Noise Levels & The Search For Tutti Parze
NSW researcher and scene archivist Luke dives into the chaotic legacy of anarcho-punk band Tutti Parze and the underground world that surrounded them.
Editor’s Note:
Noise Levels has become one of the most fascinating archives preserving forgotten NSW punk and heavy music history.
What began as a passion project collecting flyers, oral histories and recordings evolved into a deep dive into the chaotic world of Sydney anarcho-punk outfit Tutti Parze.
Created by Luke Bartolo, Noise Levels explores underground Australian music culture through zines, podcasts, flyers, interviews and scene research, preserving bands, spaces and stories that have largely disappeared from the internet and physical circulation.
This guest feature documents that search.
Guest Feature by Luke Bartolo of Noise Levels
December 1990 Show Poster
Hi, my name is Luke and I am a History teacher and band guy.
In 2024 I began a multi-platform online project called Noise Levels, an initiative that encompasses two social media networks, a podcast, a series of zines, and an online archive that presents the histories of NSW-based bands from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s.
When I started Noise Levels it began as a way to connect with other people who'd been in bands. It was also created to resurrect lost information that had vanished from the internet as now defunct bands from the past had faded from our collective memory. I mean, it also certainly didn’t help that 50 million songs from ‘local’ bands worldwide had been deleted by MySpace in 2018. A lot of stuff had just, well, disappeared.
It started small. I collected some oral histories from punk and metal musicians and began reconstructing the histories of their bands. And then something happened. I never imagined the project would attract the attention of so many people. Things began to snowball, and as I collected flyers, photos, music, and interviewed hundreds of musicians, this image of a forgotten scene began to materialise before me. I had to limit myself to a specific location, NSW, otherwise I would have been overwhelmed by the material I was collecting.
A lot of what I was looking at began to point towards one mysterious name on a collection of eye-catching flyers from 1989, 1990, and 1991... Tutti Parze.
I'd never heard of this band. I think it's fair to say that, unless you were there at that very specific time, most people would not have heard of them. As I looked at photos of the band I recognisedBilly Hughes (RIP), Tutti Parze’s guitarist. I am a huge fan of two of his later bands - Toe to Toeand Downtime.
In addition to Billy’s presence, I was drawn to the strange band name. Tutti Parze. As I began digging I saw glimpses of a subterranean world of squatting, police brutality, activism, and anarchic rabble-rousing. Those who'd seen them play live - they never forgot them.
How do we bring something like this back to life? I've spent the last two years collecting sources and testimony to substantiate a timeline for Tutti Parze, two years grappling with conflicting perspectives and tracking down band members across the world, two years trying to cut to the heart of a burning question:
What is it about this band that demands our remembrance?
Vocalist and central band member Willie, speaking from his remote rice farm near the Thai-Laos border, sums it up best, "Good punk rock is not created surrounded by marshmallows, flowers, and fucking unicorns. It comes from fucking tragedy, mate, and class war. With Rapey-Bone-Spurs as President in America I expect a lot of good fucking punk to happen now. Bad shit's gonna happen and bad shit makes good punk rock."
But let’s backtrack.
In 2024 I was interviewing another band, a mid-90s Sydney grind outfit called Noisam, and their members pointed me towards someone they referred to as ‘Spacey’. She’d been their manager and they said she would know stuff about earlier bands that I’d be interested in.
Spacey had been a part of Tutti Parze and she graciously sent me a CD filled with photographs and music from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Sydney anarcho-punk scene. It was an absolute treasure trove, a real time capsule of the era – images of punx picnics in Sydney Park where a huge mass of colourfully mohawked and dreadlocked teens had gathered in the shadow of the old brick works, and music and flyers from obscure music collectives with amazing names that evoked this time and place (Mahatma Propagandhi, I Am Bacteria I Am Filth, Deviant Kickback, Subversive Intent,Tofu Terror…just to name a few).
Approximately one year's worth of On The Street, a street press publication from the '80s and early '90s
I did my background research. I scoured zines for information… found historical interviews with members of Tutti Parze and reviews, notes, references that all let me build a bigger picture of who this band was. I drove to Wollongong to pick up a crate of zines (thanks Robbo and Jay!) and I took a trip to the state library to dive into the archives (this was less fruitful… I spent three hours combing through two years’ worth of issues of the street press publication On The Street and did not find one single reference to Tutti Parze).
As I mentioned, those who had seen the band spoke highly of their energetic performances and the way they would interact with their crowd and community. But the band itself seemed notoriously hard to pin down. There didn’t seem to be a set number of members… even a live CD released by Innercity Uprising in 2018 says that “a lot of people could claim to have been in Tutti Parze” and didn’t have an exact listing of who was in the band. The key members seemed to be lead vocalist Willie, his co-vocalist Donna, guitarist Billy, and drummer Soy. There were three bassplayers and a huge cast of live fill-in performers and additional singers such as Spacey.
I spent several months chatting with Spacey and interviewed her for a podcast I wanted to do about the band. She put me on to the amusingly named ‘Stu Magoo’, another vocalist. Both alluded to the difficulties I might have in finding members to speak to. Some had sadly passed on (Billy and second bassist Spin), some had shed the controversy of their teenaged punk years for more respectable lives, and some had left Australia for new lifestyles abroad.
Once Spacey put me in touch with Willie, who had long since disappeared into the South East Asian jungle highlands, I started to get a more concrete vision of the band.
Donna
Born out of the violent clashes between Melbourne’s squatting milieu and the heavy-handed policing culture of the ‘80s Yarra, Willie had escaped to Sydney to create a new anarchist punk band, mainly based in a string of squats in Sydney (and sometimes Mullumbimby). The activism and political passion that fuelled them seemed to be the primary objective - Tutti Parze was more a force of a nature than a band overly concerned with releasing recorded music.
The band would pass out joints to their audience and feed them vegan food while inciting anti-authoritarian sentiment. Butcher shops would get their windows smashed in up and down King Street in Newtown. In one now-infamous showdown between the police and the band, three members of Tutti Parze neutralised a police raid on the Jellyheads Warehouse (an anarchist community space in Sydney) by holding a police radio and helmet to ransom. The police agreed to release their freshly-arrested prisoners and slunk away to avoid embarrassment.
Tutti Parze was a band of ideals but it was also a band that would be torn apart by drugs and external pressures. The councils and police and local skinheads all pushed down on this band who had famously encouraged their followers to ‘Bite back’.
In 1992, exhausted and depleted, the band evaporated. There was no dramatic final show, it was just done.
1990 Randwick Racecourse Show Poster
As I interviewed Spacey, Stu, Willie and, later, Donna and original bassist Nipper, one thing became clear to me. Even though a lot had superficially changed since 1990, there was also a lot that was still the same. Each of these bands members still had deep connections with their communities and the natural world. Willie and Donna now speak quite emphatically about the state of the world we currently live in and the saving grace that punk music has provided for them.
As we sink further and deeper into the Age of Information Chaos it’s started to become clear that the internet is not an easily traversed realm where likeminded individuals can always find each other. Algorithms, social media, and big tech search engines now control what we can see online. In the first half of this 21st century it will be up to mindful content creators to establish islands of sanctuary in the stormy currents of the online world - websites and physical media that have been conscientiously curated by actual humans.
In similar fashion, Noise Levels attempts to reject the magnetic pull of the algorithm by forcing a space for community. A community that is predominantly interested in physical media, the value of the past, and interacting with music by going to live shows or playing in bands.
Thirty years after they succumbed to the winds of change, Tutti Parze still wants us to bite back. There doesn’t need to be an acceptance of the status quo. Music can illuminate and educate and activate the parts of ourselves that glimmer in the dark. The live wire of Tutti Parze, a band I never saw, still holds a current within it for those who want to touch it.
Let it light you up.
The Tutti Parze zine can be purchased from select record stores and distros in QLD, NSW, VIC, and TAS, or directly from Luke.
Noise Levels Website: https://noiselevelsau.blogspot.com/
Noise Levels Facebook Group: Noise Levels - Bands from Sydney and Surrounds (1980s - 2000s)
Noise Levels Bandcamp:https://noiselevels.bandcamp.com/
Noise Levels YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@noiselevels
Noise Levels Instagram: @noise_levels
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Through his Noise Levels archive project, Luke traces the chaotic history of Sydney anarcho-punk outfit Tutti Parze through flyers, oral histories, zines and years of underground scene research.