Taste Test: Mikelangelo

THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY
It was 1981: Over The Top. I can let go of a lot of stuff but I had to keep my '80s compilation albums. I wish I could say it was something really cool but to me it is strangely cool. I eventually started buying cool records but I was definitely firmly in the Countdown mainstream at that age, with no shame at all. It's made me the man I am. Whatever weird and wonderful music I play, there's pop beats in my heart.

THE ALBUM I'M LOVING RIGHT NOW
Hellhounds are a local band firmly rooted in the dark rock'n'roll arts of St Kilda that have been all but lost by many. There are so many shite blues rock bands out there, with really appalling guitar solos, but with these guys there's none of that; it's completely electrified urban city blues. I don't think there's many people alive today writing any good blues songs so I take my hat off to them.

MY FAVOURITE PARTY ALBUM
I don't have a favourite party album. I like to party, don't get me wrong, but when I'm at home listening to albums I listen to mellow stuff mostly. So my favourite party music is a DJ: The Great Muldavio. He's one of the best DJs I've heard because he has no boundaries except for the ones in his own brain; he can take you to completely different places. I just can't leave the dancefloor while he's DJing so I just want to give a shout out to him.

MY FAVOURITE COMEDOWN ALBUM
I love the Hope Sandoval album Through The Devil Softly. It's beautiful. I really like Mazzy Star but I think she's even better post-Mazzy Star. Her voice is so dreamy and there's strange dark undertones but she doesn't overdo them. They're such beautiful, ethereal songs. It works its strange magic on you. I can listen to that album a lot.

THE MOST SURPRISING RECORD IN MY COLLECTION
I don't know if it would be surprising or not but an album I actually like is Madonna's Like A Prayer. I think it's great. I haven't really listened to her since. I don't think the journey into dance beats is the way to go for her but that album I still pop on from time to time.

THE FIRST GIG I EVER ATTENDED
I've got a choice here. I reckon I could lie by about a month and sound cool or I could tell the truth and be really bad. I think I'll tell the truth! I was about 13… Uncanny X-Men, supported by Pseudo Echo, Electric Pandas, and a middle of the road new wave band called Mood Section. Uncanny X-Men had a hidden trampoline on stage so he could jump off the drum riser section onto the trampoline and bounce up to where his microphone was and I thought that was pretty cool.

THE WEIRDEST GIG EXPERIENCE I'VE HAD
I was playing in my old band P-Harness at a rogues and wenches ball. All the men were dressed as women and all the women were dressed as men. We used to dress up quite a lot in that band and one of our outfits was a macramé owl pot plant holder with big tassels on the bottom which we wore like a codpiece – it looked a bit like we were a lost PNG tribe. Perfect rock gear, really. There's not a lot of support going on with this macramé owl and I remember these women looking at me and thinking they're just going to grab my nuts and twist them and hurt me! That might make me sound weirder than them but really, it's not true.

MY BIGGEST NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES
I love a lot of filmmakers like David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch, where music is so integral to the film. And visual art, anything from medieval art through to Joseph Beuys, a mid-century German conceptual artist. He did these amazing performances. He hung out in a room with a wild coyote and all he had was a blanket and a crook and I love that someone made a living out of doing stuff like that! There's all these amazing photos of him sweeping the streets or with his face painted with gold leaf, singing to a dead hare. What's left is these gorgeous photographs, testament to these moments. Some people could do things like that and it would just be a wank. I think it's got to be coming from a place of quite a deep, strange, mystical place where someone is trying to forge meaning.

THE COOLEST PERSON I'VE EVER MET
My dad's from Croatia and I go back there every couple of years and visit the village where he grew up. I was walking along the promenade one night a couple of years ago and I heard this voice echoing out over the sea. As I got closer, I saw this image of a man in a red jumpsuit against the darkened sky singing a Kris Kristofferson tune along to a CD backing track, with a space echo on his voice, and it was sublime. It turned out that this fellow, Dooley, was a Croatian Elvis impersonator who loved sad country music. We ended up doing some gigs together; he wasn't a very good singer but he just had so much personality and I respect that a lot. His offstage outfit was these really short white shorts, thongs, and a great, red Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, and a white towel around his shoulders. He was just so cool.

THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH I'VE HAD
Blondie. Deborah Harry was a pretty big crush when I was young. I don't think I have to say too much!

IF I COULD HANG OUT IN ANY TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY
I feel like it has to be right now. Living in Melbourne now is really fucking good. I think people realise it but I think Melbourne now is like Berlin when The Birthday Party was there, or like France in the Belle Époque. I really feel there's something in the air and stuff's happening here. It sounds a little bit cheesy but I think we're lucky, there's something good going on here, and the world doesn't quite know it yet and that's why it's still good. So sure, I'd love to be around in the '30s swing band time, I'd love to be a neanderthal man discovering sound, but I'll take now!

IF I WASN'T MAKING MUSIC
Making art. My retirement plan is to draw pictures. I love drawing and painting and I just don't seem to find much time to do it. And there may be a day when I get sick of the stage. It will take a while, but I reckon I'll get to that point and I'd love to sit down and make beautiful strange little books for children. A lot of my favourite books are like bewitching children's illustrated books, be they old or more contemporary ones. Either that or a champion javelin thrower!