Episode 367 - The Story of INXS Part 1

Before they were stadium superstars, INXS were just six Aussie blokes carving out a sound in the sweaty pubs of Sydney. In this episode, we chart the meteoric rise of one of Australia’s biggest musical exports—from their gritty early days, to the glitz of international fame, and the tragic loss of frontman Michael Hutchence.

Join Holly & Matthew as they dive into their chart-topping hits, backstage drama, controversies, and lasting legacy. It’s the story of a band that defined a generation and gave Australia its rock’n’roll swagger on the world stage.

*

"Just Keep Walking" clip (c) INXS 1980

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A strange, spiraling white light was spotted in the early
morning sky over Sydney, with even skeptical witnesses wondering if
it was a UFO.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
They were last seen on the beach with the tall
man and that's the best description police have ever had
of it. More than seventeen years after Harold Holt disappeared
into raging surf at Chevy A Beach, his widow has
finally revealed his last romantic words docky, terrifying, mesmerizing.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
That's the way a number of Australians have described the
alleged encounter with the YOWI. It's time for the Weird
Crap in Australia Podcast. Welcome to the Weird Crap in

(00:45):
Australia Podcast. I'm your host, Matthew sol joining me for
another episode into the world of weird, strange and highly unusual.
Is the research for Extraordinaire herself, Holy Soul. Hello Elle,
and today, ladies and gentlemen, we are delving back into
a absolutely controversial subject and I mean that in every
sense of the term. We're going back into the world

(01:06):
of music. Settle down, muso. Since the last time I
did a music episode, I have a turntable. I have
a box of records, right, so leave me alone.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Well, so you're automatically getting struck by calling them records records?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I did that. Why why can't you call them records?

Speaker 2 (01:26):
No? Because you call them records.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Result has been an asshole. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, so I read the autobiography of the band for
this episode. So if you have a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
With okay, so when you say read, do you mean
actually the whole you read the book? My goodness, you
really are.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Becoming a man.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
You're really becoming Marcus Parks from last podcast on Left.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I read this book while I was editing We Crap six,
while I was writing the episode and doing all my
tax stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Hate, to be fair, what have I been doing your coursework? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Five hours a week?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Oh oh you going gone dinner? Now? I'm actually on break.
Now I've finished my last Well, I've got to revise
my two assessments, but the majority of the work has
been done. But yes, three units are six assessments, and
I've been cooking you lovely dinners as well, four nights

(02:24):
a week. To be fair, what is Friday night?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Fast food Night?

Speaker 1 (02:26):
And then on Sunday night? What happens you don't eat meat,
so you don't eat because that's your meat day. He
has to have a meat day Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I cook pizzas.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I would cook meat for you, but you don't like
how I cooked me?

Speaker 2 (02:38):
No, because turn it into levens called cooked, called horrible.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Welcome to our therapy session, ladies and gentlemen, as we
experience marriage counseling. Now I'm kidding, of course, As I
said earlier, we are about to delve back into the
world of music, and today's subject is one that we
have actually received a couple of emails about the messages, right.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, yes, a while ago that this got put on
the episode list. The reason why I picked it up
is because I was doing Week PRAP four and went hey,
let's put together a playlist and then realize we'd only
covered four singers and that playlist was looking pretty stark.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, it was pretty bad. So today, leies and gentlemen,
we are jumping into the subject matter that is the
band in Excess through our focus which is on its
lead singer, one mister Hutchins.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
When you think of big Australian bands, there's a few
that come to mind ec DC, Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil,
powder Finger, the Wiggles.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
No one says powder Finger. I do because no one
says powder Finger. Why don't you tell everyone why you
put powder Finger in there? You biased person here?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
This is one of my favorite bands, Finger and it's
one of the few ones that I've seen in concert.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
And now before are you power Finger fans stucking real
angry at me? Right? I like silver Chair and I
would put silver Chair. No, I put silver Chair in
the same cultural significant to gory as powder Finger.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Boo, Silverchair boo.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
You don't have to like it. I'm just saying they're
both around the same cultural value, which is it's all right,
is all right? I really don't like Midnight Oil, but
Midnight Oil is more significant to Australian culture than silver
Chair a powder Finger.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Each of these bands has displayed the stained power needed
to remain in the Australian pub scene, or, in the
case of the Wiggles, in the classroom. And then there's
in Excess, the band that took the pub rock circuit
and turned it into a passport to global stardom. They
weren't just big in Australia, they were big everywhere.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
WHOA, let's back this up a little bit David Copperfield
pub rock.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
That they started in the pub as a rock band.
It's technically started as pub rock again, read the autobiover.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Who wrote it.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Were they surviving in Excess members?

Speaker 1 (04:58):
And they okay, here's my read all right now now
again before everyone starts jumping down my throat and I
say that facetiously. Of course, you guys are great. So
this is the research I did for this this episode.
I'm very well aware of Michael Hutchins. My research is

(05:21):
comprised of listening on vinyl to Inexcess's album The Swing Right,
which featured original hit original Sin and the new single
I sent. Well, it was new when this came out,
because this second hand.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Is the print, first printing, so.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, first pressing ninety four, I send a message. And
to be fair, I recognize pretty much every single song
on the album one or two that I didn't yet
thanks to Australian television which has absolutely utilized the Inexcess catalog,
you know, yeah, be it drama television or commercials. Australian

(06:03):
film of God Like You.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Coyote Ugly even had a fucking in Excess song in it.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, they did absolutely, Yeah, Dan, Dan Dante that one right.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
No, that's another one, bites the dust?

Speaker 1 (06:16):
What's not you say that about everything? I try and
hummle need.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
You tonight is the one that's in Coyote Ugly.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, there is no denying that NXS has not
had this massive cultural stamp on not only Australian culture
but internationally as well. Most people know an Inexcess song,
even if they don't know in Excess. I would argue
that the genre of music that they fit into is glam.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
I argue against that because there's a lot more than
glam pop too.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Them. Their lead singer went out and frequently got a part.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah so to most people. But the glam rock era
ended in the seventies.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
I didn't say glam rock. I said glam pop.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Lamb was still seventies and I.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Said glam pop because I don't think they're a rock band.
I think they're a pop band, and I think you
want them to be a rock band, but they are
not a rock band. So instead of us going back
and forth, Team Matthew, which is going to be the
majority of your listeners, if you know what's good for you,

(07:26):
Team Matthew says in Excess is glam pop or just pop.
If you just want to go with pop Holly, what
is team Holly Satan? It's rock, right, So you let
us know on Facebook. And I would consider anyone who
says that in Excess is a rock band, thinks that

(07:46):
going out to party is having a coffee instead of
a tea because they want to go wild that night,
well as Wow Man think about Midnight Oil is more
rock and roll than an Excess, as is ac DC
in some cases. The Wiggles like, it's very easy listening music.

(08:12):
I listened to at Like, I listened to both sides
of an album last night. I didn't hate it. I
don't like. I'm not saying I don't enjoy their music.
I enjoy, you know, a very as you know, Holly,
a very eclectic mix of music. You will hear me
listening to, you know, Chapel Roone. You will hear me
listening to Jimmy Gimmey's Spider Bait. Yeah, you know, you'll

(08:35):
hear me listening to the Clash. I can even go
back to, like in the nineteen fifties, blue grass, like,
I listened to a lot of stuff. Whatever happens to
get those the brain electricity moving along. Sorry, I didn't
couldn't think of a better metaphor than that. In Excess
is nice, easy listening, soft pop music.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I don't think you know what easy listening is.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
I will give you woos rock I refuse to take them.
That's the That's as much compromises I'm willing to give anyway.
Go to our social media you know face on which
camp you on? Even send us an email Weekrap andstroat
gmail dot com. Are you team Matthew that in excesses pop?
Or are you team Holly that it is rock? It
is not? Anyway?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Let's with international hits, the soundtrack to an nrma ad
and the loss of their lead singer.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Is that by my side? Yes? Yes, bye? Say ahead?
Did it? God? That that ran for what a decade?

Speaker 2 (09:31):
I felt like it?

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yeah, definitely felt like it for sure.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
In Excess ended up with not just a lot of hits,
they ended up becoming part of the national sounds.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
See. I would very much agree with you on that
because there would be a lot of Australian drama television
and it was always like an Inexcess song would would
feature prominently like you know, put down your gun, put
down your gun. Don't be so wreckless? You know that?

(10:03):
Is that an excess song? No, a bit worry, that's
not so.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
List of inexcess songs that have been in movies at
some point or another include New Sensation, Mystify, lay Down.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
That must have been it, laid down?

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, yeah, laying down the law? Sorry what you need?
He don't change, you know all these things need you tonight?
Keep the piece like almost their entire catalog has ended
up in a movie or a TV show, and some
of them are even Australian and.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
The song would end up prominently in either the TV
series or it end up in the movie.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
And when they trail is to advertise them.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, and when they did the ad breaks, their little
snippet of song would feature in the you know so, kids,
when you're watching commercial television, there was a movie. When
there was about to signal to an ad break, it
would usually to move into the ad break, they would
have a picture of the movie poster and a little

(11:02):
bit of music from the movie.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Billy Madison's one is burned into my brain. But if
you think that I can tell you what it is
right now, I cannot. Because we watched Billy Madison on
Free to Are TV a lot, and it just popped
up over and over and over again. But I can't
remember what the song was. As soon as I see
that image on top be able to tell you what
the song is.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
It's probably during the montage with the song, I think
around there someway, but that's what would happen on television.
And so when you had an inner excess song in
a film, that was always the book end of the commercial.
So it just, yeah, it was a real cultural shorthand.
And for whatever reason, and I think this is just
appearance wise, I always associate Guy Pierce with Michael Hutchins,

(11:46):
but I don't think Guy Pierce ever played him, but
he shreut have right. They have a very similar patty
mouth and jawline. Maybe Guy Pierce's is a little bit
bit of a stronger jaw, but they have that little
patty mouth look. No fans, you know, just the way
it is. Handsome Men.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
In Excess is like most of the bands that made
their way into the pub scene, based on a single family,
with a few others thrown in for variety. Andrew John
and Tim Farris were brothers born in Perth who moved
around a lot growing up following their father's naval postings
across Australia. That meant they had a pretty wide view
of Australian culture and a whole lot of time stuck

(12:26):
indoors with musical instruments.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Their father, Denis, was the West Australian manager for a
global insurance company, ironic that their music would end up
on an roma commercial Holly. An Englishman by birth and
a former navy man, he was, unlike the continent's original
Anglo settlers, sent there for good behavior. He met their mother, Jill,
who passed away in ninety five, fell in love, married

(12:48):
and set about raising a family. In nineteen seventy one,
Dennis was promoted to assistant manager of the company for
all of Australia relocated the family to Sydney, just as
their eldest son, Tim termed fourteen. The family settled in
the leafy suburb of Belrose, short drive from the inner city.
Quote from In Excess Story two Story In Excess and

(13:10):
Anthony Boza two thousand and five, Ataria Books.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Tim was a guitarist well Andrew handled the piano, keyboards,
and songwriter John picked up drums and quickly proved he
had the rhythm to keep them all on tracks. That said,
they didn't really play together and they had no intention
to in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
I think this is just a case of Australians being
too fucking lazy to do like band mate castings and
casting calls, right, because typically when you want to start
a band, right, let's say you and a buddy. You
could be like me and play bass guitar. And yes,
I know the old joke. What's a guy called who
hangs out with a bunch of musicians A bass player?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
It's the lead, see it? Because at least the bass
players plays an instrument.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
No, see it's not. It really is a.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Depends on which position in the band you occupy who
from who the useless one is.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
I had to do, you know, I had to play
four strings and it was usually like don't, don't don't
don't you know, that's all I had to do. It
was great anyway. So I think Australians are just lazy
and it's like, well, my brothers can play instruments, and
I really don't want to have to go out and

(14:19):
find band mates. I fuck it, And that's how you
end up with INXSS and that's how you end up
with ac DC.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
I think it's the Begs as well.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
They were brothers. Yeah, yeah, the Gibbs brothers. Yeah, we
have a lot.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Of siblings and our bands band Soundscape. The boys had
their own groups, Doctor Dolphin, Guinness and a few others.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Doctor Dolphin, that's cool, that's very what's the band called.
I think they called them. We might be giants, or
they might be giants.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
We might be giants.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, doctor Worm, I've never heard that one. They call
me doctor Worm, you haven't. We're going to listen to that.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
After this, they spent their time playing in these groups
until John eventually graduated high.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
School in nineteen seventy one. The oldest faris Tim made
a friend in high school who became an honorary honorary farist,
Kirk Pengilly, with whom he pursued all of his musical endeavors.
Kirk and Tim attended the Forest High School and met
one day in a science class when Kirk, already an
avid bedroom guitar player, noticed that Tim had drawn a

(15:24):
guitar on his pencil case. Quote from an excess story,
Just story in Excess and Anthony Bosa two thousand and
five Ataria books. No Ladies and Gentlemen is how you
make friends when you're a kid, which is far easier
than trying to make friends as an adult. It's far
less complicated. Hey, you have that sticker of that thing.
I like, I'm going to go hang out with you.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
I know a few people, including someone sitting across the
desk from me, who made their best friends by being
in a fight with them.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, now, to be fair.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
He's not denying it. I was right, and I'm sure
Gary would say that.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Gary listens to this podcast, and because he can't fight
back this time, I'm going to say I was absolutely right.
But me and Gary have been you know to that.
You know that I think you only reserve this for
you know people, but for very special people. But you know,
he he He became an honorary member of Mike Family

(16:20):
and vice versa, and you know those those sort of
relationships are very special. But yeah, they usually start around
really stupid shit. You know, a friend of mine the
only reason I started playing Dungeons and Dragons because he
wentn't shut up about a stupid sword from the game.
That's all he would talk about. And he would insist
that we should go and play, and go and play,

(16:41):
and go and play. Ironically he doesn't play anymore, but
we still do. Yeah, that's you know that making friends
was so much easier when you're a kid.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Andrew Farriss met Michael Hutchins while the pair were attending
high school in Sydney. Upton's had been living in Hong
Kong with his family, but moved back to Australia as teenager.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
It's really interesting around that time to have lived overseas
as a young man and come back to Australia.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Hong Kong became well was Hong Kong was released by
the UK in nineteen ninety six, so it was still
a British technical British overseas territory until then.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Okay, that makes sense and I suppose so it's not
that far for Australians to travel there too. And there's
a lot of banking that goes on in Hong Kong
to this day.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Hong Kong Stock Exchange is one of the big ones
in the world.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Hutchins was quiet, introspective and had a distinctive looked. Best
of all, he had a good singing voice. The Faris
Brothers and Hutchins soon pulled in Gary gary Bears on
bass and Kirkpangilly on guitar and saxophone, rounding out the
band's abilities and opening them up for a lot of
variation in their music.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
Also, I have to say that Gary Bears's parents were dicks.
Gary Gary Bears really yeah, really fucking lazy. Anyway, we
have a quote. Michael and Andrews soon formed a band.
Neil sand and a surfing buddy was on drums, Andrew
played keyboards and guitar, and a school friend named Kent

(18:12):
Kearney played guitar, but obvious was missing a bass player.
Yay the boy they should have just like throw a
bass at someone. Anyone can pick it up. It's the
boys did what they had to do. They placed an
ad in the paper, and in so doing found the
final link in the chain that later became in excess.

(18:33):
Gary Beers attended Forrest High School with Tim and Kirk,
but he didn't run with the same crowd. He was
a surfer and had played school team rugby. Yeah. I
was in the music, I was in the playing, and
I was in a band. The only reason I learned
to play bass was because I lost a bet. We
had two guitar players in my band, and whoever lost
the bet had to learn bass. That was me and well,

(18:56):
good thing I lost. Quote from a Excess Story to Sorry,
et cetera, two thousand and five. I'm not going to
keep reading that big quote. You get it. It's from
their book. The biography covers everything.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
None of these boys could really sing. And if you're
going to make it big, like Bond Score or Jimmy Barnes,
you needed someone with a.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Good voice and a bowl of liquor. Get tons of liquor,
lots of liquor, you know, like we will cover Jimmy Barnes.
At one points on the list in his biography, he
just said there were some nights where he just like
he started with two bottles of ram or whiskey and
then by the end of the night they were gone
after the set had finished. And I don't know how
someone can continue to perform in that state with that

(19:37):
screaming voice. I don't. I mean, it probably helped Sue.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
He probably couldn't feel his vocal cords, But.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
I don't, oh man, like I've I don't mind on
a night where I can get away with it having
a drink or like this. This probably should have been
a drinking podcast, But I don't mind having a drink
or two while doing something like this, especially when it's
a fun subject. You know, it definitely helps mellow you
out a little bit and sort of gets you into

(20:03):
the groove. But if you were to care me a
bowl of whiskey and be like, look, you're going to
finish the whole thing before you have finished, because you
know we've done, I wouldn't call it sting it up.
We've done live versions of well condensed versions of this,
but we've stood up in front of the crowd and
you know, you sort of feed off the energy and that.
I couldn't do a drunk. I don't know how they

(20:24):
did it, really don't.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
That would be all the poke that they were also consuming.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, yeah, definitely could to do it. Hi, I'd just
be like, well, let's go. Why are you all laughing
at me? That's cool. I don't know how people perform
high either.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
In Andrew's friend Michael, they found their lead singer.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
The house where the Feris Brothers played their first gig
was a wee bit weird, a kooky cozy cottage hunched
sharply into the tangled jungle killside. It's still there around
a tlank curve at the bottom of a ski slope steep,
vertigo inducing set of stamps. The occasion was Tim Ferriss's
twentieth birthday, August sixteen, nineteen seventy seven, which is the

(21:07):
day the band considers the moment that their history began. Coincidentally,
it is also the day that Elvis died. Quote from
an excess story to story.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Elvis' toilet, Elvis's spirit just transplanted over into them to
give them their showmanship.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
You think so, yes, while he was on the toilet
and he died.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Look nineteen fifties. Elvis his spirit at being dead, he
could then turn into his best self, and he flew
over to Michael Huskins. And that's why Michael Hutchins became
a sex symbol for a fucking long time.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Was it the spirit that also married a thirteen year
old girl?

Speaker 2 (21:44):
I don't know. I don't know that much about Elvis,
so I'm not going to comment on this. I like
brings up considering he was what Tennessee. I'm pretty sure
it was legal there. I know it's not morally okay,
but legally it.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Was OK, it was a different time.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
It was a different time. The band officially became a
thing under the name The Farrest Brothers.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Yeah, that's a terrible name.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
I wonder why they chose it.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, it reminds me of that era of bubblegum pop,
you know, the Monkeys, the Farrest Brothers, the Yeah, they're
still performing and you know, I saw a clip of
them the other day, and their songs make much more
sense as adults and send them better.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
That doesn't surprise me. He'd like, fine, way, Well not quite.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
It's like, let's not go crazy. They're butter They're still
performing and they're a bit more musically talented than they
were when they were kids him. But for obvious reasons.
The band who would be in excess called themselves the
Farrest Brothers back then, and they soon did gigs as
fledgling musical units do wherever they could. I was sixteen

(22:58):
at the time and Tim was all out of high school.
John Farres says it was working at a Toyota dealership
where Kirk worked too, so we did a gig on
the back of a truck in their parking lot as
a promotional thing. Once I wonder how that affected sales
wrote from inexcess story to story.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Considering you're selling cars, probably didn't affect them at all.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
I always love those early gig stories. You know, what
do people do in order to, you know, to make it.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
I had a barrel of string, guitar and a fishing
line and we just went out in the back of
a field somewhere and performed a concert.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Well. I always like hearing about future editors how they
started working on porn for like movies first, because that's
that was their quick gig, that was their money making gig.
When they moved to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Well, isn't directors and cinematographers aren't they usually doing ads?

Speaker 1 (23:50):
A lot of them? Yeah, so is it videos. These
are not examples of directors I like. But they were
very successful doing that and moved over to movies. And
the two that I think about the probably most exemplify that.
We'd be Michael Bay and Zack Snyder. Both of them
were very, very celebrated commercial directors, and it's very apparent

(24:11):
when you're watching a Transformers film that Michael Bay directed
and you see all that product placement. He was very
good at that, very very good at that and that's yeah,
that's where a lot of directors will cut their teeth.
But now it seems like pipeline is go do some
YouTube videos and then move your way into move into
cinema or television through the independent circuit, which is pretty

(24:34):
much what the Philippel brothers have done for that wonderful
film that we saw the other week, Bring Her Back,
which I would recommend everyone go say go support your
Australian films. It is a fantastic movie. It is very
hard to watch. It is a horror film in the
strongest sense of the term, but it is brilliant. Go
and watch it. So that seems to be the pipeline now.
But I always love those stories, you know. It was

(24:55):
like talking about the Wiggles and they performed a brothel
once when they were the Cockroaches. You know, those little stories.
I always think that they add flavor to a band's
history because because the bands who don't have that, you know,
their product.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Bands yeah, and the ones who can't turn around and say yeah,
I beat the shit out of him in like the
playground for lunch money, they have constructed bands. They are
not real bands.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Well that there's no interesting story about ensignc or Backstreet Boys.
They went to a casting essentially a casting paul and
they were picked because they were pretty, and then Auto
Tune did the rest. Not to say that there wasn't
some musical talent there. There had to be some musical talent.
But that's what those bands were in the early nineties.

(25:40):
They were manufactured, they were built.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
The Fairest parents returned to Perth where they intended to retire.
They took their youngest retire.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Is it Perth some.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
People who decided to live there until they got a
new posting to go to Sydney. You wouldn't want to
live in Sydney.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Oh, I'd hate living in Sydney. Yeah, look, okay, fair enough.
Like if you're presenting me with a scenario where it's
like you can live in Sydney forever or retire to Perth.
I'm retiring to Perth. But I always think that there
are there are nicer places in Australia to retire too,
because for me, it's you know, stereotypically Brisbane as a

(26:15):
retirement rural New South Wales seems to be where a
lot of people retire. Campos I Coast absolutely the Coast
is a big one. Cambur is a massive retirement village
in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
They took their youngest son, John and in an act
of solidarity, the rest of the band moved to Perth.
Right alongside their drummer, the boys crashed the Farris House
with all six of them occupying a lot of space.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
That seems like a bad move, though, doesn't it. Like
if you're expecting to make a big Sydney would Sydney
or Melbourne would seem to be more apparent or.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Even Brisbane at that point. Yeah, Brisbane was on its
way up in the early eighties.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
I suppose a lot came out of Brisbane. I don't
necessarily know whether it was aid in Brisbane, like where
people make like make it.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Powder Fingers started in Brisbane. Oh for Fox, I'm gonna
have someone well, actually, but I'm pretty sure there were
a Brisbane beds.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
You're knew a powder Finger. I've got a vinyl coming
for you. There is a powder Finger vinyl on its way.
It's in the mail today. They posted her today. Good good.
She gets angry when I buy a jazz album. I hate,
I hate. My scattered brain really likes jazz. It makes
a lot of sense to the way my brain works.

(27:34):
You would think that though Sydney, Melbourne in the hotbed
for being picked up. And it's interesting, right, Like if
you look at today, I think you can be anywhere
in Australia and you you will be able to find success.
But getting that success is now rarer than it was
when when In Excess was a band.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Well the directors that Bringer Back or Adelaide Boys. So
that kind of proves the point, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah, it does. Like I think you can find success
anywhere now, no matter where you. I mean, we're in Canberra,
and not to toot our own horns, but we do
have at least a high position in the charts right
higher than some ABC programming or Channel seven or Channel Win.
We generally beat pau Po podcasts. And we're in Queening.

(28:23):
Like it's a tiny, little sister city to Canberra, and
Canberra in itself is quite small relatively speaking. Don't get
upset about of the Canberraans. It's true we have a
little city. Doesn't mean it's a bad city. It's just
not as big as the other cities. But the big
cities don't know how to use their size do we
get the metaphor so I think nowadays, like it really

(28:45):
doesn't matter where you live, but I think it's harder
to be seen because so many people can get in there,
you know, so many people can pursue their musical careers.
So I think that while moving to Perth would not
be great for an excess, at this time, their chances
of being picked up or being found or discovered are

(29:06):
actually greater than they were before. Sorry, far greater than
they would be now. Especially pop. I don't think are
there many male pop singers anymore? There probably are.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
And it depends on what you de find as pop.
Is Bruno Mars or Edge sheeran pop. They're not Australian,
but they're the ones I think of straight away.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Geren's interesting. I'm not quite sure where.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Mars tends to write the lines R and B.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, a bit popish, definitely soft music.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
I mean Edged Heeren's a wedding singer and that's all
he's ever going to be.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
But yeah, like I don't know how many weddings I've
been to, there's always at least one Ed Sheer and
weepy song.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Well that's where he started. He was a wedding singer,
and then.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
He records makes sense.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
The boys eventually found somewhere else in Perth to live
and spent nearly a year, which is where the Hutchins
voice finally came into its glorious self.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
We had been up to that point very extreme, experimental
and naive. John says. We were so eager to keep learning,
and we really did in Perth. Michael wasn't really a
singer before then, but in those eight months he worked
on getting his pitch, his intonation, and his phrasing right.
He started to get it, but it wasn't until a

(30:20):
few years later that he really bloom. Quote from in
Excess story to story. Oh and another thing. I've also
seen what's left of Nxcess perform live at a concert. Yeah.
Who who filled in for Hutchins when we saw him again?
We were talking about this yesterday.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
I can't remember. I didn't I didn't remember looking it up.
I just remember saying that it wasn't Jimmy Barnes like
I thought it was.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, Adam Lambert was Queen Yep. I don't remember Adam Levine.
Adam Lambert, you're right, Adam Lambert, Yeah, but I don't remember, Yeah,
we've seen most of in excess perform Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, but the music scene in Perth was very stilted
in those days, and boys feared they wouldn't go anywhere.
Being added to that, they were evicted from the house
they were renting, and they took that as a sign. Yeah,
it's a sign you should pay the fucking bill.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Or the people got sick of their noise.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, because they you'll find it spread through all this.
They tended to turn wherever they were living into a studio.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, and that's going to piss people off if you
live next door.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah. Broke and without a place to stay. When they arrived,
the Boys returned to Sydney to start their pub circuit
Brawl in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
The Boys are backing down.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Not the right band, but I like your I like
the cue though.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah. Look, it makes perfect sense to go back to Sydney,
and it makes perfect sense to start getting into the
pub scene. I mean, let's be honest, you know, the
pub scene is where you make it in Australia. Side
off neighbors and Home and Away are still a little
ways off at this point, right or.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
They be I believe they started in the early eighties.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Yeah, because Minogue, it's Hutchins.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Just give away the ending.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
It's not the ending, it's nothing close to the ending.
And obviously she became famous because of Home and Away, right,
So sorry, neighbors, Jesus home Allay.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Neighbors started in neighbors.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Neighbors, she was a neighbors.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Girl, right, Yes, Neighbors started in eighty.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Five, everybody. Yeah, so it's that those were your two
ways to faint. You either jumped on young talent time
and then got onto a soapie or you pubbed it.
So I can understand why you think they're pub rock,
and I can understand why they think they're pub rock,

(32:38):
but they're not.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
I'm so indignant over here, right, And I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
I just not. I know that people are going to
be up at you about this, and but I'm sorry
they're not pub rock anyway, keep going, you can be wrong.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
As for how the band's early momentum found direction, came
down to a lucky meeting and right manager. Like most
things in Inexcess's history, it started in a car park.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Lots of things starting car parks out the back of pubs.
Tim Farriss first met Gary Morris in the parking lot
of another hotel, the Newport Arms, where both of them
were placing handbills on windshields that advertise their beans upcoming shows.
Morris had been managing Midnight Oil since nineteen seventy seven,
and that night he met Tim. The two spent more
time talking about music than distributing ads. Tim's in h

(33:29):
charm won Morris over, and soon the man who was
managing one of Australia's most successful acts checked out the
Farris brothers Joe at the Royal Antler, and soon after
Gary Morris began booking gigs for them. See how everything's
connected here. So we've talked about Midnight Oil, We've talked
about Kylie Minou. Kylie Minogue is going to be attached
to Hutcheons, and you also have the Mons will also

(33:51):
be attached. Yes they will. They'll come into it eventually.
And yeah, so we started and ac DC by the way,
yes that's true too, And so we end up with
our first connection here to pre establish whe crap in
Australia law, which is Midnight Oil, he asked the Farrest
Brothers to be the support band on a short Midnight
Oil tour of the coast and soon ubsurps management duties

(34:12):
from Tim. Of course, the problem is that they never
managed to get any sleep because their beds were always burning.
That's a Matthew original. I don't hear aborious laughter from
across the sale. Isn't shaking my head right now, dear.
The only problem he had with them was their name,

(34:34):
something he soon transformed through a mystical convergence of television, breakfast,
jelly and joints. I was watching TV having a bit
of a session with the lighting guy for the Oils.
One day, Marus said, I saw a commercial for a
brain of gem called I x L. Their ad featured
a guy who said, I excel in all that I do.

(34:57):
I'd recently seen the English band XTC and when they
toured Australia, and I love their name ecstasy. Ecstasy is
in the drug. I'd also been telling Midnight Oil that
the way they should market themselves as a group was
to be inaccessible. In that moment, I put all those

(35:20):
thoughts together. The name needed to be letters that make
it a word. I put the IXL JAM commercial together
with XTC and the concept of a band that was inaccessible,
and then I had it in excess quote from inexcess
story to story, and absolutely that is a high thought.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
So fucking lutely you would not get it from a drunkard.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
No, that's a high thought. Absolutely, that's a high thought.
Do you. I don't. They don't sell XL JAM anymore?
Do they do?

Speaker 2 (35:53):
I've seen it on the shelf.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
They do still sell it.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
I'm pretty sure they do. Y.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
I have a fond memory of IXL JAM. There was
a promotion that they did where they changed their jars right,
and they're like, grab these jars and you can resh
them in their glasses.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
They're drinking with those the Simpson ones, because we had
a lot of those ones.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
We had the Looney Tunes ones, not the Simpsons ones.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
I think that Teller also ended up doing that at
one point as well.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
I distinctly remember they did. Yes, I distinctly remember Tweetybird
and Sylvester the cat On on one of those jam glasses.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
I remember Mum getting pissed whenever she couldn't find one
that we didn't already have.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Oh okay, she was one of those people. Yeah see
that shit, man, Holy fuck, Like our parents are so
responsible for that crap. Like this day and age where
people are like, why do you have like fifteen million
lego sets? Because our parents collected everything, We were told
to collect it, all collected, all collected.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
All It was parents.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
I think so, I think so. I remember my aunt
and my mother getting so excited about collecting every tazo.
That was so excited.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
I remember my mum just one day handing us a
big pile of all these interconnected tasos. I don't know
how she got them mm, but she's they were still
in there wrapping.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
I imagine like there's like a kid walking and walking home.
He's got a big bag of tasos and your mum
knocks him over the head and steals and runs away.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Well, you know when you go to like the arcade
and you get those strings of tickets, It was like those,
but it was tasos.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Grew up in the country, Love. We didn't have an arcade.
We had a pinball machine at the video easy.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yeah, but you know what I'm talking.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
About, I do. I'm just being a smart ass.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Hutchins later joked that it sounded like a encryption drug,
but by then it was already starting to stick. In
Excess had a name a manager and a growing presence
on the Sydney circuit. It wasn't glamorous and it definitely
wasn't lucrative, but it was theirs and they were just
getting startied.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
All right, So this quote comes from us from nineteen eighties,
from what we're guessing was a music publication.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Which was actually the an u's campus magazine.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Okay, so this does sort of fit. You can imagine,
you can imagine what I'm about to read being said
by a university student radio guy. Right, yeah, all right,
let's go right. A typical Wednesday night at the Strata,
not often really packed, so it's a good venue if
you keep your eyes open and wait for a good band.
Otherwise not worth crossing the bridge for in excess pronounced

(38:25):
in excess and yet another young local band infiltrating the
Sydney circuit. If anyone has heard of the Faris brothers
and were wondering what happened to them, well, ladies and gentlemen,
here they are, Tim, John and Andy Farris, along with
bassist Gary Bears, kerk Pngrilly on guitar and sax, and

(38:47):
ener Cheddek vocalist Mick Huncheins make up the ingredients to
get a good original sound. It's not hard to see
why after only five months in forming. Their credits include
touring with Midnight Oil backing bands which the Angels and Chisel,
and are now releasing a single. Quite an achievement considering
the competition Sydney's been producing lately. But on in Excess

(39:09):
gain with their original work they partly destroy with the
cover versions. The act is about sixty percent original, but
songs like Lovers a Drug, Roxy Music and Jealous by
Robert Palmer were two pretty poor versions anyway. The single,
still to be announced is on the Deluxe label distributed
through RCA Records. Will be worth listening for. It'll definitely

(39:33):
be either a wishy washy simple simon or telephone, so
keep listening to too JJ, which will probably be the
only station to give it airplay. Quote from The Thrunker, Monday,
the fifth third of March nineteen eighty, page twelve Music.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
You like the Keystone bands before them. In Excess started
out playing the Australian pop circuit one hundreds of sticky,
flawed venue late night sets, I'd Pay and rough cracks.
Their first gig as in Excess was at the Ocean
View Hotel in Tukeley, New South Wales, on September one,
nineteen seventy nine. They played anywhere that would have them,

(40:14):
sometimes five or six nights a week. Hutchins had a
stage presence in his bones, even if his voice still
hadn't settled into its mature tone, and they managed to
draw a crowd everywhere they went.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
When you just started going out and about, were they
still doing pub bands or was that era well and
truly dead. When you started going.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
To pubs, there were unique pub bands, like guys that
went to the pub for that. When I was in
mil Dura, the pub that we went to had two stages.
One was a DJ booth and one was an actual
band band. Yep, so yes on that case, but they
were only doing covers, so whether or not that counts.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Did you ever say Pelican Head, No, they were a
staple in the river arena with tour every single little pub,
so we did. We did have live bands. It slowly
phased out for DJs, and that slowly got even more
phased out for music machines.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Then Spotify took over all of it. All those little
jukeboxes they stick on the wall and you pick your
own songs.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, yeah, no, it definitely killed the scene. It got
harder and harder to go out. And I mean Schumann
had no shortage of pubs. It was like seven pubs
for a very small town. But the last pub of
the night, which usually stayed open to three or four
am and often saw me there at that time, was

(41:39):
you know, they still had Pelican Head and things like that.
But yeah, I mean I would imagine around Unis it's
still very much a thing and I think it always
will be. But yeah, the touring, it's more you get
touring comedians now more than anything. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
bit of a shame, but music changed me.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
I think they just got sick of the pilted with
beer bottles.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
I mean, why would you go on toua when you
can put up a fairly professionally produced music video on YouTube,
put your whole listing up on Spotify, and then utilize
a bunch of social media accounts to build your audience.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Twitch for live concerts and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
You know, you jump on Kickstarter as well to get
a monthly income. Patreon, you know, Patreon is what I
meant to say. Kickstarter to start to get some studio
time for your album? What's the incentive? And hubs don't
really like them, which is a shame. And people really
don't go out for music. People don't go out in
general much anymore.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Would you try not to?

Speaker 1 (42:44):
You know, I was shocked when we went to when
we actually went to see Bring a Back, and there
was an audience, and it still shocks me. They like
when we saw Sinners as well, there was an I
guess horror film still drag out an audience. Yeah, yeah,
because you want to experience.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Here the surround sound of the darkness and all of that.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
But you know, then we go and see a superhero
film these days and it's nothing. It's crickets.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
When we saw what was a brave New world and
it was just us in the cinema, So it riffed
on the.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Whole Captain America for Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
In nineteen eighty, In Excess released their self titled debut
album through Deluxe Records, a small label with limited rate.
It was recorded quickly and cheaply. Songs like just keep
Walking hinted at their funk pop leanings.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Funk pop say right there you wrote it there, right there,
funk pop, you wrote that you wrote that.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
And the video got a bit of airplay on the
Fledgling Countdown TV show. It didn't set the charts on fire,
but it was enough to justify a second attempt.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Society Against Discrimination or SAD, in conjunction with other groups,
are in the process of organizing a Rock Against Racism concert.
The concert is planned for Saturday, December thirteenth at the
Paddington Town Hall. In Excess and the hit Man have
agreed to play a few other bands have expressed interest
and we'll know the lineup by the end of the week.

(44:16):
Quote from The Thrucker, Wednesday, twenty ninth of October nineteen eighty,
page two newsline.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
The promotional stuff for this album gave me one of
the funniest comparisons for this band that I've ever actually seen.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
With an album in the shops and a single on
the radio, they should pull a good crowd. See one
man sound like Pete Garrett and Steven Gilpin at the
same time. One of the weeks good gigs. Quote from
The Canberra Times, Wednesday, third of December nineteen eighty, page
thirty five. The g a you.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe Michael Hutchins
as a Peter Garrett slash country singer crossover. Peter Garrett
can't sing, No, he can't, and he can't dance either.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
He can dance, No, we can't.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
There's a reason for it. It hasn't done in a
mode of him dancing yet.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Peter Garrett's dance style is like if an alien came
down to Earth saw people dancing and then tried to
copy it. Yes, that's Peter Garrett's dance style. Yes it is, Yes,
Pete Garrett. I've never heard anyone refer to Peter Garrett
as Pete Garrett. That's so weird.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
It was like the previous one was Mick Hutchins. I'm like,
who the fuck is that?

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, yeah, very strange.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Their second album, Underneath the Colors, arrived in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
I say it's a play on Underneath the Covers, say
it's a bit sexy.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
It was more ambitious, more polished, and it began to
reveal the band's songwriting strengths, particularly the growing creative partnership
between Andrew Farris and Michael Hutchins. Pretty Much all of
the latest songs that in Excess released were the music
was written by Andrew and the songs were written by Michael.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
He was a great lyricist, Yes, he really was. And
to and again to all credit to Farris. Farris was
a great musician, and putting those two together you ended
up with just a steady stream of music that, in
my opinion, also manages to stay individual from the other songs.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Well, it's like listening through the Swing last night, sitting
there going fuck, I didn't realize that was an inexcess song.
Yeah fuck, I didn't really like that one was.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, And it's like take something like let's say Pink
for example, right, talking about modern pop, modern pop, she's
fifteen hour, right, fifty sixty?

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Yeah, kid, I think is now in a change?

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it makes me feel bad when you
look at her body of work. You know what a
Pink song is. Yeah, when you look at Lady Gaga,
you know what a Lady Gaga song is. Yeah, And
they don't deb eight.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
There's a small variation, but it's still Lady gard So
still pink.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Because when we were listening to the Swing last night,
I made that comment. I was like, you know, modern
pop that they have a brain, they have a style,
they have a sound and doesn't v Britney Spears. Every
Britney Spears song sounds like a Britney Spears song, every
Justin Timberlake song. Sorry to pair those two up together,
controversy noted they it sounds like a Justin Timberlake song.

(47:13):
Even when he was doing songs with The Lonely Island,
they still sounded like a Justin Timberlake song. You know,
Andy Samberg was pretending to be Justin Timberlake on those
songs very effectively. In my opinion. In Excess doesn't do that,
you know, and their contemporary around the time. Is it
okay to bring in Kylie Minogue? I don't know, you

(47:33):
tell me musos. All of her music sounded the same stilistically,
still does and there's nothing wrong with that. Like ac
DC sounds like ac DC. There's very little variants.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Not ol will always just sound like mid not Oil.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
You know. But In Excess was able to do that
thing that I know. This is an unfortunate comparison and
people are gonna hate me for this, but it's the
same thing that Nicol Back did where they sort of
if were able to make their pop releases distinct and
when you can do that, there's more chances that you
aren't going to have hit after hit after hit after hit.

(48:11):
At least that's my opinion anyway. I don't have a
music degree.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Hutcheons and Farris would become the engine room of Inexcess,
with Farris crafting melodies and hutch supplying the words. Together
they wrote most of the band's biggest hits.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
This is a new one for us. Have we ever
quoted the Australian Women's Weekly.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
We have, but it was a very long while ago,
and I think we were talking about the Royal Flane Doctors.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Okay, Probably RCA is distributing the record is looking for
a release date in England early next year, Hutchins said
for us, that will be a major step forward. The
record company has told us it has complete confidence in
this album breaking into the charts over there, and we're
looking at a tour around February to coincide with that release.

(48:56):
Huchins points out, and rightly so, that in Excess should
not be classified as merely an Australian rock band. It
has already proved itself on the Australian list with two
outstanding singles, just keep Walking and the loved one and
a self tible titled debut album from nineteen eighty which
was a moderate success. Underneath the Colors is by far

(49:18):
our best effort. Watch said, we're no longer novices and
we're now putting together the music we like, the way
we want to do it. The title track ranks as
my favorite piece, although I still rate Just Keep Walking
as the best we've done. That song should have done better.
The Australian Women's Weekly, Wednesday, second of December nineteen eighty one,

(49:40):
Clay Adams, page one seventy four.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
More on pop I would agree with that because Just
keep Walking randomly showed up in my Spotify DJ and
I just added it to a playlist without looking at
who wrote. Who was singing it.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
As a banger?

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Yes it was. I do really like.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
It, Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really interesting sometime, you know,
Like I always think of the Ramones, right, and one
of the ramones biggest hits was I Want to Be Sedated,
which is a very basic song with a really really
good riff, and that's about all there is to it,
you know, I want to be Sedated. No, no, no no,

(50:17):
And there's not really much to that. Song. But one
of my favorite songs is one that they wrote for
the Pet Cemetery soundtrack, What's It God? Bath You Pet Cemetery?
And I like that a lot better. But people really
don't talk about that, you know. They talk more about
I want to be sedated, and I mean, you look
at God. You could really do that with every single thing.

(50:40):
Lady Gaga released an album It's as part promotion with
Warner Brothers for Joker Too, which nobody saw. I think
we're we saw. We were the only two in the
cinema for that one. She released set of covers which
sort of inspired her performance of Harley Quinn. It's called
Hulloquin Funnily enough, and it's all like nineteen forties, you know,

(51:02):
being in bump sort of music. And she does all
these covers and it should get more play. No one
talks about it. I think it's a great album. Yes,
it is all covers, but she really brings a lot
of umph.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
To them, especially the title called the Joker.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
I love that song, you really really do. And yeah,
it always surprises me when those sort of things falter away.
And then you'll listen to a music podcast. My favorite
one for discovering music is I mean, it's not kind
of surprise you. It's from the last podcast network. But
Marcus Parks does one with his wife Carolina Hidago called
No Dogs in Space, and I have found so much

(51:41):
obscure music through that because they play some of the
Spotify tracks while they're talking about the history of it yep,
and then he puts together a playlist after every single episode,
and it's a great way to discover classic music. You know,
people now associate me with really loving punk rock. It's
only because that podcast. I only learned about, you know,

(52:02):
the clash and the creeps and all this sort of
stuff because of that podcast, and now that that pretty
much makes up the majority of my music. Dead Kennedy's
never heard them before till that podcast. Say, Dead Kennedy
should get a lot more play than it does.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Well actually leaving especially I punched Nazis or whatever is
Nazi Punk's fuck off that?

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yeah? Nazi Punk's fuck off? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
By this point, in Excess had developed a reputation as
one of the tightest live acts in Australia, Sharp, reliable
and all business on state that suck as them. They
brought no drama worked well with venue owners and treated
each gig as a stepping stone. This professionalism ended up
paying off. On March eight, nineteen eighty one, In Excess

(52:43):
shared the stage with Midnight Oil and Serious Young Insects
at the Pier Hotel, Frankston, Victoria. This performance was part
of their early efforts to gain exposure by supporting established aucts.
There were confidence, stylish, and ready to break in, even
if they were known to party a little harder than
they good. That set them apart from some of their contemporaries,

(53:03):
a few of whom took pride in turning their sets
into actual smash kits, sometimes ending in brawls rather than encores.
But it didn't mean that there weren't events at In
Excess concerts.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
It's called mc RSL and sorry Northeastern coast of New
South Wales, where the bands played a local venue to
about two thousand kids. All of us arrived on with goodies.
Richard Clapton says, cuckling at the memory. In Excess I
opened after their set started a party. I went on,
and midway through my set it started to go haywire.

(53:39):
We'd been ending each show during encores to doing encores together.
So by the time they came back out with me,
we were just a mix. The audience loved it. They
were stumping on the floor to many more on cause
refusing to let the night in, which in this region
of Australia was a problem. They had a curfew there
and Michael wasn't having that. Clapton says he was up

(54:02):
to mischief. After Clapton left the stage for the third time,
the promoters cut the lights to let the audience know
the show was over. Michael grabbed me. He dragged me
down in front of that stage. Clapton says, It's like,
what the fuck's going on? He just said, Richard, watch this.
When the lights came up. There they were the other

(54:24):
members of an Excess and all of Clapton's band, including
a lady flashing, as they say in Australia, their brown eye.
Hu had talked to everyone into doing it, saying that
he and I would be up there with them. Clapton says,
and he told the lighting guy to flash our spotlights
on the stage a minute do they cut those house lights?

(54:47):
So there they were except for Kirk. He came out
wearing only this great jacket that belonged to my guitar
player completely naked and facing the crowd. The audience went bananas.
It was the best third encore that they'd ever seen.

(55:10):
By this time, pops and parents were heading toward the
venue and ow to a menu, ow to a manager
was just standing there in the wings, going where fucks.
Clapton says, but Michael wasn't done. He jumps on stage,
stands in the spotlight and invites all of these young

(55:30):
pretty girls in the front to come up on stage
and flash their tits and pussy to the audience, which
they did, lots of them. There to a manager, a
man named Neil, somehow ran the band out of the
building and into the veans. He then ran them back

(55:52):
to their hotel and into their rooms, urging them to
gather their belongings like their life dependent on it. Because
it did, they were literally pased out of town, pursued
by a furious mob. Kind of lied Frankenstein. It really
was a scene out of an American comedy film. Clapton says,

(56:14):
we had a pack of cops and parents pacing us
down the highway. About ten years later, I was planning
a tour through that part of Australia and I suggested
to my agent that we do a date. They're out of,
you know, convenience. He looked at me and said, how
fucking dare you? No one has played KEMPSI ever since

(56:34):
your last gig, the one within excess, And he wasn't kidding.
Quote from an excess story to story, and that, ladies
and gentlemen, is where we leave it for this week.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
I thought it was a good story to end it on.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Who doesn't like a good flashing moon. I think we
need to bring back the tradition of mooning.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
I mean, the gun gets the moon every now and then,
doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
It does so at the as the gun makes its way,
I think it's into its last town. As it enters,
the townspeople go out and flash their bottoms at the
at the train.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
And a whole lot of tourists apparently, yes.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Which is a lot of fun. I miss the good
old mooning. Have you ever mooned anyone?

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Holy people would be blind.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
A bit reflective.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
I'm a redhead. Yes, of course it is reflected.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Is that the moon it's very close. I don't even
need to tell, Oh my god, it's a lady something
like that. Yeah, probably, yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't
think my pale white ass is any better my darling. Anyway,
that wraps it up with a lot of nudity for you.
Hope hopefully we all put some imagery into your heads.
And knowing some of our audience and good chance that

(57:53):
you have yourself been mooned or mooned a concept, please
let us know we're crap in Australia. Please don't send
me photos. You can find us at gmail dot com,
Week crap in Australia Gmail dot com, or you can
check us out on social media. Just type in week
crap In Australia into your social media of choice and
let us know what your craziest onset going adventure was.

(58:15):
You can also help support us here at weekrap in
Australia by heading to our Patreon and for only five
dollars USD a month, you get access to bonus minisodes
as well as these episodes released to you early and
on hunt and completely at a free But if Patreon
is not your style, you can head over and check
out the week crap In Australia book series through our
great mates at Impactcomics dot com dot au. If you're

(58:36):
an international listener and you'd like a paperback copy of
the book, you can head to lulu dot com for
ThePrint on demand service. You can also grab the book
digitally from our Amazon Kindle store front. Just type in
week crap in Australia into the search bar. There, and last,
but not least, you can grab yourself aiden awesome week
crap in Australia T shirt. We've got plenty of designs

(58:57):
that you can stick on a shirt and stick on
the front of your chest. Well, mooning people if you want,
it's entirely up to you.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Please don't moon people wearing your shirt.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
No, that's cool. I give you a permission moon everybody
you know, gather two hundred people or wear weird crap
shirts and just moon the hell out of someone. It's
it's the Australian way. It's the Australian way. Holly does
an endorse her, but I do. I'm the good parents.
She's a bad part. And on that note, as is

(59:28):
our final words, Holly has a PSA about why you
shouldn't be moaning people. Holly final words.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
I don't even know where to go with that. You'll
a PSA on mooning people and the first thing you
cross my mind was make sure you wipe.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
On those words. Ladies and Shelman. That does us for
another week. Please stay safe, bekind to each other and
we will see you again next week for more Weird
Crap in Australia. Until then, Bye for now, I'm sorry bye.

(01:00:07):
The Weird Crap in Australia podcast is produced by Holly
and Matthew Soul for the Modern Meltdown. If you've enjoyed
this podcast, please rate and review on your favorite podcatching
app