LP Liner notes - continued

Puke! Other names we considered but discarded at that time were: The Poofter Bashers, The Fearless Dog Lovers, andThe Inspired Chicken Motel. In retrospect, we all love the name Fearless Dog Lovers. Depending on your point of view, itmeant brave and defiant friendship with mans best friend, or a tendency towards bestiality.

A few enlightened promoters eventually opened up several venues, such as the Tiger Lounge (Royal Oak Hotel) in Richmond and the Seaview aka The Crystal Ballroom (George Hotel) in St Kilda, Most of these venues were outside the mainstream of rock, but we were not in a position to choose. We played regularly at the Tiger Lounge, mainly supporting the Boys Next Door (or the Fags Across the, Road, as we called them). The Boys Next Door had their own arty college crowd, and we, definitely did not meet their approval. You could see the audience split into clear sections. Their crowd "wore black, were fashionably dishevelled, had dyed hair (black, mostly) and generally aped British trends. Our lot wore whatever theyliked (jeans, tee-stirts and Army Surplus mostly), were genuinely dishevelled and ware quite physical in their support -- they'dget up and crazy dance right in front of the stage. Crazy dancing was inspired by Radio Birdman - when the music is that fast,epileptic convulsing is about the only type of reaction possible! Our lot were beer-driven and were very aggro, probably a bit ockerish as well.

Eventually, this venue was closed to us after a little incident one night about half way through a set, when I realised that the usualstage racket had abated somewhat, As bass player and backup vocals, I was at the front of stage right, thrashing away andproviding (as always) great backup, except I had become a solo act, I looked around and I was the only one on stage. Ian hadbeen overtaken by some unusually destructive, urge and, tiring of trashing microphones, leads, stands and monitor boxes,decided to fix up Fred the guitarist, so he, punched him right out. Fred was saved from even worse through the intervention of Cal. They all disappeared off stage and left me to it. I told the crowd to get stuffed and walked off. I never found out the cause of this at stoush, but I suspect it might have had something to do with Ian fucking Fred's girlfriend. This event ultimately led to Ian being chucked out of the band.

We played quite a few gigs at the Seaview, a really good venue (big stage, big PA, good audience area, lots of bars) whichbecame "Punk Central" in Melbourne. The only thing was that most "punks" were just fucking fashion plates. We hated themand called them Fag Trendies. I wrote a song car so rather imaginatively, "Fag Trendies" where, I specifically listed allthe things we hated about them. At the Seaview, these bizarre creatures would parade around the front of the stage,trying to out do each other with contrived acts of nihilism and self-mutilation. We gave first prize to the couple, whohad a root it front of the stage using a metal tube chair as a sex aid (I kid you not ). Ian would prance, mince, andthrash all over the front of the stage, screaming invective and spitting hatred at the, Trendies from a distance, of aboutthree feet. They lapped it up, silly bastards!

We became nauseated by all the falseness in the business. When we played around the Mornington, we were an ARAB band (i.e. we were looking for a "root and a beer" except for me, my darling wife, honest!) and we played because we liked playing. We played loud and fast, and we were appreciated for it. When we tried to make our way in the big world, all we came across was fakery, chicanery, lies, and absolute fucking bullshit in big steaming piles, There seemed to be a yawning gulf between us and the self-styled music business impresarios. We rejected this self-adulation, or at least we acknowledged it and laughed at it, and our obvious scorn of the system and those who ran it was what landed us squarely in the "punk brigade" rather than our music. We didn't fit into the British oriented punk scene very well at all. We rejected the accepted punk uniform of predominantly black clothing. We wore white, played white guitars, white, drums, even had white guitar leads. We dropped the white gear after a while, mainly because it was boring: you had to pay a bit more than lip service to maintaining it, otherwise it looked utterly shit house. We never wore the usual punk paraphernalia of safety pins, one he and razor blades, but chose to wear Fosters beer can ring pulls instead.

We wrote songs about false fashions and other punk bands ("Fag Trendies" and Disco Tek Wreck"), rock industry bosses("Record Co Execs" and the "Jokes On Us"), social me also ("TALOIGA" and "Terminal Rock"), teachers ("Get Knicked"),the conundrums of history ("Adolph, You Beauty!") and simple pleasures in life ("No Fun on the Beaches", "(Do The Manic)To Kill or Maim", and "Backstreet Killer"). We deliberately and quite systematically vilified everyone we came into contactwith, especially industry tin gods. I mean, calling ttie guy who thinks he's managing you a slimey, cocksucking, fuckwit, pommy(or words to that effect; I think I might also have called him a cunt, but I can't be sure) probably didn't advance our cause, but itseemed the right thing to do at the time.

Our audiences also copped a fair hiding front time to time. Ian often singled out an individual e.g. one night he asked if Jeff Rule(an identity then and now in the alternative music scene) was in the, audience and then said "This next ones for you Jeff, it'scalled'Get Knicked'," or he would scream out "Calling Barry Earl" just as we launched into "Record Co Execs", Normally "FagTrendies" would be introduced by a line such as "There are a lot of you out there, you little shits!"

We took to carrying axe-handles on stage, We all had one, lovingly embellished with personal identification. The idea was thatany cunt who gobbed on us was going to get fucking smashed right then and there.

We were big on self-promotion, oh yes! We placed ads in the music press expressing support for Idi Amin and Pol Pot, butdenied any complicity in the Hilton Bombings (although we admitted to a garbage bin fetish). On posters we quoted JayneMansfield as saying "I lost my head over The Chosen Few", Linda Lovelace admitting to being "choked-up" for the ChosenFew, while another quoted Hitler as saying 'The Chosen Few are a gas!" The word "Chosen" usually had a swastika instead ofan "a". We derisively adopted punk personas: Bruce Friday became Bruise, Fear Die, Cal became Zoom Schwartz orTrainpacker, fan became The Een or Sonic Schwartz and your humble narrator, oh my little droogies, became Goid (fuckknows why!).

Through it all, and probably despite it all, we eventually won our supporter base and we were able to play up to three, or more gigs a week regularly. We played regular supports at the Seaview and had a sort of residency at The Champion Hotel inFitzroy. We even got to headline in Adelaide at a "Children of Tomorrow" concert. That gig was unreal, even by our grubby standards but not because of anything to do with music. A couple of days before we drove to Adelaide, the boys had one or nine beers one night and went a bee's disk overboard. Ian, Cal and Fred lived in a flat in Spray Street, Mornington which we called The Fitness Centre. Under the influence of heaps of piss, the lads decided to brand themselves as members of The Chosen Few -- literally! They made, brands with the initials "TCF" out of wire coat hangers, and branded themselveson the arms. Silly cunts! By the time we got to Adelaide, the wounds had partly healed, except for Ian's, His had become suppurating open wounds, oozing puss constantly, and he was half out of his skull with fever and pain. However, this gig was huge: the sound was enormous, and the Adelaide crowd had obviously not seen a full-on band of our type. They got right into us and went right off.

At the end of the Adelaide gig, the, boys had an open and-shut opportunity for a gang bang with an extremely willing groupie.This tall, slender blonde bird came up to where we were sitting after the show, waved a I flagon of wine and asked where the party was, Christ! A chick who wants to root us AND she brought the grog! Eeek! However, we were pretty fucked afterthe gig (and I was faithfuly married, so count me out, lads) but the others only reacted by saying "Fuck off, mole!" Typical.Another lost opportunity.

About a week later, we, were playing at the Seaview. During our set that night, Ian leapt into the crowd and invited punters tocome and pick the scabs of the barely healed brands on both his shoulders. We couldn't believe it! We couldn't believe it evenmore when two absolutely drop dead gorgeous chicks came up and did it! Yuck! Whatever happened to the, cock rocktradition of the, lead-singer wanking on stage? Not good enough for The Few -- we had to provide a display of unbelievable,tackiness. You had to be tough to be a Few fan, even tougher to be on stage watching it happen all around you.

Our philosophy towards playing live, was pretty basic. Get up on stage, crank everything up as loud as possible, and then tryand race, each other to the end of the song We stripped our music down to simple structures: most of our songs are in the keyof "A" because that was easy to play; we had few lead breaks and in our "Ramones cum Saints' period eliminated themaltogether (although later on we began to appreciate the dynamics of a good guitar break, as in "Son of Sam' that I wrote!).We didn't like rooting around art stage; if we had a break in our set of more than a few seconds, you could bet we wereexperiencing serious equipment failure. We bad bugger all patter with our audience (apart from the occasionalrepartee between fan and some wit in the crowd, who would usually offer some helpful advice such as "get off!"), we justplayed frenetically, and they could come along for the ride, if not, fuck 'em! One gig (I forget where) we find had an hour set.We played about 22 songs and collectively lost about ten stone, in weight. The Ramones non-stop style, influenced us in thisregard. We used to include a few of their songs in our set (e.g. "Down the Basement" and "Blitzkrieg Bop").

We got the opportunity to make, a record through free, studio time given to us by two it so boys (definitely not fags!) calledBen and Baron (Baron, I ask you!!) Rolls who really stretched their imaginations to come up with the name BB RollsRecording Studio, in Smith Street, Collingwood. We played a few gigs for Baron and Ben (the Flower Pot Men!), and theygave us free studio time as payment. They were great guys and helped us a lot. We did about three sessions: the firstsession we did six tracks. These are the first six tracks on the Bungalow Tape fooled you there! This session was oneginormous piss-up. Cal, Fred and I were in one room (they put screens around Cal, which we thought was about time) and Ianhad a little booth to himself with a glass window in the door so we could watch him in action. When Ian was doing his vocals,his face, disappeared from the window, but the screaming continued unabated. He went utterly berserk, rolling all over the floor

of the booth, dribbling and frothing at the mouth and farting like a demented wad dog. His singing was very excitedand slightly dangerous; we thought it sounded shit hot. I'm sure Ben and Baron couldn't rent that booth for at least amonth, Ian made it so rank with his particularly vile flatulence. We coined a new band slogan after this event:"The Chosen Few - the only band in the world that sticks like shit!"

We went back to BB Rolls a few weeks later and did two more sessions, which became the "Joke on us" EP. We couldn't afford a full album, but we found out that if you made a seven inch record run at 33 1/3 RPM, you could put more trackson it, hence our odd record configuration. Our choice of songs was obvious: we, just selected raucous punkoid songs, more or

less because we could: what the fuck! We had little experience of studios, hence we didn't really know what we, wanted orwhat we should sound like. I'm still convinced that at the last minute, one of the engineers dubbed the wrong mixesonto what became our master tape, because the songs on the EP are not as good as I remember the finished product on thatnight. I believe the EP contains unmixed songs or partially incomplete mixes, hence the fairly ordinary sound quality.

The EP was made at Astor Records in Clayton and released 28th August 1978. There were 500 copies only, I did theartwork and lyrics sheet, and my wife Chris and I assembled the packs at home. We sold it mainly by mail order and in a fewshops around Melbourne (e.g. Keith Glass at Archie and Jugheads gave us a lot of support --- no money, just support!), Wesold most of the discs so I guess it was successful. Apparently one week we sold more copies than the Angels current single.Hoorah! Hoorah!

The only other reasonable quality recorded product from the band is a desk tape of the Adelaide gig (great energy, supersound for a desk tape, of the time), four studio tracks recorded in Adelaide the same weekend, and two tracks recordedat Richmond Recording Studios (produced by Frank Owens from Island Records). When we recorded with FrankOwens, we did two songs, oils take each, then went off to get food and beer. He was amazed that we didn't want to spend allday fucking around "getting it right" so to speak. We bluntly asked him if he liked it, he said yes, so that ended that. We satdown with our fish and chips and beer!! Get your priorities right, mate!

All this while, we all lived on the Mornington Peninsula (me at Crib Point and the others at the Fitness Centre, itMornington) and we had to travel over 50 kms for the closest Melbourne gig. This meant we spent an incredible amount oftime travelling to and fro and eventually the effort and expense began to fray the Few brotherhood, and tensions inthe band began to emerge.

In hindsight, the fact that we stuck together without any serious disagreement for fifteen months says a lot for ourinitial unity of purpose and our commitment. We genuinely all thought pretty much alike (although Cal and I wrote 95% ofall songs and music and tended to dominate the band). However Een was simply becoming too weird to be around. He used tosleep all day and watch videos all night and he became too unpredictable on stage. He developed this stare that would havemade, Sid Vicious envious. Around March or April in 1979, we sacked Ian and then mutated into The Instigators, changedsingers (Bohdan X), adopted a keyboard player (Andy Duffield, great bloke) and revised our set. Bohdan's songs and hispreferences became prominent and we played more sedately and more conventionally, but my heart wasn't in it. I gave myplace on bass to Billy Blanch and played my last gig in May 1979. We'd lost era plot. The Chosen Few was dead Long livethe Few!

Where are, we now? Cal, a happy family man, hasn't got any smaller, but is still playing drums and has been in some damn finebands (Rain Ran The Flag, The Saints, The Clip Clop Club, The Large No. 12s). Fred had (has?) a bit of a drug problem, buthe's alive somewhere. Ian achieved immortality and walked in front of a train in August 1995. Who knows why? I'm running aband rehearsal complex (also part owner) and manage, bands, got a great wife and daughter, two cats and a Celica.

In the 1970s, we didn't think much about what we were doing. What resulted was too unfocussed, demonic, savage, crude andsarcastic to be commercially viable, but at the same time it was one great big two-fingered gesture at the whole rockestablishment. It was also monumental fun, and the good gigs were fantastic. You will never see the like of that energy again. Iguess if we'd stuck to our guns (and I don't just mean The Chosen Few, but all our contemporaries) we might have eventuallymade a bigger impact, After all, the so-called punk thing only lasted about eighteen (?) months in Australia, and the competentmuses we knew personally moved art to more acceptable money bands. The few record companies that had an interest triedto change us all into pommy clones (little Eivis Costellos), which a few went along with. Most who were serious fucked offoverseas (e.g. Nick Cave and the Boys Next Door Me The Birthday Party a/k/a The Bad Seeds). Even the mightyRadio Birdman fell in a heap in 1978, so what hope did we have?

In 1992, a guy called Dave Themes (lead singer and guitarist in the Geelong band Bored!), instigated a move to revive TheChosen Few. We got Fred to come along, with Dave Thomas and Jeff Hussey (my brother-in-law) also on guitars, me onbass, Bohdan X on vocals and Cal on drums, We called ourselves the Fearless Dog Lovers and did two practice sessions.The backing music was incredible: if we'd played like that in the 1970s, we'd have been legends, Unfortunately, Fred washardly with it (in fact, he was totally ripped), and was carried by Dave and Jeff, and no he except Bohdan was happy with thevocals, so we pulled out of the project. Two tapes of the sessions exist.

As for me, I'd do it all again, only this time, I'd mean it!!

- Ian Cunningham aka Goid February 1998

back to first page

Cormack, Greg, 1999, 'The Chosen Few - A Root and a beer', Inpress Magazine
My God. Talk about your sonic skid marks.
    A Root and a Beer would have been a show in for the ugliest recording made this year, except that it was made in 1978 - but I guess it could still be an outside contender in the all-time category.
    At the time, a lot of people said Radio Birdman were shit - they were unfamiliar, they played music that had not been widely heard in Australia up to that point. Now that Birdman are recognised as the legends they always were, it seems that every other band that was attempting to play hard punk surf rock in the 70's wants to claim the same status.
    For middle aged men now trying to convince themselves that once upon on a time they really did rock hard, the unfortunate fact is that just at there were shit hair metal bands in 1988 and shit grunge bands 1992 and shit grrrl rockers in 1996, there were some really shit punk rock bands in 1978 and The Chosen Few, based on this fine recording, were one of them,
    They will try and convince you otherwise in the liner notes - they played with The Boys Next Door and (almost!) with Birdman, and once told a groupie to "Fuck off, mole!" - but, as with all great bands, the truth is in the music.
    Utterly unexciting, lacking in any tangible charisma or attitude, built around painfully uninventive guitar riffs (one seems to be a direct rip off of "you're going home in the back of ambulance"), the only aspect of the punk tradition The Chosen Few have a good handle on is boredum. Ho-hum.

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