Fuckshitupism deluxe.
RUPTURE MEET THE SCROUNGERS- Split 7″EP (Yeah Mate Records, Australia, 1992)
Today, on my way home, I thought to myself: “You ought to post a decent Punk record today, you just have to do it!” When I was home, I stood in front of my records, torturing myself. “Punk, c’mon, you have some Punk records, I can’t be that hard!” I ended up playing DK’s “Give me Convenience of give me Death” album. “Great album, the DK’s are one of these bands that will always sound better than you thought they would, after the zillions of hours you’ve spent with playing their catalogue back and forth.” Yeah, clever, still – no Punk record in sight to post. So I started to randomly flip thru the 7″ boxes (“too tired for a full album rip”). Punk, you know. The rich kid’s alternative to Heavy Metal. Music for the socially aware and junkies likewise. Junkies? I went to my books, grabbed some Burroughs books, hoping for inspiration. Nothing. Turned on the telly, tried to watch an episode of “Two and a half Men”. How awful. Don’t ask me why, but in the end, I stood there, with the RUPTURE / SCROUNGERS split 7″ in my hands and here it is. RUPTURE tear it up as always. Fantastic it was to see this band deconstructing itself. THE SCROUNGERS – fuck, I wish there was more music like this. Don’t know anything about this band, except for it was a one man thing (right?).
Although from the 90s, music’s most horrible decade so far, this one just suits me perfectly, so here you go, getting the same vibe hopefully. Surf with me, Baby. Play, hate, destroy. Whatever.
Rupture
Your Hand is on your Rod.mp3
It’s not my Fault I was born.mp3
Does the Soul to the one armed Man flow within?.mp3
Reality of Shit.mp3
Oh Taboo Tug Trauma.mp3
The Scroungers
Prison Clampdown.mp3
Domestic Uprising.mp3
F. wrote:
nina will love you for this.
[Reply]
Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
fred wrote:
scroungers was a one man thing from victoria (jason or something was the guy’s name). great shit you’re sharing! this blog keeps amazing me. so diverse!!
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Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
Peter - KBD Records wrote:
Does the soul… is really good and makes me wanna dance. The rest of the Rupture tracks makes me wanna dance to actually. Ok, got to listen to some Rick Kids now.
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Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 3:10 pm | Permalink
Yobu wrote:
The Scroungers really kill, man! Can’t believe this was done in the 90s. Guitarwise they sound like some early Misfits.
And by the way, thanks for your Blog! Always a guarantee for some interesting music you haven’t heard a thousand times.
[Reply]
Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 4:09 pm | Permalink
gamma693 wrote:
Scroungers was a one man project from a guy named Macka, not Jason. He recorded a bunch of stuff under that name and distributed them all through his “Trevor the Fish” catalog. Nothing he did was available for sale through him. He only did trades, and only for things that you had created. If you weren’t in a band and didn’t have music to trade you could draw a picture or write a story, etc and he would accept that.
I first heard Scroungers on this split 7″ with RUPTURE. I have always been a rabid Rupture fan, but when I heard the Scrs side I was blown away. I quickly wrote him a letter to see what else he had available and was suprized to get a quick response. I assumed because of his pairing with Rupture he wouldn’t write back based on the 4-5 unanswered letters I sent to Gus Chamber. Macka and I wrote eachother several times over the years and I even had the chance to meet him when I went to Melbourne in 2001.
After a lot of talking I convinced Macka to let me press his second cassette “Jeff Kennett Fuck’s Sheep” on to vinyl. I released it later that year as “Weak as Piss” through my label Mortville Records. Aside from the split with Rupture, I think this was the only Scroungers vinyl released. I misjudged the amount of copies I should have pressed and did 1000 of them thinking I could sell them all. Macka only wanted 5 copies for himself. I sent him 50, though I planned on sending him 200. I still have 100′s of these things here at my house.
Macka is hugely into home recording and even did a zine called “The Taped-Crusaders” where he only interviewed artists/bands that recorded their own music.
I haven’t mailed Macka in a while now because I don’t feel I have anything interesting to say anymore and I didn’t want to be a pest. I think he still distributes all of his old recordings, so if anyone is interested, I can try to dig up his contact info.
[Reply]
Posted on 25-Feb-08 at 8:18 pm | Permalink
Sean Hogan wrote:
Jesus Christ this is as left-fieled as I ever thought you’d post here Erich.
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Posted on 26-Feb-08 at 2:40 am | Permalink
stinky82 wrote:
gamma693:
hmm, your story with Gus is interesting. My friend interviewed him shortly before his death and we got answers really quickly, even we are from east europe
But you know, 100 people = 100 manners.
If I remember properly, Macka´s statement written inside that EP´s cover is “Scroungers´ stuff is no longer available, so don´t make an effort to contact me” like. Nice to hear, he´s back!!!
I´ve read interview with you in K.A.Z. fanzine (from Slovakia) years ago and I like RUPTURE´s soap farm EP a lot
[Reply]
Posted on 26-Feb-08 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
gamma693 wrote:
stinky82
When I tried to write Gus, it was back in 1996-97. Maybe he was in a different frame of mind then? Who knows? Too late to care now. I befriended another member of the band instead which led to several Rupture related releases on Mortville.
This period of Rupture stuff (this split 7″ with Scroungers, the split with Slavestate, etc) is my favorite. It’s their fastest stuff and the crappy sound of the recording makes it seem like they tossed all of those songs off in a single afternoon. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but I like to think this shit was effortless for them and playing it was as natural as breathing.
I had forgotten about Macka’s “don´t make an effort to contact me” statement inside of that 7″. I know that he is currently recording stuff, and has been since that 7″s release. He was doing a noise project called N:FIOS for a while, but just this week he told me he’s recording punk stuff again. I can’t imagine he’s doing music with the intent of it going unheard, but that’s possible. Maybe he just doens’t want to be bothered about Scroungers stuff today?
[Reply]
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 6:11 am | Permalink
Zach wrote:
Macka burnt me two CDs full of unreleased Scroungers stuff a few years ago. Some guy I made copies for ripped it to mp3s and it’s floating around Soulseek if anyone is interested. People should also get the CDR that Andy released!
[Reply]
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
Fernando wrote:
So, punk is erich kids’ answer to HM? haha. Similar to what you mentioned about die schöne Schweiz, in the early 80’s in Spain there was a wide, huge response to HM from working class kids while punk was still so minoritary (till 85-86 when the bloody RRV happened, but that’s another story) and you had 10 metal freaks for each punker to say the least. But a peculiar phenomena in Spanish HM was the strong politization from some of the main bands like, say, Barón Rojo, whose 2nd LP “Volumen brutal” (ca 4/82) is full of social comments; while at the same time there were very few punk bands with a political angle (PVP’s LP, Ultimo Resorte’s EP, can’t think of more now) as opposed to the UK82 chaos attitude. I wonder if you foreign people ever heard of old spanish HM, said Barón Rojo LP (they even did an English version, but better stick to the original) is a Meisterwerk if you ask me, except some prog-rock bits (& the rest of their records are almost entirely forgettable), btw it includes a tribute song for Bon Scott and other eminent dead rockers (the fuggers forgot Sid, Malcolm Owen and Ian Curtis anyway, haha); there was also other great stuff like Obús 45 “Dinero, dinero” or Rigor Mortis’ 45 “Vete al infierno” (82 both) which lyrically-wise are a laugh.
[Reply]
Posted on 28-Feb-08 at 9:43 am | Permalink
Admin wrote:
Yeah, Fernando – I love(d) Baron Rojo! “Flowers of evil” (the english version) was such a hit. Saw the band live in Belgium in 1984! I don’t have any BR albums anymore though. I somehow must have gotten rid of them along the way.
Another social phenomenon was that Punk was happening in the cities mainly, while Metal had a stronger base in the rural parts of the country, btw. Not really surprising, though.
These days, I hardly listen to anything besides Metal, haha. Metal makes me happy, HC makes me angry.
[Reply]
Posted on 28-Feb-08 at 10:05 am | Permalink
Perro wrote:
Thanx a lot for this post Erich, your blog is the best one! I was waiting some stupid comments by the legions of pc assholes who hate Rupture, but luckily it seems they disappeared…cool also the Scroungers tunes, way better than the full ep on mortville (with all the respect for the great work gamma693 did).
Anyhow, I’d like to get more Rupture stuff, expecially the split with Dropdead and the Corrupture 10″!!
cheers!
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Posted on 29-Feb-08 at 5:24 am | Permalink
roman wrote:
many thanks man! i only know rupture tx from the “brutal bandlands” cd. those are remastered versions if memory serves, so i´m curious how will the originals sound… anyway, first 23 songs from that cd are the best stuff they ever recorded (along with “righteousfuck” 7″, and “lust and hate” cd). sounds great – fresh, with plenty of fuck you attitude, and as gamma 693 wrote – it has totally natural feeling… pure fun! never heard any scroungers stuff besides 7″ on mortville, which is fucking great (well, except the 1st track), and yeah – there was some kind of statement saying “i don´t want someone going through his puberty with a stupid haircut bothering me about scroungers stuff” or something like that. by the way – the interview stinky82 mentioned above was made a couple of weeks after gus died, and it was zombo who was interviewed. it was never released though.
ps: gamma 693, is there any chance you got a spare copy of gus chamber and the rape apes cd?
[Reply]
Posted on 01-Mar-08 at 10:35 am | Permalink
gamma693 wrote:
roman, I’ve got about 200 of them sitting here. Contact me through the email on my website.
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Posted on 02-Mar-08 at 7:19 am | Permalink
Cowboy Builder wrote:
This was a killer split. I lived in Perth during this period and used to play in bands and do gigs with Rupture. I met Macca in Melbourne in the early/ mid 90′s. He is a good fella and even though I came from a completely different background, i.e. surfer who had a job, but sang in noise core bands, got on well. you gotta appreciate the dedication it takes to run a one man gig and dedicate his life to it and the shit he sings about… Thanks for posting this it brings back some good memories as I live in the South Pacific and all my vinyl is in Perth.
[Reply]
Posted on 24-Jul-08 at 5:37 am | Permalink
Clinton wrote:
Macka still records mostly noise/drone music under the title of Screwtape. I’m hoping to do a best-of mp3 release of Scroungers sometime. If anyone wants Macka’s email, contact me through Shame File Music – http://ShameFileMusic.com
[Reply]
Posted on 13-Nov-08 at 7:52 pm | Permalink