There’s that dreaded G word! Doug Galbraith’s penned biography of Kim Salmon entitled ‘Nine Parts Water One Part Sand. Kim Salmon And The Formula For Grunge’ has the word in its title! The subject needs to be dealt with. Yes its true that other Aussie bands such as King Snake Roost and Feedtime’s music may have made it over to Seattle… and Kurt Cobain may have worn a Lime Spiders T-shirt somewhere…. but while others try to claim the word, Kim Salmon has tried forever and unsuccessfully to shake it. The word has haunted Kim since the Scientists and no amount of ghostbusting has been able to extinguish it. “So what can you do?” he thinks. “Might as well own it. It’ll annoy people whatever .” Dealt with!
Although they have been relatively quiet in recent years the most travelled of Kim Salmon’s combo’s would have to be The Surrealists. They have toured all over Europe, Australia and USA extensively many times. They will come out of their hiatus to appear at the launch of the Doug Galbraith penned biography of Kim Salmon entitled ‘Nine Parts Water One Part Sand. Kim Salmon And The Formula For Grunge’. This Launch is at Memo Music Hall, St Kilda on Saturday 9th November.
It will also serve as the Launch for two 7” singles from Kim. One of them, The Poison Pen/Dissonance is a split single featuring Kim on one side and The Scientists performing the entirely new track ‘Dissonance’ on the other.
Kim Salmon has always approached his music as art. Indeed he was studying Fine Art at the WA Institute of technology back in ’76 when he was side tracked by CBGBs punk rock, causing him to take a ‘gap year’ which he is still on…… not strictly true as he has never given up creating art in the form of drawings, paintings, cartoons and posters. Indeed he finally had his first art exhibition last year. It was entitled ‘Lexical’ and was held at the Fitzroy gallery B Side. He will be following up at the end of this year with another exhibition at Melbourne institution Mario’s Café opening on November 27th.
Kim Salmon’s public history begins in Perth 1976 with his formation of the city’s (indeed one of this country’s) first punk band(s) the Cheap Nasties. BUT it is his next band, the decidedly POST punk Scientists that makes the indelible mark on rock history. Much has been made of the band’s influence on multiple generations of multiple genres of music – including ‘Garage, Post Punk, Power Pop, even Experimental and Psych Rock. Acts as diverse as Sonic Youth, Spacemen 3, Jon Spencer, The Drones and the White Stripes cite them as an influence, not to mention a plethora of Seattle Grunge outfits, most notably Mudhoney.
But Kim’s history continues well after the Scientists. There’s The Beasts Of Bourbon, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, Antenna, The Business, SALMON, The Darling Downs, Precious Jules, Kim and Leanne and Kim on his own.
This adds up to a lot of recorded output. 30 Albums! not including compilations, live albums repackages, singles, EPs (7”&12”) all of which easily triple that number.
Due to the recent release of their entire back catalogue on the prestigious Chicago label Numero Group the Scientists have been experiencing a worldwide renaissance that has taken in an Australian, a European and two US tours in the last two years. The band have issued new material in the form of singles in both Europe and USA and are preparing to record an album later this year to be recorded in Perth where they’ll be grouping to be inducted into the WAM Hall Of Fame.
In the meantime Kim has been involved in the reformation of the Beasts Of Bourbon, now known as simply, The Beasts. Last year they recorded an album of new material entitled Still Here which they toured earlier this year. They will be touring Australia at the end of this year. Tour Dates https://lnkfi.re/thebeasts
And as mentioned earlier there’s the book. This is by no means a cap on the KS history.
KIM SALMON AND THE SURREALISTS
With performances from Shrimpwitch, Dave Graney & the MistLY
and Kid Congo Powers & The Near Death Experience
Saturday 9th November 2019 – Memo Music Hall, Melbourne
(88 Acland Street, St Kilda | memomusichall.com.au)
Doors 7:30pm AEST. Tickets $35.00+BF
KIM SALMON – ART EXHIBITION
Opens Wednesday 27th November 2019 – Mario’s Cafe, Fitzroy
(303 Brunswick St, Fitzroy | marioscafe.com.au)
Book pre-order: https://www.melbournebooks.com.au/products/nine-parts-water-one-part-sand
Single order: https://kimsalmon.bandcamp.com
