WHAT COMES TO MIND … JIMMY AND THE BOYS WITH A PIRANHA OR TWO
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Here we have the next instalment in What Comes To Mind, an alternative series in the Wind Back Wednesday space, based on the work of the brilliant photographer Stuart Spence.
Each time, he will dig out a photo from his archives going back almost 50 years and challenge me to respond with what comes to mind when I look at that image. It might be serious or ridiculous, personal or historical but it will be inspired by a photo I’ve not seen before, and maybe even unseen by anyone beyond Stuart himself.
This week, Jimmy And The Boys breaking more than rules.
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SMALL TIME LONDON CROOK, Stig O’Tracey, who had his head nailed to the floor by gang leader Dinsdale Piranha, wasn’t best pleased. Understandably, what with the pain and inconvenience of nail/head/floor on a regular life. But he also thought it was reasonable as he had “transgressed the unwritten law”, he told the reporter from the TV current affairs show, Ethel The Frog, even though he didn’t know exactly what that law was.
“But he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy.”
And good enough for me and Sister Ferdinand – not, as far as I know, a fan of Monty Python – who having once butted my head to smear more ash on my forehead when she assumed I had rubbed mine off after Ash Wednesday mass, would have been impressed with the performative Catholicism across American TV last week when so many devotees made sure their ashed foreheads survived the layers of makeup to be seen.
There are rules, for the benefit of all, and we are well advised to keep to them. Yes, even in “wild colonial boy/up yours to authority major general/wasn’t that Dawn Fraser a card/burn down the Star Hotel even though I never actually went there and neither did Chisel” Australia whose rebelliousness is, and really always has been, about as performative as Fox News. We like rules in Australia – not just laws but tut-tutting rules of correct, appropriate behaviour – and woe betide those who disturb them and risk the ire of small-hearted Catholic boys like NSW premier and chief scold, Chris Minns. For to do otherwise is reckless, dangerous, and harmful. To young minds. Impressionable minds, Innocent minds. It is known.
Though maybe not known by Jimmy and The Boys. Or, worryingly, maybe very well known by ‘Jimmy’s’ Ignatius Jones, Joylene Thornbird Hairmouth (aka William O’Riordan) and friends rotating through, but ignored. They had, after all, graduated from two of Sydney’s most prestigious religious private schools, so it’s not like they didn’t get the lectures. And the knowledge on the correct use of leather. Ooh yes matron.
And yes, my eyes did see that, including on television when Donnie Sutherland let through stuff Molly would not have. Did see Ignatius bend his body in ways that hurt just to think about. Did see Joylene do that thing with her mouth. Did wonder where that thing they strapped on was meant to go.
(In where? There? Really? Oh. Did Father Spillane know about this? And what would he say to my mother if he knew I had seen it too. I’d never be allowed back in the gates of Sacred Heart Public School. Oh.)
If you look up Wikipedia because you wonder if this nostalgia trip I’m on is worth anything, you will find firstly the amusing fact that Jimmy And The Boys’ biggest “hits” were covers of songs by eminently respectable and lauded writers, Ray Davies (I’m Not Like Everybody Else) and Tim Finn (They Won’t Let My Girlfriend Talk To Me), and then a quote lifted from Ian McFarlane’s The Encyclopedia Of Australian Rock And Pop, where he said “the band’s gigs mixed S&M trappings, sex shop props, mock rape and other depravities, with sub-Zappaesque humour, hard rock, jazz, reggae and disco”.
I hear ya! It didn’t start with TISM? Who knew?
At a time where transgression is represented by the mindless dick-ism of Sticky Fingers and Cory Bernardi or the flapmouthed banality of festival operators and TV producers who kept booking them, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of a moment when transgression was more than offensiveness, exactly 50 years after Ignatius and Joylene formed the band.
Or for that matter to keep in mind that Ignatius Jones – a Filipino Australian whose real and much more exciting name was Juan Ignacio Rafaelo Lorenzo Trápaga y Esteban – would go on to program that most benign and circumscribed of public events, the New Year’s Eve fireworks, as well as co-directing the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Events which had precious little S&M trappings, sex shop props, mock rape and other depravities, with sub-Zappaesque humour – aka real sticky fingers – but did feature elements of hard rock, jazz, reggae and disco. So there’s that.
Maybe the final word should go to another person who encountered Dinsdale Piranha, a man who had he not been locked up in Wormwood Scrubs might have been a fan of Jimmy And The Boys. We never did get this witnesses name but she speaks for many of us I’m sure after being asked if she wasn’t worried by his reputation for offensive things like stitching people’s legs together.
“Well it's better than bottling it up, innit?! He was a gentleman, Dinsdale! And what's more, he knew how to treat a female impersonator.”
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