Tex Perkins & The Cruel Sea

Tex Perkins, Toronto, July 1994

AUSTRALIA FASCINATES ME MORE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY. When the editor who assigned me travel stories asked her writers to name the places they most wanted to visit, I put Australia at the top of my list. I didn't care where I got sent, I told her: Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin, Alice Springs, Hobart, Coober Pedy - I was game for any place on the continent, huntsman spiders and all. I haven't met an Australian I haven't liked, and perhaps it's some kind of post-colonial thing, but I'm willing to risk disappointment by flying for eighteen hours to find out.

I can't say where my antipodiphilia comes from, but it might have its roots in the '80s, when I noticed that many of my favorite bands were from down under - bands like The Saints and Radio Birdman, the Birthday Party, feedtime, the Go-Betweens, the Scientists and the Beasts of Bourbon. Given the vast distances involved, Australian bands rarely made their way to Canada until they reached some level of popularity between Lubricated Goat and AC/DC, so I was excited when it was announced that Beasts lead singer Tex Perkins would be passing through town with his other band, The Cruel Sea.

The Cruel Sea, Toronto, July 1994

The Beasts were a sort of Aussie underground supergroup with a flair for singing about degenerates and heroin; The Cruel Sea, on the other hand, were swaggering master musicians as likely to record instrumentals as perform with Perkins fronting them. Just two of perhaps two dozen groups Perkins has been associated with, they do nothing to dispel my fantasy of Australia as a land of intense musical ferment on the far side of the globe.

Perkins himself is a charismatic front man, whose public image can be summed up loosely as "Nick Cave's talented and charming younger brother, the one everyone will admit they like much more if you bother asking." His recent work has included a stage show featuring his best Johnny Cash impersonation; an early entry on his discography is a single by his band Thug, featuring the exhortation to "Fuck your Dad" chanted and mumbled over abrasive industrial screeches and pulses. There is literally nothing he's done that I haven't liked.

The Cruel Sea, Toronto, July 1994

The band were playing the Horseshoe Tavern, I believe, so I showed up at soundcheck to do their portrait in the same alleyway behind the club where I'd shot Mark Eitzel and American Music Club the previous summer, and where untold numbers of bands have likely been captured on film. I was fond of diptychs and triptychs and collages at the time, so I tried to liven up the standard five abreast band photo with a bit of bisection.

The idea I'd discussed with NOW music editor Tim Perlich - also a fan of Perkins and the band - was that we'd get these shots in the can and put the band on the cover at the end of the summer, when they were scheduled to pass through town again. Which explains why I have no live shots of the show, but a whole roll of Perkins alone, shot with a telephoto by the schoolyard fence down the alley.

Tex Perkins, Toronto, July 1994

I gave Tex the full Tiger Beat treatment with these shots, all lantern jaw and smoldering glare. It would have been a great cover, but either the band never returned or the cover got nixed, because I have no record of making any prints, and the sheet of Perkins slides remained uncut and unscanned - until today.

I may be wrong, but to my knowledge neither Perkins nor the Cruel Sea have been back to Canada since then. And I still haven't been to Australia.

Guitarist and keyboardist James Cruickshank died in 2015.