They're one of the prime minister's favourite bands and their records are on high rotation at The Lodge.
Now after 40 years of touring and recording more than 20 albums, underground punk rock band the Hard-Ons are having a moment.
Their latest album, called I Like You a Lot Getting Older, has shot to number five in the ARIA Australian music charts.
At the same time, their long, stereotype-defying career is the subject of a documentary, The Most Australian Band Ever, which premieres this week as part of the South by Southwest Sydney Festival.
"The Hard-Ons story is about three ethnic kids growing up in Sydney's south-west, a place that people didn't really want to know about," the documentary's director Jonathan Sequeira said.
"So here's these guys doing things on their own terms, battling racism, battling the industry, battling censorship and cancel culture, to do their own thing and to do it really well."
'We showed our true colours straight away'
The band's original line-up featured Peter "Blackie" Black on guitar, Ray Ahn on bass and Keish de Silva on vocals and drums.
A preview screening held this week was attended by a string of fellow musicians as well as Western Sydney MP and Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke.
He's a long-time fan of the band and revealed that it was a passion he shared with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
"The PM's vinyl collection is not that different to my own," he said.
"Both the Hard-Ons and Radio Birdman you'll find playing pretty regular in The Lodge."
The documentary relates how the band met as teenagers at Punchbowl High School and bonded over a shared love of music.
They came up with the band's name with the intention of getting a reaction.
"It would piss off our parents, it would get noticed, it would be offensive to the right people," Black said.
But it would also have consequences for their career.
They were shunned by the Australian music industry, with radio stations refusing to play their songs.
Some record shops insisted on wrapping their albums in brown paper bags.
Even today, Sequeira said, the name still "carries weight".
"The documentary's called The Most Australian Band Ever because I knew if I put Hard-Ons in the title, it would probably go into the spam filter of most inboxes," he said.
Four decades on, bass player Ahn remains comfortable with the band's choices.
"When we called the band the Hard-Ons, we showed our true colours straight away, that we weren't really interested in mainstream acceptance and so all the pressure was off," he said.
"We're not really interested in anything other than the music. We're free to do whatever we want."
'Something uniquely Australian about the Hard-Ons'
The original three band members were all from migrant families.
Growing up in multicultural south-west Sydney, different ethnicities were the norm.
But once they started playing gigs in Sydney's predominantly white inner city punk scene, they stood out.
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"That whole racist neo-Nazi skinhead subculture was pretty big and those guys really did cop it badly," Sequeira said.
At one of their shows, the manager had to hide them upstairs to avoid a threatened riot.
"They obviously didn't like a Sri Lankan, a Korean and a Croatian guy playing rock and roll," De Silva said.
On another occasion, Ahn was dragged off the stage and beaten up.
The band was known for playing concerts wearing thongs and flannelette shirts or "flanos".
"There is something uniquely Australian about the Hard-Ons," Sequeira said.
"They couldn't have come out of any other country."
The elder statesmen of Australian music
After a five-year break in the 90s, the band reformed.
The current line-up consists of founding members Peter Black and Ray Ahn with Tim Rogers from You Am I on vocals and Murray Ruse on drums.
While many of their contemporaries from the punk rock scene have crashed and burned, they have released more than 20 albums and gone on to become one of Australia's biggest-selling independent artists.
"I have adored them for a very long time," Lindy Morrison, from indie rock band the Go-Betweens, said
"They stand up for what alternate is. They stand up for what indie is. And that's what I really love about them. They're punk."
Speaking from a hotel room in Berlin during their latest European tour, they said they had no plans to hang up their guitars.
"As corny as it sounds, it's just a really hardcore, deep love of music," Black said.
"And, you know, never getting tired of it."
Ahn agreed: "If you love doing it, why would you stop?
"I want to be involved until the day I die.
"To me, nothing's changed, it's still that same high school band."
Sequeira described them as "the elder statesmen of Australian music".
"The Hard-Ons will go for as long as they can get up on stage and play and I think wheelchairs or Zimmer frames definitely.
"I can't imagine them not doing it in some way."
Interviewed in the documentary, musician Dave Faulkner from Australian band Hoodoo Gurus said recognition for the Hard-Ons was long overdue.
"They should be in the bloody ARIA Hall of Fame.
"The Hard-Ons have done probably more for Australian music than some of those bands we talk about."
