Flugelbinder

 

ORIGINS: Parramatta, NSW

GENRE: Punk

YEARS ACTIVE: 1996-1997

 

MEMBERS:

• Kerry Foulke - Guitar
• Adam Alexander - Guitar
• Vanessa Smith - Bass
• Stuart Poe - Drums

RELEASES:

• Fish Don't People (1996) - Download Here.
• 1. Melancholy Lullaby
• 2. Door to Your Salvation
• 3. Rejection
• 4. Hale and a Half
• 5. Vote of Discontent
• 6. Be the Machine
• 7. Hatred is Innocence
• 8. Hippycrites
• 9. Pressgang
• 10. Redneck Lovesong
• 11. Last Call

• Self-Titled (1997)
• 1. Game Plan
• 2. Warm Beer
• 3. The Rot
• 4. Rock Star
• 5. So What?
• 6. Shit List
• 7. Die Frucht

SUMMARY: A punk band in the Parramatta/Blacktown scene, Flugelbinder played with bands like Spilt Milk, Speckled Foam, Stalin's Organ, etc. The band released two CDs and eventually broke up a couple of years after forming.

 

SHOWS: 

• No shows documented yet. Let me know if you have records of any!

ORAL HISTORY:

KERRY: I was good mates with Adam in high school - we studied HSC music together and were constantly jamming. He introduced me to bands like NOFX, Bad Religion, Pennywise, Propaghandi, etc., and I got obsessed with them. After we left school, Adam wanted to start an originals band and we started writing together. He was mates with Stuart and had played with him before in another band in high school, Limited Access. Stu was an awesome drummer so he was an obvious choice. Adam met Vanessa at uni - I think she was a visual arts student and photographer. She was more of a metal chick but still got into the punk stuff. She didn't play an instrument at the time but we all hit it off and Adam's always been an exceptional music teacher so rather than search for a bassist who might end up being a fuckwit, Adam took it upon himself to teach her to play. She was the creative type so she picked it up quickly, haha. 

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

ADAM: Everyone in my family is a musician so it's always been around me and part of my daily life so I always played music but I think I found my passion when I first listened to Bad Religion. I started playing in bands pretty early... my first band was Limited Access, I played with them from Year 6 to Year 10. I left school after Year 10 to go work but I hated it and decided to go back and do Year 11 and 12 at a new school. That's when I met Kerry and we started playing together immediately. Stuart was the drummer from my first band and Vanessa was a friend that I went to university with but we were all friends first and had similar taste and it was all pretty organic how it started. 

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

VANESSA: I've always loved live music - been a gig pig from a young age. I was about 19, sitting down at the lunch/bar uni area. I was an Art student, and my friend Adam was a Music student at the same uni. One day he says, "Hey, we're putting a band together and need a bass player... wanna play bass?" I don't remember it taking me long at all to reply - "Sure!" And it went from there.

Vanessa Smith (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: First gig we did was a 21st party. We threw about thirty covers at Vanessa and gave her, like, a month to learn how to play the bass from scratch and get the songs down. In retrospect, a dick move.

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

VANESSA: We played a 21st party in Pittown Hills shire. It was amazing! I was so nervous. I swear my feet didn't move, I swayed from side to side and was concentrating so hard on all my parts. Another band, Rinkle, played as well. The party went off! The guitarist/singer from Rinkle is now my husband. We were all part of a broader big crew of Hills District/Parramatta friends. Me and a group of friends used to go to the Cowshed in Wenty to see bands play - bands like Spilt Milk, and a lot of metal bands.

Vanessa Smith (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 20256

ADAM: We played a bunch of parties before we we started playing pubs. 

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: We spent weeks trying to come up with a name. All the ideas sucked. I remember sitting at the Bull and Bush in Baulkham Hills once night and I think it was Vanessa who put Flugelbinder forward. It's from the movie Cocktail when Tom Cruise and Elizabeth Shue are talking about seemingly inconsequential inventions that ended up making their creator's millions. I believe flugelbinder was the name they jokingly gave to the little bit of plastic that wraps around the end of your shoelace to stop it from fraying and slipping through the eyelet. From what I remember, none of us really like the name, but it was the only one that none of us hated either, so it just stuck. 

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: I think we wrote and recorded a full length album before we even played any proper shows, haha. We did it with Ian Pritchett at Noisegate Studios in Castle Hill. Stylistically, it was all over the place. It ranged from 90-second pop-punk tracks to eight-and-a-half minute stoner jams. We even threw in a tongue-in-cheek country song. That was a Jimmy Buffet song... to this day, I've neve heard the original, but I saw the lyrics and chord chart in one of my teachers' notebooks once and thought it was hilarious. All in all we had no idea what we were doing but it was my first studio experience and it was so goddamn fun.  

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

ADAM: There were lots of laughs recording but it was mostly the things that go along with recording that I remember - taking pictures, running around the streets causing a ruckus. There's a picture of us in a bathtub with the drummer passed out on the toilet with his underwear around his ankles. Fun times. 

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: We were just a young punk trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. We did a lot of gigs with Spilt Milk and always had a blast with them. We were all from Western Sydney and got on great with those guys. We also played with bands like The Last Hemeroids and Stalin's Organ, and at at places like the Iron Duke - Vanessa and I ended up working there - and the Annandale, Feedback in Newtown, and a lot more. We also did a lot of shows at the Wentworthville Hotel, which was a real dive, but we could always pull a crowd there because there wasn't much else to see or do in Western Sydney. We used to do theme nights where everyone would dress up. They were the best! We did a '70s night, Cowboys and Indians, Animals, a Halloween party. So many good memories. I remember Marty from Spilt Milk doing a set in a full gorilla suit once at the Wenty Hotel. It was 40+ degrees under those lights. He nearly passed out. 

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

VANESSA: We did lots of themed gigs at Wenty Hotel - cowboys and cowgirls was awesome! I was stoked to play an Annandale set, albeit on a Wednesday, it was the best shared-stage where I'd seen so many faves back in the day. 

Vanessa Smith (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 20256

ADAM: There were heaps of good times and I can't really point to a specific show as standing out - I just remember moments. I remember one time playing at Wentworthville and the band before us - their bassplayer liked to get naked and he was running up and down the bar butt-naked. That was pretty funny.

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: We did a shorter EP after we'd been gigging for a while. It was a lot better than the album but apparently I forgot how to write a chorus after that first CD so it's kind of... niche, haha. There's a song on it called 'Hippiecrites', which I'm pretty conflicted about. It's reasonably well-written but it hasn't aged well. I was aggressively apolitical (even anti-political) at the time. I was at uni, and the song was a reaction against what I saw as a lot of performative political expression from the people around me. I wasn't necessarily opposed to their views. To me though, that crowd at the uni bar just seemed like they were coming from a place of privilege and their opinions lacked any real substance. So the song was my attempt at taking that specific group of people to task for their hypocrisy. In my mind at the time, there were true progressives out there, and while I didn't count myself as one of them either, I passed judgement on these other kids for falling short of the standard set by 'true activists'. I actually think some of the lyrics were pretty clever but when you remove them from their original context and listen through the lens of today's political climate, they sound like the impotent ramblings of a right-wing troll. For the record, that's not what I was going for. So it's an okay song written by a ninteen-year-old kid with more time on his hands than brains, and I'm glad hardly anyone ever heard it!

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

ADAM: By the time we recorded the EP the material was growing and getting better. My main memory of the band though is the solid friendships that I will always have with the others and a lot of crazy times. Road trips with bands like Spilt Milk. Lots of beer. 

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

KERRY: We were young, dumb, and loved a party. After about two years, I think we were all realised we were going in different directions - both musically and personally. 

Kerry Foulke (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

ADAM: The band finishing was mostly my fault. I was originally all about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll but after a while I was mostly just into the drugs part and things fell apart from there.  

Adam Alexander (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2025

VANESSA: Looking back the thing I love most about Flugelbinder was the time we all spent together - hanging out, jamming, gigging. It was awesome being part of something like our own little family. It brought friends together to come and see us play.

Vanessa Smith (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 20256

RELATED BANDS: Limited Access, The Dark Element, Hippycrits, MM9, Mz Ann Thropik, Switchkicker, Blackbreaks