I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago

Exploring the life, music, & artistic output of Stuart Gray (AKA Stu Spasm), the notorious underground rocker who created the most psychotronic group to ever emerge from Australia – the legendary Lubricated Goat. Shot over 20 years, featuring archival footage, photos, interviews, Gray’s sculptures and paintings, live performance footage including Gray’s current band, The Art Gray Noizz Quintet.
The odyssey of a compulsively creative iconoclast who finds his artistic redemption outside the realm of commercial success.

"An amazing personal journey -- 20 years in the making -- with one of noise rock/grunge's most unjustly unsung visionaries.” -Mark Prindle

  • Jason Axel Summers
    Director
    Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story
  • Jason Axel Summers
    Producer
    Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story
  • Kate Fix
    Producer
    Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story
  • Stuart Gray
    Key Cast
    Lubricated Goat, The Beasts of Bourbon, Salamander Jim, The Art Gray Noizz Quintet
  • Mark Arm
    Key Cast
    Mudhoney, Bloodloss, The Monkeywrench, 1991: The Year Punk Broke, Hype!, I'm Now: The Story of Mudhoney, The Color of Noise
  • Tex Perkins
    Key Cast
    The Beasts of Bourbon, The Cruel Sea, Thug, James Baker Experience, The Butcher Shop, Salamander Jim
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Genres:
    Documentary, Music Documentary, Portrait
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 40 minutes 52 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, 16mm, Super 8
  • Aspect Ratio:
    17:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Jason Axel Summers

Jason Axel Summers is a seasoned storyteller and visual visionary with a career spanning over 25 years in motion pictures. Summers established himself in the punk rock music scene of the 1980’s and 90’s as a performer, photographer and music video director for bands including The Squirrel Nut Zippers and the Archers of Loaf. During his years immersed in documentary and feature filmmaking in New York, Summers was a cameraperson for renowned directors Errol Morris and Barbara Koppel. Summers, with his wife and filmmaking partner Kate Fix, served as camerapeople on the 2002 Academy Award winning short film THOTH, as well as producing, directing, and shooting their own punk rock love story, the feature length documentary, UNKNOWN PASSAGE: THE DEAD MOON STORY. A lifelong fascination with outsider stories and unconventional lives continues to inform and inspire Summers in his documentary and creative work.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

While DJing at a college radio station in the early 1990’s I discovered the strange and wonderful albums of the band Lubricated Goat. I found them perplexing but in those pre-internet times, I could find no information about Stu Spasm or Lubricated Goat, and so my imagination ran wild. Cut to the late 1990’s and I found myself living on the Lower East Side of NYC. On a visit to the notorious Mars Bar and it’s weathered wooden bar I saw the deeply carved words LUBRICATED GOAT, in the distinctive gothic font of the band’s infamous first album “Plays The Devil’s Music”. I realized that Stu Spasm must be in NYC. Days later I found a cheaply copied show poster advertising a Stu Spasm cabaret show just a few doors from my apartment. It was there that I became immersed in the wild world of Stuart Gray and his raucous personality with many sides, altogether thoughtful, poignant, hilarious and off kilter.