Australian Rock Icon, guitarist, John (Jock) Paull, has been honoured with a genus of North American Snake named in his honour.
Paull, was one of the masked singers in the 90’s Melbourne band TISM.
He also performed numerous services to wildlife conservation in Australia, for which he is not as well known.
Paull has since died of lung cancer (9 April 2008) and is survived by his long-time girlfriend and now (2021) adult child.
Both also live in Melbourne’s south-east.
TISM (an acronym of the phrase This Is Serious Mum) were a seven-piece anonymous alternative rock band from Melbourne, Australia which amassed an enormous cult following.
They always appeared with heads covered or wearing masks, so that their true identity would not be revealed.
The group was formed on 30 December 1982 by vocalist/drummer Humphrey B. Flaubert, bassist/vocalist Jock Cheese and keyboardist/vocalist Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun.
Their third album, Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, reached the Australian national top 10 in 1995 and still generates a huge playlist audience via online platforms.
The genus of snake named in honour of Paull, Jockpaullus Hoser, 2012, is a divergent genus, associated with Rhadinaea Cope, 1863.
As part of a global audit of the world’s snakes at the genus level, leading reptile expert, taxonomist and scientist Raymond Hoser identified this previously unnamed genus of snakes for the first time in the early 2000’s.
However, Hoser, better known as the Snakeman, who also runs the Reptile Party business in Melbourne was so busy it took him nearly a decade to publish his big paper that named the genus in honour of Paull.
Raymond Hoser, has discovered and named more species and genera of snake than anyone else alive.
He also named the genus Brucerogersus Hoser, 2012 in honour of Bruce Rogers, one of Australia’s leading Didgeridoo makers and players in another major scientific paper published in 2012. Rogers of Kangaroo Ground on the northern edge of Melbourne also died of cancer in 2016. That genus of snakes is a divergent group of North American Garter Snakes.
Raymond Hoser’s live reptiles have featured in a number of well-known music videos of Australian artists. He supplied the large Goanna Lizards used the clip for Great Southern Land, by Icehouse, featuring Iva Davies.
The clip was filmed in a disused quarry at Terrey Hills on the northern edge of Sydney, Australia.
Snakeman's crocodiles regularly appear on TV and music videos, adverts, etc, as does his venomous and non venomous snakes.
BOXBOY (real name, Harrison Richard Wain) a music icon of recent years, has used Snakeman Raymond Hoser's snakes a number of times when making his video clips in Melbourne, Victoria and some of this material can be found on Instagram.
