As I see it, Stu Harvey (the dude behind Australia’s only national punk/hc radio show SHORT FAST LOUD) has been one of the people instrumental in making punk/hc in Australia what it is today. He’s one of the few people I’ve met whose passion for punk/hc matches my own. This conversation was to appear in a zine I was doing that was shelved. Happy I can share it with you all now…

What first bought you to punk rock?

I think like a lot of people, I was a metal kid. I grew up listening to Anthrax and before that, stuff like AC/DC. What got me into punk rock was hearing bands – especially bands like Anthrax – talk about their punk rock root. They always claimed to have these ties to the New York hardcore scene. Through them, I just basically followed a thank-you list of bands. One of the first things I discovered was the first Suicidal Tendencies record. I went and bought that on cassette.

Wow a cassette!

Yeah, a cassette. I still have it till this very day. It’s worn out and you can’t hear a single thing. It sounds like it’s been on the dashboard of a car for the last fifteen years. It just blew my mind hearing that record. Just going ‘Wow this is amazing! This is what I’ve looked for in a band’. And from then I just did it the way it was done before you had the internet – you’d buy a record, you’d look at the thanks list and you’d go ‘I don’t know what that band sounds like so I’ll track down some of their stuff’.

I still do that.

Yeah, I still do it too. That’s the way it should be done. The internet is a wonderful thing it’s the best thing to ever happen to punk and hardcore but at the same time, it’s also the worst thing to happen to punk and hardcore. You use what resources are available to you. That’s pretty much the way I started.

What bands are you digging at the moment?I know it must change everyday. I know it does for me.

It does change every day. I go through phases. At the moment, for the last week, I reckon I’ve only listened to two records that have come out in the last fifteen years. The last week I’ve listened to everything like up to 1989. I’ve been going through an old school phase. Over Christmas I went and cleaned out my cd and record collection because I have so much stuff I just don’t ever listen to.

So you did some weeding, huh?

Yeah I did a bit of weeding. You always come across all these gems you forgot you had. Lately I’ve been listening to stuff like old Bad Brains and Dischord bands. Just going back and enjoying that stuff. At the same time I’ve been listening to new stuff I get from the show each week.

So where abouts did you hock those cd’s you weeded out?

[laughs] I haven’t hocked any of them yet. I’m up to ‘O’ in my cd collection at the moment. There’s four hundred cd’s sitting there and I don’t know what to do with them because I don’t want to hock them. A friend of mine that does the Mondo Bizarro show that I used to do in Melbourne he’s planning to come around and raid most of those. He’ll get first dibs on on them and then we’ll work it out from there.

So how many cd’s do you think you have?

I don’t know? And I don’t want to count. I counted them up a few years ago for insurance and it was about 3,000. That was a couple of years ago before I started at Triple J.

Do you collect vinyl as well?

I do but I’m stopping. I’ve made a conscious effort to stop that. I’m just going to try and weed out the things I don’t want and start transferring everything to digital files so I don’t have to store so much. You get to a point where it just takes up so much space. Transferring the files to digital I can play them a lot easier on the show too. One thing I want to do this year is play a lot more older stuff to try and educate people. I think a lot of kids getting into the music now don’t really learn the roots of it anymore. You go two or three steps back to a band like, Black Flag and you don’t realise the influence they’ve had on the bands that are around today. Kids pick up a cd like, from the band Paint It Black and go ‘these guys are amazing!’ They don’t go back a couple of steps. Even a band like Kid Dynamite. I get kids emailing me all the time saying ‘why don’t you play some more old school stuff? Why don’t you play some old AFI?’ I’m like ‘I’ll play AFI for you but why don’t you go back and look at this or look at that? You like AFI, go pick up a Misfits record’ That’s one of my personal aims this year to try a introduce a bit more of that stuff to the program.

How did you get into radio?

I got into radio when I was about sixteen and going through this phase discovering all these bands. Where I lived in Melbourne there was this great community radio station. Monday or Tuesday nights they had the hardcore show. These two guys did the show – they were stoners – it was just hilarious. They’d get on there and play stuff – they introduced me to Gang Green and Dag Nasty – they’d get on there and play this music and have a ball. Sometimes they’d play a whole side of a record. They’d play like the whole Bad Religion, Suffer when it came out. I thought it was so amazing, soaking in all this new music. I still have tapes of that show at home. Anyway, they ended up getting kicked off, as what happens when you’re a stoner at community radio stations. Then I saw an ad in the local paper that they were looking for radio announcers for this local station. So me and Nick my best friend, we went and said ‘oh let’s give it a go’ and we went in and started Mondo Bizarro. That was back in 1992. It was like, ‘no one else is doing it so we’ll do it’. Radio has never been a goal of mine. I approach radio like a fanzine. I’m just a fan of the music. I’m not an expert.

I think that happens a lot with people like you and me. You just fall in to it because you just have so much love for the music.

That’s it! I don’t want to be the messiah like I’m the expert on everything. I just want to share the music I love.

I hear you. It’s not like a career choice.

It’s just something I do because I have the time to do it and, no on else is doing it. It’s the same reason why I approached Triple J.

How did you convince them to do a punk rock show?

It took a lot of convincing. To me it’s always seems bizarre that a national youth station didn’t represent punk and hardcore which, is such an incredibly popular genre for the youth. It just didn’t make sense to me. I found out how to get in contact with them and I sent letters and emails to people who I thought were in charge going ‘Hey how you going? I think you should have a punk show and here’s why’. Then I’d write a 600-700 word essay explaining why? In the end after a while, I finally knocked on the right door of this guy named Rob Scott. He said ‘We don’t have room for a punk show at the moment but…’ – I’d also sent him demo tapes of Mondo Bizarro – ‘…do you want to come in and do some midnight till dawn shifts?’ That’s like 1am to 6am. My whole thinking behind doing that, going in there and playing music I despise like things like, The Jon Butler Trio at 4am in the morning was basically so I could get on the inside and from there I could go ‘You need a punk show. You need a punk show. You need a punk show. You need a punk show!’ So that’s what it was. I wore them down eventually. A slot came up and I was just there in their ears going ‘You need a punk show!’ So they gave it a shot and within two weeks they were blown away by the response. I think people were really glad that I wasn’t just doing a show with the latest Fat Wreck titles or Blink 182 and Good Charlotte. It was a genuine show. I try to cover as many sub-genres as humanly possible.

I’ve heard a lot of positive comments about the variety of the show.

It’s always been an aim. I think it is such an honour to be able to present this show.

It’s awesome how you have so much Australian content on the show too.

That has ALWAYS been the aim. Last year we averaged 40% Australian which, I’m rapped to be able to get that much stuff in there. It doesn’t have to be a big Australian band – it’s not always the I Killed The Prom Queen’s. I like to try and play as many small bands as I can. Even if it’s just their demo. I think recording quality is important but I think people can see through that and they know a good song when they hear it. I’d like to think that someone listening to the show can discover something as I’m discovering it and that everyone else in the country can discover it and we can all discover it together and we can support these young bands. That we can help them work their way up. Australian music is amazing at the moment.

Would you say the climate in Australia is really healthy for punk at the moment?

I think so. Like anything it has it’s ebbs and flows.

Where do you personally see it headed?

I can see more and more people are starting to move away from the metal-core stuff that has been really popular over the last 12-18 months. It depends how you feel about that? I think it’s a good thing. Personally, this is my own opinion, I like the more straight up hardcore stuff as opposed to the metal-core stuff.

Me too!

I like it but, I spend so much time sitting around going ‘Is this hardcore? Or is this metal?’ The metal show is on the night before Short Fast Loud and sometimes the line is very blurred with what’s metal and what’s hardcore? And I don’t like to make that judgment. Getting back to what you were saying I think more traditional hardcore, like Last Nerve and even the more melodic hardcore is starting to come through. There’s all kinds of exciting stuff happening. There’s some good ska starting to pop up again. Maybe the ska revival is coming back.

Do you think Aussie punk is different to that of other places in the world?

It can be. It depends. There’s definitely a lot of bands in Australia that take their cues from the US and there’s definitely a lot of bands that take their cues from the UK. I definitely think we have our own flavour.

Are there any Australian bands in particular that you don’t think get as much recognition that they deserve?

The Nation Blue.

They’re amazing!

I think they’re an incredible band and people seem to be fans of the band but I think they don’t get the respect. I think it’s because they’re not playing easy music. It’s not easy to get your head around it. They don’t fit into a pigeon hole and that’s the best thing about them and it’s probably the worst thing about them. They’re challenging, they’re trying different things and going out on a limb. I think people are slowly coming around.

You’ve interviewed a who’s who of punk rock over the years, what’s been some of your favourite interviews?

Ian Mackaye is my favourite person to interview ever! I think he’s just so interesting. Ive never really had people I idolise but he’s someone I really look up to. He’s ethics, the way he’s conducted himself over the years, just steadfast d.i.y ethics are just amazing. He’s such a grounded person. He knows what he wants to do and he does it his own way – he’s always done it that way. He’s just a really genuine person. He doesn’t need to spend time doing interviews with people like me, but he does. He’s out there and always has time to have a talk. You drop him an email and he’s always going to reply back to you by the next day and tell you what’s going on. I don’t know how many times I’ve emailed him about Fugazi! He’s just a lovely person. Mike Muir is another one. He’s just a lovely genuine man. He’s whole stage persona is such a menacing character stomping up and down the stage but when you speak to him, he’s just so lovely and genuine and very appreciative at the fact that I have taken the time to speak to him. You’re kind of going ‘Really? I should be thanking you!’ I can’t think of any one I’ve interviewed that hasn’t been good.

That was my next question!

What about you, could you think of anyone you didn’t like that you’ve interviewed? Sorry, I don’t want to spin this around and make it a Bianca interview! [laughs]

Wally from The Meanies.

Really?

Yeah, when I first started doing interviews. I think I asked him the wrong question though maybe? It was when I was around 16-17. The Meanies had broken up and I was upset because I loved them so much and Wally had just formed Even and I asked him why he’d broken up The Meanies to form Even? I didn’t even mean it in the way it must have came across to him!

He was probably sensitive on the issue. I remember I interviewed Unsane once. They were such an incredible band from New York. I didn’t know much about them, I got the cd a week before hand and was blown away by it. This was pre-internet and all that stuff so you couldn’t just Google them and find out all their details and sound like an expert five minutes later. I remember doing this interview really early on in the Mondo Bizarro days and he just gave me these ‘yes’ ‘no’ answers. The singer was an incredibly intimidating man. Because of the ‘yes’ ‘no’ answers one minute into the interview I was done. My questions were over. I was like ‘Alright then, let’s go to a song’. I sat there while we were on the phone and I played the song going ‘What am I going to ask this guy?’ That’s probably the only interview that comes to mind as being a complete failure.

My most challenging interview was Dr. Know from Bad Brains.

Why?

Because he did the interview but didn’t do the interview. He was like ‘I’m not going to do this interview’ but he did it. He came across as being a little abrupt and rude, he called me ‘babydoll’ and he was like ‘you’re not listening’. And I was like ‘yes I am’ I was trying really hard to get what he was saying. I was upset after the interview but listening back it turned out great in the end. Also, someone from a band I totally love, I’m talking in my top ten even, asked me to pay them for an interview! It was one of the interviews for my book… I paid! I think Duane Peters & Corey Parks are the nicest people to talk to. A lot of people would probably be surprised to hear that but they are. I also interviewed Blag from the Dwarves yesterday…

Lovely man!

He really is! He is super nice. He has his quirks but, he’s really smart. If there was someone you could interview that you haven’t had the chance to yet, who would it be?

I’m in the process of setting up an interview with Jello Biafra. Jello and Ben Weasel. I’m working on both of those interviews at the moment. Ben is someone who when I was 17-18 I used to read his columns in Maximum Rock N Roll religiously. He’s such an opinionated person and I can’t wait to speak to the man and see what he thinks of the state of punk and hardcore at the moment. He’s someone I’ve wanted to speak to for a long time because I’m a huge Screeching Weasel fan. Boogadaboogada is probably one of my favourite records ever! Also, Jello is just such a huge figure – larger than life. He’s probably one of the last of that US crew of punks that I haven’t spoken too.

Ben was amazing when I talked to him. I found him to be very intelligent and very, I guess you could say, charismatic. He had so much to say. What’s it like being interviewed instead of being the interviewer?

It is bizarre. It is quite strange and very off putting. I don’t really see the point in interviewing me to be honest? I see myself as a fan. I don’t see myself as someone that’s very interesting.

I feel the same when I get interviewed. It is so weird! It’s like ‘ahhhhh…. why me?’ Do you ever miss doing Mondo Bizarro?

Absolutely! I went back and did a show three months ago and it was th best. It’s so loose. What we do on that show has a real clubhouse feel. It was always a few friends sitting around talking shit, that’s what it still feels like – there just happens to be microphones there. It’s really relaxed. With Triple J I feel a lot more pressure because it’s a much larger audience. We only get two hours a week and it’s so precious. I just have to use that time as effectively as possible to share all this music which I think is amazing. Just to shut up stop talking and play the song.

Last question, what’s the most memorable Australian band you’ve interviewed?

Mindsnare. It was the last Mondo Bizarro show I did. Myself and Adrian who I used to do the show with were both leaving the show at the same time so we had Mindsnare on because they’re pretty much a band we’ve all grown up around. The show was just hilarious. There were just eight guys in the studio talking shit. It was very funny. I wish I had a tape of that one. It was so fun and we had a good time. That’s what it’s all about, having fun. If I wasn’t having fun I wouldn’t do it.

To check out Short Fast Loud: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/shortfastloud/