Magic Umbrella comes with another fine documentary feature to help fill in the blanks for me regarding Stu Spasm and Lubricated Goat and his 23 other known bands. Director Jason Summers and producer Kate Fix not only present Stu’s story in his own words and through his music and artworks, but they lay out an incredibly complex through-line and musical family tree from the nether regions of the wilder side of the Australian rock scene, to the Space Needle and dope needles of the ’90s  *grunge* scene. (As it turns out, ’twas an Aussie band, Salamander Jim, that may have  been the first to earn the “grunge” moniker, back in 1983.) I had gotten back to the PNW in the early ’90s but somehow missed the entire part of the Adelaide scene cross-pollinating Seattle from way down yonder in Portland up until now.  

The highlights on the Down Under side include “Australia’s First Nude TV Rock Band”  on the Blah Blah Blah variety show in 1988, wherein a naked Lubricated Goat  performed their song “In the Raw.” Stu recalls, “It was primal, but not cock rock,” in his usual dry manner. “Not sexy at all — more like medical.”  

Stu is a self-proclaimed autodidact whose life and learning experiences range from a starting point of his father’s being *stuck* mentally in World War Two, to which he constantly compared young Stu’s “easy” life. Dad is a rigorously trained jazz standup bassist, and it would seem his son picked up a great deal of intricate musical knowledge by osmosis. Stu also has a strong affinity for classic occultism and 20th-century avant-garde and surrealist movements. His sculptures are bona fide outsider art in which he creates likenesses of musicians, artists, family, friends (including the images of both the director and the producer of the film), terrorists, and himself. 

I have watched “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago” twice now, and there’s still more I  want to go back and study, as far as the history and influences exchanged so well, back in a time where you had to do it in the real world, where nothing was instantaneous, but  

also had to be grown from scratch. Little weird scenes of 30 or 40 people, in little  fucked-up towns well off the beaten path on a continent halfway around the world — or in what was once the far reaches of the little-known Pacific Northwest — got hold of holy grail records risen from the ruins of the Bowery or the silver lamé swagger of the psychobilly squall … Those days of piratical spelunking for the next song, the next gig,  the next session – all that was done *by hand,* and out of sheer fucking determination.  There is something essentially pure to me, still, about those days of discovery and obsession and, yes, addiction in so many cases. The narrative arc of Stuart Gray’s life and career (I imagine him scoffing at the latter word) flows from WWII Britain to the white migration to Australia, from Aleister Crowley to Alfred Jarry, Slade to the Butthole  Surfers. And all in an analog world, baby. A vision cobbled together by hand, from scratch, like Stu’s sculptures.  

Best part is that it’s a happily-ever-after story. Stuart Gray has lived a monumentally prolific life, and this film from Magic Umbrella honors his legacy as the man sets the record straight for himself. The amazing and exhaustive credits roll serves as a suitable syllabus of the diverse influences and fellow creators that have fed his visions, and is also a testament to the integrity of the filmmakers, and to the attention to detail that is a feature of Jason Summers and Kate Fix’s films. The title song is a lovely crooner with a special touch. I’ll leave it for you to see for yourself. Stu’s got one helluva pretty singing voice, as it turns out. And he’s got one helluva story. So very glad he’s lived to tell.