COSMIC Psychos frontman Ross Knight will forever be known for singing the punkish Australiana classic Nice Day To Go To The Pub.
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A song where he advocates the culinary delights of the Aussie pub staple schnitzel, chips and sauce.
So it would shock Cosmic Psychos fans to learn that Knight no longer rates the humble Australian watering hole. It's a topic the 60-year-old addresses in the rockabilly singalong Too Old To Drink In Pubs on Cosmic Psychos' forthcoming 11th album Mountain Of Piss.
"It's probably just my age," Knight says. "I'm used to pubs being a warm friendly place where you can have a yarn with anyone and have a few social beers and make friends.
"Now you go, have a blue with someone whose pinged off their heads, and you're drinking some beer that tastes like f--king pineapple and mango juice."
There's plenty of issues rattling Knight's cage at the minute. When we catch up with the punk legend he's just come in from his Redesdale farm in central Victoria after a morning of chain-sawing on a "typical Victorian rotten and soggy shitty day."
Knight has spent most of the past year bunkered down on the 300-acre property riding out Victoria's various lockdowns.
He's increasingly become enraged by the continual restrictions placed on live music venues compared to the relative freedom of professional sport, which has seen the AFL and NRL operate with full-capacity stadiums.
It's a disparity Knight and his mate and grunge legend Eddie Vedder, of US rockers Pearl Jam, have discussed in their recent catch-ups.
"It really pisses me off," he says. "I love sport as much as anyone else. I've played sport all my life.
"But how can you put tens of thousands of people sitting right next to each other to watch a game of sport, whether it be rugby or cricket or basketball, but you can't have the same amount of people to watch a gig?
"We played [Melbourne's] The Forum a few months ago, which holds a few thousand people and it's beautiful, but they had to cap that at 600. Yet I'm watching packed trams go past because there's 40,000 at the footy. Work that one out."
Ironically it's the bad behaviour of sports stars which was the inspiration behind several tracks on Mountain Of Piss, including the lead single Sin Bin.
There was certainly no lack of resource material. Whether it's sexual assaults, drink driving, drunken fights or drugs charges, footballers behaving badly has become as cliche as "giving 110 per cent".
"It's weird how people can really behave themselves and clubs can operate really well, but then people just take liberties because they can't handle it and bad behaviour is a norm," Knight says.
"There seemed to be spate of domestic violence and drunken incidents and I'm thinking, fair dinkum if you're getting paid that much money surely you can put a lid on it for a couple of years and behave yourself without embarrassing the game, your club, your teammates and yourself.
"I'm sick of people being put on a pedestal and not setting a really good example. They don't have to be saints, but just be civilised. Things like that piss me off."
Sin Bin even references former NRL player Todd Carney's infamous bubbler incident in 2014, where the Cronulla Sharks half was photographed urinating in his own mouth.
Knight admits explaining "the bubbler" to their foreign audience will be interesting.
"They shake their heads at this part of Australian culture as it is, so it'll be fun explaining that to the Euro heads," he jokes.
Cosmic Psychos' self-deprecating humour and raw punk intensity has long attracted international interest. They were famously adopted by Seattle's grunge scene in the early '90s and boast Vedder and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain among their earliest devotees.
COVID-19 has obviously thwarted any opportunity for Cosmic Psychos to tour overseas in the foreseeable future, so tonight the band will livestream their recent Forum show to promote Mountain Of Piss.
"We've got a lot of good mates in Europe, and we think we're doing it hard, but they've done it really really hard," Knight says. "We were thinking of ways we could do a Psychos show for our friends. Maybe they can stream it in a bar in Europe and make a bit of money for themselves."
Cosmic Psychos' concert is streamed through emusiclive.com from 8pm tonight. Mountain Of Piss is released on July 9.