze every impulse and spur of the moment musical
bullshit? If people don't like it, they don't buy it. If people don't know what we sing
about then we laugh at them. It's obvious that nobody, not even our parents and
girlfriends know what the fuck we are on about. Our lyrics are mostly not explainable;
it'd be like explaining sex to a nun or the taste of pork to a Jew. They are in-jokes that
only we understand.
NFH: I've read
several interviews where you say that you don't play your instruments very well...my
impression is that while that may have been true a few years back, nowadays you play much
better than most. At what level are you going to feel like you play well enough? What's
more important, improving as songwriters or musicians?
Ray: To us a
"musician" is someone who plays musical instruments technically correct. We are
not really good musicians in that sense. Having a good knowledge of the technical bullshit
is very handy, but can also lead to downfalls, like overdoing the muso-bit (like a lot of
boring metal bands). We don't really see ourselves as musicians or songwriters, but as
just the Hard-Ons. I think this is because this has been the only band for us since 1982
when we were kids, so we developed side by side. Musically we may be retarded because of
the insular environment. Ho ho.
NFH: Hard-Ons
songs seem to split in to two types to me; one is the more pop styled thing like
"What Am I Supposed To Do" and the other is the more slam-bang thrash type stuff
like "Busted". Which type of song is more fun to play? In all bands the members
don't all have identical interests; usually one guy always wants to play faster and
harder, and somebody else wants to be more melodic and so on...how would you describe the
tastes of each of you in this regard?
Ray: We like
to put all our songs into a Hard-Ons blender and thrash everything out. We like all kinds
of music and we like to think that we're not a prefabricated stereotyped punk or hardcore
band. I think we act independently of things like that. We all write songs together and
whether they are a bit poppy or metally I think they all sound like the Hard-Ons and
nobody else. We all like playing different styles, but we play everything hard.
NFH: What
plans are there for the future...tours, records, etc. So far the music world at large has
been able to ignore the name Hard-Ons, but it seems as though your level of success is now
getting to the point that (if I may phrase this right) the Hard-Ons are becoming too big
to ignore. Do you think we'll see a day when people are phoning in requests for Hard-Ons
records on the radio and People magazine has Hard-Ons on the cover?
Ray: Our new
lp is due the end of June; it's called Love Is A Battlefield Of Wounded Hearts...12
death-pop tunes about Satan. With a name like Hard-Ons and our lyrics most people realize
that we are not commercial types. But we'll take anything that falls our way, including
the cover of People magazine. Our goal is to be self-sufficient, to make records and play
gigs and still have enough money left to eat and buy records and tour overseas without
having regular 9-5 bullshit jobs. The more people that hear us the better, but we will
make absolutely no compromises like toning down lyrics, music or artwork, like we once did
for Bigtime.
NFH: What
other Australian bands should we be looking out for?
Ray: Thrust,
Insane Hombres, the Lompoc Country Splatterheads and Bored are the newest ones. It's kind
of boring now; we need a few more bands. And not just boring deadshit hardcore bands who
think that just because they have a lead singer with a flashy imported hardcore t-shirt
and a high elbow action (the arm that holds the mike), they're cool.
