Letters to the Editor: archive

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Let's talk about TISM

(posted on 2008-02-24 16:28:50)

Has enough time passed since the demise of Melbourne "band" This Is Serious Mum (TISM) for it to be reasonable to reflect on the career of this unique outfit? You shouldn't post-mortem a band too soon or too late - too soon and the air is still acrimonious; too late and your understanding of their social impact is lost amongst nostalgia and fading memories. I think it's time to talk about TISM, and I'd like to start the ball rolling. There is a good biography of TISM on Wikipedia, so I won't try to write their life story - I'll just comment on some aspects of it.

First let me suggest that TISM were not really a band. TISM were more "about" bands. (Dare I say "meta-band"? I just googled this and was asked if I meant "metal band".) I've heard people debate whether TISM were a good band, but this is a category error, like asking whether CNNN is a better current affairs program than Four Corners. TISM were especially un-band-like in their early days when a lot of their output was written text, situationist performance and media stunts. No-one wants to call TISM an "art collective" or suchlike, so for simplicity I will do what everyone does and call them a band. This allows me to succinctly opine that TISM were one of the best bands ever. Not everything they did was great art, but enough of it was good enough to get the message across. Perhaps "most valuable player" is closer to what I'm trying to say. Part of their positive influence on our culture was simply to be there, threatening to take the piss if someone wanked too hard. They were the bouncers at pop culture's party. But they polarized music scenesters - why?

One of the intriguing facets of the TISM saga was their sudden mid-career phase-change from indie to top-forty, and then back again. There is a glass ceiling above indie bands and few break through it. Most that do, do it early in their career and were never really indie in the first place. How TISM managed it will be worth a chapter in their bio-to-be. TISM were indie darlings in the late 80s, then in the mid 90s jumped up a level to JJJ rotation - at a time when airplay on that station mattered - and then up another to commercial airplay and chart success, only to return shortly afterwards to a kind of underground status. In their final years (2001-5) they were as good as they had ever been. They released a great album (De Rigueur Mortis) that received relatively little attention, along with an innovative attempt at "communal video clip making", before finally packing it in with a typical live spectacular at the Hi Fi Bar.

What brought about these career moves, one up and one down? I think radio station JJJ was instrumental in both - though they are not the whole story. When JJJ went national in the early 90s, their auntie-meets-indie sensibility became very popular among Australia's young music-consuming public. JJJ liked loud guitar-meets-techno pop-rock, and had a penchant for novelty songs. TISM must have seemed like their ideal band. In the mid 90s TISM released a series of techno-flavoured instant hits which were atypically well-produced and funny without being too dark. JJJ played them constantly. Soon TISM had record sales, tv appearances and national tours.

Then TISM did two things "wrong". First, they spilled the beans about the increasingly-powerful JJJ. Their 1998 single Thunderbirds are coming out, with its teenagers-as-puppets theme, included the line "I get my political views from my youth radio". I can imagine TISM realizing what JJJ had become and choosing to bite the hand that fed them. JJJ in turn chose to bite the band, who quickly fell from high-rotation to kill-file. At the same time, TISM began to annoy indie music fans, who had been their support base in the 80s. More accurately, the indie music fans who had supported TISM were growing old, their places filled by a younger crew for whom TISM had never been more than a novelty top 40 act. Nineties coolsies hated synthesizers and drum machines, hated satire and irony, and wanted "credible", ie American, rock. Most of all they wanted themselves and their heros to be taken seriously. TISM were a piss-take of serious rock, right down to the band name. Their post-punk, tall-poppy-syndrome anonymity jarred with the careerism creeping into indie back then. They were a risk, a lose canon, and had to be shut down.

I don't know the inside story of these career moves. I wish someone would do the research and tell the definitive TISM story. It could be a great 5000 word article, and easily a good book. A retrospective at the NGV perhaps? Plenty of me-too bands get their bios published - let's see one about a band that actually did something.

One of TISM's two front-persons has started a new band called "Root". I saw them for the first time at the Sydney Road Festival the other day. Describing Root in one line I would say that the lyrics are as good as TISM though musically they are quite different - a mix of country rock and related genres. The country sound suits some of the themes well, giving it a kind of homespun round-the-bbq feel. Some people will like the country genre, and some won't - an ex TISM fan who was there said he'd rather read the lyric sheets. IMO to get the best Root you need to see them live.

reply 1 from Richard Hagen: [I sent this to Greg via email.] I've had a skim over your TISM piece. There's a big oversight: the loathsome TISM fan base. There might be a paper about ironic and satirical performers attracting the dullest, most unselfconscious and humourless followers. Apart from TISM, I'm thinking particularly of Chris Morris (who did Jam, Brass Eye, etc.), and maybe even Monty Python. Many TISM fans are thugs. I'll give it a proper read tonight.

reply 2 from Greg: I know the legend of the awful TISM fans, and TISM themselves have referred to same, but I'm not fully convinced. Virtually every fan I ever knew had impeccable character. I bet if you did research you'd find no fewer ratbags moshing to other bands. But if we accept there were a few in the TISM mosh pit, how to explain it? I bet most were nice folk for whom TISM's high-brow content and low-brow form were releasers of their inner bogan.

reply 3 from Ms .45: Sorry Greg, I've only just gotten around to reading this. About the loathsome TISM fan base: I have still got a t-shirt in my possession that is covered in blood (not my blood, though I washed it several times) from one of the most violent TISM shows I ever saw. Is Richard referring to the Cold Chisel-alikes that inflicted that kind of damage (the word "thugs" suggests yes)... or to the more wanker end of the spectrum who never get that the jokes are about them as well? I also disagree that Thunderbirds brought TISM down. TISM's songs are too noticeable, too distinct, and too lyrical (you don't have to think they're great lyrics, but they do command attention) for JJJ's aural wallpaper format. Combine this with the capriciousness of the yoof record-buying public, and career death is ensured.

reply 4 from Greg: I'll defer to Richard and Ms45 on the subject of thug fans - you have the evidence. Richard also points out the paradox of the satirical band that ought to repel dickheads but seemed to attract a few. But w.r.t. TISM and JJJ, bear in mind that the band were on high rotation for a couple of years, so there can't be an inherent incompatibility between band and station. The station changed from a position of supporting the band to a position of not.

reply 5 from Indifference Engine: Greg, I think your observation that TISM was a meta-band is very perceptive, and helps explain the extraordinary longevity of the group - their music always used a variation on whatever genre was current as a vehicle for their commentary, so their performances successfully infiltrated pop culture even as the real practitioners of those genres were swept aside by the next wave of musical fashion. Your theory is not refuted by the presence of thuggish audience members at many of their gigs. After years as a TISM fan, I became convinced that TISM's method of in critiquing the rock industry, banal teenage 'rebellion', celebrity, etc., was very close to the technique Laibach (and more broadly Laibach Kunst, as Laibach was also a meta-band) used to undermine Yugoslav totalitarianism. The technique was to embrace and embody the unexamined ugliness of their target, collapsing the categories of subject and object. Laibach's performances, lyrics, artwork and interviews presented repression, conformity, political fanaticism and alienation as admirable traits shared by the band and the state. When the state and its allies responded by repressing the band, this confirmed the message. When asked in the Prva TV Generacija interview why they had been attacked by red workers and banned, Laibach responded that 'the Trbovlje action' (rock performance) was a test of the social self-defence mechanism. The action was a success, because it was actually meant to be banned. In the same interview, the band's unbandlike indeterminate membership raises a very TISM-like question (Who are you? What are your professional occupations?... Are you all here or are there more of you?"), which the band diverts directly to its critique of the system. As Slovene philosopher Slavoj Zizek pointed out, Laibach's message was "we want more alienation". But in equating the Yugoslav status quo with fascism, at first glance it appeared that the 'jews' were missing. But on closer examination, the band/collective members were both the fascists and the scapegoats. They presented themselves as a sacrifice, that their people might see Truth and be set free - this Christ-like sacrifice is expressed in their "Jesus Christ Superstar" album. Where then do TISM fit in? The band's anonymity is not merely a tactic for avoiding litigation. This anonymity (which TISM values because, "unlike other bands, we choose it"), *proves* that TISM is not really a band. Rather than maintaining the false subject-object dichotomy of singer and listener, prima donna and adoring fan, powerful and powerless, TISM relinquishes personal aggrandisement and dissolves the distinction between band and audience. Like a German at the Nuremburg Rally, the audience member experiences a strange combination of adoration and hatred - but the band directs both emotions to themselves, as representations of the rock star (true 'rock icons'). This condition is precisely expressed in "The 'B' Attitudes" ('I'm one of the boys who stands up the front to see TISM'): "But although there is nothing can get me in such a rage/As when they slag off TISM in the pages of The Age/Yet there is a strange contradiction that haunts me within -/Because if I met a member of TISM, I'd kick the cunt's head in." TISM brilliantly used the audience as a canvass. The audience member who attempted to crush my testicles as I crowd-surfed during one TISM performance was unwittingly engaging in performance art. During the last TISM concert I ever attended, at the Hi Fi Bar, one of the bouncers assaulted a number of audience members, in one case leaving a man unresponsive to external stimulus for over 10 minutes. At one point he held me in a headlock and informed me that if I crowd surfed again, "I will hurt you". Towards the end of the performance, RHB leaned forward and shook the bouncer's hand. Recall RHB spitting at the audience, and diving into the crowd, despite the fact that this often led to members of the audience punching him repeatedly on the arms and legs and tearing off his clothes. RHB was simultaneously Christ and the Romans, Hitler and the Jews, rock preener and audience member. The band's early Nazi references flag the band's intention to, as Laibach would put it, "harness the totalitarian impulse of rock". Cf 'The Ballad of the Semitic Nazi', 'U2, Brute' (Adolf Hitler did not die/he invented rock n roll) and 'Defecate on My Face' with its cryptic references to the workaday grind (see Guide to Little Aesthetics p123 for a hint) and Ron Hitler Barassi's own fascist/suburbanite name. One of the group's key messages was that true rebellion lies in courageously subjecting oneself to the anonymity of mediocrity: "[Byron] was lucky. All he had arrayed against him was conventional society. Today, we've got to put up with anarchists. Byron's employment of the classical Plutarchan a b a b a b c c rhyme structure was, paradoxically, one of his most rebellious gestures." (Ibid, p.x.) If you think being a rock star is hard, the band says, try taking the 8am train to Flinders Street every morning. Consider this quote from Guide to Little Aesthetics (p71): [Q] How many members are there in TISM; who are they; and what do they play? [A] You are all members of This Is Serious Mum. We died that you may live in us. Thomas, do you want to put your fingers in the hole left by the nails? [etc]" The rest of this 1986 faux interview contains a synopsis of TISM's critique on rock music (pp71-75). Or Flaubert's answer to an audience question at the 2005 ACMI appearance: [Q] If I saw a member of TISM in the street, how would I know? [HBF] You would be able to identify us by the fact that we would look just like everyone else." In other words, we are you, you are TISM, and we are united by our anonymity and mediocrity (and by implication, our ability to produce something genuinely valuable without ever gaining personal recognition). Ms .45, please don't try again to wash the blood out of your shirt. Don't throw the shirt out. Frame it. It is a priceless artifact, the transubstantial blood of Christ, a proof of the miraculous, liberating revelation of rock music's banal totalitarianism.

reply 7 from grims: Well Greg I just read your TISM article then. very refreshing, it's nice to see that TISM isn't dead and gone and forgotten, lets home more people write insightful text appraisals of them like you have.

reply 8 from Greg: after writing this blog post I interviewed DC Root, an ex TISM member and current member of Root .. see Webcuts magazine

reply 9 from James Earthenware: Triple J would only have been allowed to keep playing TISM if Ben Folds had recorded a cover of a TISM track. After your 15 minutes of high-rotation they prefer to switch to playing an obscure and horrible de-contextualized cover of your hit song. After that point you are never heard of again. You are no longer relevant if no-one is covering your hits. Note all the albums they release of bands covering other bands songs. Preferably on piano or acoustic guitar. TISM should have covered their own songs, releasing them as acoustic ballards to get continued triple j support.

reply 10 from what's your name?: Brilliant original argument and brilliant reply from Indifference Engine. I'm glad there's people out there who in some way 'get' TISM.

reply 11 from datakid: Is that meant to be a reference to CNN or CNNNN? Now I'm confused :S

reply 12 from Greg: Sorry, I meant CNNNN. The tv show 'Frontline' would also be a suitable example. Trying to argue that TISM were not a band, but were 'about' bands, and so can't be compared against regular bands, for the same reason that CNNNN can't be compared against regular news shows.

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