November 2025

GET TO KNOW… JOHN ENCARNACAO

 

Nic: What was the home stereo like in your house when you were a kid?

John: One of my earliest memories is of the family “stereogram” as we used to call it. It was a wooden piece of furniture that had a turntable and a radio and the speakers on each side and a compartment for the storage of LPs. It was stained a dark red that was almost purple. Mum used to say that when I was a baby, if I was having trouble getting to sleep they would set me up in front of it with a record on. We moved house when I’d just turned six, and I don’t think the stereogram came with us, so this is pre-six memories. The record I remember the most from that time is a live Harry Belafonte album, particularly “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.”

            A few years after we moved to Smithfield we got a three-in-one with a cassette player as well as turntable and radio. So I was able to tape records and tape from the radio. That was in the lounge room, but I also had a portable record player in the bedroom. I still have it (see picture): blue and bone. The lid has a speaker in it that detatches. I remember playing Sherbet and Skyhooks records on it the most.

What was your parents’ taste in music like? Did they play records?

My parents’ taste was pretty conservative. We grew up with my Mum and she was a big fan of Neil Diamond. In the 1970s she was a part of a group of Charismatic Christians – they would meet on a Friday night and fall about and speak in tongues. I think Hot August Night was one of their sacraments.

            Mum also like the pop of her teenage years in the 1950s – Paul Anka and Bobby Vee. “The Purple People Eater,” “Running Bear,” Johnny Horton, Jim Reeves, The Platters. And from her parents she also liked certain German and Russian singers: Ivan Rebroff, Freddie Quinn, Heintje.

Did your siblings play any part in your musical knowledge?

Not really. I am the eldest and was music obsessed since before I could talk, so I was always leading the way there. We all loved ABBA together in the mid-1970s when ABBA was the biggest thing.

What was the first record you bought? And do you remember where from?

My paternal grandfather used to buy me records. One of my earliest memories is sitting in the back seat of his Fiat holding the first Monkees album in an orange Edels bag, bought at Westfield’s in Burwood. I was four or five, it was so exciting. I used to buy 45s from the top 40 – The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, “Seasons in the Sun.” I think the first album I bought with my own money was A Collection of Beatles Oldies, from Galleon Records, Fairfield.

When did you start collecting records?

Before I was even at school, I was so obsessed with records that a friend of my parents, who apparently stocked jukeboxes, used to drop piles of 45s off for me to play with. I wish I had them now, I have no idea what they were. I didn’t even play them on the stereo. Apparently, I would take apart my toy trucks and spin them on an axle with one wheel as a base, and sing.

            I guess I started “collecting” records around the age of five. I remember having and being obsessed with The Monkees’ Vol. 1 EP, and then gradually over the next couple of years getting the first four Monkees LPs – would have had them all by the age of eight. And I still think they’re awesome records.

What were your go-to record stores in Sydney when you started buying records?

Galleon’s was the most important when I was in primary school and high school. I remember I had a book called The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, so I learned that there were all these great songs that were only on singles, not the albums. And I would order them from Galleon’s. I remember buying Kiss records there, and a few years later, XTC’s English Settlement the day it came out. I remember getting Devo’s “Satisfaction” and Talking Heads’ “New Feeling,” both in the discount bin, there. Fairfield also had a Palings – I remember getting Midnight Oil’s Head Injuries there, and Cheap Trick’s Heaven Tonight marked down to half price.

            There were a couple of stores in Merrylands, I can’t remember the names. When I was in high school, I would do the rounds of the department stores – Coles, Woolworths (both department stores rather than supermarkets then), K-Mart. Target, even Farmers and Grace Brothers – and watch the sale bins. I got lots of great things marked down to $2 or $3 in those stores – LPs by Models, Sports, a double cassette pack of the first and third Velvet Underground albums . . .

            Around the age of fourteen I would start getting the train to town to the import stores. Anthem was the original for me, in Town Hall station. It always seemed very exotic, especially with Rob Younger behind the counter. But also Phantom Records, and Zounds, which was really interesting because it had all the local records but also imports discounted. And Chelsea Records. And of course Ashwoods. Waterfront and Red Eye and Record Plant were a couple of years later.

Who were your favourite bands/singers when you were in Primary School?

That’s nicely specific. Earlier primary school it would have been Monkees, Beatles, Suzi Quatro, The Sweet. Then later primary school, Skyhooks and then Kiss and Alice Cooper and David Bowie.

In the States, a lot of budding musicians had their ‘wake up moment’ when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. What was yours?

It was the Monkees TV series. I loved their songs (still do) and loved the idea of a band all living together and having adventures. I particularly loved Micky Dolenz. I wanted to be him. I would set up cushions on the floor and drum on them until my family got me toy drum kits. This is from ages five to eight. At nine I started learning guitar.

Now some radio questions. What radio station(s) did you listen to?

2SM, and next best was 2UW. This is before Double Jay existed, pre-1975. Then in high school it was Double Jay. I remember in Year 9 I had a clock radio in my bedroom and every morning I would listen to Doug Mulray before school. There were comedy skits at the same time every morning – the Dr Poo serial, and The Prime Mincer, which was someone imitating Malcolm Fraser. That was probably the first time I began to understand something about Australian politics. Plus of course they played all the indie music you couldn’t hear anywhere else then.

            I also used to listen to the program American Top 40, which 2WS used to syndicate and run on Sunday afternoons in the late 1970s.

As we’re the same age, I reckon you’d remember the first Countdown episode? Any other music shows you remember when you were a kid?

I don’t remember the first episode of Countdown specifically, but I did watch it religiously every week. I remember repeats of GTK slotted in between the afternoon programs on ABC-TV, but also Happening 71 and Happening 72. I remember seeing Russell Morris performing “The Real Thing” on that show. He was in the studio miming, but superimposed was footage of wars (Vietnam I suppose, but I wouldn’t have known that at the age of six) and nuclear detonations, and sometimes the image would pulse to negative. It really freaked me out and made me obsessed with that song. That’s my earliest memory of music TV.

            Also, Flashez, Nightmoves and Sound Unlimited, which is the first place I saw Kiss.

Did you go to those open-air concerts in the 70s? Like the 2SM Rocktober ones.

Yes! Thin Lizzy on the steps of the Opera House in 1978 was my first gig! So exciting! Sports and Jon English also played (and Wha-Koo!). Then a couple of months later Dragon + Angels + Split Enz + Kevin Borich Express + Sports at Victoria Park. So good.

Were there any local bands you liked when you were in High School? Or bands from your area who became famous?

Not famous exactly, but Richard Jackimyszyn was in our year at school and was playing in pubs when we were in Year 10. He joined Lime Spiders pretty soon after that. That seemed pretty exotic but then I started playing in pubs with The Flies when I was in Year 11.

Did you embrace ‘punk’ when it came along?

More or less, but it took a year or so to filter down. I was in a one-off band that did a set of punk songs at the school fete when I was 13. The Sex Pistols and Ramones just seemed like great rock and roll, not too different from Kiss or something that I’d already liked. I remember the Stiff flexidisc that came with RAM magazine in early 1978, with tracks by Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and The Damned. I remember hearing Midnight Oil probably later that year and thinking it was great. Also Devo. “Punk” had a different and pretty vague meaning back then. I liked anything that was new sounding or challenging. I read a review of The Residents’ Not Available in RAM in 1979 and hunted down a record of theirs. Not punk but kind of associated in those days – punk/new wave.

What was your first live show you played?

I hadn’t thought about it for ages, but probably that “punk” show at the school fete. And at the 1979 school fete I had a band called Sneak Attack, just for one show, and we even did a couple of originals. With Jess Ciampa on bass and Peter Kelly on drums. The first thing out of school was my first show with The Flies, which was at Fairfield Civic Centre on 4 September 1980. I remember the date because I just met the guys the day before for a rehearsal! And Pete Marley is my closest collaborator to this day, in The Nature Strip.

Where would you buy your instruments from? What was your first guitar?

My first electric guitar was a white Strat copy. I can’t remember the brand. I can picture a logo with a stylised big letter A in lower case maybe. Then I had an Ibanez copy of a Gibson 6L6. Strangely the first guitar I had as a teenager that I really liked was a Vantage.

            There was a music store in Fairfield. I can’t remember its name. But we used to go there after school all the time.

Where did you rehearse in your early bands?

For years we rehearsed in the band room at my school – even for a few years after I finished high school. Then it was a studio up a steep flight of stairs on the outside of the building at Petersham. Music Box. No lift!

One day, I assume, you made the move to the inner city of Sydney to do your music. Where was your first share house and what was the music on the stereo (or tape player) the household agreed on?

My first sharehouse was also in Petersham with Bill Gibson, and we were into The Church, Died Pretty, all the Paisley Underground stuff from L.A. (The Bangles, Rain Parade, The Three O’Clock), and then the SST stuff – Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Husker Du . . . but also Sixties garage and The Beatles and The Doors and on and on.

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