LINER NOTES FROM THE HUMAN JUKEBOX 1984-1986
1. The Dream (London 1986)
Tony Thewlis, stalwart Scientist guitarist, told me late in the year that he'd had a dream that we had a song that featured the phrase "I am a human jukebox". A short time later, I found myself in a cheap Brixton recording studio singing that very phrase over a perverted Eddy Cochrane style riff. I had just started playing the riff on bass(!) to have it jumped on by newly recruited Scientists drummer Nick Combe, along with Tony and possibly the most distorted fuzz guitar sound committed to tape by him to date. Our only concessions to production were to have a very cheap cassette player with a tape of a single sustained E note from a child's Casio miked up as we played. That, and some additional distorted vocal samples added later and a two note piano part that Nick wacked down on the broken down studio upright (he fancied he sounded like Suicide's Martin Rev).
The whole process, from nothing to a complete song, took about an hour. We recorded all of what was to become The Human Jukebox LP in much the same way over a few days at the close of 1986. This recording was a return to the kind of shambles that The Scientists had previously always felt most comfortable with. The Human Jukebox was to fulfill the second option of our recently signed quarter million dollar (US) recording deal with US label Big Time. Following after Weird Love, a fairly slickly produced re-recording of our back catalogue with 'Wall Of Voodoo' and 'Fall' producer Richard Mazda, this effort out of leftfield was not what Big Time had bargained for. They chose not to take up their option.
2. The Chaos Theory
So there we were…1985, London, the center of the known musical universe, getting written about by the music press, regulars on the European Festival circuit, being invited onto tours by major artists and record labels wanting to sign us in the U.K., Europe and USA. Why some 15 years later then you may ask is the name 'Scientists' not a household word. Why is it Michael Stipe's mug and not mine that you know so well from 'Who Weekly'? What happened to our stellar trajectory? One line of thinking goes that The Scientists "were just too damn far ahead of their time" for people to appreciate them. I think such speculation is best left to other people. However I do think that if our chaos were restricted to our musical form we would have had a much greater chance of exploiting the opportunities that came our way.
What had we been on? What were we thinking? What had we gotten ourselves into? A bunch of hicks from the world's most isolated capital city, who hadn't even seen a recording contract, thinking we could take on the world over a sustained period and last the distance without help. We were naive. We knew we were naive (if such a thing is possible). Naive to us was good. Naive was part of our charm. Naive was Rock'n'Roll. Naive was a law unto itself. It worked for us in Sydney. We were stupid enough to think it would work for us in London. The reality was that we sorely needed protection. Protection from the world and protection from ourselves.
3. Psycho Cook Supreme (London 1985)
As Sounds journalist Robyn Gibson had said in 1984, The Scientists were perfect. Long greasy hair, low-slung pants, ugly feedback, two chord songs over one note bass lines, malevolent countenance. Why would you fuck with that? In fact it had all evolved naturally around what came naturally. It was all down to 'chemistry' so when Brett Rixon came informing us of his decision to leave the band there was a tacit concern about what would happen to the band's 'feel' after he was gone. With his earlier threats to leave if we didn't move away from Australia it would have been apparent to someone more level headed than any of us that this wasn't the most stable type of person to be providing the rhythmic backbone of a successful band. However, as 'band chemistry' was so important to us it was unthinkable to prepare by being less dependent on his peculiarities. Pity.
The Scientists might have looked pretty tough but there was an extremely delicate balance in place keeping them rocking. Boris Sujdovic's bass lines, having two, three or four notes at best, created a heavy reliance on nuance. The subtlest difference in the drum's nuance was sure to upset things. The prospect of a new drummer was something akin to having an organ transplant. With all the best procedures the body still might reject it.
4. You Get What You Deserve
Trying to undergo a successful drummer transplant was but one slight obstacle to our trajectory. The obligatory 'big legal mess' was another. Due to the possibility of attracting legal retribution I don't feel free to tell that story in a way I would like to. The long and short of it is we signed a deal we shouldn't have signed. This of course preceded a monstrous and expensive dispute between our former Australian label and ourselves over tape ownership and copyright thereof. Having a career to get on with, we set about finding a suitable label to release our records. This ought to have been easy due to the fact that labels were initially queuing up after the local release of and excellent critical response to 'Blood Red River'. Trouble was, all but the shonkiest labels were being frightened off by the prospect of litigation from our former label. All that is, except for Karbon, the label run by our newly acquired management. We chose the Karbon option and got back on with recording and releasing records only to have every one of our releases 'replicated' with different titles and artwork by the Australian label resulting in, as Rolling Stone's Brett Woodward put it, more dodgy repackaging of the same material than the average C&W artist.
First came Demolition Derby, then You Get What you Deserve, then Atom Bomb Baby the LP and Atom Bomb Baby the single, then You Only Live Twice the single, then Heading For A Trauma and finally Rubber Never Sleeps...all released in 1985! Considering it could all have been condensed into one LP (You Get What You Deserve), pre existing singles and some out-takes, it's a wonder any of it sold as much as it did.... But it did (albeit on an 'indie' scale) ensuring The Scientists that special place they now occupy in the hearts of 'trainspotters' and 'completists' the world over.
5. Nicked
And so it was that for 1985 and 1986 The Scientists did the bed and breakfasts of the UK, drank the Heineken riders of Europe and appeared to have a fine old time, all the while internally eaten up with bad chemistry and legal problems. During this time we acquired a manager, in the form of Nick Jones, straight from the pages of some latter-day Dickens novel about the London rock scene. Nick's primary achievement for the band, aside from keeping it and himself afloat during the two years of chaos that we dragged him through, was to find us a deal with Big Time Records early in 1986. We also acquired a procession of drummers worthy of Spinal Tap.
The percussive parade that formed our backdrop during this period included someone out of PIL, onetime Motorhead and Hazel O'Conner member Lucas Fox, Chicago born Phil Hertz (who no-one jibed about his real but punk rock sounding name), Kevin Coyne's son Rob and our tour manager Leanne who took it upon herself to buy Brett's kit and teach herself to play from listening to Brett's playing on our records. A good deal of 1985 was spent touring around the UK supporting, firstly, northern gloomsters The Sisters of Mercy and then proto Goths, Souxsie and the Banshees. We did the very 'punk-rock' thing by having Leanne, who to start with could barely get from one end of a song to the other, play the latter tour.
Boris, Tony and I spent that tour doing the very 'punk rock' thing of being as generally obnoxious as possible to distract the audience from Leanne's steep learning curve. I have a vivid memory from Glasgow's infamous Barrowlands of Tony from onstage pointing out to me an angry Glaswegian trying to bribe a bouncer to let him over the crash barrier so he could come and take a swing at one of us."Lucky for you there's this barrier eh?" I said to the audience as a whole with about as much threat as Norman Wisdom.
6. Nicked (again)
It should now be mentioned that all throughout the Scientist's time in Sydney and London we had one friend/fan who was always that bit more knowing and objective than the rest. We could always rely on him to 'shoot straight' as to whether or not the band was indeed 'shooting straight' with whatever angle we might be trying. His name was Nick Combe. He shared our aesthetic plus he was an avid collector of 'stuff' e.g. super 8 Pam Greer films, second hand LPs of what has, in recent times, become known as 'Exotica' not to mention toy lobsters, Barbie dolls and the like for use in his own animated super 8 epics. He also played the drums albeit on a toy kit.
1986 was nearing its end and Boris, having had enough, was living back in Sydney. I'd bought a Burns Sonic Model bass (made out of balsa wood I believe) for fifteen pounds at a pawnshop. Tony and I in a last ditch attempt to synthesize the 'old chemistry' got Nick, who had acquired a full size kit, into a rehearsal room in Earls Court. It didn't sound like the band that recorded Blood Red River but we liked it enough to want to take it straight into a recording studio. The insecurity of not knowing what was going on or what would happen next in our music (and note this was NOT 'jamming') gave us, ironically, a bizarre kind of security we hadn't felt since 1984. This in turn gave us the confidence to pull such a stunt with little money and just a couple of ideas knowing that we'd come out with an LP we'd be proud of regardless of what critics or even punters thought.
The collection of songs on this album consists of material from You Get What You Deserve and The Human Jukebox LP. I would say that on the surface it appears that all of this material adheres to the Scientific formula of fuzz guitar overload, minimalism and primal beats. The material from Deserve however, is carefully crafted and produced. This is quite different to the sonic outpourings and deconstruction of Jukebox. Here songs appear in their formation, or in the case of Braindead and Shine, as twisted reworkings. (Don't go looking we never recorded them in their original form). The underlying attitude in these songs is of total disregard for the opinion of others. This would seem to be in stark contrast to what we should have done given our circumstances at that time e.g. Big Time deal. It was also in stark contrast to the way we had tried, in the previous year or so, to conform to what people thought we were.
Looking back, however, it is as though we were biding our time in order to go out with a bang worthy of our auspicious beginning in Sydney and first year in London. In keeping with our philosophy it was irrelevant if anyone heard that bang… or not.
Track Listing: (55:29)
- Atom Bomb Baby (Kim Salmon) (3:00)
- It Came Out Of The Sky (John Fogerty) (3:01)
- Lead Foot (Kim Salmon) (3:41)
- Hell Beach (Kim Salmon) (2:23)
- Psycho Cook Supreme (Kim Salmon/Tony Thewlis) (2:57)
- Go Baby Go (Kim Salmon/Brett Rixon/Boris Sujdovic) (3:04)
- You Only Live Twice (John Barry/Leslie Bricusse) (2:28)
- If It's The Last Thing I Do (Kim Salmon) (3:56)
- Shine (Kim Salmon) (5:19)
- Distortion (Kim Salmon) (5:14)
- Braindead (Kim Salmon/Tony Thewlis) (3:42)
- It Must Be Nice (Tony Thewlis) (3:09)
- A Place Called Bad (Kim Salmon/Tony Thewlis/Nick Combe) (4:41)
- Human Juke Box (Kim Salmon/Tony Thewlis/Nick Combe) (4:55)
The Musicians:
Drums - Brett Rixon (tracks 1 - 4, 6, 8)Bass - Boris Sujdovic (tracks 1 - 4, 6 - 8)
Guitar - Tony Thewlis (drum machine track 5)
Vocals & Guitar - Kim Salmon (bass tracks 5, 9 - 11, 13 - 14)
Drums - Phil Hertz (track 7)
Drums - Nick Combe (tracks 9 - 11, 13 - 14)
Drums - Kevin Rooney (track 12)
Bass - Rob Coyne (track 12)
Technical Details:
Tracks 1 - 4, 6, 8: Recorded At Berry Street Studios London 1985
Produced By Peter Watts
Track 5: Recorded At Soundworks Studio Brussels 1984
Produced By Paul Delnoy
Track 7: Recorded At Falconer Studio London In 1985
Produced By Richard Mazda
Tracks 9 - 14: Recorded At Reel To Reel Brixton 1986