Bloke's Blokes

Cosmic Psycho Ross Knight has no problems calling a spade a spade. “Here's three ugly-lookin' blokes, y'know, tourin' the world, playing in all these wonderful cities, dining at all these wonderful restaurants, meetin' all these famous people and in the back of your head you're goin', I'm thinkin' to myself, I'm goin', 'I'm a fuckin' farmer!'” he says at the opening of Matt Weston's Cosmic Psychos documentary Blokes You Can Trust. This basically forms a mantra for the film.

Knight becomes the unlikely hero of this documentary, thereby lifting what might have been your stock-standard talking-head and grainy-footage mosaic band history into more of a character study of the endangered classic Aussie larrikin. Underneath the hardened flesh and bones of this man beats an enormous heart and behind the hardened cranial ridge sits a curious mind grappling through old-school ideals to make sense of a wild world.

Cosmic Psychos were the unmarketable Australian cousin of the fuzzed-out guitar bands that burst out of the States in the late '80s. “We were fuckin' ugly, there was no way... I mean Robbie [Watts] looked like one of the bloody Marx Brothers, Bill [Walsh] was just a bald fuckin' midget and I was just runnin' around with a mullet, with a head like a robber's dog,” continues Knight, later in the film. In spite of this lack of economic potential, or, more likely, because of it, the Psychos' integrity was never brought into question.

Filmmaker Matt Weston had never paid the Psychos much attention in his youth. At the initial suggestion, the concept of shooting a documentary on the band seemed pointless. That was until Weston met Knight. “It would be tricky to fuck up a documentary with someone who can tell such a great story,” Weston says. “I sorta rolled my eyes at [the documentary idea] initially. I'd seen a bunch of music documentaries that I'd found to be quite disappointing because, I think, a band's general life isn't that interesting, unless you kinda get into, you know, the craziness of the Ramones or those kinda things. There's not that many bands that have that much of an interesting story.”

Brought up, and still residing, on a farm at Spring Plains near Mia Mia in country Victoria, Knight's punk-rock origins hardly mirrored those of most of his US contemporaries. It was a far cry from the mean streets of 1980s Washington DC or Seattle, but Knight, like any teenager, found plenty to rage against. “When you're stuck out on the farm and you're 25 miles away from your girlfriend and you wanna go see ya girlfriend on the weekend you have to ride your pushbike to see her, by the time you're in there you're stuffed,” he says. “You're just so far away from everything and then these bands come along singing about 'no future' and I'm 15-16 years old and I'm going through the change of life, you might say. So everything's bad, everything's fucked... I could sit out here feelin' sorry for meself for a couple of years, it was great.”

In Knight, Weston found a willing, open and reliable storyteller. Knight makes no bones about his personal circumstances during the period of filmmaking – he's in the midst of divorce proceedings and is faced with the threat of losing his farm. He speaks openly about the addiction and death of his mate and fellow Psycho Robbie “Rocket” Watts. He speaks of his past relationships, his children and the challenges associated with bringing up a teenager with cerebral palsy.

Through these stories, and often almost accidentally, Weston uncovers much humour. Knight describes his forays into the New York S&M underworld in the 1990s. We discover, in Knight's typical understated fashion, that he's a champion weightlifter – a fact Weston only uncovered late in the filmmaking process. “[It was] just a throwaway comment: 'I can't do an interview this weekend, I forgot I'm in the Victorian championships',” says Weston. “And I'm like, 'I'm doin' a fuckin doco on you, why didn't you tell me that?' And he's like, 'I didn't know you wanted to know'.”

Knight's grounding in the bush sets him apart from the rest of the punk-rock world in terms of upbringing and ideals, but the setting also had a huge influence on the Psychos' signature sound. In the film, Buzz Osborne of Melvins describes this sound as: “... like late-'70s punk rock, played through a stereo inside of a muffler of a car dragging down the freeway – that's what they sound like.” Knight maintains that they had no idea what they were doing musically; it was really just making music for the sake of scoring free beer.

The calibre of the talking heads enlisted by Weston suggests a much higher perception of the band in the wider music world. Osborne, producer Butch Vig, members past and present of Mudhoney, Eddie Vedder, Donita Sparks of L7, Hard-Ons' Ray Ahn and so on speak with reverence of this Australian curiosity. The Psychos left an indelible mark on the world of rock'n'roll and they made a shitload of friends.

“We've bumbled and fumbled our way around and I think people enjoyed us being around because we're fuckin' twits, y'know,” says Knight. “We're not musos, we're idiots; so maybe we took the edge off a lot of the seriousness of it. It's not like we try to be clowns, we just are...

“This could all be over tomorrow so we may as well make the most of it and be respectful. We treat everyone the same, I don't care if you're the bloke bringing the beer into the dressing room or you're bangin' on the door of the biggest rockstar in the world, it doesn't matter 'cause at the end of the day everyone's a bloke or a sheila and you're either a good bloke or a good sheila or you're not. We've been lucky enough to meet a lot of good people.”

It's ultimately these friendships that shine. A two-case drinking session ensued when Weston finally locked down original Mudhoney bassist Matt Lukin and Vedder for an interview in Seattle – the interview footage ends with both parties carrying 50 cent pieces in their butt cracks in tribute to a party trick they learned from the Psychos. “Most of the people were just like, 'I'd love to get involved',” says Weston. “I was getting emails back within an hour... Sitting down with Ross, as far as he's concerned they're just beer-drinking mates. It seems that they have the same reaction to him, they just consider him an absolute champion of a bloke to hang out with.”