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H Block 101.
 Rick Munro laughs when I ask whether nostalgia played a part in his band's new retrospective CD 'The H Block 101 Tapes 1996-99'. "Well, there was maybe a little bit of that," he replies. "That and a new relationship with Graham [Nixon] and Resist Records, which is good. We'd always had thought that we'd whack [the old stuff] together, add a few wacky b-sides or whatever and put it out there for people that were getting into the band in the last couple of years and maybe didn't even know we'd put out those CDs."
Yes, Melbourne's old school punk stalwarts are now label mates with the likes of I Killed The Prom Queen and Parkway Drive on Australia's premier hardcore label. It might appear an incongruous match at first, but Munro explains that it all happened very naturally. "The band basically decided to go back to the DIY concept that we had before [when they were independent] and just look for distribution. Then Graham wrote us an email out of the blue saying 'do you have a copy of the 'No Room For Apathy' EP because I've lost mine,' and Karl [Mautner, vocals] went 'ah, no, it's no longer in print, actually we're trying to find somebody to reissue it at the moment so it should be back in the shops pretty soon,' to which Graham replied 'what do you mean, you need somebody to put it out?'" he laughs. "So that was just fantastic. We had no idea that he was a bit of a fan so that was very handy for us."
It's a feather in any band's cap to be given the nod by one as well respected as Mr Nixon.
"Absolutely!" Munro declares. "And from what I can gather about Graham he's a very eclectic music lover. Most people would assume that he just deals in hardcore and hardcore only, which was interesting. It's not like [Resist]'s not a label that we look at, or that we haven't got lots of stuff from, but we thought 'oh, would a label like that really like us?' But as it turns out he's a fan and we're more than happy and proud to be with them."
And despite preconceptions, H-Block and Resist are nowhere near as odd a match as putting H-Block's old-school punk on a multinational major record label like, say, Universal. "That was a very odd match," he chuckles, emphasising that the band worked with some very supportive people over the two EPs and album with the label. "There was an A&R guy there who really liked us and I think that was the sole reason we got signed - I daresay we were his band that he was allowed to have, but it was never really going to be a happy marriage. Like any band that has the opportunity to sign with a major we thought 'hey, at least it'll put us in the general public's attention,' and it did to an extent: they've got buddies at radio and everywhere. But it did get increasingly uncomfortable, and I think we were as bad for them as they were for us."
Enough with the past: let's look to the future. "We're going to do two EPs coming out from the forthcoming record -Graham was really cool to do this one, but we're definitely hoping that the next two releases come out through him as well, if ['The H Block 101 Tapes 1996-99] does well, and we're going out and touring it."
The show also features the premier screening of the US skating documentary 'Who Cares?: the Wayne Peters Story', although Munro's a little sketchy on the exact details. "It's a doco which I assume has been made about him: we played with Wayne's band when they last came out here. And we know some of the guys from Kwala and Black Label Skateboards, and we thought it would make kind of a different night: a film and a band, as opposed to just five bands as always. They might be running it first, so it might be a get-there-early type of thing."
That said, Munro's not one for the street surfing himself. "Not at all!" he laughs. "We kind of steered clear of that whole So-Cal movement, I think."
Andrew P Street
 | H-Block 101 play an all-ages show at the Enigma Bar on Sat 16 July with The Backseat Romeos and The Jerks, as well as the SA premiere screening of 'Who Cares?: the Wayne Peters Story'. Doors open 7.30pm. |
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