Meet My Friend Venom: The Brazenness of Venom P. Stinger

Throughout the late eighties/early nineties, Melbourne’s underground music scene shined with immense talent and originality, none more so than Venom P. Stinger.

A man walks into a bar. Upon first glance, he appears well-dressed and a class above the regulars of this dingy dive joint. Sweat pools above his brow as he spies the room. He seems nervous, agitated. Upon second glance, it appears he’s not well-dressed at all. In fact, he’s a scruff. The illusion of a tailored grey suit jacket is shattered by collection of suspicious stains and cigarette burns. He is small with exaggerated features, and hair styled in a frizzy, professorial mess. Making his beer order he trips over his words, clenches in anticipation, and as a short, sharp beer spews from his lips, he pummels his fist on the counter. Upon receiving his beer, this odd creature smiles, and mouths a pleasant thank you to the bar wench.

That was my first impression of Jim White, drummer extraordinaire for Melbourne’s Venom P. Stinger. This was 1991. Thirty-three years later, the jazz-trained prodigy has done it all — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, P.J. Harvey, The Dirty Three, Low, Cat Power, and more, adding a richness to the music that may otherwise be deemed as straight up the middle.

Distracting my gaze, a wayward individual with his right arm in a sling staggers by. That’s Dugald McKenzie, Venom P. Stinger frontman and wild child. His notoriety precedes him, having sung for seminal eighties punk bands Fungus Brains, and Sick Things.

As Venom P. Stinger takes the stage, Dugald and Jim are joined by bassist Alan Secher-Jensen, (a tall, rangy fellow whose demeanour could best be described as geography teacher by day, serial killer by night) and guitarist Mick Turner (ex-Sick Things, Fungus Brains and Moodists) who, despite his skeletal face, seems quite normal in comparison.

As a seventeen-year-old back in 1991, I thought I’d seen it all. Punk, thrash, metal, rap, scat movies… but as it turned out, I had not. Once Venom P. Stinger were up and running, my life reset to ground zero. What the hell is this?

Claustrophobic, is what it is. Paranoid. Assaulting. And when Dugald finally decides to stop swinging from the rafters to begin singing, well, I had never been so petrified in my young life.

They got my car, they got my house
They got the keys to my door, I can’t get out
They got a game, where I’m the mouse
While they’re beating my brains in, and smashing my face around

For close to a decade, Venom P. Stinger played small venues worldwide, gaining a cult following in Germany, Spain, and Italy, and also gaining recognition in America. Hence, it was such an untimely exit for Dugald McKenzie, committed to a psychiatric unit in late 1991.

With the release of two LP’s (Aberrant Records’ Meet My Friend Venom and What’s Yours is Mine) and a swathe of 45’s on their resume, Venom P. Stinger could have called it quits there and then, and still go down as one of Australia’s greatest. At the behest of McKenzie, the band decided to continue.

Nick Palmer was just another face in the crowd. More importantly, he was a diehard Venom P. fan. So much so, that at the time of McKenzie’s departure, Palmer, akin to Henry Rollins re Black Flag, was approached by the band to audition as replacement singer. Already having met the band, and knowing all the lyrics, he was ready made, and as an added bonus, was equally as menacing the former singer. Sound-wise, it’s not easy to spot the difference.

In late 1991, with new singer in tow, Venom P. Stinger released the 4-track EP Wating Room. The transition to new singer was seamless. But Venom P’s biggest break came in late 1992, when Los Angeles radio station KDVS invited the band to perform a full set live on air. The ensuing result was the release of a live album, simply titled Live, which boasts a mix of old and new songs, solidifying Dugald McKenzie’s legacy.

With the band now entering earholes abroad, and with a sustainable income, the original three took a hiatus to concentrate on other projects. In 1994, Alan Secher-Jensen formed his own band, Come the Rubber Pig, while Mick Turner and Jim White joined a young Warren Ellis (Busload of Faith, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) to form instrumental group The Dirty Three in 1992.

A final full length LP followed in 1996 (Tearbucketer), but by then, the wind was out of the sails. Dwindling crowds, poor sales, and other projects garnering more importance, saw Venom P. Stinger split in 1997. Adding salt to the wounds, Dugald McKenzie passed away from a long battle with cancer in 2004. But the legacy lives on, a savage ethos that provoked the punk rock standard, and challenged the audience with their musical nous. Vale Dugald McKenzie, and R.I.P. Alan Secher-Jensen, who passed away in 2018.