CIVIC are one of Australia’s most electrifyingly punk acts and seeing them twice in one weekend got me that closer to my personal goal of seeing over a hundred gigs in 2024 (I’m well on track with ninety-two!) as well as being an overall great life choice. Because that’s just how fucking good CIVIC are! One gig will never, ever, ever be enough and two is just starting to sooth that mangey punk itch.
The first night of the weekend, CIVIC headlined The Brightside for SILO 23. Before they tore the roof off the indoor stage, we all gathered around a beer garden table to ask them Five Quickfire Questions!
CIVIC are:
- Jim McCullough: Vocals
- Roland Hlavka: Bass
- Eli Sthapit: Drums
- Lewis Hodgson: Guitar (Not interviewed)
I started by gifting a retro Honda Civic car badge for the occasion, which gained an excited reaction from the fellas.
1. Welcome to Brisbane. I hope it’s not too warm for you, as I appreciate you weren’t Born In The Heat. But a word of warning, it does get hot as fuck in a fully packed Brightside, and that’s what we’re expecting tonight at the SILO show. On the subject of heat, what is the hottest gig you’ve ever done? And it doesn’t have to be just referring to temperature either.
OB: Oh, wait Roland You were born in the heat?
Roland: No, I was born in Victoria, but I grew up here in QLD, and Byron Bay, so I’m half born in the heat.
Eli: The boat…
Jim: Oh, the boat was hot, and hectic.
Rolan: Nah, nah Groningen.
Eli: Yeah, Vera downstairs in the basement in Groningen. Vera in the Netherlands, they have like an upstairs proper stage set-up, and then they have like a downstairs-
Roland: It’s like an old wine cellar.
Eli: Yeah, it’s like a downstairs wine cellar basement. We played there to like two hundred people?
Jim: Nah, less than that.
Eli: I don’t even remember how big the crowd was, it was over a year ago now… Yeah, a hundred-ish people but we played on the floor, and they were all crammed up, trying to not get in Jim’s face but at the same time everyone was falling on Jim. And there was sweat dripping off the roof at the same time, dropping on everyone’s head. Just dripping constantly.
Jim: Yeah, it was the condensation.
Eli: Yeah, the condensation, it felt like it was raining indoors.
OB: So, no barrier, aircon, air flow, fans, extraction or anything right?
Eli: No, no barrier, none of that
Jim: It was like a wine cellar with rain.
OB: But was it a good gig?
Eli: Best gig ever. So much fun, everyone was just going mental, but yeah it felt like it was raining while we were playing.
OB: It’s often the more uncomfortable the gig is the better it is for some reason. I don’t know why either ha!
Eli: It was good. It was definitely the hottest one, like I was in shorts and a singlet and still ended up with not many clothes on afterwards, dripping in sweat. It was mad.
2. Nuclear Son, New Vietnam, Taken By Force, Wars Or Hands Of Time, this is a true arsenal of guerilla warfare tactics and themes. After the ABC Four Corners expose about a company that rhymes with ‘Hive Station’, are there any tactics you’d employ to make independent punk music more equitable for artists and punters?
Jim: Yeah, you can answer that… You guys are up on that one (gesturing to Roland)
Roland: Just give the bands more money. Is that what you mean?
OB: Yeah, well that’s the guts of it.
Roland: Companies are taking too much money from artists, taking too big of a slice of the pie.
Eli: Companies taking a pretty big percentage of the money, and the band is left with almost no money, it’s not fair at all… Yeah even when you’re just starting up right, you’re not getting millions of dollars when you start, but it’s still taking ten to twenty or fifteen per cent of everything, and then stack that on top of three different things all of a sudden you are fifty to sixty percent out (of profit) and you make a grand split four ways and are left with nothing really.
Jim: I think it’s just we were always just DIY, and then you change it to get people on board you know. Like to facilitate certain things touring or whatever, but if you run it yourself it’s so much better.
OB: Yeah, that’s something we encounter with a lot of bands that self-manage.
Jim: But that’s not easy in itself either.
Roland: Yeah, we all have to work normal jobs outside of the band to keep the money going. But then we lose so much time doing that. Whereas if we could have the freedom of self-managing, we could- it’s so fucking hard.
Eli: It’s a Catch-22. It’s a juggling situation-
Jim: But, at the end of the day, we didn’t start this for money and we don’t do this for money we do it for the love of it. So, fuck it yeah whatever.
OB: Yeah, yeah, R.I.F.F, I get that.
3. If you were to cast your Radiant Eye on your top three independent acts you’ve seen that you would love to pump up and Tell The Papers about, who would you put on that list?
Eli: Pun Guy Official! Yeah, let’s go!
Rowland: Oh, who did we play with in Byron not long ago?
Eli: Gimmy?
Dakota: Gimmy are good! Yeah, I know her. She has short hair and does the leg movements.
Roland: They were fucking great!
Jim: Yeah, we’d never heard of them and we watched them and thought these guys are mad!
Dakota: Yeah, they’re northern river locals.
Eli: Yeah, that Byron style…
OB: You know, this is how we find acts. On the referral of the interviewee!
Jim: Who else? Billiam and the Split Bills are pretty cool.
OB: (I tell them the story about meeting Billiam at the Split System/Stiff Richards gig but not realising it was him the whole time)
Jim: Yeah, he is a good kid.
Roland: And Phil and the Tiles.
Eli: Oh yeah, I’ve got the shirt on as well!
Roland: They are fucking awesome.
Jim: They are from Melbourne. We’re all mates.
Roland: Eli used to play drums with them back in the day.
Eli: Yeah, this was my band, before CIVIC. And they are still going, they are great. Have a listen, they are fucking awesome. My girlfriend also plays with them as well.
(I can confirm Eli’s comments, particularly the 2024 album Double Happiness, with one of the best bass line intros in the track The Watcher.
4. Recently we asked Straight Arrows about a dream festival, it really invoked a great response from them. If you were to have a CIVIC festival, who is on the bill? Alive or dead. And where are we doing it?
Jim: Jeffrey Lee Pierce solo.
(Perhaps the track Lucky Jim is name appropriate?)
Jim: Where are we doing it?
OB: Anywhere you want, resources are not a concern.
Jim: Jupiter. Because that’s where they just sent a rocket last week.
Eli: Jupiter? Nah! Lad no way, isn’t it just gas?
Jim: The frozen one.
OB: Mars?
Roland: Uranus?
(After laughing at the mention of Uranus, the group breaks into discussion of the planets including Pluto, Mars, and what planets are mostly gas)
Jim: They just sent a rocket, rover type robot there to test the ice, and sample the water because they reckon there’ll be life forms there.
(Correct! On the 14th of October, NASA launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter to survey Jupiter and its icy ocean moon Europa)
OB: They’re getting ready for CIVIC! But we will need a couple more acts though. Who else is on the bill?
Eli: So, who we got?
Jim: Jeffrey Lee Pierce from The Gunn Club.
Eli: Yeah, let’s put Phil and the Tiles on, we will always shout them out why not! Who else can we get?
Jim: Kirin J. Callinan.
Roland: Yeah Kirin J. Callinan.
Eli: Yeah, let’s get Kirin on there. He is coming here (Brisbane) in a sec. Who else we got? Chrome Cell Torture?
(Quintin explains how we know about them through Mini Skirt)
Eli: Ah yeah Mini Skirt we love them, lets chuck them on as well.
OB: Yeah! Big ups to Mini Skirt, we love them so much.
Jim: Rod Stewart, The Faces seventies Rod Stewart.
Roland: Mariah Carey…
Eli: I’ll put Mariah Carey on there, why not? I’d like to see her.
Jim: Who else? Charli XCX.
Eli: Charli XCX yep. We’re getting a bit outrageous now, but why not?
Roland: I’d go to that.
Jim: Yeah, that’d be so much fun.
Eli: It’s bit of a mixed bill but why not right?
5. What’s a punk album that makes you Shake Like Death?
Roland: Probably just The Stooges first album. I would say that’s a good one, never ending goodness. Jimmy?
Jim: Yeah, you can’t really beat that one. I’ve been listening to… Ah it’s not that heavy though- Mark Lanegan Bubblegum.
Quintin: I love Mark Lanegan!
Jim: Yeah, I’ve been reading his book at the moment.
Quintin: Yeah, so have I.
Roland: Yeah, we’ve been smashing that, it’s an amazing record.
Eli: I’m a bit more of a hardcore dude.
Jim: You are going to say Title Fight, aren’t you?
Eli: I was going to say Trapped Under Ice. For sure yeah, a hundred percent… Secrets of the World, Trapped Under Ice I’d say that.
Roland: Oi chuck them on the (CIVIC) Festival.
Eli: Yeah, chuck them on the festival. EP and first record only.
OB: Well, that’s The End Of The Line, thank you so much! Let’s go check out Free Entry, Dogtooth, and VOIID!
Unfortunately, at The Brightside show, some punters were rudely putting their phones up with New Vietnam on the screen, and demanding them to play it, which predictably resulted in the band not playing it. At the Vinnies Dive Bar show the next night, this didn’t happen and CIVIC gladly chose to play the song to a crowd of less entitled punters. Artists are not jukeboxes or monkeys cranking an organ grinder in exchange for coins. Be respectful and enjoy what you get, because the set might not be the same as other gigs, and each song is a gift. Speaking of Vinnies Dive Bar, the next night I was fortunate enough to get to know CIVIC lads a bit more. I found that they are the most endearing, thoughtful and genuinely positive people you could hope to meet. They also informed me there are plenty of sweet and tasty surprises coming at you real soon!
Big love to Dakota (@strictly.sentimental) for the shots in this article as usual, doubly impressive that she helped us cover this weekend while having a thesis to submit on Monday!
