stu spasm discography - cousincreep.com

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THE HOR 

Lubricated Goat. 

Stu Spasm 

interviews by 

Rhys Davies and 

Danger Coolidge. 

have never met Stu Spasm, never even laid eyes on him, 

certainly never seen him play live, but ever since my 

I 

first encounter with Lubricated Goat he’s been a hero 

of mine. I’m utterly shithouse with dates, but it must’ve 

been around 1993 when a mate first played me …Plays 

The Devils Music, Lubricated Goat’s murderous 1987 

debut LP. Perverse, grinding, gutter-dwelling rock ‘n’ roll, not 

so much sexy as slimy, sleazy and nasty, it sounded like bump 

and grind grunge for dirty back-alley pimps and prostitutes. I 

had heard punks gargling razorblades before, but never had I 

heard someone doing it to dilapidated pole-dancing music and 

getting off on it in a sexual way. I suddenly knew how my great 

grandmother must’ve felt hearing Elvis for the first time. 

Discovering Lubricated Goat was a keyhole to a whole world 

of deranged Aussie music that I’d only just missed out on due to 

being too preoccupied with being a young teenage thrash-head. 

After that I would pick up any Black Eye Records stuff whenever 

a record store bin was generous enough to offer something up 

– Lubricated Goat, Thug, the Waste Sausage and Leather Donut 

compilations, as well as other non-Black Eye stuff like Grong 

Grong (Aberrant) and King Snake Roost (AmRep) – ingesting 

all this sickly audio swill that seemed so much like a breath of 

foul-smelling fresh air. Of course, I couldn’t see the ‘Goat play 

live because Spasm had moved to America and married Babes 

In Toyland leader Kat Bjelland by that time, so I’d query all the 

older guys still around Sydney and be regaled with tales and 

half-truths of the crazy antics both onstage and at the infamous

NED GOD 

Gracelands mansion on Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, where Spasm and several other of the 

scene’s key players resided in the late-eighties. 

But then this older bloke I knew came back from America reporting that Stu Spasm 

wasn’t in such a good way. Divorced to Kat in ’94, and sunken into drug addiction, “He can’t 

afford a bullet to shoot himself,” my informant had coldly said. Since that day I occasionally 

thought, wondered, even worried about Stu Spasm. I wondered if he was getting healthy, 

and I wondered if and when I’d get to hear some new music from him again. 

Before I started UNBELIEVABLY Bad two years ago I made up a list of people, all the 

UNBELIEVABLY Bad inspirations on my life that were still alive and could potentially be 

interviewed. It’s a massive list that is still being worked through and occasionally added 

to, but the first name on there was Stu Spasm. When I imagined UNBELIEVABLY Bad back 

before it existed I think what I was imagining was …Plays The Devils Music in fanzine form 

– that is to say, I wanted to somehow give off the same foul, irresistible stench as that LP. 

Possibly if I’d known what great shape Spasm has been in these past couple of years I 

would’ve asked him to paint the cover of UB’s first issue. But I wasn’t sure, so I bided my 

time. Then, in issue #3, The Stabs arrived back with a tour diary from their 2006 U.S. jaunt 

where they played with Lubricated Goat in New York, and there was a photo of Stu Spasm, 

looking as fit as a prize-fighter standing next to a drunken Brendan from The Stabs. 

More recently, UNBELIEVABLY Bad Boy of World Travel and Drums, Rhys Davies, 

announced that he’d contacted Spasm and sent me through tight Q&A he’d conducted with 

the man via email. This finally got me off my fat arse to call up Spasm at home in New York 

and ask a bunch of stuff I’d been wanting to know for years – first question being if he 

would paint us some original art for the front cover. 

So now, lucky reader, you’ve got two Stu Spasm interviews (and UNBELIEVABLY Bad got 

its Stu Spasm cover!), Rhys’ original, and my lengthy follow-up. At various points these 

interviews intersect, and facts are sometimes repeated twice, but each is its own unique 

piece that offers things the other doesn’t, so they are both reprinted here unedited. 

Lubricated Goat - The classic 

line-up: (LtoR) Peter Hartley, 

Stu Spasm, Guy Maddison, 

Brett Ford

STU SPASM INTERVIEW #ONE: 

BY RHYS DAVIES. 

Before Lubricated Goat started you had spent some 

time in London; which borough were you living in and 

what were you doing? How do you feel this shaped 

your musical perspective? 

We moved to Australia when I was three and I had no 

real memories of England so I was gonna go in April '79. I 

saved up and bought a plane ticket as soon as I left school 

but my parents cancelled it ‘cos I was underage and I ended 

up losing a lot of money as a result. I finally went in early 

’85 when Salamander Jim split up due to Tex [Perkins] 

(Beasts Of Bourbon, Thug, Salamander Jim, The Butcher 

Shop, Cruel Sea, Dark Horses) being asked to join the Gun 

Club. I lived in Brixton with Sharon [Weatherill] and Ren 

[Renestair EJ] from Zulu Rattle/Bloodloss and Tony 

Thewlis and Nick Combe from the Scientists. It was 

pretty depressing ‘cos there were never enough 50p 

coins around to keep the water hot; you had to keep 

inserting them in this ridiculous meter. I don't know 

if it’s still like that. The most inspiring thing there 

was visiting my grandmother in Peckham 'cos the 

front of her house was destroyed in WW2 by a V1 

buzz bomb. It was rebuilt and she still lived there. 

Any complaints I had growing up were always belittled 

and rendered insignificant in comparison and 

so everything was basically Hitler's fault – what a 

cunt! Eventually, like all Aussies, I ended up in Earl’s 

Court. I lived in a shitty little bed-sit on Cromwell 

Road with seventeen people who shared one bathroom. 

There was no shower, you had to take a bath 

and you could see all the other people's dead skin 

and God knows what in the water! Despite being 

broke I did see some good bands, though, at places 

like the Hammersmith Palais and Clarendon and 

at The Electric Ballroom and Dingwalls in Camden; 

bands such as Mark Stewart's Mafia, Psychic TV, 

Virgin Prunes, Einsturzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth 

and the Damned. I joined this band called Stump 

on vocals and had a week to write words for all 

their songs. They kicked me out ‘cos I wore silver 

pants at a gig; I don’t think they liked my sense of 

humour. I also jammed a lot with James Johnston 

and Mike Delanian who became Gallon Drunk. 

Half of the debut …Plays the Devil’s Music was 

recorded in Perth. Describe the Perth music 

scene at the time. How much influence did the 

small, deadshit-town mentality have on that 

first batch of songs? 

I was only meant to fly to Perth to do shows 

for a couple of weeks with Brett Ford (Kryptonics, 

Singing Dog - drums) and Peter Hartley (Kryptonics, 

Monroe’s Fur - guitar) but I missed my flight 'cos 

I got drunk at a Cramps show in Sydney the night 

before and passed out in an armchair in the living 

room at Gracelands. I was awoken by this weird 

hippie chick reverse raping me! I pushed her off 

my lap, raced to the airport and had to change my 

round-trip ticket to a one-way. As a result I ended 

up being there for a couple of months. It worked out 

well though, firstly 'cos I met and got to know Guy 

Maddison (Bloodloss, Monroe’s Fur, Mudhoney) and 

secondly, I was like a big rock star there and used to cruise 

around town in a red Triumph Spitfire sports car and fuck all 

these hot chicks! There wasn't much to do there but smoke 

pot, go to strip clubs and fuck horny blonde Perth chicks! 

It was the eighties after all! I also saw a great band with 

Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan and Glen Matlock and got 

to hang out with them, which was cool. Then I had to get a 

bus back to Sydney via Adelaide where I recorded …Devil's 

Music side two with Martin Bland (Bloodloss, Zulu Rattle, 

Salamander Jim, Primevils, Monkeywrench), which wouldn't 

have happened otherwise. So I owe it all to getting drunk at 

a Cramps show! 

Upon moving to Sydney, the band settled at the 

infamous “Gracelands”. The house seemed to be a real 

hotbed of musical activity. Any stories of drug-parties, 

complaining neighbours, random arseholes, run-ins 

with The Man? 

I moved back to Sydney from London at the end of ’85 

and first lived in this building called Riverina off Oxford 

Street where Peter Read from Thug lived as well as Patrick 

Kavanagh from Box The Jesuit and other bands. They both 

had four-track recorders and that was the beginning of 

all the Waste Sausage-type recordings. In about mid-‘86 

I moved into Gracelands, which was originally called “Illoura”. 

At first there were these junkie hippies there, such 

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as the girl who “raped” me. Gradually I replaced them 

all with musician/artist friends of mine. In fact, it was a 

schizophrenic artist off her meds who sprayed Gracelands 

on the front. In her mind I was some kind of Evil Elvis. She 

also claimed to be pregnant to a ghost called Mr. Carter who 

fell down the stairs and died there. I always prided myself 

that we produced such disturbing music that the neighbours 

were too scared to complain. We used to have barbeque/art 

shows where you were allowed to touch the art with your 

greasy fingers. Afterwards they'd become nude discos! The 

Sydney O.T.O. also used to meet there and perform rituals in 

a big circle in the living room. Surprisingly the cops never 

caused us any trouble, at least not while I was living there. 

They did show up to the odd O.D. The period when I was living 

there was one of the happiest in my life, and yet I knew I 

had to leave before something bad happened. Sure enough, 

a few people who lived there did die after I left, no one from 

my band though. Believe it or not I expected a curious kind 

of responsibility from the people I played with. 

Sydney has this dark undercurrent, a bizarre vibe that 

is difficult to put one's finger on. It's hard to keep your 

head above water there. Was this something you picked 

up on when you were living/playing music there? 

I lived in Melbourne in ‘81-‘82 but when I moved to 

Sydney everything seemed to fall into place for 

me. I loved it there. I love the weather, the old 

colonial buildings. I wallowed in the darkness to 

some extent but rose above it. 

Did you encounter many antagonistic 

crowds during the mid-to-late eighties? 

What with the confrontational nature of the 

band and the context in which it existed, 

there must have been a vast-array of difficult 

situations which offended/confused 

audiences? 

There's nothing I enjoy more than playing to 

people who hate it! That's why I used to go up 

and do what I call “Terror Crooning”, such as 

squeezing their cheeks, drinking their drinks, 

sitting on their laps, smearing chicken grease 

on them, poking them in the stomach with 

swords and patting skinheads on the head like 

Benny Hill! There was nothing funnier than 

some Aussie yobbo in bad eighties fashions like 

red leather pants and a matching tie, and I loved 

ruining their evenings! 

How do you feel about the “In the Raw” incident? 

Did it help or hinder your “career”? 

The only problem with the “In the Raw” 

incident is that I didn't have a phone at the time, 

no one could contact me so consequently we 

missed out on a lot of interviews and publicity. 

Some international touring followed. The 

Berlin stabbing is well documented. Did you 

play Berlin both pre and post-'89? 

As far as I know, the stabbing isn't well 

documented... I wish I'd gone to Berlin in ’89 

before the wall came down. All we did was a 

week of shows in Germany before I got stabbed. 

The night it happened we played with Primus. 

I had no idea who they were at the time. I had 

a great Crunt tour of England and Europe lined 

up including a John Peel session but Russell 

[Simins] (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) and then 

Kat [Bjelland] (Babes In Toyland) decided not to 

do it, which really pissed me off and ultimately 

fucked up my “career”. 

So Lubricated Goat is back together now? 

Who’s in the current line-up? 

I had a lineup with Jack Natz (Cop Shoot Cop) on bass, 

Rick Rodine on guitar and Hayden Millsteed on drums. It's 

the tightest band I've ever had but unfortunately Hayden 

has gone back to Australia for an extended holiday so we're 

on hiatus until we get another drummer. I also really want a 

keyboard player. …Plays The Devil's Music and Paddock 

Of Love are being re-released by Reverberation Records 

soon. I have hours of unheard music that I've been compiling 

into albums, which will be available on my online label 

Candiru Records. There's I Should Like To Think, Indeed, 

Stu Spasm Live In Your Boudoir to name a few.

STU SPASM INTERVIEW #TWO: 

BY DANGER COOLIGE 

You lived in Adel Adelaide and played in a few bands pre- 

Lubricated Goat – Exhibit A and Zulu Rattle I suppose 

were the most noted of these. What recordings exist of 

your pre-Goat forays? 

I used to have all my tapes from back when I was fifteen 

years old, I had them for years and years but then I kinda 

just left them there when I came over to America – all I 

bought with me was a guitar and basically the rest of the 

shit I had with me on tour. I was planning to stay here so 

I just left things at people’s house and I wish they’d have 

looked after it. If I could go back now I’d ask someone, it 

would just been a small box really, just a couple of tapes 

and a couple of videos of shit that was really important 

to me, I could’ve held onto some of that. It’s frustrating 

when you hold onto this stuff from the time you’re fifteen 

to when you’re twenty-eight or something, you know at 

that time I’d kept that stuff most of my life. Exhibit A played 

a live-to-air in 5MMM in Adelaide once, this was about 

1980 or ’81, and we played some of the songs that ended 

up as Lubricated Goat songs, “Funeral On A Spit” was on 

there. Depending on how good their archive is, that stuff 

might still be around. The guys from Memorandum in 

Australia are re-issuing the first two albums and so they’ve 

been looking for bonus tracks and when Lubricated Goat 

first started it was just a bunch of us making four-track 

Salamander Jim: (LtoR) 

Lachlan McLeod, Martin Bland, 

recordings. There was a couple of people we knew that 

had four-tracks, because they were actually really fucking 

expensive back then. A four-track that you can get today 

for under $200, when they first came out they were $1,100 

in Australia, so the only people we knew who had them 

were Peter Read who was in Thug and Patrick Kavanagh 

who was in Box The Jesuit and he was also in Leather 

Moustache, which was what Lubricated Goat was originally 

called; it wasn’t like a band it was just a recording thing. 

So Peter Read had a four-track, Patrick Kavanagh had a 

four-track and Martin Bland in Adelaide had a four-track. 

So between those people everyone was able to make fourtrack 

recordings and that’s how Lubricated Goat started. 

It was called Leather Moustache and it had a bunch of 

people in there and a few different ideas. And anyway, 

some of that stuff is going to be the bonus tracks when the 

first two records are re-released. 

Were your earlier groups not too far away from what 

you ended up doing in Lubricated Goat? 

Exhibit A was my first band when I was sixteen and I 

used to have a really good recording of us doing “Pirate 

Love” by the Heartbreakers. We did Damned songs and we 

did [Stooges’] “I Got A Right”, and we did this song by the 

Corpse Grinders, which was the band that Arthur Kane had 

after the New York Dolls. We had original stuff too. Like, the 

first punk bands in Adelaide were The Accountants and The 

Dagoes and Irving And The U-Bombs, and I used to go to 

these gigs. Actually, the very first big punk gig was when 

Radio Birdman played Adelaide in 1977, I think, and my 

parents didn’t let me hitchhike down for it. But all these 

people that formed bands after that were at that show, it 

was kind of a legendary show, they still show footage of 

them sometimes playing at The Marryatville Hotel. But anyway, 

those three bands, The Accountants and the Dagoes 

and Irving And The U-Bombs, they used to play at different 

places around Adelaide and then when I put together Exhibit 

A we had a mixture of stuff, it was kinda punk rock but 

I was never like a full-on punk rocker. Because you couldn’t 

actually get punk rock clothes at the time, you had to make 

them yourself. And also, I was kinda pretentious because I 

used to pretend to people that I was never into the bands 

that I had really liked. I acted like I was never into anything 

before punk rock but really I was into Jimi Hendrix and Led 

Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, I liked hearing heavy rock. 

But you know, I was never into doing big guitar solos, but I 

was into people that did interesting things on the guitar. So 

anyway, this is a roundabout way of telling you this; you’re 

probably going to have to edit it down. 

It’s all cool man, you can just keep telling stories and 

I’ll be happy. 

Well at one point Exhibit A went to Darwin and that 

line-up had Richard Ploog (Salamander Jim) who after 

that joined the Church. We went up there to try and make 

money up there. 

It seems odd that a punk band from Adelaide could go 

to Darwin to make money. 

Well you see there was a secret agenda that these guys 

that we went up there with had. These couple of people 

in the band, they used to… well, basically they stayed up 

there after I left, ’cos I got sick of it after about two months 

and went back to Adelaide ’cos we really weren’t making 

any money. So I came back and joined this band The Bad 

Poets and Richard Ploog came with me and as I said ended 

up joining The Church. But these others guys, they were 

older than us, and they stayed in Darwin because they 

wanted to be nearer to Southeast Asia – I don’t even know 

if I should be putting this in your magazine – but they 

wanted to be near to Southeast Asia so they could do runs 

over there and smuggle drugs into the country. They didn’t 

do any of these trips while I was there but I believe they did 

after I left. When they came down to Melbourne they had 

all this money and they wanted to record a single. I can’t 

tell you their names because that would incriminate them.

This is the kind of sleazy story that should be in my fucking 

memoirs or something. 

So let’s get onto talking about recording the A-side of 

…Plays the Devil’s Music, because you had been in 

England prior to that… 

The reason I was in England is because the Gun Club 

more or less fucked up our band. 

This is Salamander Jim we’re talking about? 

Yeah, Salamander Jim had an album [Lorne Green 

Shares His Precious Fluids] all recorded and ready to come 

out and the Gun Club had been to Australia during the same 

year we were doing Salamander Jim and they heard or 

saw the Beasts Of Bourbon and really liked Tex [Perkins]’s 

(Beasts Of Bourbon, Thug, Salamander Jim, The Butcher 

Shop, Cruel Sea, Dark Horses) singing. So Kid Congo Powers 

(guitar) and Patricia Morrison (bass) bailed out on Jeffrey 

Lee Pierce (guitar/vocals) in the Gun Club and decided to 

start a new band and they asked Tex to be their singer. And 

it seemed like a chance for Tex to tour all over the world… 

and it’s weird that it was such a good career opportunity for 

him because it totally fucked our band up. Our record was 

about to come out after spending all year building the band 

up to the point where it was a pretty popular band and everything 

and then he went over there to be in this band with 

them and when he got there he didn’t like the songs they 

wrote and he came back to Australia fairly soon afterwards. 

It was just long enough to totally fuck up Salamander Jim. 

So I’d always wanted to go on a trip to England anyway, 

and I was playing in Beasts Of Bourbon at the time and we 

would make a bit of money sometimes so I just thought, 

fuck it I’ll take a trip to England. I had always wanted to go 

there since I was young, because back then there was all 

this good music coming out of there. I bought a ticket when 

I was seventeen but my parents cancelled it and I didn’t get 

to go. So I eventually went over but it was expensive and 

tough to live over there and I didn’t really like it very much. 

You know, they don’t even bother to plant any trees outside 

their houses and there are whole streets that look the same, 

everybody is boring and the TV finishes early and the bars 

close early – it’s really hard to have a good time over there. 

I would’ve liked to have just taken a trip around the country 

and checked out some castles and shit like that, but as far 

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as living there and trying to have a band, it was too hard. I 

was playing with these guys who eventually had that band 

Gallon Drunk. In fact, one of them, James Johnston, is in 

the Bad Seeds now; he replaced Blixa Bargeld, which was 

kinda funny because he was always a huge Bad Seeds and 

Einsturzende Neubauten fan. So I spent most of the time in 

England thinking what a big mistake I’d made, but I bumped 

into Brett Ford (Kryptonics, Singing Dog) over there, he was 

a great drummer, so we were jamming and trying to get 

something together and we worked on shit that we ended 

up doing with Lubricated Goat. It was a coincidence that I 

bumped into Brett because back home when I was living 

in Melbourne I had this band the Singing Dog, we only ever 

did two gigs, but it was me and Brett Ford and Nick Barker 

(Reptiles, The Wreckery) on bass. This was maybe 1982 or 

something and the Singing Dog wrote all these songs that 

ended up being on the second Lubricated Goat album [Paddock 

Of Love]. The first Lubricated Goat album […Plays 

the Devil’s Music] was recorded in Perth and Adelaide, 

but by the time of second album Brett Ford had moved to 

Sydney so we brought out all these song we used to do in 

the Singing Dog. 

Why didn’t you and Brett use that material on …Plays 

the Devil’s Music? 

A lot of the ideas on …Plays the Devil’s Music came 

from weird bits and pieces of songs. I was in this band in 

London that I had done one gig with called Stump, who 

actually became a fairly popular band in England with a 

different singer. They kicked me out because I found these 

silver pants in a thrift store, kinda like Iggy Pop silver pants, 

and I was wearing them kinda as a joke but they didn’t 

know what to think about them, they just looked at them 

with disgust. But they’d had all these songs written and I 

wrote all these lyrics to go with their songs and some of 

the songs I wrote lyrics for were “Nerve Quake” and “Guttersnipe” 

and all these others. So there were all these ideas 

I had been writing for the first album, whereas the second 

album we tended to use the Singing Dog songs. There was 

this practice tape that Brett had where we basically did all 

the songs that we later did on the Paddock Of Love album, 

like “All Too Sane” and “Gargoyles” and “Cannibal’s Lament” 

and “Funeral On A Spit” and more too. And that’s why Nick 

Barker ended up coming up to Sydney when he was playing 

in The Wreckery and recording the bass parts on all those 

old songs. 

So what about when Brett was still in Perth, when you 

recorded the A-side of …Plays the Devil’s Music? 

Well what happened was, when we came back from 

England Brett went to Perth and I went to Sydney and I was 

trying to get Brett to come to Sydney and he said, “Why 

don’t you come to Perth and do some gigs?” So I went out 

there and Brett was playing in the Kryptonics already and

The James Baker 

Experience: (Clockwise from 

left) Tex Perkins, Stu Spasm, 

Roddy Ray'da, James Baker 

he h kept k telling me how great this guy Peter Hartley (Kryptonics, 

Monroe’s Fur) was on the guitar. And so the band was me and 

Brett and Peter Hartley and we came up with the songs for Side- 

A of the first Lubricated Goat album. I think in the first interview 

with Rhys I told the story about where the girl raped me and 

then I missed my plane from Sydney, and that is an intrinsic 

part of the story because that’s why I ended up being in Perth 

so long. Otherwise we wouldn’t have done the recording. I just 

would’ve went out there and done a couple of weeks worth of 

gigs and then come back to Sydney. So consequently the songs got 

more formulated over the time. I had arranged with this girl to give 

me some money for some recording time and so I got her to send it 

to Perth and we did the recording. A lot of it was based on what we’d 

been doing on the four-tracks in Sydney but there was this weird 

little Sri Lankan guy that ran the studio and he claimed he didn’t 

know how to do anything. You’d go, “Can we put some distortion on 

my voice, do you know how to do that?” He’d go, “No.” So because he 

didn’t know how to get us the effects we wanted I was trying to do 

them naturally, like fucking with my voice. That’s why I ended 

up singing the way I do on “Jason The Unpopular” and 

“Nerve Quake”. I was just cupping my hands over my 

mouth and fucking with my voice to get weird effects 

but it was without effects. There was a lot of studio 

shit that I didn’t know about back then, there were a 

lot of technical things that I didn’t know about how to 

make a record, but the thing is, this guy didn’t seem 

to know them either – or if he did, he 

wasn’t very forthcoming with it. 

The B-Side sounds great as 

well and it was just recorded 

in Martin Bland’s (Bloodloss, 

Zulu Rattle, Salamander Jim, 

Primevils, Monkeywrench) 

lounge room, wasn’t it? 

That was done in the living 

room but it’s got a real atmosphere 

about it. It’s lucky that it did because 

you could just as easily have 

done a cheap recording and not had 

it sound any good. The whole thing 

was like that – the shit from the 

studio in Perth had a real uniqueness 

to it, and so did the stuff that 

me and Martin did; we just got on 

a really creative roll and got a really 

cool sound. So that album, it’s two 

distinct sides with completely different 

people on it but it kinda works 

because it starts off rocking, then it 

gets a bit weirder and then towards 

the end it gets even weirder still. 

The B Side is definitely weirder, what drugs was 

that fuelled by? 

I think we were just drinking and smoking pot 

when we were doing that record. Brett Ford was a 

real pothead so I guess there was pot involved. If I 

have too much pot I fall asleep. I’m pretty sure it was 

just good ol’ fashioned beer and pot. 

So were those two recordings always meant to 

comprise the first Lubricated Goat LP or was the 

release a bit less planned than that? 

I definitely wanted to do an album but maybe that 

was all the songs we had, I can’t really remember. 

The recording from Perth was what it was, and the recording 

from Adelaide, well, I don’t think anyone was 

planning to do a whole bunch of four-track albums, 

like the Waste Sausage compilation, which was all 

done on four-track also. I honestly can’t remember 

but I just know that when I got back to Sydney all the 

Waste Sausage stuff started coming about and that 

was all done on four-tracks and so the idea of putting 

the stuff I had done on four-track with Martin on an 

album just seemed to come together. 

The Waste Sausage 

and Leather Donut 

compilations helped 

define what that Black 

Eye Records scene 

was all about and you 

contributed a bit of 

stuff, how did that come 

about? 

It’s because of growing 

up with all these records 

that used to come out: “20 

Explosive Hits! 20 Explosive 

Stars!” There was all those 

cheesy albums containing 

all the supposed hits of the 

year, like I think there was 

one called Gutbuster and it 

had a picture of a butt in a 

pair of jeans, you know those 

kinds of albums. So we were 

making records just like that, 

except we’d record a song and then we’d just make up the name of 

the person that did it. Then we put them all together and they were 

like those records except with a sense of humour about it, utterly ridiculous. 

You know, instead of Little River Band you’ve got Toe [Chris 

Cashel]. Some of it was just so utterly ridiculous that I can barely 

listen to it myself, but the idea of it is still pretty funny. I would like 

to do more shit like that, but you know, you can’t just say, “Let’s slip 

into the Waste Sausage mindset” – either it happens or it doesn’t. 

You can’t just come along and say, “Well let’s be a little more 

immature about it.” Those things just came about in their 

own way and there were some really weird and clever 

people involved and there are people involved that 

have still got a lot of great music that has never been 

heard. But then there’s other people involved that I 

don’t know how they got involved. There was a guy 

on one of those albums and I don’t know how crazy 

he was but he thought that just because you are on 

a record you’re gonna make a million dollars. And the 

record came out and this guy who had done one of the 

things with Tex kept calling up Tex and demanding money 

and shit. It was some poorly recorded toilet humour 

song off Leather Donut or Waste Sausage and he 

seemed to think that automatically he’d be 

getting thousands of dollars out of it. 

With Black Eye Records, it seems 

like there were a lot of very insane 

and talented personalities around 

in Sydney at that time and Black 

Eye helped channel them all into 

something. Were you lucky to 

have hooked up with owner John 

Foy or was he lucky to have hooked 

up with you? 

Tex knew John, and John 

though really highly of Tex and 

so John did the Salamander 

Jim album, but unfortunately 

the momentum of the album 

had been completely squashed 

by Tex going overseas, and he also did 

STU SPASM 

DISCOGRAPHY 

� � 

1985: James Baker Experience – “I 

Can't Control Myself” / “Born To 

Be Punched” 7” (Red Eye) 

1985: Salamander Jim – Lorne Green 

Shares His Precious Fluids 

(Red Eye) 

1987: Various – Waste Sausage 

compilation (Black Eye) 

1987: Lubricated Goat – …Plays The 

Devil’s Music (Black Eye) 

1988: Various – Leather Donut 

compilation (Black Eye) 

1988: Lubricated Goat – Paddock Of 

Love (Black Eye/Amphetamine 

Reptile) 

1989: Lubricated Goat 

– Schadenfreude EP (Black 

Eye/Amphetamine Reptile) 

1989: Lubricated Goat – “Meating My 

Head” / “20th Century Rake” 7” 

(Sub Pop) 

1990: Lubricated Goat – Dope, Guns 

and Fucking in the Streets 

Vol. 4 7” compilation 

(Amphetamine Reptile) 

1990: Lubricated Goat 

– Psychedelicatessen (Black 

Eye/Amphetamine Reptile) 

1990: Stu Spasm's Bubble Machine 

– Rockin' Bethlehem: The 

Second Coming Timberyard 

Xmas compilation (Timberyard) 

1991: Stu Spasm – Positively Cleveland 

Street compilation (Bulb) 

1992: Lubricated Goat – “Play Dead” / 

“Prayer For Blood” 7” (Sub Pop) 

1993: Beasts Of Bourbon – From The 

Belly Of The Beasts 2-LP [live 

and rarities] (Red Eye) 

1993: Lubricated Goat – “Shut Your 

Mind” / “In The Wrong Hands” 

7” (Sympathy For The Record 

Industry) 

1993: Crunt – S/T (Trance Syndicate) 

1993: Crunt – “Swine” / “Sexy” – 7” 

(Insipid Vinyl) 

1995: Lubricated Goat – Forces You 

Don't Understand (PCP) 

2000: Stu Spasm – Love God film 

soundtrack [Recorded 1996] 

(Koch) 

2004: Lubricated Goat – Great 

Old Ones [Old songs re- 

recorded] (Reptilian) 

2004: Lubricated Goat – Dope, Guns 

Vol. 1-3 1990-94 DVD 

compilation [Recorded live ‘88] 

(Amphetamine Reptile) 

2004: Stu Spasm – Popular Male 

Vocal 7” (Australian) 

Coming soon: Lubricated Goat – … 

Plays The Devil’s Music [re-issue] 

(Memorandum) 

Coming soon: Lubricated Goat 

– Paddock Of Love [re-issue] 

(Memorandum) 

Coming soon: Lubricated Goat – Split 

7” w/The Stabs (TBA) 

Coming soon: Stu Spasm – I Should 

Like To Think (Candiru) 

Coming soon: Stu Spasm – Indeed 

(Candiru) 

Coming soon: Stu Spasm – …Live In 

Your Boudoir (Candiru)

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the James Baker 

(Victims, Hoodoo Gurus, 

Beasts Of Bourbon) 

single, which was also 

recorded before I went 

to England. They were 

the first things he did 

on Red Eye. Then he 

started to release more 

conservative bands like Steve Kilbey (The Church) and all 

his relatives. You know there was Steve Kilbey solo albums, 

some band with Steve Kilbey’s girlfriend in it, then there 

was Bhagavad Guitars with Steve Kilbey’s cousin, then The 

Crystal Set with Steve Kilbey’s brother, it’s all Kilbey-familyrelated. 

But then I guess John was always supportive of the 

guys that had been in Salamander Jim or Beasts Of Bourbon 

or whatever, and so when we did these recordings he was 

one guy open to listening to it and potentially putting it out. 

It wasn’t just him that liked it, though, Tex and other people 

all liked it and so he liked it. He sometimes wanted to be 

part of the joke but he just wasn’t really on the inside. He 

came up with this idea once that we should do a split record 

with Bhagavad Guitars. He goes, “The Bhagavad Guitars are 

really big fans of the ‘Goat. You should do one of their songs 

and they’ll do one of your songs and we could put out a split 

single.” And I’m like, “What the fuck is he thinkin’?” y’know, 

“No way I’m gonna learn one of their songs and record it!” 

Another thing you did that has the same warped sense 

of humour was Chicken Holder, an act that allowed you 

to antagonise people without them being able to do 

much in return. 

That was basically because I grew up with my parents 

listening to Frank Sinatra and all that kinda stuff and so 

Chicken Holder was a reaction against that. I got this 

instrumental album of Frank Sinatra songs and other songs 

in that vein and I found this costume at Surry Hills Market; 

this green Lurex aerobics outfit. Actually the reason it came 

about was ‘cos me and Tex were sitting at French’s on 

Oxford Street and we said to the guys behind the bar, “We 

wanna book a gig,” and they said, “Who’s it for?” and I said, 

“Toilet Duck and Chicken Holder.” They were two products 

that were on the TV at the time. Toilet Duck was like a 

toilet cleaner with a duck-head bottle that reached under 

the rim of the toilet. Chicken Holder was a dildo-looking 

thing that you sit the chicken on so the chicken sits upright 

and there’s this dish at the bottom that catches the juice 

and bastes the chicken. So we booked the gig for Chicken 

Holder and Toilet Duck and then we had a couple of weeks 

to come up with the bands. And Toilet Duck was something 

that Tex did with some other people, just some crazy songs 

that they wrote, and Chicken Holder was just me with the 

green Lurex outfit and a hat with a feather in it and an 

actual cooked chicken attached to a mic stand and this 

small synthesizer thing that I had stuffed inside the chicken 

so you’d hit this chicken and it’d make a noise, like you 

were playing the chicken. So Lachlan [McLeod] (Salaman- 

der Jim, Thug) was hitting the chicken 

with a stick and I was singing, crooning 

all these songs like “Strangers In The 

Night” and some Tom Jones songs over 

the top of this instrumental record. And 

there just happened to be these two bikers 

there that were causing all this trouble, like these short 

tubby biker guys and I had this sword and I started poking 

one of them in the stomach with the sword. I looked ridiculous, 

I had this green outfit on and these big green rubber 

boots and this hat and the sword, I looked like some kind 

of stupid super hero, a cross between Puss-In-Boots and 

the Three Musketeers. But I jumped off the stage and got 

one of these biker guys in the headlock and he eventually 

agreed to leave. And another time we were doing Chicken 

Holder and this skinhead came up the front of the stage so 

I was patting him on the head, you know how Benny Hill 

pats those bald guys on the head? I was patting him on the 

head and the show finished and this skinhead was looking 

for me, he wanted to bash me up, but I got off stage and put 

my jeans on over the top of the green outfit and whatever 

shit I was wearing and he couldn’t tell who I was. He goes 

to me, “Where’s the singer from that band, I wanna get that 

guy?” Chicken Holder was pretty confrontational. I’d wear 

that outfit and go up and sit on people’s girlfriend’s laps 

and drink their drinks and all this sort of stuff. One time 

Brett Ford was playing the chicken and he said, “I’m gonna 

beat you tonight, ‘cos I’m gonna do Quail Holder!” And so 

we had the chicken attached to the mic stand but he had a 

dead quail on the end of a drumstick and he was hitting the 

chicken with that. 

When was the first proper line-up of Lubricated Goat 

formed? Did Brett, Peter and Guy Maddison (Mudhoney, 

Bloodloss, Monroe’s Fur) all move to Sydney from Perth 

because of the band? 

All those guys were really into doing it. But I remember 

to get Brett Ford to move to Sydney from Perth I had to 

convince him that the clothing store he had with his wife, 

Wheels And Doll Baby, I had to convince them to start up 

the store in Sydney. And you know, that kinda backfired 

because the store did really take off and they made a ton of 

money and eventually she left Brett and married that fucking 

blonde dork from the Divinyls. When the store started 

taking off it became harder to get Brett to come to practice, 

because she was always trying to get him to come back to 

the store and put studs on leather jackets and all this. One 

time she wasn’t going to let him come on tour until he’d 

written the word HUTCH in studs on seven leather jjackets 

for an INXS giveaway contest. Another time when they’d the 

had an argument he bought her a rabbit, in the same way 

you might buy someone a bunch of flowers, he bought her 

a rabbit and the rabbit pooped all over the store and they’d 

sweep up all the studs that ended up on the floor and they’d 

get mixed in with the rabbit shit. There was a few shitty 

bands around Sydney that we used to laugh at because we 

secretly knew their jackets were full of rabbit shit. But Brett 

used to wear all those clothes, all those Guns N’ Roses-type 

clothes the shop sold, and they used to try and get the band 

to dress up in all that. They’d go, “You’re not gonna make 

it unless you dress like this,” you know. So he would walk 

around the streets with all these studs and spurs and shit 

on and we’d walk five-feet behind him embarrassed. One 

time we were doing a gig with Mudhoney and Brett’s wife 

couldn’t believe Mudhoney dressed in what I s’pose would 

later be considered grunge clothes; she couldn’t believe 

they dressed like that and still got to travel around the world 

and play music. And Brett showed up and he had these red 

stretchy pants with laces up the side and a jacket with no 

shirt underneath and this matching red hat. Just like really 

ridiculous clothes, like someone from Poison. And he came 

up and played harmonica with Lubricated Goat and we’d 

always told the members of Mudhoney about this guy that 

used to play in our band that dressed like that and I invited 

him up onstage and they were laughing their heads off. I 

know I’m telling you all this stuff in a really roundabout way 

but anyway… So Brett set up his store 

in Sydney and Guy brought over his 

band, the Greenhouse Effect, but for 

whatever reason they split up. I’d met 

Guy when I was in Perth and I’d seen 

the Greenhouse Effect and thought Guy 

was a really great bass-player. And you 

know, Peter Hartley was a great guitarplayer 

but he very quickly went too 

fucking far. He’d play across the song, 

and he seemed like a real acid casualty 

but he had only really done acid once or 

twice. There was a point where he was 

playing stuff that was really interesting 

but then it got so far off that it was really 

irritating and it clashed with shit. Some 

people liked it, but the majority of people 

thought it sucked. So it was really hard 

to kick him out of the band because we really loved him as 

a person, but he just seemed like he was struggling with 

like… I don’t know, like he was just too far-gone. Under the 

right circumstances I think it’s right to play across the song 

but when you’re playing live it’s hard enough to hear everyone 

as it is and he was just so loud and so off, too far off, in 

the wrong key and he’s like playing different rhythms and 

doing shit that didn’t fit. And some people were really mad 

at me when I kicked him out, for a long time. In fact, Brett 

Ford and him were really good friends. But it just wasn’t 

working you know. And the bad thing is, I always regarded 

that as the best line-up of the band. 

How were the first rehearsals with the full band? 

We used to have the greatest jams but we usually had to 

trim it down. Someone would have to say, “Stop.” And playing 

with Guy was great, but you know I almost had to kick 

Guy out as well because he almost did the same kinda thing 

as Peter Hartley. He was influenced by this guy called John 

Evans who was doing sound with us and who was kinda 

into this industrial type of thing. So Guy was like a punk 

rocker guy when I first met him and then he went through 

this arty industrial phase, and you know, I’m very broadminded 

in my music taste but he started doing shit like playing 

these random basslines that didn’t make any sense, letting 

this guy that was mixing us put a sampler over the top of 

it and making noises, which is fine if I knew they were going 

to do it but it just doesn’t work when someone starts doing 

stuff like that across a song. The proof of that is was when 

Guy went to Seattle with the Monroe’s Fur guys, because that 

was a case of like, y’know, nice fucking try, but it didn’t work 

out that great. And they were playing around to Seattle to no 

people because it wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. When 

they were in Sydney and they had Paul Kidney (Southern 

Fried Kidneys) singing that was good because he had this big 

roaring voice and stuff, but when Monroe’s Fur was playing 

around Seattle they would only attract a crowd because Mark 

Arm (Green River, Mudhoney, Bloodloss, Monkeywrench) was 

playing with them and even then people were like, “Hey Mark, 

what are you doing with these guys?” And Bloodloss was 

like that as well. Ren [Renestair EJ] started playing the saxo

Pic: Rod Hunt 

phone and he really can’t play the saxophone that well. You 

know some of these guys were more into the idea of shit than 

spending time making it good. It’s okay to go for some higher 

concept thing but you have to be able to tell when something 

isn’t working. And even with Lubricated Goat, we should’ve 

spent a lot, lot, lot more time jamming. Basically there was a 

lot of racking up going on and not enough playing. We didn’t 

rehearse as much as we should have and I think it could’ve 

been so much better. Because I’ve had line-ups of the band 

over here in America and we’ve rehearsed a lot more and 

it’s been so much better and so I just wish that I had these 

guys rehearse a lot more to make it so much better. This is 

reflected in things like the Psychedelicatessen album, you 

know, a big fucking mess. 

I s’pose we should discuss the legendary ABC TV 

performance of “In The Raw”. I know you didn’t agree 

with what I’d written about the song back in issue #2, 

so this is your chance to berate me publicly. 

Yeah, I don’t think that song needs any more elements 

to it. It’s supposed to be like a machine you turn on and 

it doesn’t stop, like a washing machine just churning 

round and round. Originally that song was a pisstake of 

The Swans, it was just like stuff off the first Swans album. 

Their songs didn’t have any more parts so why should my 

song need any more? I liked the Swans and I liked the slow 

grinding style they had, I was making fun of their lyrics 

more than anything else. 

I suppose my criticism was more based on the fact that 

the “In The Raw” incident has almost come to define 

Lubricated Goat itself, like more people have seen that 

footage than have heard …Plays The Devil’s Music, and 

I think there was more to the band than that song and 

that stunt. 

Yeah, I don’t want Lubricated Goat to be defined by that 

because out of all our songs that’s not even our original 

style, that’s like copying someone else’s style. I can imagine 

some Swans fan hearing it and going, “That’s just a fucking 

rip-off.” Mike Gira [Swans], I see him round all the time, 

and I think he’s heard that song before and just thinks, 

this guy is ripping me off. Because the song is taking the 

piss, but he’s such a humourless guy that he’s the kind of 

Beasts Of Bourbon: (LtoR) 

Stu Spasm, Tex Perkins, 

Spencer P. Jones, Brad 

Shepherd, James Baker 

person who would take it 

the wrong way. One time I 

was at Jim Foetus’ house 

and David Yow from Jesus 

Lizard was there and so 

was Mike Gira and I don’t 

know what happened but 

somehow Mike Gira stuck 

his tongue in David Yow’s 

mouth and Yow bit on 

his tongue and wouldn’t 

let go. He was biting it 

really hard and when he 

finally let go Mike Gira 

was like, “I’m gonna kick 

your arse.” So everyone 

was trying to calm things 

down and saying, “You 

know, David’s cool and 

everything,” and Yow 

goes, “Yeah, I’m a big 

fan of your band, I 

like your lyrics, I think 

they’re funny.” Gira 

was like, “Funny? My 

life’s work is funny? 

Now I’m really gonna 

kick your arse!” David 

Yow is a pretty crazy 

character. Mike Gira, 

he’s a very smart 

guy but he acts like 

such an oaf when he’s drunk. He’ll get drunk and ask my 

girlfriend to show him her tits. 

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There was a documentary being made about that “In 

The Raw” incident, right? 

Yeah, Cousin Creep [Craig Barnes] is making it. I don’t 

know why, but he started making it and then he moved to 

California. 

I heard he was planning a bigger documentary on the 

whole Black Eye scene but Tex called it off. 

I think he said something negative 

about someone Tex liked and all of 

a sudden Tex was down on him and 

wouldn’t give him permission to use 

any of the music and obviously you 

can’t make a documentary about 

Black Eye if you can’t use Tex’s stuff 

because he’s on about half the things. 

It seems, or it’s just the impression 

I’ve gotten anyway, that Tex 

isn’t that keen for people to be 

re-visiting Thug and that early part 

of his career. 

Thug was fucking great, but there 

was a point where I suppose Tex 

became more of your conventional rock 

star. You know, he’s a different person 

now. Tex was over here a few months 

ago and we caught up for a few beers 

but I didn’t really ask him about that 

stuff. He came over and did this thing 

with Tim [Rogers] from 

You Am I and I didn’t want 

to see that; I wanted 

to see the Beasts Of 

Bourbon. So then finally 

Beasts came over and 

that was good. 

You were in Beasts for 

a while there, right? 

Yeah, I joined when 

the Scientists went to 

England. Like the Scientists got pretty popular over there 

and so Kim Salmon [guitar] and Boris Sujdovic [bass] left 

and I was playing bass in the Beasts and Brad Shepherd 

from Hoodoo Gurus was playing guitar. But then Hoodoo 

Gurus kicked James Baker (drums) out of the band because 

he couldn’t play along to a click-track so we kicked Brad 

Shepherd out of Beasts Of Bourbon. Obviously they couldn’t 

be in a band together anymore; there was a lot of bad 

blood. So after that I switched to guitar and we got Graham 

Goode who was in the Johnnys to play bass and I was in it 

for about a year or something. We used to do a lot of covers 

back then like New York Dolls and Alice Cooper covers, shit 

like that. Obviously that stopped when Tex went over to do 

the Gun Club thing, then when he came back he formed the 

Bush Oysters and that was like an extension of what he had 

started to do in Salamander Jim. Salamander Jim started 

off swampy and grungy and then got more kinda crazy and 

arty. I played one show with the Bush Oysters too after I 

came back from England and that’s when Tex and Peter 

Read started Thug and all that Waste Sausage four-track 

stuff started. And at the time when Tex was doing Thug he 

was not into doing the Beasts Of Bourbon anymore because 

he had changed and was doing the more experimental 

Residents-type of thing or whatever. So Beasts Of Bourbon 

never got back together for years, I think it was after I had 

left Australia. 

With the Shadenfruade EP, Lubricated Goat had managed 

to score an American record deal with Amphetamine 

Reptile but you didn’t have any songs, is that right? 

No, Shadenfruade was already recorded but we got a 

deal based on the fact that they liked the first two albums. 

Most bands shop their shit around, like send their stuff to 

a bunch of different labels in America and England but we 

were lucky that Tom Hazelmeyer at AmRep just liked us and

Pic: Mark Nielson 

wanted to release our album and that ended up being a 

really cool label doing stuff at the right time. And the worst 

thing that happened was that John Foy really wanted to 

release Shadenfruade on Black Eye in Australia but he also 

negotiated a separate deal for Europe that didn’t work out. 

Like all the Amphetamine Reptile bands used to go through 

Glitterhouse in Europe and England, but the label that 

John Foy got us in Europe, called Normal, they had already 

been doing the Beasts albums; they only did Europe and 

not England. So John Foy should’ve let us go through Glitterhouse 

with all the 

other AmRep bands 

because then when 

we toured Europe 

we would’ve got to 

do England as well. I 

think with this deal it 

worked out that we 

might have gotten 

like an extra $1000 

or something but it 

wasn’t worth it for all the shit it caused. It totally fucked us 

in England. 

On Shadenfruade you had Charlie Tolnay (Grong Grong, 

King Snake Roost, Tumor Circus) on guitar, Gene Ravet 

(Space Juniors) on drums and Guy on bass. But then 

you got Martin on drums and Ren on guitar to tour 

America in May 1989, why? 

Charlie couldn’t go because King Snake Roost was doing 

their own tour. And Gene couldn’t go, I can’t remember why, 

maybe Space Juniors were doing something? But I had a 

few drummers in the band, like Peter Read was playing 

drums for a while too, and he was all right but he wasn’t 

good enough to be the drummer in Lubricated Goat really – 

not compared to someone like Brett or Gene. And we’d also 

have Peter Read on guitar sometimes. But you can’t really 

take Peter Read on tour – he used to steal fucking microphones 

all the time. Martin had always wanted to go on tour 

in America and it made sense to have Ren along because 

those guys are like a pair, they’ve been best friends since 

high school. That was a good line-up with us four guys. 

So how was the first tour? 

It was great; it’s just that we didn’t have much money. It 

looked like it wasn’t going to happen for a while but I was 

determined that it should happen and the booker said, “It’s 

going to be a little rough,” and I said, “Don’t care, let’s go.” 

Because we had been gearing towards it for so long and 

there wasn’t much more we could do in Australia anyway. 

So was Psychedelicatessen done before the second 

tour happened? 

Yeah, and it was out in time for the tour as well. Psychedelicatessen, 

it was the kind of album I wanted to make 

but when you’re only in the studio for a couple of days you 

realise that people who try to do something like that have 

probably been in the studio for weeks at a time, like they 

record the stuff and then keep remixing it, but we never 

got to do that. If you try and do some songs that are kind of 

intricate there are any number of ways you could mix them, 

and I think that record, to make it work, some of the stuff 

Lubricated Goat live in 2006 

could’ve even been recorded again, but basically it needed 

to be remixed. It didn’t work because it needed more time 

spent on it. 

In America you got to record a SubPop Single of The 

Month 7-inch with Jack Endino. 

That was a cool thing to get to do, the Single of The 

Month on SubPop. We did that at Reciprocal, the same 

studio where all those SubPop bands did their stuff, where 

Nirvana did Bleach and where Mudhoney did their first 

album and all 

that. And that 

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record sounds 

really good I 

think, and Jack 

Endino made it 

very simple and 

straightforward. 

We just kinda 

rocked out and 

he captured it 

good and you know, it would’ve been great if he could’ve 

done some of the other records. 

So the European leg of the tour came to a halt after you 

got stabbed in Berlin. You said in the first interview 

with Rhys that, “As far as I know, the stabbing isn't 

well documented…” 

I’ve never read anything about it. 

Well, what happened? 

There was a place we played at called the Ecstasy and 

the funny thing is that Primus opened for us. I had never 

really heard of them. Subsequently I’ve found out how big 

they are and it’s crazy that they opened for us, they did the 

music for South Park and all that. So this show was a Sunday 

night and I should’ve really just walked around Berlin 

and checked out things, but instead we 

were hanging out at this bar until seven 

o’clock in the morning and we wanted 

this girl to help us get some drugs. There 

were these girls there that hung out with 

Hugo Race and the Bad Seeds and stuff 

so we figured they knew where to get 

hard drugs. So they took us down to 

this area of Berlin and gave this Turkish 

guy forty marks and he just took off. 

We all had these cheap switchblades 

we’d bought in Hamburg. Ren had one 

that flicked out sideways but the rest 

of ours were like the classic stiletto 

style. Anyway, the guy went to jump 

over this fence and we grabbed him 

and dragged him back and he had 

this knife behind his back, like a 

really thin knife, the kind you might 

scale a fish with. So this girl with us 

who spoke German was like, “Wo ist 

das Geld?” which means, “Where 

is the money?” So an argument 

was going on and I punched him 

in the face and then Ren pulls out 

this switchblade, which was so stupid because you could 

hardly cut butter with it. He’s going, “Yeah, now who’s 

got a knife motherfucker,” and this guy starts chasing us 

around, I forget how it exactly went down but he slashed 

Ren across the head, then somehow we got him up against 

a wall and we were punching him and kneeing him in the 

face. We got our knife back and we left him on the ground 

and went to walk off down the street and then he comes 

charging down the street and he’s got another knife. It was 

more of a hunting-type knife with a curved blade on it. So 

he’s chasing me down the street; I’ve got these snakeskin 

cowboy boots on that I bought in Texas and I was drunk as 

well. Unlike a movie, there’s no dramatic music, there’s only 

heavy breathing and the clump clump of feet running along. 

So there was this door that I managed to get behind and he 

started pushing on the other side of this door and you know 

I was holding it back, but after a few minutes it stopped 

and then I heard this knock on the door like kinda saying it 

was safe to come out, but when I opened the door he was 

right there. That’s when we believe he dipped the knife in 

dogshit. So somehow he got behind me again and I ran into 

this apartment building and I thought I could go out through 

the back way. He was around the corner so he didn’t see 

where I went, but I couldn’t get out the back because it was 

all chained up. And then I heard the door go and he came in 

and I was standing towards the back of this corridor and I 

put my hands up and he started slashing at me. He slashed 

my hands and he slashed my face open and he missed my 

jugular by about an inch. And I thought he was stabbing me 

more but I think the knife was slipping through my hair and 

he was kicking me and stuff. Anyway, I think he thought 

that he had killed me, like I said he’d gone for my jugular 

and slashed my cheek. But I still never gave him his money 

back. He left and I think he thought I was just going to lay 

down there and die but I came out and one of the girls we 

were with had freaked out and ran off and Ren was there 

with the other girl who had given this guy the money in 

the first place and we flagged down a car who drove us to 

hospital. I was bleeding a lot; I couldn’t believe how deep 

it was and how much it was bleeding. So they stitched me 

and Ren up and gave us a tetanus shot and said, “Come 

back in a week.” Then after we left the hospital they called 

the cops and they interrogated us for a few hours through 

interpreters. They were just like Nazis only their uniforms 

were green. It was like some World War II fantasy, being interrogated 

by the Gestapo. So then after that we get back to 

the hotel and we have to drive to the next town and I hadn’t 

slept or anything and by the time we got to the next town, 

eight hours later, I was in pain and my face was getting all 

tight and I couldn’t swallow or drink very well. And I tried to 

do a gig but I couldn’t sing, it hurt too much and we only did 

about four or five songs. So then I went back to the hotel to 

sleep and when I got up the next day I was still wearing the 

same clothes, I had blood all over me. And then we drove to 

Switzerland, which was another eight hours, and on the way 

we went to Dachau Concentration Camp. We were walking 

around Dachau because I really wanted to see it and I felt 

like more like an inmate than a tourist. Then when I got out 

of the van in Switzerland, we were supposed to play with 

Helios Creed but instead it was like, “You’ve gotta go to the 

hospital right now,” and as soon as I went in they gave me 

an emergency tracheotomy, where they just puncture your 

neck to find an airway. Because I had been sitting upright all 

day and I couldn’t swallow or drink or breathe 

or turn my head properly, 

this infection had spread 

through my body. So I ended 

up being in intensive 

care for two weeks. I was 

on drips; I had tubes going 

to my stomach and another 

one going all the way up 

my arse to my heart. Then 

I was in a regular hospital 

for another couple of weeks. 

I could see the Swiss Alps 

out my window. Then when 

I came out a guy took me 

for a drive through the Alps 

and that was a really good 

experience. The irony is we 

weren’t enjoying the European 

tour so much because it was 

tough and we had a really tiny 

van, but when I came out of 

hospital I got to see the Swiss iss 

Alps and I had this amazing g

train ride across Germany to Amsterdam. I remember the 

night I got out of hospital, I was staying with the guys from 

the Young Gods because they happened to live in the town 

where I was, Cryborg, and Cop Shoot Cop were playing with 

the Flaming Lips and I went down to that show. 

So did you go back to America from Amsterdam? 

Yeah, I was in Amsterdam about a week then I went 

to America just a couple of days after Christmas in 1990. 

I was kinda planning to live there, but I didn’t have any 

plans, except like, when I first toured America in 1989 

I saw Babes In Toyland and I said, “If I’m gonna marry 

anyone it’s gonna be Kat [Bjelland].” And that’s what I 

ended up doing. 

Did you have a Green Card because you were married 

to Kat? 

I never got one. She divorced me like two months before 

I would’ve got it. That’s why I haven’t been out of the coun- 

try for quite a few years. I came back to Australia in 1993 

Lubricated Goat circa-90: (LtoR) 

Lachlan McLeod, Martin Bland, 

Stu Spasm, EJ Renestair 

Brendan Noonan 

and Mr. Spasm 

when Babes In Toyland toured there; I went to Australia and 

Europe and Japan and Hawaii. But then 911 happened in 

America and it all became much harder. 

You live in New York now, but where did you live when 

you first got there? 

Here in New York, and then when I married Kat I went 

to Minneapolis but I didn’t really like it there – it’s cold and 

the people are two faced. I don’t know, a lot of the time 

I was there Kat would be off on tour. So we went to live 

in Seattle for a while because my ex-band members the 

Monroe’s Fur guys were there and I guess she probably 

didn’t like it because she still lives in Minneapolis now 

and I was always complaining about Minneapolis. So we 

went to Seattle and that was good because we started 

Crunt, me and Kat [bass] and Russell Simins [drums] (John 

Spencer Blues Explosion). The Crunt album came out and 

everyone liked it and we’d only done five shows in Seattle 

and we were supposed to go tour England and Europe 

and do a John Peel session and all this stuff. But basically 

what happened was we all moved back to New York, and I 

thought Kat wanted to come and live in New York, but she 

went back to Minneapolis for Christmas and didn’t come 

back. Two weeks after Christmas we were meant to do this 

Crunt tour and I was really looking forward to it, and I think 

things would be a lot different if we’d have done that tour, 

but she didn’t really care. Her band was already touring all 

the time over there anyway, and so was Russell’s band, the 

Blues Explosion. So to them it didn’t mean much, it was 

just another tour of Europe. But the album was getting really 

good reviews and it would’ve either made me or broke 

me if we’d have gone there. So after that happened I was 

really depressed for a few years. 

Is that when you reactivated Lubricated Goat and did 

Forces You Don't Understand? 

I did that a bit before that. I did that when I came to 

New York around 1992, in fact I was still doing it when I got 

together with Kat. I had met her in 1989 and she had heard 

that I loved her and then later she walked into this bar one 

night and tapped me on the shoulder and someone took a 

photo of us kissing and that was it, we were together after 

that. It was some little fairytale thing. We got our names 

tattooed on each other, and that’s always the kiss of death. 

So your marriage ended when Crunt ended? 

I told her if she didn’t come back to do the tour, don’t 

bother coming back. That’s fair enough I think. 

I heard from people that you were not in a good way in 

the mid nineties. 

No, I wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do. I tried everything. 

I tried to go to Europe and got stabbed and then the second 

time when I tried to go, other people fucked it for me. I put 

together a good band and made a great record and got 

the tour organised and then these people bailed on it two 

weeks before y’know. 

What was Russell’s take on it, did he not want to get 

involved in a marriage break-up? 

Ah, he probably just thought we were a pair of junkies 

or whatever. But it wasn’t as bad as that; otherwise we 

wouldn’t have been able to go on tour y’know. 

You seem in good shape now, how did you turn it all 

around? 

There came a time when I decided that I wanted to do 

music more and I realised like, “Why did I come here in 

the first place? To play music,” y’know. You get to the point 

where you don’t have any of your things left, you’ve sold 

your records, although I never sold my guitar – I’ve had the 

same guitar since I was sixteen. You don’t want to just sit 

around and take drugs and not function, you want to have 

some cool music to listen to and it just goes on and on and 

on. It’s like, “I’d rather have this record or this book or a 

new guitar, I need this, I need that…” So that’s what I did, 

I virtually collected all the things I’d sold when I was down 

and depressed and I’m happier to have these things around. 

I started to accumulate everything that I needed so I didn’t 

need to rely on anyone else, and that’s why I record everything 

myself now. I play guitar and bass and keyboards 

and drum machine. I use a live drummer as well, because 

there’s only so much you can do with a drum machine, but 

other than that I play everything myself. And even on some 

of my earlier records, I don’t want to insult anyone, but at 

the same time I knew that some of these records would 

sound better if I had played the stuff myself. But you can’t 

say to people, “I’ll play everything on the record and you 

can play it live,” although that’s what Billy Corgan from 

the Smashing Pumpkins does. That’s just a weird situation 

y’know. But there’s not much else that I need as far as 

musical shit goes. I want to have every instrument there 

so if I want to play it I can play it myself. I’ve even got this 

control on my recorder that does male-to-female vocals, 

so I can do my voice up like a female, but it doesn’t really 

cut it, so I might have to get a real girl in to sing. But for the 

most part I try and do as much as I can and not let other 

people let me down.

stu spasm discography - cousincreep.com

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