Like most bands No Fixed Address started out with the focus of performing music. During our initial performances we concentrated more on cover songs, particularly songs which were well known in the Aboriginal community. Like most bands our cover songs reflected our musical interests, and bands that we idolised. Les Kelly on the one hand loved performing songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Credence and was the lead singer at the time early 1979.

https://youtu.be/0j8aKKMXWOw

For myself ‘Chris Jones’ my music was about rebellion not about what people liked to hear, but more about my own personal likes. Hence, The Angels, but more in particular The Sweet, Santana and AC/DC. The Angels because they were and still are, like the others, my favourite music, that I still enjoy listening to today.

The Angels because of the image that they projected and the music was something that rocked, the words 'whiskey bottle in his withered hand’ was something as a youth I could relate to. The way out of the reality of what we faced as Aboriginal people. The whiskey bottle, not beer and wine, and it defined a new generation of radical thought, for me anyway.

Like overseas band ‘The Sweet’ my first album being ‘Sweat FA’ songs that reeked of hard rock metal rebellion against society that I could relate to, in regard to the non-acceptance of equality in my home town Morwell, by the establishment . it was a way of finding my own niche of who I was. Believe it or not I wanted to be an accountant when I left school, but ended up working as an Apprentice Gardener for Park and Gardens, in the worst winter of snow we ever had. Watering council lawns while it was raining, cutting stakes, chipping and planting trees but most of all weeding, ouch so cold and wet.

I guess the biggest inspiration from oversea’s during that time, on a more mellow note was Santana, whose lead singer was a black man something new, like wow a black man fronting the most gifted guitarist/songwriter at the time. I was lucky enough to meet Carlos Santana later in 1997 after No Fixed Address disband.

Once Countdown arrived on the scene in the mid 70s, it was like mana from heaven, firstly Skyhooks, yes preferred over Sherbet a girly band, as most tough teenaged guys referred to, in my hometown high school back in the 70s lol. I remember I used to walk up the hill to Morwell Technical School, an all boys school, to watch all the band that appeared on 'Countdown’ perform, including ‘Blondie’. Yes they all came to Morwell and performed, my mum loved Sherbet, I didn’t really warm to them until later when I started to mellow out ‘Howzat’.

AC/DC the one band i considered the most ballsy, rebellious band that ever performed in Morwell, only they played at Morwell Town Hall, not the TECH school. The thing that inspired me most were the lyrics to their songs, in that, you could write about anything you wanted, and give society heaps, as long as you had a guitar in hand, guts enough to get on stage and a passion for music and rebellion. Like 'The Sweet’ and 'The Angels’ AC/DC pumped it up, but Bon and Angus were like the gods of rock, the unconditional, take no enemies, stuff you society attitude, that teenage rebellion adored. Not quite the word but in the catch cry’s of my youth, 'get my drift' or 'what are ya’ .

Meeting up with Les in 1979 and becoming a student at CASM changed my whole focus on the direction of my songwriting and music style. Introduction to reggae in the form of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and in particular the album ‘The Harder They Come They Harder they Fall’ was like a bolt of lightning that changed my perception of rebellious music forever. I guess back then for me it wasn’t about bashing the shit out of the guitar, and rebelling, but now I became more focused on a musical approach, which lent to enlightenment and teaching from real life experience s, and then bashing the shit out out the guitar lol. The punk never really left me and it is reflected more so in ‘Pigs’. see below
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