From Adelaide to Seattle: The Roots and Evolution of Grunge
Amid the Seattle grunge explosion, the music industry reaped profits unseen since its 1970s heyday. Yet, little is spoken of its main influence, the Adelaide underground.
“We felt a kind of a kinship with the underground music scene in Australia.”
Adelaide, Australia’s city of churches, is known for its anomalies—exaggerated mullets, salmonella in the water supply, and groupies with elongated nipples, to name a few. In isolation, these quirks make for a hectic lifestyle, however, to a smattering of the population, cholera and freakish areolae don’t quite cut the muster.
In the early 1980s, Australian underground music was looming large, schooling its peers on exuding vibrance without pretence. Melbourne embodied art rock, Sydney revelled in its Stooges-influence, and Brisbane rode the coattails of The Saints juggernaut. In the shadows, another cauldron of cultural revelation bubbled, a scene unfettered by influence, affording its originators pioneer status. Welcome to Adelaide, city of gimps and buzzsaws.
It was a bludgeoning of everlasting consequence—a young intellectual from San Francisco, knowing little of the uncompromising Australian nature, stood side-stage, awed by the outliers aurally raping earholes at will. The poor sap never stood a chance.
On this particular evening, the legendary Thebarton Theatre shuddered beneath the weight of northern suburbs larrikins. Just a cigarette away from the guts of the city, the venue’s sticky carpet shouldered the burden of the rattled foreigner’s contemplative stare, as he reflected upon the cataclysmic event he had just witnessed.
“I lay awake for two nights after seeing Grong Grong, wondering if I actually saw what I saw.”
Grong Grong, a bande à part, was formed in 1982 by brothers Michael Farkas and Charlie Tolnay. The group garnered a fierce live reputation, as their confrontational performances often relied upon audience coercion. By September 1983, the four-piece had blown Biafra’s Dead Kennedys from the stage.
Adopting the abrasion of post-punk contemporaries, Birthday Party, The Pop Group, and Pere Ubu, Grong Grong raised the bar for their peers, obliterating the rock template with a wild, claustrophobic swing principle rarely surpassed in aggression.
Grong Grong’s sizzle was predominately driven by guitarist Charlie Tolnay, an Adelaide stalwart who provided heavy inspiration to Sydney’s Cleveland Street collective. Describing Tolnay’s axe mentality is akin to investigating a snuff-film aftermath—a devastating assault epitomised by a crippled stance and an abused Marlboro dangling precariously from his bottom lip. Imagine your auditory canal penetrated by Ed Gein screaming Beefheart renditions in reverse. Uncomfortable, yet intriguing.
Singer, Michael Farkas, an antagonist in his own right, often stalked the stage in a gimp mask, jutting his skeleton to morbidly unkind lyrics. He didn’t croon to his audience, he sandpapered.
Increasingly stale from rancid FM dogma, Australian music in the late 1970s underwent a transition. Assisted by trailblazers, Ramones, The Damned, and The Saints, punk conquered the streets with its DIY mantra, providing a platform for disillusioned youth to express civil disobedience. Establishments like the Sett Up on Hindley Street offered an open stage for anyone willing to perform, while in the poverty-stricken northern neighbourhoods, venues such as the Seacliff Hotel played host to a number of punk up-and-comers. However, it was the suburb of Elizabeth, a struggling outpost with high unemployment, that became the talisman for the rest of the Australian underground.
With a surge of late 70s acts, U-Bombs, The Sputniks (featuring a young Dave Graney and Clare Moore), Bohdan X, and Nasty Nigel and the Teenage Hellcats, Adelaide’s spectral surroundings were resuscitated. A bizarre fifteen-minutes-of-fame moment even ensued when local act Black Chrome broke commercial television on the conservative This Day Tonight, with their anthem We Are Tomorrow.
The emergence of a new form of media, an independent, accessible format of communication called the fanzine, helped drag Adelaide counterculture into the limelight. Following the punk DIY ethos, the fanzine typically adopted a black and white template with loosely typed reviews, limited space, and a minute circulation. Collaborated by the people for the people, the fanzine spoke truth, an epiphany in an incrementally cynical society.
In October of 1979, taking its cue from Australia’s original zine (Brisbane’s Suicide Alley) Adelaide’s DNA was born. Founded by musician Harry Butler, DNA introduced an alternative forum in which to locate information of new bands and upcoming gigs, while providing a mouthpiece for those with pertinent viewpoints.
The inaugural issue of DNA set the tone—ugly, uncompromising, cheap, entertaining. Issue #1 featured The Stooges, Radio Birdman, The Saints, and Scientists, while promoting local acts The Sputniks and The U-Bombs. The launch cemented a fledgling scene, and saw an influx of new bands materialise.
y the late 1970s, two components collided to form the basis of the next decade:
Post-punk died a slow death in Australia, allowing Americanised hardcore to evolve.
With Harry Butler championing Melbourne hardcore bands Depression and Vicious Circle, the genre rapidly spread through the intimate Adelaide underground.
A natural progression from the predominantly British sound of the era, hardcore goldbricked a political manifesto. Maintaining a uniquely Adelaide strain, Filthy Scumbags, Septic Saw Blades, Fear and Loathing, and the evergreen Where’s The Pope?, blew away audiences with pure angst. Where’s the Pope?, in particular, promulgated a notorious reputation nationwide, producing a series of chaotic live shows.
With the emergence of hardcore, influence stemmed from far and wide. The ska tinge of Hoot McKloot, the gritty Order of Decay, and the overdrive of Perdition, became the next wave of talent to bleed into the Adelaide subterrane. To complete the infrastructure, the formation of a record label was paramount. Enter Doug Thomas.
A veteran of the Adelaide music scene with bands The Dagoes and The Spikes, Thomas was synonymous with industry connection. His nous allowed him to form Greasy Pop records, a label as au fait with Adelaide as SST is with Los Angeles.
Initially, Thomas established Greasy Pop as a release forum for his own projects, thus, in February 1980, the label debuted with The Dagoes’ Sell Soul. Word of the new venture soon spread.
By 1985, Greasy Pop’s colloquial loyalty had breached the consciousness of alternative music fans, and with the release of compilation An Oasis in a Desert of Noise, the label’s legacy was sealed. The promotional sampler gained frequent community radio airplay across Australia and New Zealand, seeding the notion that the quality of previous Adelaide output was not an aberration.
From the compilation, it was the three-chord Exploding White Mice and the sophisticated Mad Turks From Istanbul who propelled the movement, emerging as recording and touring staples for decades to come.
Tailing Grong Grong’s momentum, new ensembles The Mark Of Cain, Bloodloss, The Iron Shieks, and Mike Farkas’ Hack, rose to prominence in the United States. But it was Bloodloss’ Renestair EJ and Martin Bland who primarily helped shape grunge, with prototypes Green River and Melvins developing structure from their untamed sound.
Making waves internationally was Sydney’s jazz-imbued noise scene, with King Snake Roost (Charlie Tolnay) and Lubricated Goat (Renestair EJ/Martin Bland) ransacking hearts and minds. Despite the music’s Sydney-centricity, many of the early creators stemmed from the Adelaide underground. Tolnay was next to rise, invited by old friend Jello Biafra to appear on the Tumor Circus debut, Take Me Back or I’ll Drown Our Dog.
As tribute, Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label unleashed Grong Grong’s back catalogue on an unsuspecting America. Christened To Hell and Back, after the band's many altercations with death, it proved a triple whammy for Tolnay, with King Snake Roost’s inclusion on Amphetamine Reptile’s Dope, Guns and Fucking in the Streets compilation a badge of honour. But it wasn’t just Tolnay making ripples, as Adelaide’s Guy Maddison (Bloodloss/Lubricated Goat) worked his way into Mudhoney’s rhythm section, while Farkas’ Hack became a critical peg in Chicago’s Touch ‘n’ Go machine. Even the name grunge stems from Mike Farkas, who coined the term in the early 1980s, perceiving it suitable to describe the ’soap-scum essence’ of Grong Grong’s sound.
With a shifting soundscape came an elegance, as post-hardcore forerunners The Mark Of Cain infused elements of art rock into their testosterone-charged blitzkrieg, paving the way for alt. rock juggernauts Rollins Band and Helmet. Helmet’s John Stanier has since replaced drummer Stuart Baguley in The Mark Of Cain lineup.
Back in Adelaide, in the male-dominated universe of punk rock, it was ex-Sputniks member Liz Dealey who blazed trails, preempting America’s Riot Grrrl movement, without the rampant feminism. As The Sputniks morphed into The Moodists, Dealey and the remaining members relocated to Melbourne, where Dave Graney and wife Clare Moore forged successful careers. Dealey soon returned to Adelaide, forming scuzz rockers The Twenty-Second Sect. In a nation rich with female vocal talent, Liz Dealey ranks as perhaps the most dynamic and attitudinal.
Over the past decade, Adelaide music has made a revival, witnessing the resurgence of Where’s the Pope?, The Bearded Clams, Blood Sucking Freaks, and Grong Grong. Still punishing audiences, Grong Grong now depicts a different vibe, as singer Mike Farkas is unable to walk after a lengthy heroin-induced coma. Despite restriction, the band endures, with Farkas still screeching from behind the gimp mask, and pummelling his wheelchair at will.
Staring at the grey army at a 2013 Grong Grong show, I applaud the efforts of the dinosaurs in the crowd clinging to a languishing scene soon buried. But as long as the torch is passed, history will not devour those heady days, one of the most important eras in Australian music.
R.I.P. Charlie Tolnay.
© Chuck Hagen
