Hot Dogma
   by
This Is Serious Mum
available on both long play record and compact disc:

Being their second full length record
THEIR OTHER slong playing record being GREAT TRUCKIN' SONGS OF THE RENAISSANCE, One other record, being FORM AND MEANING REACH ULTIMATE COMMUNION and several and various singles precede this work.
The Guide To Little Aesthetics, a book, has recently been
PUBLISHED



It is hard to vew TISM's Hot Dogma outside the context of the events which immediately followed its release. In the wake of the Great Depression of the 1990's and the atrocities of world-wide democracy, TISM's ill-fated masterwork became searing testimonial to a world that was crumbling around them. It is only now, in the wake of 1990's nostalgia, that this album, ironically TISM's least successful at the time of its release, is being rediscovered by a new generation of rock fans.
Of course, TISM disappeared without a trace only months before America exploded into a group of self-governed democratic states and world leaders were selected on the basis of album sales. The secret horrors of the 'free world' only became apparent much later as we learnt that Bono, and his 'Love Party' had finance the Vatican's nuclear strike on South Africa, and Roger Waters, leader of the 'Concept Album' party, had been instrumental in the re-building of the Berlin Wall.
The sinister idealism of that age is nowhere better exposed than in this doom-laden prophetic tour de force. Yet little is known about the making of the album other than the malicious gossip of the rock industry, which swallowed up and discarded TISM in a mire of propaganda and revised history. Only today can we put the shattered pieces back together to analyse the true significance of Hot Dogma.

The Nietzschian swirl of The TISM Boat Hire Offer opens the exhausting journey of Dogma. When Humphrey B Flaubert screams "I just want a leitmotif that can float" he is verbalizing an emotion all adolescents have felt, even if they are not aware of the meaning of 'float'.
Extistentialtism neatly closes the chapter of Camus opened by The Cure's Killing An Arab when Dela Hot-Croix Bun muses: "I'm the outsider. I break the law. But here's a tip ~ the book's a bore."
While My Catarrh Gently Weeps, TISM's sequel to The Beatles' Rocky Raccoon, makes a  passing note to the popular style of music of that time, known as 'Acid House'.

Itself a rehash of two 1970s fashions ~ disco and symphonic rock ~ and a precursor to the 'Lederhosen-house' that we have today. The 1990's were a particuarly vapid period musically, but TISM's incoherent jack-booted rendition of the style prevents it from sounding dated today.
The twin guitar assault of They Shoot Heroin Don't They? is reminiscent of early Stones and Flaubert's confessional chorus ~ "I've got the jockey on my back" ~ echoes Jagger's flirtation with steeplechasing and the satanic underworld of Equestrian showjumping.
The title of Dazed And Confucius gives a hint as to the guitar playing influences of TISM's Van Vlalen, although there is no documented proof that Confucius did in fact play the guitar. In the four party trilogy, Kevin Borich Expressionism, TISM continue their homage paying to the Australian cultural icons begun with Doug Parkinson Sings Christie Allen, and continued with their reference to "Roberts; Sandy" on I'll 'Ave Ya. Couplets of searing insight abound in Whinge Rock. "Dostoevsky knew it hurts to the marrow / Stuck in a lane without a right turn arrow."

Of course, this flippant contempt for 'issues' is prevalent throughout Dogma. Why were TISM so vehemently opposed to this lyrical trend? Again, we must consult the pages of history for our answer. Before TISM, not everybody was singing about 'issues'. Even Phil Collins, who became British Prime Minister after sales of his Even Black Musicians Respect Me went multi-platinum, once sang meaningless pop songs. But by the 1990's things were changing. By the turn of the century, 65% of the world's population were aged between 25 and 40, and the remainder were teenagers. With the teenagers tranquilised en masse by the fake rebellion of heavy metal, 'respected' artists became frighteningly powerful. Tracey Chapman and Suzanne Vega were largely responsible for sensitive folk music dominating electoral trends for ten years, until Chapman disgraced the genre when her affair with Axl Rose was made public. Even famous sessionman Milli Vanilli cross-dressed in a bid to corner the black Germanic male lesbian Euro-disco-folk market, and netted million sales and major party nomination for the White House. When Michael Jackson was incarcerated for assassinating, only TISM were left in the void between heavy metal and 'issues' music. What was going on? Either TISM were the only intelligent artists not singing about something important, or they were the only stupid artists not playing heavy metal.

It was this very act of distancing themselves from 'respected' artists that made TISM the pariahs of the rock industry ~ reviled by critics, mistrusted by fellow musicians, loved only by a dwindling group of followers. Producers Blyton and Maddy were black-banned by the industry for many years after working with the band. Blyton was only able to work again when he publicly renounced TISM at a rally in Georgie, and Maddy disappeared, reportedly still living a nomadic surfer existence today. Engineer Malcolm Dennis was tracked down by a zealous journalist some ten years later.
Dennis, living with his mother, was heavily sedated and remembered no such band. It is so tragically ironic that TISM, the very band scrubbed from the history books at the time for having no desire to contribute anything of importance to its generation, stand as the only band of its generation worth remembering. Their songs argued some chilling points: Was it possible that rock musicians weren't intelligent enough to be pored over in search of layers of meaning and deeper parallels with the human condition? Blasphemy!
But TISM strode onwards, forging their path into obscurity, and Hot Dogma was the flag they waved.

In The TISM Nightsoil Cart And Horse Blues, Dela Hot-Croix Bun sings a simple love lyric and then willfully debases it, ending all hope for redemption from TISM's obsessive nihilism. (I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And) Whittle Away My Furniture further emphasizes, when Flaubert's only solution to the world's problems was to turn his dining table into a pile of shavings, and Cheese, as studio legend has it, produced a guitar part that was to revolutionize future attitudes towards the instrument but then had it submerged to an inaudible position in the mix.
The TISM Finance Plan Offer presents a multi-layered vista of Van Vlalen's sublime guitar, whilst the lyric outlines the despondency at the core of TISM's lack of a world view: "What do you get form the brotherhood of man? No repayment, no interest."
As the song segues into Leo's Toltoy, we go back to Hitler-Barassi's childhood for the beginnings of this disenchantment, complete with 'Streets of San Francisco' guitar from Van Vlalen, who tosses off one style afer another with no remorse for the guitar aficionado.

The History of Western Civillisation, with its carneo blues harp by Jon St. Peenis, zeroes in on the western suburbs of Melbourne; those willing to be duped into thinking that this song provides a geographical context within which we can examine TISM are quickly disapointed: "I've never been there of course. It's what I've heard."
My Generationand I Don't Want TISM I Want A Girlfriend both affirm family life as the true mark of a revolutionary, but TISM later include family life in the witches brew of their unrelenting contempt.
Get THee In My Behind, Satan harks back to the Whinge Rock with its obsession with the right turn lane, and refers to Young and Jackson's, a hotel in the centre of Melbourne's old business district until it was destroyed by a Right-to-Life terrorist attack.

In We Are The Champignons the subtle art of song lyric is brought under the microscope by Hitler-Barassi's "that last verse contained an eye-rhyme." Of course, he is referring to what is also known as a consonant rhyme between the words 'food' and 'good' in the third verse. It reminds one of Shakespeare, in sonnet CXVI:
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit inpediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove..."
Or indeed of John Donne's 'song':
"Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root
Tell me where all past years are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot.."
Hitler-Barassi's analysis of TISM's use of this technique is succint: "This last effort ~ it's pretty drab." But the deliberate irony of his comment is not lost on us.

TISM not only present us with a poetry lesson, but reminds us of history too. In Let's Club It To Death Cheese desparingly cries "My friends call me John, but you can call me Breaker Morant." Cheese's pain wracked vocal delivery is one of the many surprises on the album, and this line evokes dhte image of TISM as honourable outcasts, figures turned upon by their own society, just as Morant himself was.
Several historical figures are alluded to in Let's Form A Company. As St. Peenis' haunting saxophone weaves through the song, Dela Hot-Croix Bun sings of Sting and Bono and refers to Bond University, which was established in the late 1980's to cater largely to business careers.
The implication that the words 'Bond' and 'university' are paradoxical is quantly anachronistic given later events which saw universities becoming 'Entrepeneurial Training Schools' largely in the Bond mould.

Finally, the album reaches its climax: an almost cheerful Life Kills takes on a darker note as Hitler-Barassi, seemingly unaware that the song finished behind him, continues his diatribe, descending deeper, deeper, deeper into a morass of invective, railing at the very core of human existence, until orchestration swirls around him and he is drowned out by the funeral march of Pus Of The Dead.
Les Miserables, the most shadowy of all the shadowy figures of TISM, chooses this,  the most apocalyptic moment of the album, to bask in the spotlight. Miserables is a fleeting, enigmatic presence on the album, and rumour had it that he spent little time in the studio, clinging to his belief that a song ceases to be a song after the moment of its creation.
Miserables had of course warned his fellow band members a number of times about the danger of making their stanceless philosophy known. Although Miserables escaped much of the slander and persecution that followed most of the others to their penniless graves, it is a widely held belief that he was the driving force behind TISM, the philosophical heart of the band.

The phrase "Cette chanson c'est magnifique? No." is the cornerstone of It's Novel, It's Unique, It's Shithouse. the final, almost afterthought highlight of this incredible opus.
Antique record collectors will have spotted the title of this song appearing on at least three occasions of past record sleeves or labels.
It is almost the dying gasp of breath, the quintessential coup de grace on an album that comprises a lifetime's intense thought and planning, and now stnads unsullied as a flag in the sea of mediocrity that was 1990's popular music.

Hitler-Barassi's "I'm dying" motif appears on the three tracks and is delivered in the desparing voices of a man running out of time. After the predictable critical panning and not so predictable modest sales of Dogma, TISM embarked on an ill-fated tour of the US.
They had barely completed half of the dtaes when Hitler-Barassi mysteriously disappeared. Rumours abounded. Was he kidnapped by the 'Women AGainst Lyricists Who Don't Use Imagery' guerilla forces, as many feared at the time?
Popular belief was that Hitler Barassi, who had long been suffering from socropholosis and delusions of insignificance had gone completely insane. Nevertheless, his disappearance left the band with massive debts.

The remaining members who foolishly remained in the US were arrested 10 days later for violations of the newly legislated 'Tastefulness Act'. Which carried a death penalty in certain states. A bitter and exhaustive court case followed.
The band were stripped of the legal rights to their name and declared bankrupt.
Dela Hot-Croix Bun and Van Vlalen stayed on to appeal against the decision and the case dragged on for another six months until the two were deported. Dela Hot-Croix Bun managed to rebuild his crippled finances and begin a modest business career.

Howeveer, Van Vlalen was visibly affected by the traumatic events and became obsessed with eating, dying two years later of heart failure, a grotesquely overweight travesty of the great man he once was.
Cheese reportedly fled to the Himalayas and was never seen again, whilst St. Peenis turned to a life of petty crime, spending much of the next ten years in and out of prison, until he was badly disfigured in an accident with Miliner's Solution in Pentridge's J Division.
Flaubert was not seen or heard of for twelve years, until he surfaced in AUstin, Texas, attempting to put together a TISM covers band with members of ZZ Top. The project collapsed when he was arrested and detained by the local police. However, he managed to escape to Mexico, where he lived as a vagrant and died in ignominy.
Only Miserables, who had became a highly acclaimed artist in the new field of repetition-engineered sculpture, retained his self respect and continued to be creative after the collapse of TISM.

The tragic demise of TISM can be seen clearly today for what it was ~ a witch hunt of the worst kind, made even more poignant by the incisive brilliance of Hot Dogma.
The album stood alone in its time and gathers artistic momentum with every passing year.
Now there are TISM appreciation societies scattered across the globe and every would be credible artist lists Hot Dogma as an influence.

How can it be that mankind is so suspicious of the real truth; that it is so willing to ignore the harsh, unremitting beauty of true art? Must art imitate life so slavishly?
Must art be in all the popular colours of the time? Must art 'taste' nice? TISM's art was intricate in its simplicity, eloquent in its bluntness, sweet in its unrelenting bitterness.
Was this how TISM really saw the world? Les Miserables, the only surviving member of TISM, when asked about Hot Dogma, brings a tear to one's eye with the underlying nostalgia of his reply:
"Hot Dogma? Rot, basically. I don't know what the fuss is about."

                                           HOT DOGMA Dramatis Personae
Gavan Purdy    }Lords of Kelin Manor
Michael Lynch  }Lords of Klein Manor
Peter Blyton  A landed gentleman
Lawrence Maddy  Judge
Malcolm Dennis  Judge Maddy's adopted ward
Nick Marsen}Buccaneers
Yain Wilderbeast}Buccaneers
Mark Woods  Constable
Sebastian Harvey  Long lost son of Gavan Purdy
David McLeod}Tragic Lovers
Linda McLeod}Tragic Lovers
Christiane Friedhoff  Nanny
Genre B. Goode  Token Black

Roman and Vloscian Senators: All at Triple R FM.
Patricians, Lictors, Soldiers, Citizens: All who have participated in stage and television performances.
Servants to lords of Kelin Manor and sundry attendants: Yuki Wadda, Leon Zervas and Hugh Walliants.
Clowns, fools, performers in dumb show: TISM

-Director: The Most Beautiful Economist In The World.

 Hot Dogma
 Synopsis:

1. THE TISM BOAT HIRE OFFER
2. EXISTENTIALTISM
3. WHILE MY CATARRH GENTLY WEEPS
4. THEY SHOOT HEROIN, DON'T THEY?
5. DAZED AND CONFUCIOUS
6. KEVIN BORICH EXPRESSIONISM PART 1
7. I'LL 'AVE YA
8. WHINGE ROCK
9. THE TISM NIGHTSOIL CART AND HORSE BLUES
10. (I'M GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND) WHITTLE AWAY MY FURNITURE
11: THE TISM FINANCE PLAN OFFER
12: LEO'S TOLTOY
13: THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILISATION
14: KEVIN BORICH EXPRESSIONISM PART 2
15. MY GENERATION
16. I DON'T WANT TISM I WANT A GIRLFRIEND
17. KEVIN BORICH EXPRESSIONISM PART 4
18. GET THEE IN MY BEIND, SATAN
19. WE ARE THE CHAMPIGNONS
20. LET'S CLUB IT TO DEATH
21: LET'S FORM A COMPANY
22: LIFE KILLS
23: PUS OF THE DEAD
24: IT'S NOVEL, IT'S UNIQUE, IT'S SHITHOUSE.