Growing up in regional QLD, the southern city of Melbourne may as well have been the lost
city of Atlantis; AFL and east Melbourne intellectual snobbery a thing of myth and legend,
and the band TISM even more so. I’d never heard of them until I spent a few years kicking
the can around in Melbourne, that whimsical place everyone seems to be nicking off to as
soon as they have any social clout – only to find themselves at the bottom of a food chain
that chews up and spits out Queenslander ex-patriates with the flick of a, ‘which [Melbourne
private] school did you go to?’ or ‘which [AFL] footy team do you support?’ So, to those
Queenslanders not in the know, TISM is a joke band from Melbourne that won an ARIA
award for taking the piss, and no one has done it better since.

They reformed after a several years hiatus for Good Things festival in 2022, playing
Brisbane in December that year. Rumours of side gigs at local venues ran rife through
communities of those in the know, but these rumours never bore fruit until TISM announced
their 2024 ‘Death To Art’ album tour, their first headline tour since 2004. TISM brought their
‘Death To Art’ tour -named for their recently released seventh studio album- to Brisbane’s
Riverstage on the 20th of October with support from a real grab bag of 90s/00s Australian
acts including Machine Gun Fellatio , Eskimo Joe, Ben Lee and The Mavis's. The
Mavis’s hadn’t toured for 6 years and have a new single ‘Heaven’, Ben Lee was suitably self-
deprecating and made a splash with his greatest hits, and Eskimo Joe had a go too, echoing
that particular moment in Australian music history ruled over by The Living End and
Daniel Johns. Machine Gun Fellatio was almost as exciting as TISM to see play live after
19 years on the bench, and their vibe and energy suited opening for TISM to a tee – never
taking themselves too seriously. They hit the stage with a banner rebranding themselves as
‘Machine Gunnilingus’ and hitting all the right notes with the crowd.

TISM exploded on stage, dropping the ‘Death to Art’ backdrop (a repurposed Herb Alpert
and the Tijuana Brass banner) to reveal eighteen artists arranged across three levels of
scaffolding in disposable coveralls, their back to the audience as they toiled away painting
on their own rectangular piece of what looked like corflute. TISM was dressed head-to-toe in
red bodysuits with what could only be described as red vertical lizard fans on their backs and
goon-sack bustles sitting just above their rear ends. They began with a diatribe trashing Kyle
Sandilands, Bruce Lehrman (aka ‘the most hated man in Australia’) and Ben Robert-Smith
before cracking on with ‘I’ll ‘ave Ya’. One of the most consistent and useful devices that
TISM employ routinely in their live performances is that they would hold up a placard with
the name of each song as they played. Highlights include ‘Whatareya?’, the perennial
question you can’t avoid – are you a yob, or a wanker? ‘Saturday Night Palsy’, ‘Greg! The
Stop Sign!!!’ and ‘He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River’ were crowd favourite classics. But
ultimately the message of the band is properly distilled from their newer tracks, their laconic
cynicism summarized simply in the title ‘I Can’t Wait For My Generation to Die’. It was as if
TISM baited the exact generation in question to Riverstage with a smorgasbord of classic
Gen X bands and gleefully eviscerated the audience and themselves in a simply stunning
feat of irony. TISM might seem like an outsider act to the average Queenslander, but in the
opinion of this reviewer they are the heart and soul of Australian humour, taking the piss with
unmatched enthusiasm. Here’s to another 14 years, then death.

Words by Matt Hall
Image: Wikipedia - TISM Live from Good Things Festival