TISM on Being Bad at Breaking Up, Dadaism, and ‘Death to Art’
Image: Photo: tism.tism.tism / Instagram
Death to Art is TISM’s seventh album, and not a bad legacy for a band that has been around since 1982 but renown for breaking up after each performance.
TISM (This Is Serious Mum) are known for wearing disguises on stage, usually balaclavas, coupled with their dark humour exemplified in songs such as ‘He Will Never Be An Ol’ Man River’, ‘Greg! The Stop Sign’ and ‘Kill Yourself Now and Avoid the Rush’, all now relegated to enthusiastic sing-alongs from the audience.
Past members include Tokin’ Blackman, Leak Van Vialen, Jock Cheese with foundation members Humphrey B Flaubert and Ron Hitler-Barassi overseeing the regular renewal of the band.
Calls for the band to reform gathered momentum in 2015, when after a failed attempt to enter the Eurovision Song Contest.
They were a more popular choice than Kylie, gathering over 14,000 signatures on a petition.
Eventually the band released new material in 2020 and in 2022, they would be a headline act for the Good Things festival.
Finally, after many attempts to break their anonymity, City Hub found a legitimate publicist, of sorts, who offered to set up a three-way phone conversation, on the proviso that we promote the new album.
“It’s Le Ron and Le Humphrey,” Ron Hitler-Barassi, vocalist said, adding a reference to band-mate, vocalist/drummer Humphrey B Flaubert,
TISM, infamous for breaking up, reforming once again
When asked why they were reforming for a series of national headliners when they are more known for breaking up, Le Ron immediately becomes indignant.
“Give is some respect, you sound like you are in the Republican Party,” Le Ron said.
“The only thing that has happened is that we broke up one in 1983 after a gig, and since then every single gig has been a reunion.
“We try to break up and we are just not very good at it,” Le Humphrey added.
Artificial intelligence and being Proustian boys (not Proud Boys)
Moving into safer ground I question if their stage persona is a forerunner of the American Proud Boy movement, who, among other civil disruption to American society, lead the storming of the Capitol Building in 2021.
“We are more for the Proust Boys than the Proud Boys,” Le Ron said.
“You sound lame, you are artificial intelligence, but sadly enough there is not enough artificial artifice, and that is what we are about.”
“I’ve found a way to block artificial intelligence, which is creeping up on all of us and is going to kill us, like the TISM fans abut to kill the members of TISM,” Le Humphrey said.
Both TISM members point to a recent example where they asked Google Translate to translate the first paragraph of their 1990 album cover for Hot Dogma, which is written in Chinese.
Google translate came up with “It’s Strange. It’s Unique, It’s Soup”.
“Now, I think I think the way to beat artificial intelligence is if we could write in Chinese, then I think humanity has a chance,” Le Humphrey said.
“That is where TISM comes in, but we are a bunch of Proustian Boys stuck in the past,” Le Ron said.
Le Ron then jumped to the subject of the recent failure of Sydney shock-jock outfit Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O to conquer Melbourne sound waves.
“I find that they are like (Samuel) Beckett’s Lost Clowns (Text for Nothing) and that the universe cares not for them.
“There’s a relentless melancholy about Le Kyle and La Jackie, like in “we can’t go on’,” Le Ron said.
Death to Art: Is TISM Australia’s first and last Dada band?
After what seemed like an eternity of such deep philosophical musings I ponder the question most promise in my mind over the past few seconds, before I get down to asking about Death To Art.
My question, which I think will elevate me in the minds of TISM, is “Are you a Dada band?”
Dadaism being an anti-establishment art movement against logic, reason, war, and capitalism that come to prominence during the Great War.
“We would describe ourselves as Australia’s first and last Dada band, and why wouldn’t we,”Le Ron said.
Le Humphrey immediately quipped “ Second and seventh would be more accurate.”
With that the phone connection was lost.
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‘Death to Art’ from TISM is out now.
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