posted 10/14/2007 10:50:39 PM

Q&A with Kim Salmon

by Chad Dryden

Few musicians have been able to reinvent themselves without losing some, if not all, of their mojo. Commercial aspirations are usually to blame. Kim Salmon, conversely, took his Scientists in a far less marketable direction when they reemerged in a different city less than a year after breaking up in early 1981.

But that’s another story for another day and another reissue; here Salmon discusses the Scientists’ self-titled debut — better known as The Pink Album — which Anthology Recordings is releasing for the first time outside of Australia. Recorded while the Scientists were stationed in their hometown of Perth and released after Salmon had already jumped shipped for Sydney, The Pink Album is an amalgam of punk influences (Ramones, Clash, Buzzcocks) condensed into peppy songs about girls, TV and boredom.

Anthology Recordings: What was life like growing up in Perth? Does a song such as “Another Sunday,” The Pink Album’s ode to ennui, sum up the experience?
Kim Salmon: I don't know if it sums it up, but it does express an aspect of it — especially for Ian Sharples our bass player, who had begun to share the lyric writing with James Baker. I think by the time he'd written that he was getting rather jaded with life in an obscure Perth post-punk band.

AR: What was the music scene like in Perth when the Scientists formed?
KS: There was a punk scene in Perth in '77 with my band the Cheap Nasties and the Victims and a little later the Triffids and the Orphans. Then a lot more started up. This scene sprang up independently of Radio Birdman or the Saints and concurrently unaware of the boys next door. Perth's scene soon became very English in its ideas and sounds. I think this was due in no small part to the fact that we were in many ways closer to England than the eastern states in terms of how news traveled. We knew every detail of what Sid and Nancy were up to and were completely unaware of Deniz Tek.

AR: What were most Australians listening to then? Did punk take some time to break there?
KS: Some of us were getting it piped directly via mags like Creem, Rock Scene and NME and trying to figure it out on our own while the rest of the country seemed to be listening to the Eagles, Peter Frampton and various “Oz rock.” We had exponents of punk in most states, but we were truly a minority.

AR: What social and political influences fueled Australian punk music?
KS: I think a whole range of things fueled it depending on where the bands came from. For me in Perth, finding a unique identity was a big part of it. Perth is a lonely colonial outpost of the world. Even if not conscious of it, living in this very Anglo bubble in an environment which is not at all Anglo would have to, on some level, make a person question their identity. As misguided as it might seem to adopt something from overseas, playing punk rock back then marked you out as being different, giving you an identity that was in sharp relief with everyone around you.

AR: I hear a lot of punk influences on The Pink Album, but also some earlier rock and roll. What did you listen to growing up?
KS: I listened to a lot of different stuff of varying degrees of merit leading up to my rejection of most of it to embrace punk. When I was 14 or 15, I liked the heavy stuff like Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, also the glam stuff but more the Bowie, T-Rex end of it than the Sweet, Slade end. I liked prog, especially King Crimson. I moved on to more arty stuff like Lou Reed, Eno and Can when I was about 18. Along the way, I had also listened to a lot of blues, some jazz and even a bit of country. I thought the Beatles were boring even though everyone loved them (nothing's changed) and didn't really rate the Stones until I heard “You Can't Always Get What You Want” on the radio when I was 16. I still think it’s one of the all-time best songs written in the entire rock idiom. A lot of the ’60s influences that are very apparent with the early Scientists were absorbed by osmosis in my childhood.

AR: The Scientists’ sound underwent a metamorphosis soon after The Pink Album. What led to the breakup and subsequent switch to the denser tone characteristic of later Scientists albums?
KS: We broke up due to our town's complete and utter lack of interest or care for us. Boris Sujdovic, who was the band's original bass player, persuaded me to give up banging my head against the wall in Perth and reform over in Sydney. All along in the early lineup I had felt a little frustration at not being more dark and primal like the Stooges or the Velvet Underground. However, I embraced the writing partnership I had with James and it didn't really produce that kind of sound. I didn't think it was a bad thing that we did; in fact, I think we really had something great going on there. However, when I found myself without this partnership, I did view it as an opportunity as much as a loss. It was an opportunity to express these dark, primitive urges (laughs).

AR: Looking back, how do you feel now about the first incarnation of Scientists and The Pink Album?
KS: I'm happy to have it behind me, but I have quite a lot of fondness for the band just the same, especially for James Baker — he is an absolute legend! I also think Ian Sharples made a very valid and undervalued contribution to the band, but he is definitely glad to have left it all behind and moved on. I still play some of the songs from this period when I play solo.

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