HARD-ONS: Going It Alone (2023)

By STEVE MASCORD

YOUR correspondent is surely not the first person to conjure the phrase “elephant in the chatroom”.

And Zoom isn’t really a chatroom, anyway, is it? But there’s an imposing pachyderm lingering nonetheless as I converse with Ray Ahn, the 58-year-old bass player from Aussie punk treasures The Hard-Ons.

Oh yes, they have a new record out called Ripper 23. Wonderful, the cover that evokes 1970s and 1980s compilation LPs. Funny, the video for first single “Apartment For Two” in which they transform into young girls performing on 1970s TV. Amazing, the album by an avowed underground act should reach number four on the charts. (“No Hard-Ons records have ever gone gold; they’ve gone pewter”)

But the further we intrepidly explore, pushing aside the long grass, the elephant’s footsteps get louder.

The Hard-On line-up is rounded out by Peter ‘Blackie’ Black on guitar, Murray Ruse on drums and Tim Rogers singing. Has You Am I main-man Tim Rogers brought new fans with him, I ask in the manner of a tactful interviewer who’s done this sort of thing a hundred times before. Do you avoid sounding anything like You Am I? By recruiting the revered Rogers, the Hard-Ons have “crossed a rubicon”, Ahn agrees, and that now involves “not looking back”.

But why is Tim Rogers in the Hard-Ons, you, dear reader, might reasonable ask. 

We leave the lantana and vines of the jungle behind when talk moves to a movie called Hard-Ons: The Most Australian Band Ever. Production paused and crowd funding was returned to supporters because the former frontman of the band, Keish De Silva was kicked out.

The savanna now stretches out before us. There’s not one but a whole herd of giant grey beasts, trunks swinging, looming in clear view.

Keish de silva and the allegations of sexual misconduct which preceded his ejection, are not so much our big game – it’s not my job to hunt them as much as it is my duty to avoid avoiding them – but they’re our destination.

The movie, as it turns out, has been funded and is back in production. The way into this, the thorniest of subjects, is therefore to ask whether it will be addressed in the revamped documentary, whether #metoo will be a focus.

“Yes it does,” Ray answers after a short pause. “They were questions that the film-maker posed to us and asked us to respectfully answer … those big questions.

“And they were … we had to answer them in a truthful but respectful way to the parties that were involved. 

“I guess we just had to explain our side of the story and what we went through.

“It was pretty painful to live through because the main thing was none of the band members were present when any of that stuff happened and so we don’t know.

“When one person’s saying one thing and the other person is saying another … well, the only thing we can do is…

“Steve, it was just really difficult and it was one of those things … even now … it’s not something I like to think about because they were pretty painful times.”

We must be at pains here to point out the chronology of events. In early 2021, a woman on social media accused de Silva of sexual misconduct. He was subsequently removed from the band. We make no judgement here on the veracity of the claims – and neither does Ray.

“Keish wouldn’t like me to say this but I probably would have sacked him from the band a lot earlier,” our interviewee says, finally getting used to our barren surroundings out here with metaphorical elephants.

“Not for any other reason than he wasn’t exactly pulling his weight in the band either, in terms of his role as a lead singer.

“I mean, we broke up the Hard-Ons because I didn’t like his attitude. The whole attitude towards playing in a band it was different than me and Blackie’s.

“Those things started to come back to the fore. 

“This is somebody I knew when we were in primary school. 

“When someone isn’t in the Hard-Ons for that long – 14 years he wasn’t in the Hard-Ons – and in that time you look at his musical career and he hasn’t done anything … 

“You think it’s a shame because the guy’s very talented. He can drum, he can play piano, he can play guitar. He can do a lot of things.

“Me and Blackie actually thought we could unlock some of his talents cause it was a shame he wasn’t being heard.

“But a couple of years after rejoining the band, you realise that … wow, it’s a lot more than that. That person has to really want to be in the band. Really, really want to be in the band.

“The big questions have got to be asked and Keish is someone who does not ask big questions about ANYTHING. He’d be the first one to tell you he can’t ask those big questions. He’s not very good a metaphysics. 

“You ask him ‘why are you in a band?’ He couldn’t tell you. That’s not being disrespectful.

“The answer always has to be ‘I really like being creative and I’ll do anything to make sure the band sounds good’. If you can answer it that way then, yeah, that’s the person you want to be in a band with.

“And without being too disrespectful to Keish, Tim Rogers is a man who says ‘I really want to be in this band because I like the music and I really want to see the band succeed, on stage and on record’.”

The Hard-Ons have lived through the impact of one of the biggest social upheavals of our lifetimes, the collision between gender equality, celebrity and technology that has redressed and reacted against many an historical injustice –  and shredded countless reputations.

Ray Ahn can ask big questions. He knows someone reading this story who is perhaps not a fan will find it ridiculous that his band called The Hard-Ons who put out a record called Dickcheese is now solemnly addressing such issues.

“You probably remember in the eighties … the big enemy for anyone in a punk band was censorship,” he begins.

“You had bands like the Butthole Surfers, the Hard-Ons, the Dead Kennedys having their records confiscated at places like Rocking Horse Records in Queensland and Hard-Ons records being sold in brown paper bags in Queensland.

“The time was right for a band like the Hard-Ons to just go gung-ho and fearlessly try and offend as many people as possible. 

“Times have completely changed and there’s absolutely no way in the world … contextually speaking, would the 18-year-old me come around now and do what I did, setting up band meetings and go ‘who haven’t we offended? How can we offend more people? What can we say or do to annoy more people?’.

“We just wouldn’t do that now because not only are people’s sensitivities different … you’ve got people like Steve Albini from Big Black saying ‘I would never form a band called Rapeman ever again’. 

“He kinda regrets the offence that the term caused.

“I’m in a similar position with the Hard-Ons. Yeah, we went out of our way to offend people. You can say till the face is blue that it was ironic and it was just being used to fight censorship and that kind of stuff.

“But it just wouldn’t wash now. You couldn’t do that.

“No, I wouldn’t call a band the Hard-Ons….”