Aussie, Sick Mate

Well there it was, the Australian Hottest 100 songs of all time. Some surprises, a few unnecessary gripes, mostly from old farts like me who should know better. It is true that most of the songs after say 2000 did nothing much for me and certainly my votes were, as you would expect, with one or exceptions from a time past. A time before drum programs and auto tune, a time when to my ears at least, musicians wanted to sing and play to you, tell you a story. Songs seemed less self-absorbed, more universal, there was less impotent angst and more nuance and ….

See, there I go. The next generation’s music will always confound, disappoint or annoy. So it has been since time began.

So instead I started thinking about who was in my Australian top ten based on Australianness. Artists that through their themes, lyrics or attitude, presentation or influences could only have been Australian. This was harder than you might think as I had to leave out many an Australian musician of quality whose output or at  least hits were splendidly international.

Let me give you some obvious examples of top-notch Australian artists who, I believe, that if you knew no history, you could listen to and have no have real feel for their Australian origin.

Kylie, INXS, The Veronicas, Gotye, Gang of Youths, The Avalanches. All great artists worthy of their appeal but they could be from anywhere. This is not a criticism just a comment of how I see it or rather hear it. Silverchair, Nick Cave can also go on this list.

By the way a song or two about an Australian place or theme is not enough. I want more which is why Icehouse, Kate Cerebrano, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizzard and my beloved You Am I don’t make it either. They may be Australia’s representatives on the world stage when it comes to certain periods or genres but if I told you that Kate was a kiwi or You Am I were from the USA and you knew nothing about them I think you would just nod.

Anyway I never said that there would not be controversy [that’s half the point of lists isn’t it?] so here goes.

My top ten Australianness Australian bands of all time.

Let’s start at the beginning with a little band called Skyhooks. Of course there were Australian bands before Skyhooks. The Bee Gees were already warbling, Daddy Cool, The Seekers, The Easybeats, hell there was Australia’s Elvis - Johnny O Keefe and our version of Gidget the wonderfully named Little Patty. But they didn’t want to be Australian, not really.

But Skyhooks looked different, somehow they were bogan and glam, pop and rock, witty and raunchy, they sang about Balwyn and Carlton and I honestly can’t think of a band since that sounds like them. Great songs, five distinct personalities. It didn’t last long and now days they are wrapped up too much in Countdown memories for their own good but they were more than that. They wanted to be, they were an Australian band. And let me throw this out – No Skyhooks No TISM.

Khe Sanh, Bow River, Ita, Breakfast At Sweethearts, Star Hotel and the sublime songwriting masterclass of Flame Trees means Cold Chisel was always going to be on the list. The Australian mid 70s through the 80s pub rock circuit did more for Australian music than anything and I am including Countdown in that appraisal.

Cold Chisel were one of the prime beneficiaries of this proving ground and let’s face it, there is nothing more Australian than a pub rock band. But Chisel went so much further than just about anyone else from the circuit because they had all the skills. And when it came to international success, like many of this list, they were just too Australian to make it.

Just about everything I have just written about Cold Chisel also applies to Midnight Oil. Midnight Oil was that rare beast, a rip tearing live band singing powerful, political, catchy and more importantly Australian songs that radio had to play even if it didn’t want to. They did it with a sound and an approach that was all their own too. I believe the Oils helped change this country’s attitude to the environment and Indigenous Australia. Power and Passion like no other Australian band.  

With Australian Crawl the name of the band says it all. Quality songs that wittily homed in on the middle-class anxieties and aspirations of 1980s Australia, they could be sweet and tart, pop or rock. They had a visual presence that seemed plain and vanilla and very beachy and yet their pub rock apprenticeship served them well. They rocked harder than they looked, there was often a dark subtext to their songs and David Reyne’s vocal style was and still is unique.  Their career was relatively short but let’s face it the world wasn’t that interested. Too Australian, too peninsular ra ra.

Musical parodists have been around as long as music itself. Someone took the piss out of Oog the caveman’s song about the mammoth hunt one day after he sang it. That someone was probably a distant relative of one of the guys in TISM. TISM in some ways is the most Australian band here. Well written parodies of the latest musical styles, cutting, hilarious X rated lyrics about subjects no other band would tackle mixed with Australian sport, political and cultural references performed by secretive, hilariously disguised members, what’s not to love? Like Roy and HG, This Is Serious Mum are an Aussie pisstake as broad as this big land itself.

The Go Betweens are a harder choice. Musically their tunes could have come from anywhere and anytime in the last seventy years and their lyrics are not about place but about emotions. Maybe I am too sympathetic to their history, the could have been should have been status, the quality of their output but there is something more. Somehow they rose above the sum of their overseas influences to create a sound someone named the sun striped sound. No Oz band has been able to sing better about being away from home in a cold uncaring land, missing the warm sun and the openness of Australia and relating that feeling to affairs of the heart.

Paul Kelly deserves his position as Australian’s favourite singer songwriter. Like Cold Chisel, when you start rattling off the bangers it is hard to stop. We were not a country that had produced too many Neil Youngs let alone a Joni Mitchell or a Bob Dylan so we needed someone who would give us Australian stories we could sing and strum a guitar to. And after Paul Kelly came artists like Missy Higgins, Sarah Blasko and greater recognition for indigenous performers like Archie Roach. For my money his best work was early, surrounded by a band but that’s me.

I'm high on the hill
Looking over the bridge
To the M.C.G.

By 2000 rock music as I knew it and grown up with was in its dotage. Sure there are, and always will be rock bands, usually blokes with guitars playing loud music that has its roots in the blues, but it is no longer the eminent youth culture music. Such is the way of all things. In some ways the current music, more commercially tilted, more dance orientated and overwhelmingly influenced by rap makes it harder to be Australian. The sound is so universal and lyrics and locales less important or at least less specific. But there are exceptions.

Security, won’t you let me in your pub.

I’m not looking for trouble

I’m looking for love.

Amyl And The Sniffers are one of the hottest bands in the world right now because they are Australian. Their music is 80s pub rock updated with a female perspective, and a dash more punk, and although they mean it, no one is taking themselves too seriously. Regardless of every other form of popular music that Australian artists excel in creating, to my mind this is what we best offer the world - a variation on boogie that is uniquely, unmistakably ours. When it comes to drinking beer, stamping your feet, swaying from side to side, singing along and just having a drunken live music good time, nobody does this stuff better than us because it is us. Amyl and The Sniffers to do this effortlessly because like us, it’s in their DNA.

Courtney Barnett has been quiet for the last year or so but for the last ten years she has been playing, singing and songwriting music that is uniquely hers and at the same time ours. Dry and rambling lyrically, deadpan and wistful vocally with understated and measured guitar. She reminds me of Billy Bragg and maybe more oddly Pavement, in the way she can present a song with humour and message. I hope to hear from her again soon because we just don’t have enough artists like her. Idiosyncratic, passionate and again somehow uniquely Australian.

Not heard of The Aerial Maps? I doubt they would make an Australian Hottest 500 but you should track them down. They have it all when it comes to Australianness. Lyrically, musically, atmospherically there is nothing quite like them. What you hear in the work of The Triffids, The Waifs, Midnight Oil, The Go Betweens and Paul Kelly is blown up to a huge, sparse but somehow detailed canvas just like this land that they sing about. As Molly Meldrum used to say, “Do yourself A Favour.”

The ten tracks you probably already know but go and listen to them anyway.

Balwyn Calling – Skyhooks – When I was 12 and living in Brisbane it took me a while to work out what Balwyn was.

Flame Trees – Cold Chisel – Possibly the finest song written in this country, our Wichita Lineman and that is the highest of praise.

Dreamworld – Midnight Oil – aah which song to choose.

Oh No Not You Again- Australian Crawl – That beach suburbia lifestyle

Greg the Stop Sign – TISM – Again which one to pick but this one is the purest distillation of the TISM experience

Cattle and Cane – The Go Betweens – two nerds meet and create wonderful songs then join with other people they love and then fight with. Just like Fleetwood Mac in a way but better

To Her Door – Paul Kelly – Storytelling in song? Why did this fall out of popularity?

Security - Amyl and the Sniffers – beer-soaked carpets, overflowing dunnies, beer in cans, Winnie Blues - it’s in their DNA

 Depreston – Courtney Barnett – Lyrically, sonically perfect

On the Punt – The Aerial Maps – Almost too much Australia

Photo by Simon Weisser on Unsplash