Johnnys Be Bad

Rip It Up, Issue 104, 1 March 1986, Page 6

Johnnys Be Bad

In a time when Australian rock could be regarded as being on nostalgia overload, Sydney'’s Johnnys have always been proud to come straight from cardboard cartoon land.

~ Recent times have seen them - stumble,as if sober, on better and _ better days. They were signed by " Mushroom Records late last year... Beano, their debut album High- ~ lights of a Dangerous Life set for - release soon, they-ate rettimingto- -~ Justover sixmronths. Thatisnotal: -logether surprising — guitarist: ‘vocalst Spencer came originlly - Puishing the “we drik, we rock, _ fefilis"of NZ pub audiences last: winter-But with the album Set'to _ bringcloser focus to bear on their... _ giventhe No Big Deal treatment by _ Spencer down the phone wire from Sydneyrecenty, @ . . Said 'we were this bunch of scally:

wags — but that sort of thing gets overblown. A lot of bands write themselves off ... musicians are like that.” 4] ‘But let’s not get carried away on the soft peddie PR. Spencer cait resist recounting a drunken jam-. withthe Violent Femmes-at one of the Femmes’ Sydney shows. While hewas up hackiig away at ‘Dance, | Motherfuckers, Dance; and Waiting fun. Poor old Lindy wasapparently abit pishedby then:and could not éven comme close to keeping time. - These outrageous rock ' rollers, “like money,’ he says: “They get a record advance and spend it on drugs;: equipment; or flying their skull-rattling hunk of throwaway fun, if not all that convincing-at. its source. This time round, the John-.. nys front up with a general release - for Injun Joe! Said piece in its curlament on a sassy kick-away chorus riff of the type favoured by the Gun Club and friends. The vocal has |

more than just a drawling glimmer of, well, Hoodoo Guruism. “Yeah, yeah, we know those guys real well,’ says Spencer. “We're from the same subutb and we've all got the same record collections.” “=Even if the:dohnnys’ early days werea fittle more simple than the Hoodoos rock-happy mishmash of they dug over a similar ‘Stylistic patch. Butas the market-wise Hoodoos knew, the obvious trap of such motivation, :is slavish. cliche =, where novelty wears thin. Lixe the beat clones that inhabit the hip.. shadey undergrowth of Melbourne™ <= Where a young band, supposed- - ly aspiring to be original, can churh out three, four, or more Beatles covers in a 45-minute set. “The thing is, you start offwith a certain vision. When that starts working you can focus on what you are doing = we are starting to develop . something thatis not like anything . we have done before” _ “The Marty Robbins and Sex Pistols thing about us —that's been . used so much. There are things about the Sex Pistols that | am against — what | like is the power.

For us, | prefer a John Fogerty/Ramones cross. We never claimed to zbenew.country and western. Were just a rock ' roll band that wears _cowhoy ‘hats so you can tell the _difference between us and the AngelsuFhereve always been bands With animage — the Beatles wore _maonkey suits, the Cramps wear _jeans, Thats where we are coming fomvisuallyy __ Thehighlights of any dangerous life go where fact and fiction get a .bit biurred, and so too for the Johnnys. Like the Hoodoos who sang ~about the death of non-existent -bass-players,. Maxwell Smart Scenarios and the rest, the Johnnys _invent, kill off and keep the personalised myths rolling in the best musaid all the songs on the album are about death — | guess it's light“hearied death. There's a couple of Gary Glitter typenumbers and one, -maybe two, love songs. Some of it little white fies that we promote.’ ~ This was written prior to album release, so the mind could only, _well, boggle on.cowboy.

Alastair Agnew