Thirteen Tonne Theory

By Mark Seymour

We were all equal, but sometimes the band could be led by whoever shouted the loudest. 
Step inside one of Australia's most beloved and hard-working bands.
For eighteen years, Mark Seymour fronted Hunters and Collectors - although he was never remotely in control of it. Together they released songs that remain Australian anthems like Talking to a Stranger, Say Goodbye, Throw Your Arms Around Me and Holy Grail. The band was also a great social experiment - an artistic collective that shared everything equally, from the drinks rider to songwriting copyright.
It couldn't last. In the end, the relentless touring machine known as 'Hunnas' didn't break up so much as switch itself off.
With a songwriter's eye for the perfect detail, Seymour tells the truth about the endless fried breakfasts, bewildering industry negotiations and the view from a thirteen-tonne truck on a never ending highway.
More than a simple rock memoir, THIRTEEN TONNE THEORY is a dryly comic, revealing and passionate reflection on the struggle to be heard in a democracy of blokes.

'Anyone who writes of their years in rock music must know that this is the book they are going to have to trump.' Robert Forster, The Monthly

'Very funny . . . there can be no escaping the absurdity of rock'n'roll.'
The Age

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
• Release date: Mar 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781742282398

Book preview

The Ballroom 1980–1982

Holland Tunnel Dive

No support

No bridges to cross

No wood to burn

Nothing to learn

No soul

No love

No dinner tonight

No woman

No cry

No respect

No equal rights

No garden to hoe

No seed to sow

No food in the fridge

No TV shows

No emotion

No devotion

No trips to the ocean

No time to play

No lays

No way

No news

No blues

Nothing to lose

No soap

No car

No cigar

Leaving for the other side Going to take a Holland Tunnel dive

Oh what a ride Going to take a Holland Tunnel dive

(Lyrics by Don Christensen)

No.9 Waratah Street

1980

Waratah Street was full of mini-vans with ‘courier’ written on the driver’s side door. The houses were all closed up with their blinds drawn – no one ever came outside except on Jewish feast days, every other week. Then families silently strolled in the twilight to the synagogue. Men and boys wore dark suits with broad-brimmed hats. Their hair hung down the sides of their faces in long tangled ringlets. Mothers and daughters walked separately in dull shapeless frocks. The women wore identical auburn wigs, slightly bobbed.

There’d been complaints about No.9. Tarty-looking punk-rock girls were hanging around out on the front veranda. They wore tight miniskirts and fishnet stockings that ended in red or black stilettos. Their faces were heavily painted with pale foundation and rich crimson lipstick. They hennaed their hair. These girls wandered in and out at all hours or chattered out front, smoking cigarettes. The front door was always left open and music pumped out into the street. The Sex Pistols, Pere Ubu, Iggy Pop. People came and went. The cops kept a close eye on the place.

No.9 was a Victorian villa with a slate roof and huge bay windows.The front garden was wild with weeds, fallen branches and exotic English shrubs long gone to seed. Someone had cared for it once. It still had dignity. At the centre of the sweeping front yard a fifteen-metre-high date palm extended its fronds out over the pavement.

Each evening at seven sharp a man came out the front door dressed in a purple fifties wedding suit with a pink ruffle-necked shirt. His hair was gelled flat to his scalp. He was sickly thin, his face pallid and pocked with speed boils. He shuffled over to the tap and uncoiled the garden hose from a hook on the fence. After adjusting the flow he aimed it at the base of the palm, always on the western side.

He never missed, even when it was pissing down. He called the tree ‘Meredith’. The girls called him ‘The Emperor of Everything’. They adored him. ‘Oh, the Emperor? He’s alright. He’s a little sweetie.’

The Emperor meant well. Every Friday he took a tram across town to the main gate of Her Majesty’s Pentridge Prison to meet the newly released. The Emperor offered the lads food and shelter back at Waratah Street and then commandeered their dole cheques to make sure the money was spent on the food of his choosing: nothing with a spine.

The Emperor believed all buildings were an abomination of nature. Once he’d gotten the lads home, he made them sit on a collapsed sofa just outside the back door. Then he stalked up and down in front of them, exhorting them to rise above their condition. He told the young lads that they were victims of a social order that was designed to confuse and bewilder them, which was why they’d ended up inside. He’d read Foucault – walls were at the heart of the problem. He’d begun knocking holes in them. When they began to come down he moved into the ceiling. In winter the house was bitterly cold.

Eventually, the only room left untouched was the ‘music room’ – the lounge under normal circumstances – where the Emperor allowed some of the more radical local musicians to ‘experiment’. He held them in high regard. They were his cultural emissaries, poets of deconstruction. Like everything else about No.9, the music they made was dark and mysterious. Some of the girls compared it to the sound of a zoo burning down. The Emperor believed it was so significant that he encouraged his ex-con disciples to hang out in there and listen for a while. They usually didn’t last long: it was hellishly loud and bore no resemblance to ACDC. There was no furniture so everybody had to stand. No one ever sat on the floor. Sitting on the floor was considered despicably ‘hippie’. Besides, it was covered in cigarettes. Still, the girls loved it. They stood around the walls, smoking and drinking gin straight from the bottle, and watched while the boys did their thing.

There was one Maori-looking bloke who used to stand in the middle of the room topless, playing a green Hernandez electric guitar through a Fender amp that lay on the floor at his feet. He also had a vacuum cleaner that he turned on, aiming the hose with his right hand at the middle pick-up. Naturally the guitar went berserk. The amp was already cranked to ten; it could only distort. Miking it up to a tower of black speaker bins over in the corner made the whole appalling bestial wail even louder. Funny thing was, it actually sounded like a whale. The famous French marine biologist Jacques Cousteau had just recorded the sound of whales mating in the Pacific and the moans they made had rocked the global artistic world, particularly the world of the musically avant-garde.

The guitarist embellished his work by subtly manipulating the end of the vacuum cleaner hose over the pick-up, causing the wail to thicken into a foghorn-like roar. Simultaneously, with his left hand he delicately stroked the guitar neck with a glockenspiel key, ‘tuning’ the note… Massive waves of mournful harmonic distortion rolled up and down the walls and seeped through them out into the street.

It physically hurt to be in there with him. But the very pain he was inflicting held the girls entranced. They felt as though they were part of something really special. The bloke became quite popular. Word got around. People from the suburbs began turning up. God forbid, boys started coming, all of them badly dressed. The girls in the miniskirts were a definite drawcard, though the bloke with the guitar seemed to hold some interest as well. The boys watched the girls watching the boy. Some of them wondered what the fuck he was doing but went away assuming he was getting screwed royally, which to the more cynical was motivation enough.

Tuesday became the night of choice. About fifty people would squeeze into the music room. The Emperor set himself up on a huge maroon lounge chair just outside the front door and started charging money for lettuce and tomato sandwiches. A dollar each. The ex-cons wandered through the crowd with trays of them. People brought their own grog and dumped the empties on the floor. The Emperor stole a broom from the Safeway supermarket out the back and the lads swept up in the morning.

When the guitar player was really inspired, the performance could go for a good hour of uninterrupted cacophony, the room jam-packed with punters all staring blankly at each other or the floor. No one blocked their ears. What would’ve been the point of that?

The neighbours became deeply concerned. Amongst the more orthodox Jews in the area, there were those who came to believe that these ‘people’ were fraternising with the devil. No.9 became a topic of discussion at several of the local synagogues.

No.9 got raided on a Tuesday night in February. Three carcasses of beef had been stolen from the Safeway supermarket by teenagers with shaved heads and trench coats. The police used the supermarket car park as a staging point. Eight squad cars arrived at around ten. Thirty-two young constables from the St Kilda Police Station moved quietly up the side lane, then simply strolled into the house with truncheons aloft. Nothing was said. They made no announcement. How could they? No one would’ve heard anyway. Some bloke from Narre Warren thought whoever it was behind him was pushing too hard. He swung a punch without looking first. All hell broke loose. There was a lot of bloodshed. Seven people were arrested for assaulting police officers.

The following Tuesday, the guitar player turned up and plugged in but the girls didn’t front. They went to the Crystal Ballroom instead. The Emperor made sandwiches and sat outside for a while. Nobody came.

The guitarist went to live in London. The Emperor vanished. No.9 isn’t there anymore.

The Schnorts

I met a bloke called Archer in a place called Ormond College. It was an exclusive hall of residence on the grounds of Melbourne University. I was a morbid little bugger, prone to long bouts of gloom, and while studying had got me this far there was little else I was good at, except what I was learning to do with the girl who lived a few doors down the street. My mother decided it would be a good idea to get me out of the neighbourhood. She was very protective. Besides, going to Ormond would allow me to get acquainted with the sons and daughters of the social elite at a fraction of what it would’ve cost if my parents’d been able to cough up for the sort of equally elite private secondary school most of the knobs at Ormond had come from. It was my mother’s idea of societal queue-jumping, straight into an academic cloister, safe from the clutches of prematurely pregnant girlfriends.

It turned out she overshot by a couple of rungs. These people weren’t just well-heeled or comfortably middle class: they were the sons and daughters of the landed aristocracy, if there is such a thing in this country. Old-money blue bloods, high on privilege and entitlement and mad as buggery. Kids in moleskins who’d boarded at Geelong Grammar, shipped in from homesteads out on the western plains, where their parents hung on to vast properties that’d been in the family since the middle of the previous century. And it wasn’t cloistered at all. All sorts of weird shit was rife. Boys and girls got bastardised, swapped beds, drank, smoked, stayed up all night singing anthems to the fall of the British empire, like ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, and never appeared to study, unless they were doing medicine. All in good fun of course, but it was hard, arrogant and sometimes violent, and the drinking was right over the top.

Archer was still moving his stuff out of what was meant to be my room when I got there. It was a slow process. He shuffled around with the Stones blaring out of his portable stereo. Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! I stood there in the doorway watching. He was moving to a bigger room. There was an acoustic guitar in the corner. The solo to ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ started. I reached for the guitar.

‘May I?’

He turned around, looked at me and shrugged.

I started playing the guitar solo, which I’d learned in my bedroom back at Mum’s place. He watched me for a while then he went over to the stereo and moved the needle back to the beginning of the track.

‘May I?’

He held out his hand for the guitar. I passed it back. He proceeded to play the solo perfectly, note for note, every accent exactly as came out of the speakers. It was exactly correct, and somehow strangely mechanical. When the song had finished he looked up at me dryly, then walked over to the stereo, unplugged it and carried it and the suitcase he’d been packing out the door.

‘See ya.’ And he was gone.

Archer liked rock music. That was it. I decided I liked him. I found him again. Everything else that followed was dictated by the obscurity of Archer’s muse. He knew a bunch of other sensitive types. There was Rob, the drunken architecture student who was constantly in love. Falconer, the tall mournful medical student who was going out with Archer’s sister, the blonde everybody looked at. There was a girl named Margot who smoked Alpines, swore like a door bitch and loved to punch the air when pissed. There were others. They all knew Archer. Gradually I was accepted, sort of. But I was awkward. Everyone was – preppies who didn’t quite connect with any of the other cliques in the place. These various soulful types gravitated to Archer’s room because the stereo rocked. So Archer decided to build a bigger one, something so big it could never be removed from the room without being disassembled. Then he decided to form a band.

Everyone who was in the room could be in it. He named it after a tennis racquet called a ‘schnort’. The Schnorts. The whole thing became an elaborate joke. It involved a high degree of dedication cleverly disguised as flippancy. And it was democratic. Everybody got to sing. Rob, the architecture student, mixed the sound. Songs were chosen for their kitsch value. Bad taste was paramount. Nothing was serious. Feature songs were ‘Stranded in the Jungle’, ‘To Sir with Love’ and ‘Set Me Free’. The overriding value was that everyone was equal; that no one took centre stage. The lead vocal was a revolving door. We organised our own gigs, for free. Needless to say, it got serious. Well, I did. I started nursing a secret desire to be a singer when I discovered that I could scream ‘Twist and Shout’. Then people started graduating, so the band ended. But my yearnings didn’t. I petitioned everyone to continue in another form.

I dreamed up a B52’s-esque thing – a sixties kitsch pop band, The Jetsonnes. High on kitsch value, not unlike the stuff we had been doing, but original. I wrote strange songs about video games and transsexuality. Margot sang. Archer’s big stereo turned into a PA. Falconer played the drums. I found an Italian guitarist from Doncaster, Ray. We played in small bars around inner Melbourne, finally gravitating to the Crystal Ballroom, which by 1979 was becoming a mecca for alternative music.

Then I left. A punk named Pierre told me I was wasting my time. It was a tipping point. I already felt it: The Jetsonnes were too light. I was after something more menacing and a lot sexier. Besides, I wanted to sing.

Instead I brooded for six months. Got a job in the tax office. Sales tax. Hung out at the Ballroom. By then I was listening to American music. New York stuff – Television, The Dolls, Lou Reed. It was all dark, apocalyptic, sarcastic, bleak. You name it, if it wasn’t nice, I was interested…

There was a lot of drug taking at the Ballroom. Especially heroin. But it was an exotic place to get lost in. Radically un-suburban. People dressed up and hung out on the long carpeted staircase in gonzo sixties clobber from op-shops, mixed with radical make-up and hennaed hair. Everything was ‘boring’ or ‘hippie’.

One night a group of us went to see Talking Heads at the Dallas Brooks Hall. There was a bloke named James with us who rushed the stage in the middle of their hit ‘Psycho Killer’ and slammed a twelve-inch butcher’s knife into the stage at the feet of David Byrne. His hand slipped down over the guard and drove the cutting edge deep into the flesh of his palm. Blood sprayed out across boards at Byrne’s feet. James turned and ran back up the aisle, security in hot pursuit. We followed him outside. An argument ensued but they let him go after handing him a roll of toilet paper from the gents. We headed south back across the river to the Ballroom, James’s hand wrapped loosely in toilet paper.

‘Wow,’ somebody said. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘For fuck’s sake, wasn’t it obvious?" he said, as we sat on the tram heading down St Kilda Road. ‘They were so fucking BORING.’

Still, there was no one there I wanted to form a band with. It was a subculture of misfit middle-class artists who were all desperate to be hip, die or get overseas. A lot of them were sooks. The classic line people used was ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ There was a big sponge factor going on. A self-obsessed bunch of insecure wankers, really. Naturally, I fitted in really well, got engrossed in the bands, the theatricality – especially The Boys Next Door, who were ludicrous but mesmerising. I hung around their friends. Not doing much.

Since the Sex Pistols, they knew that Australia was more of a cultural backwater than ever. In the Ballroom, ‘punk’ meant ‘anglophile’. England was good. New Musical Express was good. To the darlings of St Kilda, Australian music simply didn’t count. But if pop music is any measure of cultural growth then this period was a turning point in Australia. A musical renaissance was about to begin with the explosion of pub rock, which Hunters and Collectors would be disconnected from for a short time. My ignorance of Australian music, especially from Sydney, would prove to be crucial later on.

I tried forming a band with my brother Nicholas. We argued. It fell apart. (He went on to form a band with a bloke named Neil Finn – they became known as Crowded House. Nicholas became extremely rich and moderately famous.) Eventually I went looking for the old gang. At least they knew how to work co-operatively. Archer, Falconer, Miles. I found them again. I wasn’t popular for leaving The Jetsonnes – even a pariah to some of them, particularly the drummer. Still, I backed myself. If I wrote good stuff they might respond. It became my sole motivation: snaring their interest and KEEPING IT. There was a kind of begrudging artistic respect that still lingered between us. Bluff and hard, but respect all the same. We came to a loose arrangement. They didn’t trust me but granted me a reprieve. I scrambled to pull it together.

Talking to a Stranger

By the time I found Archer again, his PA was fully commercial. He was hiring it out regularly at the Ballroom. There were six wooden speaker boxes and two large cases on wheels, full of cables, microphones and metal stands. He kept it all in a white Toyota HiAce. Every night he moved the gear through the back gate into his house for safekeeping. It was in Fitzroy and ran along the side of a cobblestoned alley. He’d chosen the house well: a side gate from the kitchen gave him access to the backyard and the alley, which meant he wouldn’t have to cart the PA through the front door every night. The PA could be taken apart and re-assembled whenever he felt like it.

He always felt like it.

There was a long wooden table in the kitchen where he sat for hours with a soldering iron, a jumbo box of Salada biscuits and a bottle of Glenfiddich. He meticulously attached microphone plugs onto the ends of metres of black rubber cable. Every horizontal surface had something on it. The opposite wall was piled to the ceiling with towers of coiled cable. There were tools everywhere:pliers, spanners, side cutters, torn-open bags of rivets and tiny slivers of red and yellow plastic shrink-wrap all over the floor and out in the yard. The entrance into the hallway at the back of the kitchen was blocked by two speaker boxes stacked on top of each other. The speakers themselves ran all the way up the hall to the front door.

The room stank of burning solder and flux, which would hiss as he blew on it to cool it down. Then he’d bang the excess off the end of the iron by hitting the heel of his hand on the table, so the table was covered in tiny dollops of solder that had burned into the wood and hardened. He spent days there, upgrading, repairing and getting off.

The PA was in constant need of attention because he hired it out to punk bands who abused the hell out of it. There was an explosion of interest in the naughty and the bizarre at that time. Kids flocked into the city from the suburbs to witness the new breed of rock, where anything could happen onstage and often did. There were bars everywhere and bands to match. Archer did a roaring trade.

He was out every night except Sundays. He’d be seen sitting behind the mixing board at the back of the room with a safety hat on and industrial ear muffs to protect his hearing from the blast. He didn’t mix the bands’ sound so much as set and forget. The bands didn’t care and he didn’t either. High-fidelity wasn’t the issue – it was the ‘vibe’, and he loved his work. The PA grew quickly. As the crowds got bigger he added speakers, more microphones, more cable and a bigger desk.

There were two other tenants in the house. They had to go. He needed the room. As business got better he became more security-conscious. Every night he came home and unloaded the PA through the side gate into the house. He jammed the boxes in all the way down the hallway to the front door. This meant there was no way in or out of the house except through the roof. For even more security, he deliberately parked the Toyota across the gate in the alleyway. The place was impregnable unless you climbed over the fence. In the morning, the other tenants were trapped in their rooms until he woke up and moved the PA out again. The situation came to a head when one of them was forced to urinate on the floor while he waited for Archer to wake up.

I went round there one afternoon with an electric guitar. Archer was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van. He looked through the windscreen at me, started the engine and drove forward. I thought he’d stop so I stayed where I was. But he didn’t. He nudged the van up against my chest. We looked at each other through the glass.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ I said.

He squeezed the clutch out a little more, pushing me backwards. I stepped to the side. An old lady came out of the gate carrying a casserole dish.

She came round to the passenger’s side window. Archer leaned over and wound it down. I started rubbing my leg.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hi,’ she said.

She looked at Archer for a moment then leaned into the window and spoke with a soft urgency.

‘Yes, Mum,’ he replied.

She trotted off down the alley. He looked back at me through the windscreen.

‘What?’

‘I’ve got an idea for a song. Thought you might like to hear it.’

Archer stared at me a moment then reversed the van back so its side door pressed against the fence gate. He turned the engine off and climbed back over the seat, opened the side door and went through the gate into the backyard and then the house. I stayed out in the alley. He came back through, opened the van’s rear doors from the inside and stepped out with a small stool and a glass of Glenfiddich. He put them both down and went back through the van into the backyard and the house, then returned the same way, with a bass guitar. It was painted iridescent metallic red and had ‘Fernandes’ written on the headstock. He sat down on the stool, cradled the guitar in his lap, sipped the Glenfiddich and looked up at me. It was turning into a warm day. Sweat ran down the back of my neck.

‘Well?’

I looked around for somewhere to sit. There wasn’t anywhere so I put the guitar case down on the stones, opened it and pulled the guitar out. I sat on the ground. He had another sip.

‘You go like this.’ I played a riff on the fifth fret.

‘I can’t hear it.’ Neither of us could. There were no amps.

I got up on one knee.

‘Here. Listen.’

Archer leaned forward on his stool. I started again.

‘You want me to play that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give us a look.’

I turned slightly to give him a better view of my fingers. He began to finger the pattern. It became slightly more audible. The thicker strings of the bass made a soft thwacking sound. I watched him. I couldn’t be sure if he was getting it right, so I sang as he played it.

‘Dumdum dadum dumdum dumdum dumdum dadum dumdum dumdum dumdum dadum dumdum dumdum dumdum dadum dumdum dumdum dumdum…’

He stopped playing and watched me, then bent over and placed his ear on the horn of the bass and started again.

I stopped singing. Archer kept going.

‘Have you got it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sure?’

‘Course.’

I started playing the other part, a melodic rhythm against his bass-thwacking. We both sat in the heat bobbing our heads up and down, barely able to hear each other. We played harder. I tapped my foot on the stones. He started to really thump the strings. The guitar vibrated in the heat. Then he stopped and took a sip of the Glenfiddich. I was getting into it, rocking back and forwards on my arse. A car turned into the alley. Archer got up, grabbed his stool and disappeared into the back of the van. I kept going until the car was almost on top of me. It stopped and tooted. I scrambled out of the way.

‘Sorry,’ I said and kicked the guitar case to the side. The car drove through. I climbed into the back of the van, then out through the side door and the gate, across the backyard into Archer’s kitchen. He was sitting at the table soldering a cannon plug onto the end of some cable. He reached one hand into the Salada box, grabbed a cracker and shovelled it into his mouth; the other hand held the soldering iron. He thumped it on the table to loosen the cold solder. I waited. He kept at it.

‘So, what do you think?’

‘Hey?’ said Archer, without looking up.

‘What do you think of the song?’

‘Oh… good. I think. Couldn’t hear much.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, it works when you can hear it properly. I recorded something on cassette.’

‘Got it with you?’ he said, without looking up.

‘No.’

He picked up the Salada box and offered it.

‘Thanks.’

I reached right in. He still had hold of the box but kept his eye on the soldering iron. I rummaged around, trying to get a good handful. He kept a tight grip, his arm waving around as I struggled to draw out a clean unbroken cracker. Finally I got three between two fingers and carefully withdrew my hand. Archer looked up. I gave the crackers a good inspection before I put them in my mouth. He frowned.

‘Got enough?’

‘Yeah. Thanks. So, you wanna play it again?’

‘No. Gotta do this.’

‘What is it?’

‘A new multicore. I have to have it ready tonight.’ He looked at his watch then banged the table again. ‘By four.’

‘Oh. See you then.’

‘Yeah. See you.’

I walked out across the backyard, through the open gate and the van and out into the alley where I’d left the guitar case. I packed it away and started walking.

‘Hey,’ he yelled. ‘Hey!’

I turned round. Archer stepped out from behind the van.

‘What?’

‘What’s the song called?’ ‘Talking to a Stranger.’

Get Perano

‘So what’d you think?’

‘Of that?’ The Doctor indicated with his head towards the entrance to the Crystal Ballroom.

‘Yeah. That. The rehearsal.’

‘Is that what it was?’

‘What else would you call it?’

‘Look, I was just playing the drums. I wasn’t rehearsing for anything.’

‘Oh.’

He dragged the kick-drum case down the entrance stairs to the pavement. I watched. When he got to the bottom he stopped and looked up.

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Yeah.’

I walked down to where the Doctor was waiting. He was well over six feet. I’m small. I had to look up. The Doctor inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, then let the air out in a rush. I took the waft of VB and seafood pizza full blast in the face. There’d been two slabs shared quickly by the lot of us over the previous three hours. They’d worked hard. It was 8 p.m. The Doctor had arrived at 4.45 p.m., straight from hospital, and was now heading back to his real job. He pulled a roll of Allens breath mints out of his shirt pocket and put two in his mouth. The kick-drum case sat on the pavement between us. I watched him chew the mints. They were large ones that made the side of his mouth bulge and wobble as he masticated. He was gaunt with dark brown deep set eyes. It’d been said more than once that he had the air of Sean Connery about him. Sean Connery with a stethoscope. He reached over to poke me in the chest. His voice was deep and clear. He spoke with great authority.

‘It wasn’t that special.’

I was intimidated and the Doctor knew it. He had important work to do and playing in a pissant band was not a rational choice at that point in his life. The Doctor was on another trajectory. He’d moved on from rock’n’roll. I didn’t say anything so the Doctor poked me again, slightly harder. The point needed to be made.

‘You’re

[wodfest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this both fascinating and hilarious. I was laughing so hard at money man that people moved seats in the train to get away from me. BWAHAHAHAaaaahahahahaha

Beyond that it is a touch mind-bending to read someone who clearly was (is?) quite narcissistic, arrogant and insecure give an account of a group of people whose internal band politics must be pretty usual for most bands and still feel some sympathy and warmth for them all.

Even with the generic names given to them all: the Doctor (drummer) the Bass Player, the Trombonist, the Mixer etc - it's still possible to feel a warm sense of what these people were like and care for them individually as well as collectively as The Band.

I missed Hunters & Collectors but I grew up in "their time" so I had a sense of them only from a distance. Great live with a really mundane image does really capture it for me.

Reading this I also dragged out the "Living in Large Rooms and Lounges" 2CD set that also gave a really helpful insight into their slightly earlier and slightly later material.

[alexstirling-336720 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful account of life within Hunters and Collectors, one of Australia's premier, iconic rock bands from Mark Seymour, their oft maligned frontman. Mark Seymour was the face and the voice behind this legendary group, creating music that reached anthem-like popularity. This brilliant songwriter offers an insight into the turbulent machinations of the rock band he occasionally drove and equally was dragged behind. If you grew up with or listen/ed to Aussie rock of the 80's and 90's era this is an absolute must read.

[bhscholz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mark Seymour's recent memoir of his time in Hunter's and Collectors: I saw this book at work and picked it up, curious to learn more about a band whose music I had mixed feelings for.

My earliest memory of this band was seeing the excellent videoclip of "Talking to a Stranger' on TV, Their earliest recordings were quite adventurous and avante garde. Driving bass, spidery guitar riffs, interesting percussion plus a horn section made their sound very distinctive.

Their better known work though smacked of a band desperately looking for commercial success. Towards the end of the band's duration they seemed to be perenially touring the country; interest had waned for their newer songs but they still had a substantial back catalogue of tunes that people would still pay to see them play live at some beer barn.

I saw them twice in the early nineties, paired up with Died Pretty. The first gig, at Wollongong, I thought was great but the second one I saw a couple of years later in Sydney, they seemed pretty flat. Died Pretty blew them away.

The book answers some of the questions that I had regarding them abandoning the adventuristic bent of their initial recordings and their turning towards using more simpler song structures. Dynamics within the band were altered when one of the original members was asked to leave. And Seymour admits that he tired of creating abstract music, that he wanted instead to write love songs.

'Thirteen tonne theory' is mostly a chronolgical journey. It is written in an almost fictional manner. The band members are given only generic names such as 'the bass player' or 'the doctor' (I think he was the Drummer - I'm not sure) so though you are given a sense of the band's collective experience a lot is held back and the reader can only see the rest of the band in the most foggiest sense.

Seymour of course is the character most revealed. The reader is given his viewpoint only. And in such a big band (they had up to 6-8 members at any one time) he comes across as quite an insecure character. One section of the book is devoted to a tour Hunter and Collectors did supporting Midnight Oil in America and how inconsolable he felt whilst doing it, feeling (correctly of course) that the punters in the crowd were more interested in the headlining act rather than his own band. And earlier in the book he recalls a conversation with a promoter who mentions his brother Nick who was playing bass in a much more internationally sucessful band called Crowded House.

All this insecurity on Seymour's part makes Thirteen tonne theory a humourous read. Seymour, 'The Singer' does not dominate his band, rather he seems engulfed by it. What relief he must have felt when the band finally came to a grinding halt.