Performatively evasive Australian bands embark on national tour in August

It’s 20 minutes until showtime and chaos is being orchestrated backstage on the opening night of the Adelaide Beer and BBQ Festival. Although the emergence of this scene has nothing to do with beer or brisket.

Ron Hitler-Barassi tries to pass through a doorway. Since he is a tall man, the three large silver spikes extending from the top of his head towards the sky are of little use. People try to guide him to keep both his balance and his hat intact, but he gives up. Or maybe he prefers a more fun solution.

Getting down on all fours, he crawls through the doorway to howls of laughter from everyone waiting in the next room, microphones at the ready, including six other TISM members (or not) and a bevy of Adelaide media.

Ah, the price of anonymity.

It’s not just beer and drinks at Adelaide venue The Drive tonight. This is also the first date of the national tour of the band This Is Serious Mum, also known as TISM, which Hitler-Barassi has fronted for more than 40 years.

Or TSIM, according to the press release that they will be holding their first domestic tour in 30 years. TSIM No Errors Tour.

Seven albums (plus one) over fifty years almost two hours of complete silence), numerous singles and EPs—in a career punctuated by breakups, hiatuses and member changes—TISM gained national notoriety, acclaim and enduring fascination.

From day one, they hid their true identities behind masks while singing alternative agit-pop-rock-dance songs and poetic critiques that included withering, funny, irreverent, profound and sometimes downright crude satire.

The core always included Hitler-Barassi, fellow vocalist Humphrey B. Flaubert, keyboardist Eugene de la Hot-Croix Bun and bassist Jock Cheese; the current cast is rounded out by members who inherit the characters; hence these Jon St. Peenis II, Les Miserables II and Vladimir Lenin-McCartney II.

Together they created an impenetrable, unapologetic, inexplicable arrogance. When the masks are put on, they become characters who can effectively do whatever they want because, by design, they are not answerable to anyone.

Including journalists.

Sitting down with Hitler-Barassi and Flaubert before the show, they cheerfully deflect or ignore interview questions or go off on hitherto unknown tangents. Or just lie.

Given the sheer scale of recent times, I ask what their next show might look like. Wankers of the World Unite The show at Melbourne venue PICA, which at one point featured three versions of TISM, playing different songs on three different stages.

“Obviously all the members of TISM have been replaced since then,” says Flaubert.

Hitler-Barassi adds: “In our opinion, all three groups failed.”

“You could interpret this as the end of TISM because it was a mistake to start.”

Humphrey B. Flaubert

Hitler-Barassi says tonight the band wears the same costumes as at PICA, but that’s the only aspect of this show that remains the same. For the rest TSIM No Error TypeThey will “change” by being inspired countdown Their favorites are the Ted Mulry Gang and their hit about picking up a hitchhiker in 1975, Jump In My Car.

Hitler-Barassi reflects: “There is a lot of intellectualization about Ted Mulry.

“There’s a nice twist at the end because the narrative shifts; he’s driven by his sexual desires for the girl, but then all those sexual heteronormative actions are automatically undermined by the fact that she lives so far away – she can’t afford gas. It’s a critique of cisgender straight male normativity. I think that’s what Ted is trying to tell us.”

“Ted was a visionary,” says Flaubert. “He clearly understood the consequences of the oil embargo that was in place at that time. It’s back again, everything is cyclical and when oil prices are very high, even sexual harassment is off the table.”

In 1983, a group of twenty-somethings wore black ski masks for the first time at This Is Serious Mum’s first concert. called Get the F—ed Concertit was also billed as a farewell show.

The masks stuck and the band began playing regularly around Melbourne and developed a following. They released their first 7-inch single in 1986 (the packaging was deliberately glued shut on all four sides), purify HEn My faceA New Order-style dance poem about Adolf Hitler’s partner Eva Braun and his alleged coprophilia fetish.

If TISM had entertained the idea of ​​ditching their ski masks while going about their day jobs, they would have paid the price for it by releasing a single whose lyrics quote Hitler saying “Come on, Eva, send it down/Bend over Braun and give me a brown.”

It was as catchy and funny as it was completely rude. purify It became an underground hit and remains a fan favorite.

Much of their frenetic rock-pop canon since then has found inspiration closer to home, exaggerating Australian cultural stereotypes and icons, both highbrow and low, to withering, expletive-laden effect. Songs like Neareya? (“yob or wanker?”), yob (“If it’s different, punch it/If it lags, lunch/If it moves, root/If it quacks, hit it”) and I may be a C— but I’m not a F—C— (enough said) keep the fans happy and keep the masks on.

It can’t be said that fans are very keen on TISM members going out in public. It’s like an unwritten contract between the band and their fans to keep the mystique as alive as possible. For the truly curious, finding out the true identities of the core members isn’t too difficult. One of them has a very active “other” music career and it is clearly visible.

But when the masks are put on, reality becomes a concept that both TISM and its fans choose to ignore. Would you tell your five-year-old that Santa Claus is actually bank teller Barry?

I try to bring the conversation back to the show and ask questions about the creations of the costumes; One of Humphrey’s angular, exaggerated shoulders occasionally threatens to shatter my left cheek as he turns in his seat.

“What is this?” I ask, tapping him on the shoulder. It feels like a coat hanger.

“Is that so? This is my mortgage,” Flaubert replies, a good-natured smile illuminating the visible parts of his masked face.

With costumes now created as embodiments of each TISM member’s financial debts, Hitler-Barassi runs with it, pointing to three head spikes as he explains each in turn.

“Private school for the oldest child, private school for the second child, private school for the youngest,” he says, adding: “These are symbols of our financial obligations. This is what happens in our hearts, where three financial ghosts stab us like Dickens.”

I hope recent years have eased the burdens on the hip pocket. TISM has been on the rise since resurrecting the group in 2022 after a 19-year hiatus. They released their seventh album Death to ArtIn 2024, he adds a double album to his long-acting catalog that begins with their 1988 debut Great Truck Songs of the Renaissance, and includes 1995’s ARIA-winning film Machiavelli and the Four Seasonsfeaturing his greatest hits, Greg! Stop sign!! And (It Will Never Be the Ol’ Man River.

This is the other key to why TISM’s music has endured over the years and years since. For all the lyrical quips and elaborate stage shows, they also know how to write a standout pop song. I’m interested in apathy is pop perfection, whereas Greg! has gained a place in National Film and Sound Archive.

I’ll be hearing a lot of this tonight as TISM/TSIM opens. No Mistakes Tour. So why TSIM?

“You can’t find proofreaders these days,” says Flaubert, as he begins the discussion about former AC Milan football coach Nereo Rocco. Clearly.

“I also think this is our way of channeling Rocco,” he says.

“A journalist said to Rocco, ‘Let the best team win,’ and Rocco said, ‘I hope it doesn’t win.’ And that’s pretty much the philosophy of TISM. We just hope there will be no mistakes, and the probability of that is very low because the first time we played a note in public was the beginning of the mistakes.”

“So you can interpret this as the end of TISM because it was a mistake to start.”

I say that would be a shame since you have at least eight shows left on tour.

“Jo, can you make some references to Proust and Chekov?” asks Hitler-Barassi.

Accordingly No Mistakes Tour themed, the crew all wear T-shirts reading “There’s No Me in TISM” as they gather the group, including Hitler-Barassi on all fours, into the room for a final pre-show interview.

Media are asked to direct all questions to a TISM member who is said to speak only Italian.

“You ask the questions, we’ll translate,” Hitler-Barassi says helpfully.

Another seven minutes of nonsense ensues and it’s show time. A few seconds after the band reaches the stage and begins I Drive TruckHitler-Barassi continued to sing and jumped into the audience. It’s like watching locusts descend on a stalk of wheat. Within seconds, fees for the first, second and third private school children were eliminated.

Flaubert also disappears into the crowd while singing, only to return wearing a silver head mask, his spiky headdress also a souvenir.

Backup dancer Les Miserables II tries his luck in the handy crowd again and again, always returning wearing less than before. At the end of the main kit, it’s down to underwear and the emergency black balaclava that TISM passengers always have on hand.

Hitler-Barassi ends the show with his trousers around his ankles, shuffling offstage like a diaper-filled baby succumbing to gravity. The crowd comes out, some sing Greg! Crossing the footbridge over the River Torrens. And all is well in the TISM/TSIM world.

TISM/TSIM continues its work No Error National tour at Darwin Festival in August before playing in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. tismworld.com/tour