Kim Salmon

Kim Leith Salmon (born 24 January 1957) is an Australian rock musician and songwriter from Perth. He has worked in various groups including the Scientists, Beasts of Bourbon, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, Kim Salmon and the Business, and Darling Downs. Australian rock musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described Salmon as one of the first Australians to "embrace wholeheartedly the emergent punk phenomenon of the mid-to-late 1970s" with The Scientists. He declared that Beasts of Bourbon were "masters of uncompromising gutbucket blues and hard-edged rock'n'roll". In 2004 Salmon was inducted into the West Australian Music Industry Association Hall of Fame and in 2007, into the Music Victoria Awards Hall of Fame. Kim Leith Salmon was born in 1957 in the Western Australian port city of Bunbury. He later recalled wanting to be a nuclear physicist until, at the age of 13, he heard "heavy rock stuff" on the radio. He bought his first guitar, "an acoustic steel string thing", for A$14 and taught himself to play "Black Night" and "Tobacco Road". By the age of 18 Salmon had started a fine arts course at a university but deferred after a year, "I didn't really fit in with it". At the age of 19 he was a member of Troubled Waters, a cabaret covers band playing in a Fremantle strip club. In August 1976 with Salmon on lead vocals and lead guitar, he formed Perth's first punk band, The Cheap Nasties. His early influences include The Modern Lovers' self-titled album (1976), New York Dolls, and The Stooges. Salmon recruited his high school mates: Mark Betts on drums; Dan Dare on bass guitar; Neil Fernandez on guitar; and Robert Porritt on vocals. After Salmon left in December 1977 they were renamed The Manikins. By early 1978 Salmon had joined The Exterminators replacing Mark Demetrius on lead vocals. Fellow members were John Dowlings on drums; Roddy Radalj on guitar and vocals; and Boris Sujdovic on bass guitar. The group were renamed The Invaders, and in May 1978 James Baker replaced Dowlings on drums (ex-Geeks, Beheaded, The Victims). They changed their name to The Scientists and in August Sujdovic left. He was eventually replaced by Dennis Byrne on bass guitar in January 1979. The line up of Salmon, Baker, Byrne and Radalj recorded their debut single, "Frantic Romantic", which appeared in June that year. It was co-written by Salmon and Baker. However Byrne and Radalj had already left in April and were replaced by Ian Sharples on bass guitar and Ben Juniper on guitar. In December 1979 and in February and March 1980, as a member of The Scientists, Salmon toured the eastern states of Australia and they appeared on TV pop music series, Countdown. They had issued their debut extended play, The Scientists, in February: Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described the single and EP as "one of the most collectable artefacts of the Australian punk rock era". Further line up changes occurred with Salmon, Baker and Sharples recording a studio album of the same name in January 1981. The group broke up and Salmon formed a briefly existing group, Louie Louie, with Brett Rixon on drums (ex-Screaming Fits), and Kim Williams on bass guitar. By August that year Louie Louie had disbanded and The Scientists album was released by EMI. McFarlane felt that Salmon was one of the first Australians to "embrace wholeheartedly the emergent punk phenomenon of the mid-to-late 1970s". In September 1981 Salmon and Sujdovic, with Rixon on drums and Tony Thewlis (ex-Helicopters) on guitar, reformed The Scientists and moved to Sydney. McFarlane noted that the Sydney line up had "dropped the melodic, punky power pop of old for a more malevolent, psychedelic-tinged neo-rock'n'roll". By December 1982 they had issued another single, "This Is My Happy Hour". In September the following year they released another EP, Blood Red River, which was an influential record of the post-punk era. In March 1984 the group toured the United Kingdom and Europe playing an amalgamation of blues, punk and noise. The Scientists remained in the UK and went through several further incarnations, with Salmon remaining as the sole constant member, before the band returned to Australia in early 1987 and broke up again late that year. Salmon's work with The Scientists in the 1980s influenced grunge music, which rose to prominence around Seattle, United States, before impacting on popular music in the early 1990s. The Scientists relied on unorthodox bass-heavy rhythms and distorted guitars, the latter being a direct precursor to grunge. The term grunge was used by Salmon in the mid-1980s to describe The Scientists' sound, which he recalled for the audience in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary series on Australian music, Long Way to the Top, Episode 6: "Gathering of the Tribes 1984-2000" on 12 September 2001. Everett True writing for The Guardian in 2011 disputed that Seattle was the origin of the genre, "[t]here's more of an argument to be had for grunge beginning in Australia with the Scientists and their scrawny punk ilk". In August 1983 while still a member of The Scientists, Salmon on guitar joined Beasts of Bourbon as a side project alongside old bandmates Baker and Sudjovic; with Spencer P. Jones on guitar (of The Johnnys); and Tex Perkins on vocals (ex-Tex Deadly and the Dum-Dums). In October that year they recorded the group's debut album, The Axeman's Jazz (July 1984). In February 1984 Salmon and Perkins formed Salamander Jim with Richard Ploog on drums (also in The Church), however by the following month Salmon had returned to his commitments with The Scientists. During The Scientists 1987 tour of Australia Salmon formed Kim Salmon and the Surrealists in Perth as an indie pop group. Fellow founders were Brian Henry Hooper on bass guitar and Tony Pola on drums. Their first two albums, Hit Me with the Surreal Feel (October 1988) and Just Because You Can't See It ... Doesn't Mean It Isn't There (February 1990), were described by McFarlane as having a "dark, confrontational sound powered by Salmon's scratchy, neurotic guitar and snarling vocals". Also in 1990 Salmon issued his debut solo single, "Lightning Scary", which appeared on the Surrealists third album, Essence, in September of the following year. From March 1988 Beasts of Bourbon reconvened and Salmon spent time with both groups over the subsequent five years. By February 1991 Hooper and Pola had replaced Sudjovic and Baker respectively as members of Beasts of Bourbon. In 1993 after touring Australia and Europe with Beasts of Bourbon Salmon, Hooper and Pola left the group to concentrate on the Surrealists. McFarlane declared Beasts of Bourborn were "masters of uncompromising gutbucket blues and hard-edged rock'n'roll". In July 1994 Salmon issued an album, Hey Believer, with backing band STM (Sexually Transmitted Music) featuring Warren Ellis on violin and Jim White on drums (both future Dirty Three members), and Andrew Entsch on double bass. Also that year Salmon released a solo live cassette album, Hookline and Singer, available at his gigs. The Surrealists line up changed as members left - Greg Bainbridge joined on drums in 1994 and Stu Thomas joined on bass in 1995. Micheal Redman and Leon De Bruin were the brass section for The Surrealists in 1998–9. Later, Phil Collings took on The Surrealists drum duties, and is the current drummer as at 2020. Early in 1998 Salmon on lead vocals and guitar formed Antenna in Sydney as a collaboration with Dave Faulkner on lead vocals and guitar (ex-The Victims, The Manikins, Hoodoo Gurus); Justin Frew on guitar and Stuart McCarthy on guitar (both from Southend). In November that year Antenna issued their debut album, Installation, and single, "Come on Spring". According to McFarlane, the single had an "electronic undertow balanced by an irresistible melody"; while the album was an "eclectic, diverse and challenging mix of electronica, breezy pop, throbbing bass, washes of guitar and keyboards, and dance floor