black eye records

 _{Filmmaker Jason Axel Summers (right) with Stuart Gray. in Jason’s apartment. This “Stutue” was commissioned by Jason and depicts him with his Super 8 camera and light meter in either hand.  The white of the lens and the sensor on the meter are made of glow in the dark epoxy.  Stuart used his own hair as the hair on the Stutue}

US filmmaker Jason Axel Summers' documentary about Australian-born musical anarchist and visual artist, Stuart Gray, “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago”, is a prime example of what fantastic music there is out there to discover, and an excellent example of 'if you had expectations about this man, leave 'em at the door”.

Many I-94 Barflies will know of Stuart Gray (aka Stu Spasm), but not so much his music. If there's any justice, as a result of this documentary, Stuart will become a TV star and take his latest band, the New York City-based Art Gray Noizz Quartet, on an international stadium tour, complete with middle-aged ladies heaving their undies at him, while his oddly-insightful sculptures will sell for hundreds of thousands.

But hey, we live in a real world of struggle, pain, indifference, beauty, sin and downright foolishness, don't we.

So let's have a little yak with Jason Axel Summers, the somewhat determined man behind “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago”.

_{Thug with Peter Read pictured left.}

Thug co-founder and Black Eye Records artist, Peter Read, has passed away. The circumstances are unclear but a friend said Read had been battling liver cancer and was thought to have been in remission. He was living in Melbourne.

Read (Leather Moustache) and Tex Perkins (Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, later to join Beasts of Bourbon) formed electro-punk band Thug in Sydney in 1987, initially to make home recordings. Thug became one of Sydney's most confrontational live acts, with chaotic 20-minute sets featuring dancers, theatrics, bizarre electronic equipment and—at one performance—an entire audience showered in flour. Thug gigs would end with members mock-brawling amongst themselves, at times sparking audience participation.  

Thug, along with Lubricated Goat and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, were part of the underbelly of the Sydney indie rock scene, releasing music on the Red Eye Records offshoot, Black Eye Records. 

Thug's debut single was the "Fuck Your Dad” b/w “Thug". Along with the “Mechanical Ape” EP and “Electric Woolly Mammoth” album, it was released on a CD, “Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way”.

Read temporarily joined Lubricated Goat for their infamous nude-on-national-TV performance of “In The Raw”. More about the Black Eye bands at Cousin Creep’s website. He went on to work as a Front of House sound operator.