The Musicians

Kim Salmon - Vocals, Guitar & Zither  •   Greg Bainbridge - Drums & Percussion  •  Stu Thomas - Bass & Backing Vocals with: Robin Casinader - Violin  •  Kate Connor - Violin  •  Phaedre Press - Cello  •  Andrew Entsch - Double Bass  •  Michael Redman - Tenor Sax & Flute  •  Michael Cousins - Trombone  •  Penny Ikinger - Additional Guitars  •  Mark Halstead - Mandolin  •  Caroline Kennedy - Backing Vocals  •  Patrick Mangan - Synthesiser  •  Jim Dickinson - Hammond B3

Recording Details

Produced by Kim salmon & Jim Dickinson  •  Recorded in Kim Salmon's kitchen  •  Carlton North, Victoria Australia Aug 1996  •  Mixed by Jim Dickinson at Powerhouse Studios, Memphis Tennessee Oct 1996  •  Engineered by Kevin Houston except Track 1 by Michael Den Elzon

Release Bio

Back in the eighties, Australia was a major exporter of credible hard rock. It was to this remote continent that Seattlites - their noses out of joint from years of being passed over in the hip stakes by New York, L.A., Chicago, and just about everywhere else - looked for a sound that they could, and did, call their own. This sound is known as 'grunge'. It existed, as many things do, prior to its discovery.

'Grunge' was the descriptive noun that Kim Salmon used for the sound that his band The Scientists made way back in nineteen eighty one. All the ingredients for this sound had existed separately, but The Scientists quite clearly were the first to combine them by quite a few years. Like the inventors of the wheel and the hamburger, not to mention a good many devices credited to the likes of Thomas Edison, the real inventors have gone largely unacknowledged allowing others to prosper. The Scientists did manage to do more than give the world 'grunge'. Their twisted blend of primal blues, sonic experimentalism, and smart 'dumb rock' still echoes through such luminaries as Boss Hog and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Sadly, being years ahead of their time left The Scientists poorly adapted for what was arguably the worst decade in musical history. They perished in 1987 leaving behind a legacy of such hard to find vinyl monuments as Swampland, We Had Love, Blood Red River, The Human Jukebox, and many, many others issued and reissued to a degree more typical of your average country and western artist!

The Beasts of Bourbon are an outfit that Kim was a key member of, contributing the lion's share of songwriting and powerfully distinctive guitar work to five albums which are all considered Australian classics. This band for many personified the 'bad boy' rock myth which Kim was unable to maintain a sustained interest in beyond its mild, but eventually tiresome, diversion as a joke.

However, The Beasts' uncanny ability to irreverently attack any genre - be it C&W, R&B, Jazz, Hard Rock - and render it its own must not be overlooked. The band is as notable for its cover versions - for example, Leon Payne's Psycho, Max Roach's Driver Man, Hound Dog Taylor's Let's Get Funky, Captain Beefheart's Hard Work Drivin' Man, AC/DC's Ride On, and The Rolling Stones' Cocksucker Blues - as it is for its own anarchic but sterling efforts at musical imperialism.

This brief history of two of Australia's more notable and influential, though criminally ignored, bands merely sets the scene for another musical adventure. Kim Salmon and the Surrealists is the prime vehicle that Kim uses to travel through the sometimes dense, sometimes smooth, sometimes spacious, sometimes torrid, sometimes cool, sometimes dry, and sometimes moist musical terrain that is forever manifesting itself in his brain.

The Surrealists' journey begins in 1985 London with a bunch of deconstructions of cabaret standards interspersed with Kim's semi-atonal, polyrhythmic primal blues and rockabilly. In 1998 it is all this plus the augmentation of strings, brass and rock and roll: it funks, it pumps, it mocks, it fuses and it oozes in a big nasty conglomeration that has prompted a recent Rolling Stone magazine reviewer to declare Kim Salmon 'the high priest of rock' and Henry Rollins to declare him 'a national treasure'.

The album Ya Gotta Let Me Do My Thing is the most recent place the band has been sighted, and a quick trip to check them out will have the listener following The Surrealists' tyre tracks not too far behind.