Guy Blackman

This is an old interview with Guy. Conducted at the beginning of 1994. A lot has happened since; Guy has moved to Melbourne, brought out 5 issues of Salty and Delicious, Stated his solo zine 'Peace & Quiet,' and released the 'Too much Ash,' and 'Asparagus Milkshake' compilation tapes as well as the 'O!' tape and CD.

PIG: Tell me about your origins in music what did you first enjoy musically?
GUY: When I was young I used to think that pop music was crap, I was a classical musician and I used to play the piano. Then the light struck me and I became a huge Pink Floyd fan at the age of fourteen. I thought that Pink Floyd were the best thing in the world, so I worked my way back through all their albums until I discovered Syd Barrett, who transformed my life and I threw away all my Pink Floyd albums and became a Syd Barrett fan and started listening to strange bands that sounded like Syd Barrett. I bought the Syd Barrett tribute album which had silly bands like the Mock Turtles and the Soup Dragons, but also bands like Opel and the Television Personalities, then I started finding albums by these bands and so I became a huge Television Personalities fan, that was the next stage of my development and since then nothing much has changed.
PIG: What are your latest interests?
GUY: Um... Clay pigeon shooting, and five litre Paddle Wheel goon casks are one of my consuming passions.
PIG: What possessed you to buy blue jeans when you were young?
GUY: My mummy bought my jeans when I was young. My Mum was possessed actually, possessed by Satan.
PIG: You're in your four letter band Sulk, what is the main aim of Sulk?
GUY: Mayonnaise? It's English salad cream actually and it's spelt P.R.A.I.S.E. The main aim of Sulk is to play really daggy music that everyone laughs at. I'm going to forge my path as a creative genius and in twenty years time people will be putting out my records and saying "he used to be good."
PIG: You wish! Do you have much of a fan club?
GUY: Not any more that I've stopped doing Stereogoround (old RTR-fm show). The only reason I kept doing Steregoround was so I could influence the kids into coming to my gigs. No that's silly. Sulk is just all about combining a nineteen year old indie popper with a thirty year old complete dag and his twenty three year old sister, a beautiful woman, and making completely stupid music which touches everybody's hearts.
PIG: You also put out a zine Chapter 24, whatever happened to that?
GUY: It stopped because the gaps between the zines kept getting bigger and bigger so it kind of stretched into infinity (like Pig Meat - Ed), hypothetically there might be another Chapter 24.
PIG: What about Salty & Delicious ?
GUY: That's my new project with Mr Richard Forster from Brisbane, a lovely person who lives with me now. That's going to be a zine which will come out quarterly hopefully and it's going to be a big professionally printed, high profile zine which is going to rock the foundations of Perth music to it's very core.
PIG: Like Party Fears?
GUY: Kind of like Party Fears but not so self indulgent, No David Gerade is one of my closest personal friends.
PIG: What's going to be in your zine ?
GUY: There will be a Chris Knox interview, an interview with professor Nicholas Potter famed across the land for his weird and wonderful antics and there will be the Blue Tile Lounge interview, the O! interview, the Marty Picasso interview.
PIG: You were going to do a zine with Bernard what ever happened to that?
GUY: It was called Fridge Magnet and it was meant to be a monthly folded over piece of A3 paper and it was going to be a pin up on your fridge calender of the local gigs and events happening each month, but because Bernard's Bernard and I'm me it never came to fruition because we are both too lazy.
PIG: What's the funniest thing you have ever done with a toilet roll?
GUY: Wiped my bum. Not with the whole toilet roll, I just used bits of it one at a time, occasionally two at a time when I had a particularly thick excretion.
PIG: What do you think about the New South Wales bushfires?
GUY: I think it's the beginning of the end, I think it's Armageddon. Apparently New Zealand at the moment is underwater because of floods and the whole eastern side of Australia is burning up and is going to become nothing but a pile of scorched earth. I think that soon there is going to be a plague of locusts and a plague of small fungal entities that will take over the earth... I think it's the alcohol talking.
PIG: It's always the best way to interview people, drunk. Lets talk about Chapter music.
GUY: Chapter music is like a record label and it has had an illustrious history after the last two years, putting out tape after tape of quality music.
PIG: So that's two tapes now?
GUY: Well yes, but there'll be a third one out soon, that's the O! tape which has taken about eight months to record and it's finally going to be out in either February or March.
PIG: You like O! I assume.
GUY: I think they're one of the best bands in Perth.
PIG: Who recorded them.
GUY: Lochlan Tuppen, who works in Dada and has his own eight track recorder.
PIG: You had lovely long locks at one stage, why did you shave your head?
GUY: 'Cause it was hot and my hair was getting in the way and I had a boyfriend who had no hair on his head and he had an electric razor set, so I got him to shave my hair off.
PIG: Tell me about your sex life.
GUY: It's dull.
PIG: You haven't got a new lover?
GUY: No, just a new lust object.
PIG: Your fist?
GUY: Well you have to have a gap in between your fingers when you form it into a fist but don't actually clench it completely, 'cause when you clench it all you can do is hit yourself, and that's not all that erotic, unless you're into that.
PIG: So what do you find erotic?
GUY: Sex, but sometimes it can be a real turn off.
PIG: Are you into bondage?
GUY: I haven't had the chance but it's definitely an avenue I would like to explore in the future.
PIG: Tie someone up and do as you will.
GUY: I'd like to be tied up myself, I think that would be much more interesting.

PIC: SULK live '93 Arts House Gallery (Perth) for the opening of Caroline Hadwin's work "Psyche's Circus." L-R: Bernard Langham, Graham Hope & Guy Blackman.

PIG: What's the new O! cassette going to be like?
GUY: It's going to be about six or eight tracks and it's called Scared of scary.
PIG: You appeared in the legendary zine Harvey as Syd Barrett, how did they get you to sit there with a grumpy look on your face?
GUY: They just told me to look drugged out, and I did the best I could.
PIG: Did you get any feedback from that?
GUY: Yeah a lot of people laughed at it, admittedly I looked like a loser.
PIG: You look like a loser now though.
GUY: Yeah but I only look like a loser to a few people at a time when I'm doing this sort of thing but when I'm in a magazine I look like a loser to about three hundred people all at once.
PIG: It could be worse you could be on the cover looking like the girl from Frente in the nude. You weren't asked to do that one?
GUY: I was asked but I denied, I thought it would be sinking a bit low, but Danny Rogero has no scruples, he's just in it for the money and the fame.
PIG: There was no money involved, has he gotten any fame out of it?
GUY: Yes, fame beyond his wildest dreams.
PIG: What did you have for breakfast Guy?
GUY: Honey O's.
PIG: Did you see that report that a lot of breakfast cereals aimed at kids have tons more sugar than they claim they do?
GUY: No.
BEC: Nutra Grain has the most sugar.
PIG: Do you know about honey O's?
GUY: Honey O's are really good because you get a free bee tattoo inside each pack.
PIG: Can you show me your bee tattoo.
GUY: No because it didn't work, Gayle got it but it didn't work.
PIG: I'll have to go and see Gayle's bee tattoo, where did she put it?
GUY: On her B-side.
PIG: That's a terrible joke Guy.
GUY: Right up my alley I'm afraid.
PIG: How many years did you do Steregoround?
GUY: I did it for three and a half years, a large part of my life. Once a week for three and a half years averages out to about 300 shows (182 actually - Ed).
PIG: Did you get any weird mail?
GUY: People used to send their undies in with letters written on their underpants.
PIG: Did they have any good skid marks on them?
GUY: No, not that reading skid marks is all that great.
PIG: Do you have enough folic acid in your diet?
GUY: Is that the stuff you get from the lettuces?
PIG: Yes.
GUY: I had lettuce with my spinach souffle tonight, so I think the answer to that would have to be yes.
PIG: I read a question in a zine that asked, "have you ever had your head in a microwave?"
GUY: No.
PIG: Would you ever want to put your head in a microwave?
GUY: It depends on what sort of microwave it was.
PIG: Have you got a microwave?
GUY: Yes we do actually, it sits on top of our fridge and Gayle puts all her wooden animals on top of it and when I close the fridge door all the animals fall off the microwave because the fridge shakes.
PIG: Then you get tired of putting them up again, walk away and she comes in and complains, is that right?
GUY: Yes.
PIG: I know what it's like, I put all my wooden animals on top of my toilet and Belinda flushes it and they all fall in.
GUY: Well I think you should just deal with it Nick, find the problem at it's roots and just rip it out. There are things within this world which have to be done.
PIG: What is the most important thing in the world to you?
GUY: Um..Er..Um.. Nothing, I don't know.
PIG: Tell me about the history of Sulk.
GUY: Sulk first started out as a band with me and Damien Hutton and Gordon Cairns from Jelly Head and Garden Gnomes (Now Steve - Ed) in it. I had written one song, the first song I ever wrote was called "Maybe love will come my way today" which was a rip off of "Heavenly pop hit" by the Chills and I went to Hutt St where Damien and Gordon lived and we did this one song on a tape recorder and did eight tracks of it. Damien's girlfriend, Kylie was going on about how Damien was such a sulk, and I said that's a good name for the band Sulk. It was at that time of the four letter band name thing, it was kind of a parody of the four letter word bands, because most of them were atmospheric.
PIG: It's funny but none of the four letter bands were ever called Fuck, Shit or Dick.
GUY: None of the four letter bands are called Geronemo either.
PIG: But Geronemo hasn't got four letters in it.
GUY: Yeah maybe. Then Sulk turned into a band with me, Barbara and Stuart who used to do Steregoround and Connor Cairns (also of Steve & Stump Mittens - Ed) on base, I used to play keyboards and sing and play a little bit of guitar in the second line up of Sulk, Stuart played guitar and Jamie Hamilton who was in Wash and Benji (now in Steve) played drums for one jam, but we only had a few jams. We didn't really do anything and then there was a hiatus (which is a big word for a gap). I was doing a Sonic Youth tribute tape thing and I wanted to do a Sonic Youth song myself so I got together with Bernard Langham and we formed a band called Sulk, he played violin and I played guitar, keyboards and recorder. We recorded a version of Kissability by Sonic Youth. Vivien then joined the band then Graham Hope who's in Bob's Lovechild and used to be in the Summer Suns also joined, but he left after the second gig and so we turned into a three piece and we've been going strong ever since.
PIG: What do you plan to do?
GUY: We want to record some of my wonderful songs soon at a studio and put out a tape. We're going to have a picture of Gayle's mother on the cover of the tape because it's a great picture of her from the sixties and she looks like a sixties pop starlet.
PIG: Is she still a sixties pop starlet?
GUY: No she's a nineties divorced housewife. Gayle is actually in Sulk now, she sings and plays the melodica, which is one of those little keyboard things you blow into so she's the special forth member of Sulk now.
PIG: Going back to the Sonic Youth tribute tape, you actually met a member of Sonic Youth didn't you?
GUY: I met all the members of Sonic Youth but only one of them was friendly to me, Steve Shelley was the one that I talked to and he was really nice and he gave me a record from his record label. He was kind of like Michael.J.Fox, whereas Lee Ranaldo was like Danny Devito, Kim Gordon was just kind of polite and Thurston Moore was just cold, and a bit too tall for my liking.
PIG: And he didn't want to listen to your tape?
GUY: No he didn't have much interest in it.
PIG: Did you actually give them a copy?
GUY: No I was meant to send them some copies but I couldn't be bothered.
PIG: Get Stuffed Guy.
GUY: Suck my WAMI Nick (wishful thinking - Ed).

You can contact Guy at PO Box 4292, Melbourne University, Parkville, Vic. 3052