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.
Moreover, when examining the underground proliferation of hard-driving rock music in Perth, it becomes quite noticeable that a certain paradigm shift coincided with Baker’s return from outings to the US and England, as though he, along with a couple kindred rock & roll spirits in the Geeks, both delivered and extended the sounds of Detroit and CBGBs in this far-off land, amalgamating the Stooges and the New York Dolls. In other words, so long as Baker had a say, these guys weren’t looking to please but to piss off.
And it is this inheritance of unyielding aggression that renders “Television Addict” an exercise in incandescence. Written by Faulkner (or Flick, as he is credited here), the song amounts to an act of wrathful release, a final declaration of comeuppance on the isolation that stunted, or prevented, would-be bands for years in this West Oz town. Though largely akin in both word and deed to a tumult, the song’s opening seconds are its calmest. Having said that, “calm” contextually equates to a respiration-distorting three-chord intro spit forth by Faulkner, summoned from some heretofore undiscovered chasm of the soul.
Pairing Baker’s trademark skin-thrashing primordiality with bass work from Dave Cardwell that verges on alarming, the rhythm section’s arrival marks a sonic detonation of magmatic proportions, heightened even further by the no-call, all-response titular refrain screamed out by Faulkner and Baker. And it’s not long after that Faulkner tips his hand: the fact this TV freak watches Dinah Shore don’t mean a thing.
