These days, Punk just seems to be a name used for raw, aggressive rock music. The angst about the futility of existence and the hate of capitalist ideologies, that accompanied the original punk movements of the 1970’s in Britain and Australia, is gone. In its place we have a Fight Club of sorts. A place everyday people, otherwise content in their lives, can vent anger and aggression through music.
I have never interviewed a real punk before and now I’m interviewing Stu Grant, chief protagonist of legendary 1970’s, Melbourne, synth punks Primitive Calculators. I’m a little nervous. Actually, I’m having a massive fan boy moment. I mean, Nick Cave and Rowland S. Howard used to go and watch these guys because they thought what they were doing was fucking crazy. I’m actually about to cross paths with a figure that lived through, and was an active part of, the punk movement in Australia.
However, it turns out the Primitive Calculators didn’t quite fit in with the punk scene to begin with. It was too tame. The only thing Stu finds memorable about his first experience of Aussie punk was how much he despised it. “They were insipid. There was The Boys Next Door [who later became The Birthday Party], who were just this David Bowie impersonation band. There was this guy [Nick Cave] out front for the Boys Next Door who was just a straight out David Bowie Impersonator. I thought ‘there’s very little in the world I hate more than David Bowie.’”
As far as Primitive Calculators were concerned, these guys weren’t even punks, a view which lead to them being rather on the outer of what was considered to be the punk scene. “The impression I got was ‘these guys want to be rock stars’. They weren’t punks. They were the next generation of wanna-be rock stars, and we found that so repulsive we let it be known and used to abuse them.”
It’s intriguing that Stu had held Nick Cave, the man who invited Primitive Calculators to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2009, in such low esteem. However, he has come to understand Cave’s trajectory, somewhat. “I’m a bit more grown up now, and I can see that if someone wants to devote their whole life to becoming a rock star then that’s what he did and he’s very good at it.” He still can’t resist sticking the boot in regarding Cave’s writing style. “I find his writing unnecessarily verbose, wordy and full of facile religious imagery.”
It’s a lot to take in, having my perceptions of those early days of punk in Australia turned upside down, but, if you’ve ever listened to the brutal wall of noise that is Primitive Calculators, it is understandable that the likes of The Boys Next Door or The Models could be considered tame in comparison. I mean, with lyrics like “it’s a cunt life and a cunt to the grave” Primitive Calculators aren’t exactly easily digestible. However, it’s a sound, and an attitude, that represents a generation who began to question the meaning of their bland suburban existence. “The initial message of punk was ‘what the fuck is this? What sort of a life is this? You work in a factory to buy this little house and then you fucking die.’” Stu, and his contemporaries, truly believed that extreme noise was the way to free the minds of the brainwashed. “Back in the 70’s we actually thought that through extreme sound you could create some kind of crack in the consciousness of the world which would suddenly make people want to be liberated from the chains of bondage."
The extremity of their approach kept Primitive Calculators on the outer for quite some time, and it was only in '78 when punk music split, one side careering down the path to power pop and the other towards what Stu describes as “savage primitivism”, that they found their niche. Away from the punk scene of St. Kilda, in Fitzroy, along with Whirly Whirl and with similar stylings to that of Chrome and Half Japanese, Primitive Calculators became the linchpin of primitive savagery.
Fast forward to the present, 35 years on from their initial formation and two re-formations later, and Primitive Calculators have just released their debut album, bluntly titled The World is Fucked. Why wait so long? Apparently, it was never a case of a lack of support. “Finances were never a problem. There were always people who wanted to make records with us”, Stu explains, “The ethos of the era that we were a part of was really anti-rock star, anti-capitalism and anti-commodification. There was the idea that you do a performance, you put the whole of your being into the performance and then it disappears.”
The musician in me is immediately infatuated with this approach. Each performance is a unique experience, never to be repeated in exactly the same form again, with no record of what has occurred except the memories of those in attendance. It is an incredibly romantic way to think of music. However, for the music consumer, it’s not ideal. Not that Primitive Calculators decision to make a record was anything to do with consideration for music consumers. In fact, to pander to the requests of a consumerist public would completely go against everything they had ever stood for.
I have never interviewed a real punk before and now I’m interviewing Stu Grant, chief protagonist of legendary 1970’s, Melbourne, synth punks Primitive Calculators. I’m a little nervous. Actually, I’m having a massive fan boy moment. I mean, Nick Cave and Rowland S. Howard used to go and watch these guys because they thought what they were doing was fucking crazy. I’m actually about to cross paths with a figure that lived through, and was an active part of, the punk movement in Australia.
However, it turns out the Primitive Calculators didn’t quite fit in with the punk scene to begin with. It was too tame. The only thing Stu finds memorable about his first experience of Aussie punk was how much he despised it. “They were insipid. There was The Boys Next Door [who later became The Birthday Party], who were just this David Bowie impersonation band. There was this guy [Nick Cave] out front for the Boys Next Door who was just a straight out David Bowie Impersonator. I thought ‘there’s very little in the world I hate more than David Bowie.’”
As far as Primitive Calculators were concerned, these guys weren’t even punks, a view which lead to them being rather on the outer of what was considered to be the punk scene. “The impression I got was ‘these guys want to be rock stars’. They weren’t punks. They were the next generation of wanna-be rock stars, and we found that so repulsive we let it be known and used to abuse them.”
It’s intriguing that Stu had held Nick Cave, the man who invited Primitive Calculators to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2009, in such low esteem. However, he has come to understand Cave’s trajectory, somewhat. “I’m a bit more grown up now, and I can see that if someone wants to devote their whole life to becoming a rock star then that’s what he did and he’s very good at it.” He still can’t resist sticking the boot in regarding Cave’s writing style. “I find his writing unnecessarily verbose, wordy and full of facile religious imagery.”
It’s a lot to take in, having my perceptions of those early days of punk in Australia turned upside down, but, if you’ve ever listened to the brutal wall of noise that is Primitive Calculators, it is understandable that the likes of The Boys Next Door or The Models could be considered tame in comparison. I mean, with lyrics like “it’s a cunt life and a cunt to the grave” Primitive Calculators aren’t exactly easily digestible. However, it’s a sound, and an attitude, that represents a generation who began to question the meaning of their bland suburban existence. “The initial message of punk was ‘what the fuck is this? What sort of a life is this? You work in a factory to buy this little house and then you fucking die.’” Stu, and his contemporaries, truly believed that extreme noise was the way to free the minds of the brainwashed. “Back in the 70’s we actually thought that through extreme sound you could create some kind of crack in the consciousness of the world which would suddenly make people want to be liberated from the chains of bondage."
The extremity of their approach kept Primitive Calculators on the outer for quite some time, and it was only in '78 when punk music split, one side careering down the path to power pop and the other towards what Stu describes as “savage primitivism”, that they found their niche. Away from the punk scene of St. Kilda, in Fitzroy, along with Whirly Whirl and with similar stylings to that of Chrome and Half Japanese, Primitive Calculators became the linchpin of primitive savagery.
Fast forward to the present, 35 years on from their initial formation and two re-formations later, and Primitive Calculators have just released their debut album, bluntly titled The World is Fucked. Why wait so long? Apparently, it was never a case of a lack of support. “Finances were never a problem. There were always people who wanted to make records with us”, Stu explains, “The ethos of the era that we were a part of was really anti-rock star, anti-capitalism and anti-commodification. There was the idea that you do a performance, you put the whole of your being into the performance and then it disappears.”
The musician in me is immediately infatuated with this approach. Each performance is a unique experience, never to be repeated in exactly the same form again, with no record of what has occurred except the memories of those in attendance. It is an incredibly romantic way to think of music. However, for the music consumer, it’s not ideal. Not that Primitive Calculators decision to make a record was anything to do with consideration for music consumers. In fact, to pander to the requests of a consumerist public would completely go against everything they had ever stood for.
For Stu, it was all to do with capturing something that was impossible to capture in their live performance. “Our sound is so chaotic. Sounds conflict with each other so much that there is a really fine balance between precision and [being indiscernible]. When we play live, it’s either just a massive wall of uncontrollable chaos or it might vary towards too much precision. By recording we could take the fineness of that balance and do it so that we were right on the boundary of the chaotic, the indiscernible and the precise mechanic repetition.”
In the end it’s probably for the best that the album was left until now. Stu’s opinion is that recording equipment in the ’70s didn’t have the capacity to capture this finest of balances. He’s also happy to admit they didn’t really have the knowhow to make the music they wanted to make at the time. “We didn’t know what we were doing at all. We knew that no one in the world of Australian rock music was doing what we wanted to do, but we had no idea how to do it.”
All this talk of sound and vision and I’m yet to even broach the subject of the album’s title. Why exactly is the world fucked? Stu, as well as being a punk, happens to be an academic at Monash University, and his argument is by no means shallow or one dimensional. It centres on one thing. “There’s only one thing wrong with the world. It has become naturalised that the Chicago School of Economic thinking has become a normal and reasonable way to view the work of humans.”
It’s a compelling point, and Stu articulates it incredibly well. First trialled under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Chicago School was gradually given a more humane face by Thatcher and Reagan, in the UK and US respectively, culminating, at least in Australia, with the individualist ideologies of the Hawke and Keating governments. Since then, it’s never really left. The focus on competition and economic growth has, according to Stu, actively contributed to environmental devastation, the exploitation of the third world and continued poverty.
For this part of our conversation the punk in Stu has been shunted into the backseat and the academic is well and truly at the wheel. Quoting American philosopher Charles Sanders-Pierce’s paper ‘Evolutionary Love’, Stu questions the traditional views on competition. “What if the survival of the fittest means the ones that fit into the environment around them? What if it means the ones that love their species and the world around them the best are the most successful, not who’s the best competitor but who loves their children the best or has found the best way to work with our environment?”
So is there hope for those of us who don’t want to compete with everyone around us, pushing people down to rise higher and get a bigger slice of the pie? The reaction to Andrew Bolt’s scathing article about Stu and his life as an academic suggests not. Following Bolt’s article, which took aim at Stu’s tea of choice and reading glasses, among other things, there was an outpouring of rage from readers, damning Stu and his academic lifestyle, making a living off something that didn’t contribute to competition or profit. However, Stu isn’t too shaken up. To him, it’s just everyone playing their part. “They’re malevolent, right-wing nut bags and they did exactly as malevolent right-wing nut bags should’ve. I’m a looney left-wing academic. I did exactly what a looney left-wing academic should do.”
Following on from Bolt’s article, Stu does, however, have concerns about the health of journalism, something that alarms me, in my capacity as a writer. “I think what we know as journalism and that role as the fourth estate, where there was an independent voice of comment that existed as a fundamental pillar of democratic society has almost gone and I think it will go.” In short, there’ll be no more keeping the bastards honest. Apparently, we all need to get ready for an age of infotainment and publications regurgitating political party views. As for me, Stu hasn’t got the best news. “Every music journalist I’ve spoken to, who has an interesting perspective like you, has a day job.” Not only is the world fucked but so am I.
At least we’ve all got something to look forward to though, in the form of a second Primitive Calculators album, which Stu has already started writing. Dismissing the rumours that their second record would sound “as if we’d taken psychedelic drugs” as just “an idea that was floating around for a while” it seems the second album will continue the intensity of the first whilst being more “politically sharp” and adding a little “colour” to their “sharp, shimmering, metallic sound”. It seems Stu, having enjoyed making the first record so much, is a convert to the ways of the recording artist, although with a completely different aim to most. While Stu’s busy unfucking the world, one record at a time, I’m going to start thinking about a new career path…
In the end it’s probably for the best that the album was left until now. Stu’s opinion is that recording equipment in the ’70s didn’t have the capacity to capture this finest of balances. He’s also happy to admit they didn’t really have the knowhow to make the music they wanted to make at the time. “We didn’t know what we were doing at all. We knew that no one in the world of Australian rock music was doing what we wanted to do, but we had no idea how to do it.”
All this talk of sound and vision and I’m yet to even broach the subject of the album’s title. Why exactly is the world fucked? Stu, as well as being a punk, happens to be an academic at Monash University, and his argument is by no means shallow or one dimensional. It centres on one thing. “There’s only one thing wrong with the world. It has become naturalised that the Chicago School of Economic thinking has become a normal and reasonable way to view the work of humans.”
It’s a compelling point, and Stu articulates it incredibly well. First trialled under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Chicago School was gradually given a more humane face by Thatcher and Reagan, in the UK and US respectively, culminating, at least in Australia, with the individualist ideologies of the Hawke and Keating governments. Since then, it’s never really left. The focus on competition and economic growth has, according to Stu, actively contributed to environmental devastation, the exploitation of the third world and continued poverty.
For this part of our conversation the punk in Stu has been shunted into the backseat and the academic is well and truly at the wheel. Quoting American philosopher Charles Sanders-Pierce’s paper ‘Evolutionary Love’, Stu questions the traditional views on competition. “What if the survival of the fittest means the ones that fit into the environment around them? What if it means the ones that love their species and the world around them the best are the most successful, not who’s the best competitor but who loves their children the best or has found the best way to work with our environment?”
So is there hope for those of us who don’t want to compete with everyone around us, pushing people down to rise higher and get a bigger slice of the pie? The reaction to Andrew Bolt’s scathing article about Stu and his life as an academic suggests not. Following Bolt’s article, which took aim at Stu’s tea of choice and reading glasses, among other things, there was an outpouring of rage from readers, damning Stu and his academic lifestyle, making a living off something that didn’t contribute to competition or profit. However, Stu isn’t too shaken up. To him, it’s just everyone playing their part. “They’re malevolent, right-wing nut bags and they did exactly as malevolent right-wing nut bags should’ve. I’m a looney left-wing academic. I did exactly what a looney left-wing academic should do.”
Following on from Bolt’s article, Stu does, however, have concerns about the health of journalism, something that alarms me, in my capacity as a writer. “I think what we know as journalism and that role as the fourth estate, where there was an independent voice of comment that existed as a fundamental pillar of democratic society has almost gone and I think it will go.” In short, there’ll be no more keeping the bastards honest. Apparently, we all need to get ready for an age of infotainment and publications regurgitating political party views. As for me, Stu hasn’t got the best news. “Every music journalist I’ve spoken to, who has an interesting perspective like you, has a day job.” Not only is the world fucked but so am I.
At least we’ve all got something to look forward to though, in the form of a second Primitive Calculators album, which Stu has already started writing. Dismissing the rumours that their second record would sound “as if we’d taken psychedelic drugs” as just “an idea that was floating around for a while” it seems the second album will continue the intensity of the first whilst being more “politically sharp” and adding a little “colour” to their “sharp, shimmering, metallic sound”. It seems Stu, having enjoyed making the first record so much, is a convert to the ways of the recording artist, although with a completely different aim to most. While Stu’s busy unfucking the world, one record at a time, I’m going to start thinking about a new career path…