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Like Everybody Else.
1st July 2004, 10.45am

God bless TISM. The other day I was at the gym listening to Great Trucking Songs of the Renaissance (picked up at Savers Sydney Road last year for three dollars), revelling in the sixteen-year-old reminiscences it inspired. Like the summer I went down the beach with two mates from high school and played them this stuff they'd heard so much about, like "Morrison Hostel", which is a huge screaming and spitting spoken word rant at Jim Morrison about how irritating and self indulgent he and his fans are (quote: "Jimbo - boy - you're a crock of shit!"). Jase and Ian liked that one, particulary the part that's a litany of people to whom Ron Hitler Barassi, the lead singer, cries out "UP YOUR ARSE!" They were also impressed by songs like "I Shit Me" and "I'm Fucked in the Head", but when it came to the rest of the album, gems like "I'm Interested in Apathy" and "If You're Creative, Get Stuffed" left them a wee bit cold. A little light went on in my head as they were saying "what is this crap?" - it was the swears that they liked. Just the swears.

The first time I saw TISM live was at Olympic Park for the 1994 Push Over, and the thing that stays with me the most was the part of the gig when Ron Hitler Barassi was screaming forth a trademark rant, this time decrying skaters as morons, and right in front of him, two skater boys, one on the other's shoulders, were punching the air and screaming incoherently in joy and elation.

If Jase and Ian had not asked me to stop the tape and put James Brown or Talking Heads back on (not that I'm complaining - both excellent choices to my mind) they might have encountered the piece that tickled my fancy so on the walk home from the gym, a little piece on what was the second album of the double vinyl Trucking Songs, but which now is simply track 24: "Ezra Pound - Axe King", a lovely exercise in toilet humour doggerel that nonetheless somehow manages to deftly encompass the human condition (repeated here in full for review purposes).

Now Ezra Pound was a fine young man
Though possibly a bit of a dandy,
But when it came to writing things down
You know, he was pretty handy.

But remember this
You pretentious shits
With all your books upon the shelf:

When he came, his dick went limp like everybody else.
Like everybody else.
Like everybody else.
Like everbody else.
Like everybody else.

Like ev-ery bo-dy e-else...

God bless TISM.

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