Painters & Dockers Still Live and Alive After 40 Years - Noise11.com
Painters and Dockers photo by Ros O'Gorman

Painters and Dockers photo by Ros O'Gorman

Painters & Dockers Still Live and Alive After 40 Years

by Paul Cashmere on September 29, 2020

in News

What started off as a one-night stand has developed into 40 years for Painters & Dockers.

“I didn’t think we were going to make it to that year,” Paulie Stewart tells Noise11.com. “We were going to do one gig to pay for Billy Walsh’s parking fines. That’s all it was going to be. Now nearly 40 years we are still playing”.

Painters & Dockers started in 1982, at a very interested time in Melbourne and around the time of Hunters & Collectors, Nick Cave and, that very same year, TISM. “We have a real interesting history with TISM,” Paulie says. “At one of their first gigs they were reviewed and the guy said “this band is shithouse. They are like the Painters and Dockers in masks”. From that moment forward people assumed we were in TISM or that the two bands were the same. For the last 30 years. I’ve said no, we were a different band but now I just say we the same band.”

The TISM/Painters & Dockers has another crossroads. “My mum was a teacher at Camberwell High School,” Paulie says. “Another teacher there was Terri Rowe. My mum came home and said “this girl Terri, her husband is in a band and they want you to listen to a cassette to see what you reckon”. I asked what it was called and she said ‘Defecate on my Face’. I thought these guys were hilarious. I gave it to our management at the time. Michael Lynch ended up managing TISM and we did a lot of gigs with them”.

It wasn’t hard for Paulie to name the most creative Melbourne band at the time. “I Spit On Your Gravy,” he says. “They had a song called ‘If You Can’t Take A Joke So Fuck You Then’. A lot of people cite The Saints or Radio Birdman. For me it was Fred Negro and I Spit On Your Gravy. He was a huge influence. Melbourne in the 1980s, everyone was Nick Cave and The Birthday Party. Everyone was dark and gloomy. Then there us, I Spit On Your Gravy, Huxton Creepers and Cosmic Psychos’.

Listen to the Paulie Stewart Painters & Dockers Noise11 interview.

Painters & Dockers live album You Know You Want It is available from their website.

Noise11.com

Follow Noise11 on Social Media

NEW: Noise11 on YouTube SUBSCRIBE

Noise11 on Instagram

You’ll discover music news first following Noise11 on Twitter

Comment on the news of the day, join Noise11 on Facebook

Related Posts

Cyndi Lauper Farewell tour Australia 2025
Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Tour Is The End Of The Era #REVIEW

I still remember the CBS guy delivering Cyndi Lauper’s debut album ‘She’s So Unusual’ to EON-FM, the radio station I was working at in 1983. ‘She’s So Unusual’ was released on 14 October 1983, the same day as Lionel Richie’s ‘Can’t Slow Down’ and The Jam’s greatest hits album ‘Snap!’. It came out in the same week as Culture Club’s ‘Color By Numbers’. Those were the days when something important was happening every week with new music.

18 hours ago
Pat Benatar, music news, noise11.com
Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo To Receive Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award

Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo will receive the Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award for 2025.

2 days ago
Limahl Facebook profile pic
Limahl Covers America ‘A Horse With No Name’

80s pop star and former Kajagoogoo singer Limahl has returned with his first new music in years, a cover of the America classic ‘A Horse With No Name’.

3 days ago
REO Speedwagon, Noise11, Photo
Kevin Cronin Is Mighty Pissed REO Speedwagon Are Doing A Show Without Him

REO Speedwagon have announced a one-off show in June without singer and founding member Kevin Cronin and Cronin is mighty pissed about it.

4 days ago
Dee Snider of Twisted Sister
Twisted Sister Sell Their Copyrights

Twisted Sister are the latest artists to cash out to a corporation.

4 days ago
5678s by Mary Boukouvalas
The 5.6.7.8’s, Guitar Wolf and Gnome, 25th March, The Tote #REVIEW

The Tote is one of the last standing bastions of seminal music venues replete with the distinctive stench of decades of musos and punters’ blood, sweat and tears seeped into the carpet and walls.

March 28, 2025
George Clinton, Parliament: Photo Ros O'Gorman
George Clinton Is Bringing Parliament-Funkadelic Back To Australia

Funk legend George Clinton is bring Parliament-Funkadelic back to Australia in September 2025 with dates in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Gold Coast.

March 26, 2025