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| Bio of the Artist |
Keen exponents of the have a go and do it yourself ethos of the time, The Black Assassins were a dirty-assed punk rock band formed in Brisbane, Australia in the middle of 1981, one week before their first gig. It was the height of corrupt Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's police state Reich in the Australian state of Queensland, oppression loomed large in the land and people were scared to speak. The Black Assassins were a loud, raucous assertion of the right to free speech against everything Jackboot Joh stood for.
The Black Assassins had strong political opinions but were very inexperienced musicians who knew no shame. They had three rum-soaked rehearsals during their first week to get a set of 8 songs together before hitting the stage at the QIT Campus Club, Brisbane. It was a highly entertaining theatrical event backed by a wall of noise, musically mutilated performance. This is how they earned the title of "Brisbane's Ugliest Band".
The Black Assassins went on to play a total of 14 gigs in and around Brisbane during the following year before the bass player and guitarist moved to Sydney and formed the band Mutant Death. The Black Assassins continued to play sporadically during the rest of the eighties if they happened to wash up in the same town at the same time. Our last gig in Brisbane was in December 1985, until 20 years and 2 days later we got together again and played a gig to launch our CD in December 2006. You can find out more about the gigs we played at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/Gigs.html
The Black Assassins were highly theatrical and usually pre-spent all the money they were paid for gigs on props and costumes for their performances. Their songs and stage act were energetic and highly political, focussing on issues of the day, having fun with imagery evoked by their name and the topics of their songs. It often involved doing things with dummies of corrupt politicians and interaction with members of the audience. Not surprisingly, many Black Assassin gigs ended in confrontations with the Queensland police.
The Black Assassins didn’t take themselves seriously and aimed to have as much fun as they could while they played. Sometimes it worked and they sounded good and people danced. Other times they could sound pretty atrocious. Luckily there was the fabled Sunshine Studios Session - thirteen songs recorded in six hours of tequila induced rage,
The band broke up, the tapes languished under beds and at the bottom of the cupboard for years before we got our act together, fixed it in the mix and produced The Black Assassins Greatest Hits, a CD just jammed pack with stereophonically enhanced, punk rock classics straight from the seedy Brisbane streets of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era. The CD finally hit the streets in November 2005. You can check out photos of the CD launch reunion gig at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/CDlaunch.html
2007 saw The Black Assassins dive back into live shows in a big way (well big for us since we now live in four different states), with a short set at the Jets Sports Club in Sydney in May. This performance ended after 5 songs when the police shut us down for complaints about the ugly noise. You can see one photo of this here in our photo section on N1M or see more photos of this gig at: http://www.blackassassins.net/Jetsgig.html
We played again a couple of months later in an uninvited guerilla perfomance at the Pig City festival at UQ in Brisbane in July. When security on the Pig City stage inside the marquee proved too tight for a stage invasion we played out the front of the 4ZZZ tent.
You can watch a video of this live version of "Death Take Me Now" we played at Pig City on our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5iKMaAuuYA
Or or check it out and see some photos of it on the Black Assassins band website at: http://www.blackassassins.net/pigcity.html
The Black Assassins are available to play anywhere in the world for anyone crazy enough to want us who can afford the costs of getting us there to play.
Here's a quick bit of background on the samples of our songs on this site:
SOMEBODY'S GONNA GET THEIR HEAD KICKED IN TONIGHT
This song is a cover and was originally recorded in the late sixties/early seventies by Earl Vince And The Valiants, a pseudonym that Fleetwood Mac used to play under at venues they wee banned from in London at the time(Fleetwood Mac were a wild hard rockin' act back then who mellowed out a lot in their later years). The original version. written by Jeremy Spencer, had a 50's rock'n'roll feel to it - our version pays homage to the original style but is a bit more punkish.
DEATH TAKE ME NOW - written about the joys of having to get up at 4am to start work at 5am
PLANET X - one of the strange places physical, astral or chemical space travel might take you too. Is it that much different from the weirdness of our own planet?
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE LIFESTYLE - it was bad when this songs was written in 1981, it's even worse now.
DRUGS - an essay on the joys and dangers of substance indulgence.
DEATH COMES TO TOWNSVILLE - the inevitable outcome of the corrpution and bad planning involved with a uranium mine that was going to be opened near Townsville, Australia, in 1981. This song was part of the campiagn that helped stop the mine happening.
FUCK ME FUCK MY DOG - written in the back of the van on the way to band practice, our humorous counter to the sentimentality of the "Love Me Love My Dog' song. This song was the most requested by the Brisbane audiences we played to in 1981-82.
You can read reviews of The Black Assassins Greatest Hits CD and live performances in the early 1980s at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/Reviews.html
You can also check out more photos of The Black Assassins at: http://www.blackassassins.net/Photos.html |
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