MONDAY MORNING GUNK
TV Jones
cassette demo
1973
available on Orphan Tracks
[Buy it]
SEARCH AND DESTROY
Iggy & The Stooges
Rough Power
Sony : 1973/1995
[Buy it]
As was typical for a teen guitarist growing up in Ann Arbor Michigan in the late 60s, Deniz Tek worshipped The Stooges and The MC5.
I was deeply influenced by these bands and a huge light bulb went on inside my head when I saw what they could do to people in a live performance. The attitude and spirit was beyond anything. People were driven to madness. "That", I said, "That is what I want to do."
Not quite so typically, Deniz moved to Australia in 1972 to attend medical school. He formed a band who called themselves "Screaming White Hot Razor Blades", briefly changed their name to the Spinal Tap-ian and more Oz-appropriate "Cunning Stunt", before settling on "TV Jones". TV Jones dressed glam but their sound was cut heavily with proto punk, mixing originals with plenty of Stooges and Alice Cooper covers.
If Bartletts ever publishes a guide to Liner Note Quotations, I'm submitting the following from the Deniz Tek website:
Early on TV Jones found a petrol spill waiting for a match in the youth of Wollongong. A tough blue collar steel town, 50 miles south of Sydney, the kids at the Charles Hotel were primed to go off on anything that would blast them out of the ennui of early 70's rock.
Oh, to be young in Wollongong...
When classes would let out on friday, Tek would hitch down from Sydney, play gigs over the weekend, get "a free meal and a few bucks and free beer" and return sunday night. Now Australia's cultural history (if its film industry is to be believed) is chock full of tales of sociological displacement; cultures clashing in offbeat and eccentric ways in the offbeat and eccentric small towns that pepper the country's outlands. But even so, I couldn't imagine a more unlikely place to host this key moment in Austalia's rock evolution, than that pub in Wollongong. But moving to Australia was maybe the best thing that could have happened to Deniz Tek. Had he stayed in Michigan, his music would likely have been lost among all the fanboys and wannabes. As it was, he found fresh and fertile ground - indeed the youth of Wollongong take great pride in their fertility. He got to wind the clock back, break upon the scene.
So then the band dumped him:
Rob: (laughs again) They were all sitting around telling him he was Mister Bad Vibes on stage and they wanted to be a bit more, you know, um, welcoming to the people... more commercial. It wasn't exactly like their music was all so left of field anyway. It was quite accessible stuff - it was rocking! But nevertheless, they couldn't tolerate it... Deniz probably gave the audience a few vacant stares and a few glares and was doing a lot of various moves and stuff like that, the sort of thing that people around Sydney had never seen before, really...
...They got this sort of milquetoast character [to replace Tek] to sing sort of more in the British vein, I suppose, more of the upper range shrieking a la... that type of thing, you know?
Deniz: The guy's name was Paul Greene, and he came on the stage with TV Jones as the new singer wearing jump suits, a big moustache and kind of a poofy feathered haircut. And he had a snake, too, so they could cover the Alice Cooper aspect. And of course, we all know where that all ended up!
Thats from an interview in the Noise for Heroes fanzine, and "Rob" is Rob Younger who founded the now-legendary Radio Birdman with Deniz Tek a year after his eviction.
After Radio Birdman's storied run, Tek formed the really facist sounding band "New Race" - whose lineup included hometown heroes Ron Asheton(Stooges) and Dennis Thompson(MC5). He also did a turn as a naval aviator, is an adopted member of the Crow Tribe, and works today as a Doctor of Emergency Medicine in Montana. This all makes him easily the coolest doctor in the world. I would have put him second after Dr. Fink from The Revolution but it turns out that a "License to Funk" is no longer recognized by the American Surgical Hospital Association.
"Monday Morning Gunk" is the only recording by TV Jones ever released, and its a corker. Its from a 1973 cassette studio demo, that the french label Revenge Records released as part of a compilation of Deniz Tek rarities and bootlegs in 1989.
Radio Birdman remade the song and included it on overseas versions of Radios Appear
Finally... Anyone know if TV Jones was names after this 60s toy?:
"TV Jones was a barking poodle made by Remco in 1966. TV Jones and his meowing-friend Pussy Meow each stood about 9-inches tall (the other Playmates were smaller) with movable legs and rooted hair. They were packaged in a plastic red and blue and pink and blue televisions."
Brian
