Growing up in the outer suburb of Springvale  in the early 1970's Stuart Grant, Denise Rosenberg, Frank Lovece and David Light were buddies at Springvale High School and shared a love of groups like Velvet Underground, MC5, The Fugs, 13th Floor Elevators and the Godz. Later they became housemates and formed a band, the Moths which soon morphed into the Primitive Calculators

The band were instrumental in organising a series of gigs named "Little Band nights", where hastily formed bands would play for 15 minutes each; this led to the recording of a compilation EP. 

Interviewed by Patrick Emery  just before a Calculators show at the Toff In Town in December 2013 Stuart said that "In the '60's people believed that there was love and peace and that the world was going to change, we inherited the  the failure of that optimism. So we just thought that everything was fucked."

In 2013  The World Is Fucked surfaced as the Primitive Calculator's proper debut, following mostly live recordings and collections of singles, EPs, and other collected scraps from their shambling early days. It was called The World is Fucked because they stated that's what we believe. The world's not any better now – in fact, it's worse. I can remember when the hippopotamus and rhinoceros weren't endangered species. I can remember when there was opposition, and when Chicago School economics wasn't a naturalised reality of life. And the anger in our music is because it doesn't need to be like that – and we don't need to be this nasty society.

Notwithstanding his regular invective, Grant concedes the modern world isn't completely bad, and he  identifies “drinking tea, drinking coffee, reading books, being of use in other people's lives” as the enjoyable aspects of his contemporary environment.

While Grant affirms the Primitive Calculators' commitment to its “absolute, unfailing desire to tell an absolute, dark nihilistic story”, the latest Primitive Calculators record is confronting in a different sense. “It's called On Drugs,  a psychedelic-space-folk record about taking hallucinogenic drugs.” 

While The Primitive Calculators  are probably Stuart's most notorious music combo , in 2014 the tv show ABC Rage called them "Australia's most influential band that you've never heard of". We'll also hear about some of the other  groups he's been in, playing grunge, soul, funk, disco & Hip-Hop styles to stay on stage, play in recording studios and help pay the rent.

Listen to Stuart Grant with Paul Elliott on And This One's Introduced By... on Planet X here on 3CR.

More info on the punk journey website www.punkjourney.com/primitive-calculators.php