No Night Sweats N o  N i g h t  S w e a t s No Night Sweats
Sydney's Post-Punk Bands
I Like Music
Slapp Happy are Terrific
A List of CDs

Text is What I Write

Crime Fiction is Silly
[ Sydney Post-Punk Memoirs ]

John Laidler

The Slugfuckers history


We sometimes borrowed SPK's drum machine

Places we played:

Our first gigs were at the Grand Hotel, Central Railway. At the time it was an established venue for 'punk' music. Other bands I can remember seeing there: Urban Guerillas; Johnny and the Dipsticks. Garibaldi's was a DIY venue in Surry Hills. A sort of café downstairs and a hall upstairs where you could play. It had a large mural of Garibaldi himself (an Italian revolutionary, apparently). The Sculpture Centre in The Rocks gave us a residency. It was an art gallery, and I'm still a bit puzzled as to why they took us on. Some photos taken there show Terry and Craig performing while sitting on the floor. Through our connection to John Young (now a well-known Australian artist) we played several times at Sydney College of the Arts, mostly at lunch times. 
Side FX was in Liverpool St, Darlinghurst. I think it was an ex-school? But it had  become a sort of artists' commune, and had large rooms suitable for band performances. St Peters Parish Hall, Darlinghurst was an established venue for the Sydney "little bands". I think we were included in some of the concerts there because Gordon and Craig played in other groups that were part of that scene.

Parties ... played a few.

Our final performance was at the CellBlock, East Sydney Tech, in 1981. As I recall the other bands included Wild West, tch tch tch, and The Birthday Party. It was a fairly high profile gig, and a suitable one to end with. I remember a lot of spitting and heckling from the audience.

Movie:

The Slugfuckers' movie was called Brother Slug, Sister Snail, a reference to the film about Francis of Asissi, Brother Sun, Sister Moon. It was shot on Super8 and the soundtrack was dubbed in afterwards. John Young  makes many appearances and was very involved in shooting and editing. I think he owned the camera. 
It tells the story of an outsider philosophy student (played by Terry) who stumbles under the influence of Guru Slug, undergoes a number of mind-expanding mystical experiences and joins a band. It ends with some concert footage, shot at Sydney College of the Arts, with relentless zooming in and out. 

Recording:

The single and ep were recorded straight to a Revox two-track owned by a housemate, Robert Parker. The b-side of the single Deaf Dub was constructed on the tape machine in the lounge room at 87 Hordern St  Newtown.The single and EP were both released in 1979. The single sold so well we got a second pressing (of 500) almost straight away, sold them too, and could afford to release the EP a month later.

The LP was recorded at M-squared in Surry Hills and released in 1981. (In between we completed a side project, the 1980 Rhythmyx Chymx/Severed Heads shared LP: No Vowels, No Bowels/Ear Bitten.)
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