Lost Treasures With BLACKIE & JAMES From NUNCHUKKA SUPERFLY

Interview by Kris Peters
Australian music was a melting pot of talent in the early 90s with
bands like Tumbleweed, Regurgitator, Spiderbait, Magic Dirt and the
Superjesus planting the initial seeds that would see them still
knocking crowds dead to this day - some 30 years later.
Punk upstarts the Hard-Ons were also a major player in the thriving
scene, but it is an offshoot of that band - formed after internal
bickering led to one of the band's many breakups - called Nunchukka
Superfly who made perhaps the biggest impact of them all despite
never releasing an album and disbanding after a few short
years.
In that time Nunchukka Superfly - Ray Ahn and Peter Black from
Hard-Ons, Massappeal drummer Peter Allen and former Harpoon
frontman and future Drones co-founder (and now JJ McCann
Transmission main man) James McCann - earnt a fierce reputation as
a must see live band, managing to record an albums worth of
material that was seemingly lost to the ether and never to be seen
or heard again.
Until now.
The masters of that album found their way back into the hands of
McCann, who dutifully passed them along to the rest of the band,
ensuring the collection of now timeless punk rock tunes would
finally see the light of day.
The band released Nunchukka Superfly 95 earlier this year and
announced a run of shows in celebration, proving there's still life
in the legs and lungs of this Australian musical enigma. And where
there's life, there's hope, as evidenced by the fact Blackie and
James reached out to us here at HEAVY to talk about the past,
present and future of Nunchukka Superfly.
We start with the album and ask how it felt to finally release it
after so many years.
"I guess you could call it strange," Blackie mused, "but at the
same time it felt really good, and I think we can thank James for
that because I didn't even have a copy of the recordings. I forgot
what it was like even. But James got in touch about a year and a
half ago and said mate, have you heard that fucken thing we did all
those many moons ago? It's really ferocious. We should release it
and I remember thinking yeah, yeah, maybe one day. He sent me a
copy, and I was like holy fuck he's right. This is mad."
"I had it on cassette for years," James added. "And I think we all
had a cassette copy initially, but I wore that out eventually. In
Sydney Jason, who recorded it, was working across the road from
where I lived at the Hopeton Hotel on the weekends, and he said I
have that DAT tape of that Nunchukka Superfly recording, do you
want a copy? I said yes, and I sat on that for years because I
didn't have a DAT player (laughs). I had access to this old 90s DAT
player about ten years ago at a friend's studio, so we plugged in
the old player and put the cassette in and BAM, there it was loud
and clear, and somehow I had stored it away well enough to
obviously have not lost it. That was the start, then I got it
digitized and sent it to Blackie and Ray."
In the full interview, Blackie and James talk more about the
release of their debut album, Nunchucka Superfly 95, after many
years, and the upcoming reunion shows. They shared their memories
of the band's formation, their last show in 1996, and their
chemistry during the first jam session, expressing excitement about
the reunion and the potential for future collaborations.
Blackie and James also discussed the process of obtaining and
digitizing the original recording of their debut album, emphasizing
that no alterations were made to the original recording. They
reflected on the quality of the music and the positive reactions on
social media and strong initial sales, including overseas interest,
and expressed pride and gratitude for the continued interest in
their music after so many years.


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