This is serious: TISM reforms for Good Things festival, after 18 years away from the stage
Probably the strangest Australian band to ever achieve a modicum of popularity, the mask-wearing alternative act TISM had not been sighted in 19 years – until this month.
Probably the strangest Australian band to ever achieve a modicum of popularity, the mask-wearing alternative act TISM had not been sighted in 19 years – until this month.
On a recent Saturday night at the Croxton Bandroom in their home town of Melbourne, TISM – an acronym for This Is Serious Mum – donned matching black attire and balaclavas to play a secret show to a hundreds-strong crowd of hardcore fans.
Deeply irreverent in all respects, their six albums skirted rock, pop and dance arrangements, all written with a strident desire to take the mickey out of everything, especially themselves: the final song on their final album, released in 2004, was titled TISM Are Shit.
The ARIA Award-winning and anonymity-prizing group formed 40 years ago, and gave its first concert at the end of 1983. “The gig was an artistic and commercial failure,” notes the band’s official history. “Flushed with their achievement, TISM duly split up.”
Every concert henceforth was billed as a reunion show, as the band resumed in 1985 and continued to “offend and appal their first few audiences in short 30-minute bursts”.
What took place at the Croxton this month was yet another reunion, then – although this one functioned as a debut warm-up gig ahead of a surprise booking at Good Things, a major metal and punk-centric festival in Melbourne on December 2, followed by Sydney (December 3) and Brisbane (December 4).
TISM are the top-billed Australian act, and will perform alongside British rockers Bring Me the Horizon, US alternative metal act Deftones and Californian punks NOFX.
TISM gained a cult following by giving unusual, attention-grabbing appearances at major music festivals including Homebake and the Big Day Out, where in 1996 the members performed while wearing giant red, helium-filled headdresses. What they’ll bring to Good Things this week is anyone’s guess.
In a largely defamatory and unpublishable joint interview with The Australian, founding co-vocalists Ron Hitler-Barassi and Humphrey B. Flaubert revealed little about their plans. Instead, the pair steered the interview to subjects including dental hygiene, their demands for large amounts of mashed pumpkin to be stocked on the band’s backstage rider, and their insistence that several high-profile News Corp employees would join the band on stage as additional percussion players.
Hitler-Barassi and Flaubert also claimed that American trumpeter Herb Alpert had died after an incident involving a cheese grater and a sensitive part of his anatomy. This is incorrect; Alpert is alive, aged 87.
TISM lore is a singular web of satirical intrigue and self-defeat. Their debut single was released as a seven-inch record inside a 12-inch record cover, with all sides of the cardboard glued together.
Their third album, titled Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, contained their biggest hits in Greg! The Stop Sign!! and (He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River.
When the album was named best independent release at the 1995 ARIA Awards, the group enlisted legendary SBS football broadcaster Les Murray to accept the trophy.
Speaking in Hungarian, Murray said from the stage: “When the revolution comes, the music industry will be the first to go.”