The Black Assassins are an early '80s punk band from Brisbane, Australia.
Keen exponents of the have a go and do it yourself ethos of the era, The Black Assassins formed in the middle of 1981, one week before their first gig. It was the height of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Reich in the state of Queensland, oppression loomed large in the land and people were scared to speak. The Black Assassins were a loud, raucous assertion of the right to free speech against everything Jackboot Joh and his corrupt police state stood for.
The Black Assassins had strong political opinions but were very inexperienced musicians. Many of the scores of new Brisbane bands of the time would rehearse for six months to try to sound good enough before venturing out for a public performance. The Black Assassins however, knew no shame. We had three rum-soaked rehearsals during our first week to get a set of 8 songs together before hitting the stage for our debut performance at the QIT Campus Club in Brisbane . It was a highly entertaining but musically mutilated performance. You can read a review of this gig by clicking here.
The Black Assassins went on to play a total of 14 gigs in and around Brisbane during the following year before the bass player and guitarist moved to Sydney and formed the band Mutant Death in July 1982.
Brisbane didn't have many venues for bands playing original music at the time but it had thriving music scene with lots of great creative bands. Other local bands we played gigs with at the time included Xero, JFK and the Cuban Crisis, The Pits, Missing Words, The End, 3B2, Resistors, The Lamingtons, Les Bon Bons, Outer Limits, Marko Halstead, the Kingswood Trio, Pork, This Five Minutes and Scrap Metal.
The Black Assassins continued to play sporadically during the rest of the 1980s if we all happened to wash up in the same town at the same time.
The Black Assassins kept their identities secret, adopting composite names of infamous assassins and wearing black balaclavas and indulging themselves to excess.
The band was highly theatrical and usually pre-spent all the money we were paid for gigs on props and costumes for our performances. The songs and stage act were energetic and highly political, focussing issues of the day, having fun with imagery evoked by our name and the topics of our songs. It often involved doing things with dummies of corrupt politicians and interaction with members of the audience.
The Black Assassins didn't take ourselves seriously and aimed to have as much fun as we could while we played. Sometimes it worked and we sounded good and people danced. Other times we could sound pretty atrocious, especially through crappy little PA's at tiny venues. Probably one of our best sounding gigs was supporting the Dead Kennedys at Brisbane's Festival Hall in 1983.
You can find out a lot more information about The Black Assassins on our main website at: http://www.blackassassins.net
Over two decades late, in November 2005, we finally got round to releasing The Black Assassins Greatest Hits - a CD of our music from way back then in the early 80s. The CD contains 13 of our songs that were the most popluar with Brisbane audiences at the time.
You can hear 4 of the songs from the CD right here at the top of this page. If you like those and an are a glutton for punishment, you can hear another 4 of our songs:
Planet X
Death Comes To Townsville
F... Me F... My Dog
Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight
on one of our other sites at http://www.numberonemusic.com/theblackassassins
You can read reviews of The Black Assassins Greatest Hits CD and live performances at http://www.blackassassins.net/Reviews.html
We played a suitably loud and ugly reunion gig to launch the CD in Brisbane December 2005 (our first gig in Brisbane for 20 years) Check it out at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/CDlaunch.html
2007 saw The Black Assassins dive back into live shows in a big way (well big for us since we now live in four different states), with a short set at the Jets Sports Club in Sydney in May. This performance ended after 5 songs when the police shut us down for complaints about the ugly noise. You can see some photos of this gig at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/Jetsgig.html
We played again a couple of months later in an uninvited guerilla perfomance at the Pig City festival at UQ in Brisbane in July. When security on the Pig City stage inside the marquee proved too tight for a stage invasion we played out the front of the radio 4ZZZ-FM tent. You can watch our YouTube video of this performance at:
http://www.youtube.com/v/Y5iKMaAuuYA
and read all about it on our band website by clickinghere.
You can see some photosof the Black Assassins at this gig at:
http://www.blackassassins.net/pigcity.html
The Black Assassins are available to play anywhere in the world for anyone crazy enough to want us who can afford the costs of getting us there to play. |
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