This Is Serious Mum is a 1985 cassette demo tape by Australian band TISM

TISM

TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...

. Liner notes to their Collected Recordings 1986-1993

Collected Recordings 1986-1993

Collected Recordings 1986-1993 was a 4 CD box set that was released in 1995 by anonymous Australian band TISM. It contained their first four albums, remastered and with bonus content, and a 28 page booklet detailing the history of TISM up to 1995...

boxed set state that only 80 copies of the demo exist. Thirty were given to promoters and media and the other 50 were sold to the public.

Background

Upon formation in late 1982, TISM

TISM

TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...

 made 7 unreleased mini-albums and many more unconnected songs that collectively are known to fans as the "bedroom tapes". 10 songs from these tapes were later re-recorded for the This Is Serious Mum demo.

Bedroom Tapes

Few of the band's actual bedroom recordings have ever been made public. Twenty-five of them make up the tism.bestoff.

Tism.bestoff.

tism.bestoff. is a 2002 "best of" compilation CD by the Australian band TISM. It is also known as best off, tism. best off. or by its full title tism. best off...

bonus disc, which includes original versions of Eckermann Is Very Silly, I Go To Werribee and The Back Upon Which Jezza Jumped. Others are heard on Collected Recordings 1986-1993

Collected Recordings 1986-1993

Collected Recordings 1986-1993 was a 4 CD box set that was released in 1995 by anonymous Australian band TISM. It contained their first four albums, remastered and with bonus content, and a 28 page booklet detailing the history of TISM up to 1995...

, and as tiny snippets scattered throughout 1988's Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance

Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance

Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance is the debut album by the Australian band TISM. Originally released on vinyl as a double album, it was later re-issued as a single compact disc...

.

TISM's Official Account

The band's self published book offers a history of the early "bedroom tapes" (and by extension, demo tape) period:

It's late 1982. Somewhere, for some reason, This Is Serious Mum (TISM) hatches. During the next twelve months TISM aimlessly write over 100 songs, which are immediately discarded due to lack of interest. No-one knew or cared. Those were the days. In retrospect, this was TISM's artistic zenith. The material ranged from the bombastic The Art Income Dialectic to clear, profound statements found in songs like Babies Bite Back and the semi-autobiographical I'm Style Deaf. This is the period where TISM most clearly show their roots: paeans to their idols, Chuck Berry (Johnny To B. Or Not To B. Good) and The Goanna Band (Stop The Franklin's Flow). The final gasp of this creative golden age was the tour de force, Screaming Mongoloid Unbound. A rock opera in four parts, Mongoloid has never been performed live, largely because it isn't very good.

—TISM

TISM

TISM was a seven piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia. The group was formed in 1982 and enjoyed a large underground/independent following. Their third album Machiavelli and the Four Seasons reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995...

, The TISM Guide to Little Aesthetics

Track listing