2001 punk greats: Little Ugly Girls

LUGS @ The Arthouse

Little Ugly Girls Photos courtesy of the Tom Lyncoln Archive.

And sometimes the tape is all there is, no seminal single, no genre defining first album (no tricky 2nd) - in this case not even a rough-hewn potential laden studio demo . With the LUGS I always blamed this lack of progeny on Hobarts industrial strength bucket bongs, but thinking about it now, it was probably that other bane of the creative soul: the desire for perfection.

The band are playing a one-off (we hope NOT) show this month, Im guessing a lot of the people there will only know Linda and Beans' current projects (Bulls,Diacos) and Im hoping the band will still have it in them to deliver exactly the same awesome, primal, visceral punk, noise that cemented their reputation.

The first time I remember seeing them was at the Evelyn: Bean, Sloth and Cameron all eyes down and simmering, intent on their precise , clever, intricate and deafening riffage while the little Angry Girl up front tried to get something far bigger and badder than we could ever imagine out of her system.
Linda on stage was a constantly morphing onslaught of full-on claws-out feminine savagery, her huge voice filling the room, a taswegian compound of Kat Bjelland, Leslie Rankine and the Avengers Penelope Houston turned up to 10.

This track is completely un-representative musically but is just as troubling as the noisier stuff, its Linda , on her own reciting a poem /spoken word/stream of conciousness/therapy session that conjures up images of family holiday nostalgia, child abuse and a painful coming of age in a few sour verses.

Boxenhoodahayda - LUGS

The artwork is all by Linda too, I remember when we (s:bahn) stayed at LUGS central I was blown away by her huge photos around the place: lurid bodies at sex-crime scenes, a nightmare of Cindy Sherman meets "Rivers Edge" . The band are as creative now as then, Bean and Linda owning the Melbourne live-scene with the Diacos, Cameron going strong with the Legends of Motorsport and Sloth enjoying great success with his "Head Gap" recording studio.