A new feature length documentary film is shedding light on the hidden cultural history of Australia’s underground music scene, capturing the rise of one of Australia’s most loved bands – the Hard-Ons – as the band marks 40 years of punk rock.
The film The Most Australian Band Ever!,will premiere on October 16, 2024 at SXSW in Sydney with a screening and Q&A with Ray Ahn and Peter “Blackie” Black at the Dendy Newtown before being shown at the Byron Bay Film Festival on Saturday 26th October, Melbourne in November and other cinemas across the country.
At the heart of the documentary is the band’s migrant roots, following the story of three ethnic school boys (from Croatia, Korea and Sri Lanka) from Western Sydney – Peter ‘Blackie’ Black, Ray Ahn and Keish DeSilva – discovering punk music in the 1980s, forming a band, fighting racism and the music industry along with it. They went on to release five hit albums, becoming one of the country’s most successful punk bands, and later bringing on their current lead singer, Tim Rogers (of You Am I).
“Faced with racism, obstruction and cancellation from the industry, the Hard-Ons did things their own way, reaching fans directly with all-ages shows and non-stop touring. They broke down the distinction between the ‘cool’ inner-city and the suburban kids who were looking for something different,” said Director, Jonathan Sequeira. “It’s a story of the band members’ true grit and adversity they faced before it was popular to be so different,” added Sequeira, who grew up a stone’s throw from the band in Dulwich Hill.
The Hard-Ons’ snotty attitude and humour belied that they were an intelligent band. Ray Ahn, who is on bass/backing vocals said: “We were already just no holds barred, free for all kinds of freewheeling punk rock action band, you know. That’s what was going to work for us. It really suited the type of people that we were, you know, pretty pent up little kids from the suburbs where playing in a band like the Hard-Ons was the greatest thing in our lives.”
On how the band got their controversial name, Blackie added: “The Hard-Ons name was chosen because it was obnoxious. It was out of a Penthouse magazine and Ray mentioned it and we all laughed and never took it seriously. But he was dead serious. We’d piss off our parents. You would get noticed. It would be offensive to the right people.”
After playing backyard gigs for school friends, the Hard-Ons were soon pulling crowds with residencies at pubs and scoring their first record deal.With the fans came the neo-Nazis and skinheads.“It was brutal and ugly, but we dealt with it the only way we knew how, by playing our music and getting on with it,” said Ahn.
“My father thought it was a good idea if we took our shirts off so that people could see our skin colour. He said that’s who you are so you might as well let them know you’re not going anywhere,” he added.
Slowly the skinheads disappeared, because the crowd was too busy having fun.“The Hard-Ons showed the world that Australia wasn’t just what you see on the postcard. The Europeans certainly didn’t know how to take a band wearing thongs on stage and the UK punk poser scene was given a shock by their unpretentious Aussie attitude,” Sequeira said.
Ahn and Blackie said they always embraced their outsider status. In 1974, nine-year-old Ray, or Dongwan Ahn as he was known then, arrived in Australia with his family from Korea, finding himself in Sydney’s west in an alien world of meat pies and cricket in Sydney’s western suburbs.
“My father was so practical, and he said, “Just pick a name and when you go to high school next year, you’ll have an Anglo name. Raymond sounds good, you know. It’s a French name, you know. Then when I turned up at school, I was Ray,” said Ahn.
“By default Australia’s my home, but I still feel like a foreigner in this country. I don’t have this baggage of wanting to be a part of something. Belonging to me is not crucial. Otherwise how else would I have stumbled into punk rock? It was music that spoke to aliens,” Ahn added.
Blackie said his parents, who were refugees from former Yugoslavia, were also determined to fit in, and quickly. “Because Dad really was very mindful that he came here as a refugee. The country welcomed him in, and he was determined to be an Aussie, be Australian,” Blackie said.
“I remember being told to F-off back to the west on a trip to Cronulla beach in the ’80s, a couple of years before Pearl Jam made flannelette shirts acceptable,” he added.
Hard-Ons: The Most Australian Band Ever!is directed by Jonathan Sequeira for Living Eyes and Play Vintage. Sequeira is also behind the acclaimed 2017 Radio Birdman documentary Descent Into The Maelstrom – The Radio Birdman Story.
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