If a band’s legend is to rest on a single and, for the most part, a single alone, you’d be hard-pressed to name a better one than the Australian rock & roll salvo that is the Victims’ “Television Addict.” Released independently circa 1978 alongside the succinctly titled and similarly great EP “No Thanks to the Human Turd,” the single, despite a heinously minuscule number of pressings (a thousand to be exact, which accounts for the four-digit starting prices often seen for the original wax), came across as a shockwave to the local music scene and gradually spread in music lore throughout the country.
Heading what was to become the Perth rock-garage-punk renaissance, the Victims were an extension of the earliest signs of punk to arise in the city, as two of its three members hailed from Perth’s first legitimate rock & roll band, the Geeks. There’s certainly an argument to be made (and one I’d willingly take up) for this genuine middle-of-nowhere setting being the preeminent rock city in the whole damn hemisphere. The output of homegrown bands such as the one in question here, the Manakins, the Scientists, and the Orphans, all seemingly linked by one common member or another, readily attests to that claim.
In retrospect, the Victims served as a veritable springboard for future pursuits, with the aftermath of the group’s disbandment marking a fairly prompt turnaround from said commercial dearth for the two most prominent Victims. The chief architects behind this single, lead singer and guitarist Dave Faulkner and drummer James Baker, would eventually form one of the great power pop outfits, the Hoodoo Gurus, in the following decade, and Baker would play the part of the mercenary for a who’s who of Aussie rock & roll powerhouses, taking up the kit as well as writing for the early-period Scientists, the Dubrovniks, and supergroup the Beasts of Bourbon.
