Bunt

In the last dark years of the 20th century, the war with the machines was almost lost. As they spread like a cancer through Australias suburbs, one pub after another succumbed, and the fat years of live music became nothing more than a memory.

Across inner Sydney a tribe known as the Musos were displaced, as their environment fell to the bulldozer blade and their livelihoods were destroyed. One by one they were evicted from the squats and forced into the streets. They hunched their shoulders against the cold and wandered the soulless metropolis, bereft of hope. Some found real jobs, and some went over to the dark side where they were reduced to parodies of their former selves, forced to slave as session musos, for the entertainment of the lame.

Others fled to the southern settlement of New Athens, in those days known as Melbourne. Squads of Harley riding yuppies gutted their villages and sold their women into slavery. (No, Son, thats not the same as bondage.) Some musos fled into exile permanently, risking all on a long crossing in anything that would float. Many never made it.

The last remnants of a tribe called the Puntas also fled the barren wastelands, or huddled in safe-houses with the blinds drawn, while the death squads patrolled the streets outside. They hoarded large black plastic discs which they sometimes played on carefully concealed devices called recawpliers , and spoke in hushed tones of a dream-time referred to simply as theeaydees.

Into this grim landscape came four riders dressed in black. Their weapons slung over their shoulders, they rode from pub to pub, always one step ahead of the authorities. On the wanted posters which went up on the telegraph poles these strange warriors were known by just one word: BUNT

Wherever they plugged in, small groups of desperadoes and guerillas would gather to hear the word, before blending seamlessly back into the urban jungle.

The groups spiritual leader and axeman of the apocalypse was Ryu Seita, a Zen warrior from the east. He met Jon in a musician safehouse in Surry Hills, and they began plotting their revolution, Jon providing the manifesto which would give Ryus crazed axe-work a sense of purpose.

Lyndon was next to join the small fighting group, fleeing an oppressive regime in a land far to the west with nothing more than a pair of shorts and the sticks characteristic of his tribe. He was an initiated man of the Drummahs, a group which have long been hangers-on around the muso campfires. He was a natural choice as Sergeant at arms: wise and cool-headed, but not afraid of a fight. The fourth original member lost his faith in the revolution and was never spoken of again. Only his photography remains. He was replaced by another warrior in the group, The Fernz.

The rumbling bottom end of Fernzs weapon is the four-stringed force, that gives BUNT the seething sustained aggro required by any revolutionary group, while at the top of the spectrum is the scream of Ryus black Charvel Surfcaster, run through an array of pedals and buttons banned under the Geneva convention. Timing, things that go bump in the night, and general percussion are Lyndons domain, a Rock-Yoda on his throne, from where he scans the room for potential trouble.

Jedi Master indeed. Deep in the mountains at a wayside hotel, one mutant challenged the band in a fruit-pelting ritual, but vaporised into the hillbilly-shadows when Lyndon uttered the sacred incantation: You, me, carpark, now! The threat of violence is not Lyndons area of expertise alone. Another serial mutant who plagued sporting events, ripping down goal nets and doing other nutso things, climbed on stage during a BUNT set at the Taxi Club, and received one of Ryus trademark flying kicks. He briefly became a spiritual devotee of the band, adopting the lotus position and chanting nonsense in front of the stage. He too has vaporised.

BUNT gigs were always an excursion into uncharted territory . At Les Girls a very nice stripper assisted the band by tying back the stage curtain with her garter belt. One pub was closed down mid-gig. The band blew up the PA at The Bat and Ball Hotel, and played more than half a gig at the pub formerly known as the Sando without power, because Ryu couldnt even tune his guitar without blowing up the pussy decibel meter. Always one to push the envelope with his axe, he went so far as to use a Hills hoist clothesline as a guitar slide at a beach-side house-party.

Jon who rather dubiously claims to have spent seven years in a Shao Lin monastery learning the art of kicking wankers in the ass fell off the stage at Manly Fishos, gashed his leg open, was bandaged by an army medic who happened to be moonlighting as a sound man, finished the gig and then went to Manly hospital to suck a nitrous oxide cannister dry. Oh yeah, and get seven stitches.

Jon spent his early teens as a role-playing computer geek. After a Dungeons and Dragons society meeting was temporarily suspended to spy on the neighbours seventeen year old daughter dancing to Iggy and the Stooges Wanna be your dog, his life took on a new direction. He never went back to the 19 sided dice, and his monastic dwarf still languishes with a Class 1B magic licence and a cloak of semi-invisibilty.

Fernz is the man with no past. He fell off a wall, broke the fall with his scone, and narrowly missed out on meeting Elvis. Months later as he crept out of his coma, he heard the night nurse blasting Angry Samoans Get Off the Air through the ward. All memories of his early life were wiped, and planted in their place was an uncanny aptitude for bass guitar. The world is richer for his near-death experience. He did time with Sydney bands like Teenage Hookers For Christ, Nude Sunday and R.U.S.T., but his most important work has been with BUNT.

He and his weapon have, in recent years, become inseparable. The bands gear was stolen from a studio in Surry Hills, but driving home from a jam Ryu spotted the bass in a shop window. It was duly liberated and Fernz was happily reunited. He hasnt un-strapped it since. It makes showering awkward, but then that hasnt bothered him too much. He was always the band member with the most punk-rock cred.

And so they wander through the land, preaching the BUNT manifesto to their disciples and sharing their own interpretations of the gospel according to Jonathan Richman, Box of Fish and Angry Samoans. These partisans of distortion will continue to defy definition, eluding the authorities, popping up when least expected, for long enough to play two or three sets for their ever growing army. So, compadre, will you join the BUNT resistance and help us take the fight to the machines?