Should TISM Represent Australia at Eurovision 2015?

In case you haven’t taken off your headphones in a month, Australia has been invited to participate at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest.

Immediately after the announcement, public attention turned to who should represent Australia with suggestions ranging from Kylie Minogue and Delta Goodrem to Midnight Oil and the Wiggles.

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One petition gaining heavy traction is calling for anonymous Melbourne alt-rock/dance band TISM, to reform and represent Australia in Vienna at the 60th edition of the annunal song contest.

Forming in 1982, TISM (This Is Serious Mum) gained a cult following with their outrageous dance/rock, theatrical live performances and subversive attitude and humour. Dressed in boiler suits and balaclavas, the anonymous group performed songs such as “The Ballad Of John Bonham’s Coke Roadie” and “I Might Be A Cunt, But I’m Not A Fucking Cunt”.

With names such as Ron Hitler-Barassi, Humphrey B. Flaubert and Jon St. Peenis, it’s obvious that TISM have never taken themselves too seriously and is probably an even more important reason why they should be at Eurovision ahead of Midnight Oil.

TISM have not performed favourites such as “Defecate on My Face” since they split in 2004. Could Eurovision draw the band out of retirement?

We spoke to TISM bassist Jock Cheese about the likelihood of the boys in balaclavas representing Australia on the international stage.

Noisey: What do you think of the petition? The one supporting TISM has almost 14,000 signatures. Kylie Minogue’s has less than 500 at the moment.
Jock Cheese: It’s very heartening to get a bunch of people to stand up, punch their fists in the air and say, “You guys are great”, or in our case. “You guys were great”. You can’t knock someone for sticking a hand up in the air for you. But in reality it’s pushing a button, isn’t it?

It’s an analogy for what the world’s come to. If I want to like you, I push a button. If you want to like me, you push a button. If you think you don’t like me you push another button, and if you really don’t like me you push a whole lot of buttons and call me an arsehole on the Internet.

But I don’t feel I should be speaking negatively in this way because it’s gorgeous that people love our old nail clippings like this.

So would you be keen to represent the green and gold at Eurovision 2015?
Of course but we wouldn’t be wearing green and gold. We’d attack this in our usual back-burner gig style; blacks and balas [balaclavas]. Unfortunately there’s this little group that are operating in the world now that have totally and shamelessly ripped TISM off. And they’re called ISIS. They seem to have taken on the blacks and balas motif with a vengeance and their stage show and props – lets just say they’re more shocking than we ever were. A lot less funny.

How do you think the Europeans would react to TISM? I mean, you’ve had some success there, but your vocalist is named Ron Hitler Barrassi.
Mmmm, it may not go down the best. I think like America, Europe always has a slight hint of enjoying bad taste and appreciating left-of-centre styles. So I think Ron could get away with his pseudonym quite well. You never know, I don’t know how we’d go down. Lets just say if we put together a showing we could acquit ourselves quite well and we’d make sure they got where we were coming from.

SBS is selecting Australia’s entry. How would you go about whooping them for the spot?
I don’t know. It’s who you’ve got to sleep with really. Is there a committee? Well Jesus, who’s it going to be? Is it going to be Sam Peng, Julia Zemiro, Lee Lin Chin and the, the newsreader? To what authority do they refer to when it comes to the final decision? Would you go to the ARIAs headquarter in Sydney and have Kylie hand you a sequinned banner? Would you have a battle of the bands on Sydney harbour? Public opinion is a very obvious and broad sheet. I don’t think SBS have the authority to decide that. Maybe they do their own poll?…I’d like to say, hey, public opinion is with us, but let’s just say it’s a very easily won arena…I think purely by track record and the style you’re wanting to play, TISM is a hands down winner.

If in some gross miscarriage of justice TISM aren’t picked who would you like to see represent Australia? Well, there was a little Melbourne band called Mr Floppy or someone of that ilk. There was another little Melbourne band called New Waver. I think they’d be very appropriate. It would be a great a miscarriage of justice if Kylie, God love her, or someone of the Kylie-commercial-music ilk went, because lets face it, the stuff that’s come out of Australia and worked really well is not the commercial schlock, or at least not commercial schlock of the calibre that’s come out of the rest of the world. I think Australia needs to represent itself as something fresh, extremely vibrant. I’d pick an underdog if it went to the TISM board.

TISM has been brought back to the nation’s attention. Is there any chance that this could spark a reunion tour?
Well it might spark a reunion to get together and drink some beers. Other than that, no comment my son. I can’t speak for others, but you can put down that if Jock Cheese were offered an amount of money to get his bass on and start writing, and the rest of the band came along, then I would be there. As for a reformation, you’ve got a firm no comment.