As they mark their 500th show, The Superfluity Three – Casey Bennetto, Clem Bastow and Christos Tsiolkas share the history and soul of their Tuesday nights – eventually taking us all the way back to the beginning…

Casey Bennetto

In late 2009, RRR then-head-honcho Mick James (now busy repositioning former RRR staff for the coming revolutionary takeover of the ABC), asked if I'd be interested in doing a summer fill. Having lived in inner-city Melbourne all my adult life, I saw RRR as a model of the kind of intelligent, countercultural confidence and defiance I aspired to. Aspire to. Will never achieve. Whatever. Don't care. Never really wanted it. WHY ISN'T MY INDIFFERENCE SEXY YET? IT'S BEEN AGES.

I was kinda familiar with the scene; in 2001 my Centrelink work-for-the-dole posting was in audio production and dogsbody work at PBS, which I suspect was an innovative government attempt to get people to look for employment, by showing them how much fun they could have playing music and not getting paid.

I didn't know what the hell this summer fill show could be, other than a great opportunity to hang out with my partner Catherine's old school friend – the lovely Christos Tsiolkas. Christos' passionate and prodigious love of music is one of the planet's great renewable resources. I still don't know anyone who listens to more of it, new and old, and thinks and feels more deeply about it. So we called the show Indulgence at first, then Superfluity, and we went on air and, y'know, played stuff. And somewhere along the way, we started trying to follow the thread of the previous song played, just for fun.

Later, in 2010, Mick asked me if I wanted to pitch an actual show for the 2011 grid. He didn't say, 'with Christos of course', because he is a courtly and polite soul and understands the fragile nature of ego. But we both knew what the implicit deal was. And right about the same time, the brilliant Scott ‘Scod’ Edgar raised the idea of maybe doing something together on the radio? So it seemed like the most fun would be for the three of us to work together – and yes, I know what you're thinking, but you've gotta remember this was 2010 and diversity hadn't been invented yet.

So Scod kicked off show #1 with... let's see… it was Aretha from Live At Fillmore West, a recording we've returned to many times over the years. Christos followed with Solomon Burke and I followed with Dinah Washington, and on it went. That first show featured ‘God Only Knows’, Joni's ‘River’ and Van's ‘Astral Weeks’ amongst others, so we were clearly starting as we meant to continue.

For the most part, we were having too much fun just chatting amongst ourselves. Once Julz Hay started paneling, we could leave all the technical stuff to her and just nerd out on music. So we did. (When the follow-up presenter for show #4 didn't appear, we just kept going through to midnight – mind you, that last hour was a bit ragged.)

That's not to say we didn't have some great guests. Every guest seemed to have a similar response – trepidation at first, then the realisation that the show is really just a freeform ramble through the things we love about music, and there are no ‘wrong answers’ per se. Some of them just naturally took to the format and brought different perspectives, off-ramps and colours from the get-go… which brings us to March 2015, and show #194…

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Clem Bastow

Having returned to Melbourne about a year prior, after living in Los Angeles for two years, I was processing my experience via the storied, therapeutic tradition of stand-up comedy. My Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, Escape From L.A, featured whackjob sound design by ‘DJ Slig’ – a gas-mask-wearing squid person (aka my brother, Atticus), and due to having actually engaged the services of a producer this time around, I was invited to do a guest slot on Superfluity.

This wasn’t my first time at the RRR rodeo. After a year or so of graveyards and summer fills, Jess McGuire and I presented our deranged pop extravaganza I’d Rather Jack for two years in the Wednesday midnight-2am slot (typically receiving at least three enraged phone calls every show). After that, I moved to Drive, with Transference on Tuesday arvos until 2011.

I loved Transference but my habit of working ever more esoteric (by drivetime standards) tunes into the playlists – Bert and Ernie ‘Dance Myself To Sleep’; golden era Disney soundtracks; Holst! – coupled with my Autistic tendency to repeat favourite tunes ('Hello, RRR, Clem speaking.' 'IS THAT BLACK SABBATH’S FUCKING ‘SUPERNAUT’ AGAIN?!'), had become, shall we say, mildly problematic. Occasionally, Mick would have a gentle word with me about my predilection for so-called ‘golden oldies’. I would argue that I was recontextualising, say, Toto’s ‘Hold The Line’ for a new generation of ears who could listen without prejudice, not always successfully. Superfluity, then, was a dream show, and I remember leaving our guest stint feeling sad that I’d never be able to do it again.

Until, that is, Christos went away on one of his international man of mystery tours and Scod and Casey needed someone to fill the empty seat. I said yes so quickly that scientists are still investigating how I managed to tear the space-time continuum via telephone. The rest, as the treasured saying goes, is the past five years of my Tuesday evenings. There is simply nothing like doing Superfluity with the guys, and I am proud to call Casey and Christos dear friends and collaborators (and Scodman, even though I do miss being able to wail on his love of Billy Joel and the fact that, believe it or not, he once visited New York). I learn something new every week from Casey’s superhuman knowledge of music: how to write it, how to play it, and how to understand it. As someone who enjoys singing a great deal but might as well be trying to decode Enigma when I look at a stave, Casey is simply one of the greatest teachers. I harbour an increasingly vain hope that one day he might do a musical and allow me to grovel my way into a small role. As for Christos, his aforementioned love of and hunger for music is absolutely aspirational and he is a peer-reviewed rebuke to that study about people no longer listening to new music past the age of 33. I hope he wouldn’t mind me saying it, but it is also very special to spend Tuesday evenings with someone I consider a queer mentor (I can’t call him a queer elder, because after all, he doesn’t look a day over 34).

Christos and I always fight over the ‘wall seat’ in the studio, but it doesn’t really matter, because chances are – facilitated by a throw from Casey’s deep love of soul, R&B and rap – one of us is going to play a 12” house remix and open the disco/techno/house archives to turn hour-two of Superfluity into a school-night party…

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Christos Tsiolkas

Tuesday mornings and Tuesday evenings are often the highlights of my week: the mornings because I spend it in front of the stereo listening to records and CDs, old and new, and wondering what I should bring into Superfluity that night; and the evenings because I spend it with two of the loveliest people on the planet.

Clem is right, Casey is a teacher, and being part of Superfluity with him is as important an education as any that I received at school or uni or through my travels in life. I do love music, but I have absolutely no talent for it. I don’t play an instrument and my singing voice is only bearable at 3am at a karaoke bar when I’m screaming my heart out to ‘Torn’. Casey has made me listen to music in new ways, has reminded me that it has a language and, like all languages, it has a grammar and a history. That education has been invaluable.

I fell in love with Clem before I knew her, listening to I’d Rather Jack. That show made me deliriously happy, not knowing what was going to be played next, and being reminded that the most useless term in all of criticism is ‘the guilty pleasure’. If a track moves you, makes you jump up off the sofa and start dancing, if it makes you want to belt it out aloud, then there is no reason for guilt. When Casey first came to me with the idea of doing a summer fill on RRR, he said, 'Christos, we are NOT going to be too-cool-for-school, we are going to play what we like'. The truth is, that it is easier said than done. Clem’s one of the most courageous and truly independent thinking people I know. She’s been my teacher as well.

Every week our show starts with a kick-off track. Sometimes there’s an essay. Sometimes it’s just one line ('I love this song because…'). The kick-offs set us on the path that we follow every Tuesday on Superfluity. They constantly surprise us. I love the little tremor of fear I get when the kick-off is announced and I wonder if the dial on the spinning wheel is going to fall on my name, and if so, whether there is anything on the records or CDs I’ve brought in, or the mix-CD I’ve made for the week, that makes for an appropriate connection and link. Everyone who has sent us a kick-off suggestion is a Friend of Superfluity. Forever. As is the mighty Scod Edgar (who was also a teacher). As is the brilliant Julz Hay (I hope the ABC know how bloody lucky they are to have you!). As has been every guest on the show. Every week I hear something I haven’t heard before. Or even if I know the music, by the connections Clem or Casey or a guest makes, through their link, I hear it anew.

Mum has a story she tells about me. Growing up, we had a stereo cabinet, with the turntable in the middle, and two deep drawers on either side, for LPs and 45s. She’d be playing music – Poly Panou, Stelios Kazantzidis or Elvis Presley – and I would climb onto the unit, crawl into one of the drawers, and curl up while listening to the music. She says I was always happiest when music was playing. I think that every Tuesday night, I’m climbing back into that small, intimate space. I am with my friends, I’m listening to music, and I am happy.

This article originally appeared in the Radiothon 2022 edition of The Trip. The final episode of Superfluity will go to air on Tuesday 18 November, 8-10pm. Be sure to tune in for one last round of free association radio!