Slacker
Slacker Punk
Interview with TONY DORK: 'it's as good a time as ever to write punk music'
19.6.20
19.6.20

TONY DORK truly is one of the best newcomers of the last couple of years. The band has released two EP to date, and it's 100% perfection. With Tony, my hope is that slacker music will move toward punchy garage punk, while still extolling the virtues of a fun life. Everything doesn't have to be so fucking serious, or bad entertainment for TV. There's another way. A way for amazing punk music, the "strongest, most virulent, most invincible Superjoke in history". Tony is one of the last heroes of the slacker scene. With Tony, these go to 11, or 12!
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Let us start with a playlist curated by
Tony Dork for Still in Rock
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Struggle Street is your first album. Can you tell us a little about the songs in it? What's the story behind them? What's the intention?
There aren’t really any great stories behind the songs but I guess in terms of themes I’d say they’re kind of about the state of the world in a way. Not all in a political sense but just more little things in life that might set us off or that sees the world continually seeming negative in a bunch of different ways. Also, just stuff that’s happening in our lives as we try to navigate being decent functioning humans, haha!
I think the intention behind the album was for us to see what we can come up with if we try to write some more “real” songs. A lot of the earlier stuff was more off the cuff and came relatively quickly without as much thought. So we kinda wanted to challenge ourselves to step it up a bit and not really hide as much behind humor and gimmicky stuff. There are definitely still songs we wrote in like 10 minutes and we never want to move fully away from taking the piss and sprinkling some inside jokes and self-deprecating humor throughout, but the album results from us being a bit more critical of ourselves and trying to make something we’re all proud of.
We’re definitely not against anyone putting us in the same vein as those bands haha! Something that they have definitely mastered that we try to follow is to not take ourselves too seriously and remember that playing in a band is just really fucking fun so I guess it’s kind of slacker in that sense. We’re happy for people to call it whatever they want!

It seems to me that the slacker scene is slowly dying off at the benefit of more serious punk music (more engaged). With all the shit that’s happening in the world, it’s possible we might see a come back to more slacker bands because people might need some music to cheer them up. What do you think of all that?
Yeah, I very much agree with you. So, what’s the music scene like in Melbourne, and more generally, in Australia. Is it going in the right direction? What would you like to change?
Ah, I didn't know that. Stiff Richards is such a good band (see this article). Which amazing Australian bands am I missing in this list?
We haven’t really put much thought into what’s next. We would love to just play a few shows to launch the album once the apocalypse is over, then I think we’re all pretty happy to just see what happens from there. Hopefully, the world doesn’t end before we get to play it live!
I find four definitions: (1) Department of Regulation and Licensing (Wisconsin), (2) Demands Of Real Life, (3) Driving on Revoked License, (4) Direcção da Organização Regional de Lisboa do Partido Comunista Português. The mystery remains!