Dr Lara Cain Grey on HOME BREWED

I’ve been putting this off for awhile, but it’s time we had a chat about Garth Jones’ Home Brewed Vampire Bullets. Please note, this one is NOT for kids. Garth Jones is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based writer (currently), who grew up in Broken Hill – ‘Mad Max country’. His professional past includes graphic art, advertising, comic creation, and a hair raising filofax of rock n roll anecdotes. Push for details at your peril though; he may have to kill you. But while he’s taking his knowledge of where the figurative (I think…) celebrity bodies are buried to the grave, he has poured a lifetime of exposure to all things questionable, subcultural, carnal and ethereal into an explosive, serialised literary adventure. It’s almost impossible to give you a linear type of plot summary, but the highlights across the 2 volumes (3rd on the way!) include:  • Middling touring blues-rock band Toxikk Shokk is en route to their latest embarrassingly b-list regional support gig.  • Between time slip story arcs, undead bass player Ed Von Satan is striving to make a comeback.  • An all girl band from the future intercepts to stave off the apocalypse.  • There’s also a bunyip.  • There’s a cult – and the occult – playing puppeteer to dodgy politicians, with a splash of spy thriller shenanigans. • Blood, guts, sex, drugs, vices and proclivities to suit your wildest imaginings.  • If it’s not punk enough for ya by now, you can also QR code an evocative soundtrack by Half Majesty. Jones’ website tells us this series is: an occult rock ’n roll black comedy that cruises the outback highways, dive pub toilets and scabby upper echelons of society in the Republic of Australia. It’s a lo-fi mongrel punk Ozploitation tale in the key of Howling III, Dogs In Space and Wake In Fright. Comparisons elsewhere have been to Hunter S Thompson and Tom Robbins. I see shades of John Birmingham, Mad Max and Spinal Tap. This is grotty, grimy, larrikin smut. Unapologetically vulgar, it takes anything you thought of as taboo and throws it in your face while it flips you the finger. If you don’t own any pearls, now’s the time to pick some up. You’ll be clutching tight. So, why the heck is little miss picture book librarian so into it? I can see why you might ask. I might not seem like the target audience for a series that reads like Russell Mulcahy took acid and had a fight with the Urban Dictionary, but this is actually one delicious read. It’s funny, anarchic, original and ridiculous. When I first read Volume One, I described it to a friend as a palate cleanser. I have a pretty eclectic TBR, but a lot of it is worthy, literary, cautiously crafted and market-focussed tomes that frankly get a bit same-y sometimes. It’s so healthy to be shocked out of your reading routine.  I also LOVE the word play. The clever use of profanities and vulgar neologisms is quite the art form. Peppering a story with Fs and Cs creates banal white noise, whereas pungent euphemisms require the writer to bundle up rhyming slang, pop culture references and the ickier unmentionables of the human experience into punchy allusions. If you are a reader d’un certain age you are also going to get a big kick out of obscure intertextuality. One character is described as a ‘hellish mutant hybrid of Worzel Gummidge and the worst of Terry Gilliam’. We later meet a kid dealing uppers from his Agro’s Cartoon Connection backpack. Niche and brilliant. Plus this stuff makes the right reader, for whom the gags resonate, feel like one of the cool kids. Jones also dances with the zeitgeist by erring oh-so-close to cancel-worthy commentary, but pulling his punches at the last minute. I am rarely outraged by vulgarity, except when it tingles my Lefty-senses. I kept waiting for Jones’ writing to cross the line into something racist or otherwise politically unsavoury – especially given the books/films to which this series is frequently compared – but it doesn’t. In fact it parodies those anachronistic ways of thinking as unapologetically as it parodies all other elements of Australian culture – music, mythology, masculinity, misogyny, Mad Max. They all get roasted, to hilarious effect. It’s tough to pick an excerpt to share, so let’s start at the very beginning. From Volume One:   It’s late October, 1995, and we’re in regional New South Wales. Like, regional. Ramstackle’s ‘St Kilda Beat’ leaked from the hissing speaker of the Bedford touring van, which limped on fumes into the tiny desert outpost known as Broad Axe. Borne within were Toxxik Shokk. A middling touring blues-rock band […] They’d just played a particularly grim ute-muster […] Tonight’s indignity was an embarrassing support gig in the middle of fuck-all, twelve hundred clicks out from Sydney. Broad Axe, population nine forty five, primary industry cirrhosis of the liver [..] very definitely the scene of Toxikk Shokk’s final stand. This was to be their killer gig. So, act now to check out this rollicking outback word tsunami – from as little at $2.99 for the download. Put aside this week’s Dymocks Bestseller and try some raw, mongrel poetry that makes you proud to be ‘strayan. And if you want to learn more about the Ozploitation tradition, you can catch Garth on Justin Hamilton’s Big Squid podcast. It’s a great listen for anyone who likes a deep dive on pop culture, especially of the ‘cult favourite’ variety. Original article here.