Monstrous Blues: Cereal Killers.

Monstrous Blues play the Paddington Workers Club on Friday.

While Monstrous Blues have but a five track EP under their collective belt, the members making up that quartet have more than paid their musical dues. Featuring the talents of guitarist Paul Hausmeister and drummer Stephen O’Brien, both former members of the now legendary Proton Energy Pills and the long running Tumbleweed. The pair were joined by fellow Wollongong musical alumni Jason Betschwar (guitars/vox) and Simon Dalla Pozza (bass), and Monstrous Blues was born. While it sounds strange to think about it, Monstrous Blues collectively have more that forty years of musical experience under their belts.

In about three quarters of an hour on the phone with Paul, the one thing we didn’t manage to talk about in detail was the band or their music. Topics like Mark Webber’s chances in the Malaysian Grand Prix, the pros and cons of using a backpack full of beer cans as a pillow, the career of New Order and the negative side of watching 24 hours of straight Goodies were broached in detail. But of Monstrous Blues and their musical tour de force High Octane there is very little.

The simple facts of the matter are that the band is in town on Friday night. Simon’s on a working trip to the US, so fellow Wollongong band Shifter have donated their bassist Justin for the trip. Get along and see ‘em. It’s gonna rock. Now for the important stuff.

“There’s a few pieces from some of those comic record books on the EP,” Paul explains. “But I can’t really say what they were.”

Kind of like those turn the page when you hear the tone things?

“That’s it man. Ding, end of side one, follow the voice balloons and you can read along. I grabbed a whole stack of them when I was growing up. I never throw anything. When I first moved out of home, the oldies said, ‘all this is going in the bin’. I said ‘it’s coming with me’, so I’ve got all this crap from when I was growing up that I can pull out and have a good laugh.”

“I actually have about eight boxes of stuff that hasn’t been unpacked. They’re all wrapped in plastic and stuck in the cellar. There’s all those bubblegum tattoos and the stencils of Sam Toucan that you used to get in Coco pops. Do you remember them? You draw one half, then flip the stencil over and draw the other half. Oh, cool, Sam Toucan. Cereal’s fucked up now. When they stopped the plastic toys that was the end of it.”