Born to amuse, to inspire, to delight...

The first music video I ever remember seeing was Thriller - my best friend's older brother had hired it from the video store. My best friend and I watched it four or five times that day, and I tried to learn the dance moves. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. You made me want to be a jazz dancer.

Every year that I was in dance classes I hoped we'd get to dance to one of your songs. I finally got my wish in 1996, when my dance school put on a cabaret show and my class did a horror-themed performance. We danced to Thriller, as part of our horror-themed narrative. It was so exciting. We learned some of your moves especially for our performance - the rest was original chorey.

When your Dangerous album came out, my mum's friend brought me a copy, and my best friend and I thrashed it to within an inch of its life. He and I LOVED that album. We played it every day for months. It's the first album I remember turning up as loud as I could stand, and then getting told to "turn that racket down!" by my parents.

I remember my mother pulling me out of school early one day in early 1992 because your Remember the Time music video was premiering on Australian television, and she didn't want us to miss such a huge event. It was a HOT day, and I remember just being gobsmacked by the scale of the thing. The costumes, the dancing, the way you turned to dust at the end and were swept away. All of it was bigger, grander, more ambitious than anything I'd ever seen.

You were more than a man, you were, to borrow from Tenacious D, a shiny golden god.

You came to Melbourne in 1996, and I wanted to see you so badly. I begged my Dad to take me to the airport to try and catch a glimpse but he refused. So I took comfort in the fact that you were briefly in my suburb (since at the time I lived by the airport), and watched your concert on TV.

When I heard you had died on Friday morning Australian time, I felt tears slide down my face, and I started shouting "oh god, oh god!!". It was an automatic but unexpected reaction. I felt kind of silly, standing there, shrieking and crying for you. But it was such unexpected news. The newspeople said you'd been taken to the hospital, and then less than 30 minutes later they said you'd died.

Born in 1983, I am too young to remember the influence The Beatles or Elvis Presley had on music. You were the first global music superstar of my time, and the soundtrack to my childhood. No longer will people my age look back on the deaths of Lennon and Presley with no true understanding of the impact those events had on popular culture, because we have now lived through your death. You were the biggest star I have ever heard of, you were so famous you seemed immortal. The idea that something as common as death could bring down someone as unique as you, still seems surreal, and kind of confusing.

I can't stop dancing to your songs. I have never in my life felt so compelled to movement as I have since I heard the news that you'd died. Your Dangerous album has been in constant rotation in my home, and on my mp3 player, and sounds as daring and groundbreaking now as it did in 1991 when I first heard it at the age of only 7 or 8. The thing just blows my mind every time I hear it. Nobody else was doing anything like it at the time, and the only artist who has done anything like it since is Justin Timberlake, on his FutureSex/LoveSounds album.

Your dancing continues to astonish me. There is a fan kick in the video for Bad that still amazes me - because you made a such a pretty, lightfooted move look incredibly masculine. The same goes for the dancing in the video for Beat It. You danced like a man. The choreography was strong, confident and masculine, but you still gave it a lightness that made it look effortless.
Thankyou for making dancing such a huge part of your music videos. You inspired thousands of young people to dance. Your signature toe stand remains unsurpassed in terms of techincal prowess and showmanship. No other entertainer has a move so iconic - even more so than your moonwalk, the silhouette of you, frozen in your toe stand is one of the enduring images of entertainment.

I loved your voice - your falsetto, your beautiful pop-rock vibrato, and the amazing control you had over every note you ever sang. You sang disco, soul, rock, r&b, pop and ballads and you did it all effortlessly.

As I sit here and write this, I can feel the tears starting to fall again. I miss you more than I ever imagined I could miss a person I do not know, and have never met. I feel shattered. My heart is breaking. I am too young to remember a world where you weren't a major star. I don't know what the world is supposed to be like without you in it.

I have spent this whole weekend dancing in your memory. My feet hurt, my legs ache, but my heart will sing your songs forever. You are eternal.

Michael Jackson Forever. Long live the King.

Picking only ten, from millions!

For some context - between 1989 and 1991, national youth broadcaster Triple J used to do an annual countdown of the listener voted Hottest 100 songs. The trouble was, every year, Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart came in at first place - except for 1991, when Smells Like Teen Spirit clinched the top spot. That's when they realised that if they continued with the current format, Smells like Teen Spirit would come first every year after that.
So the bigwigs at Triple J decided to scrap the Hottest 100 in that form, and rather restrict the voting to the songs released within the calendar year, a system which began in 1992 and has continued since. In 1998, they decided to revisit the idea of being able to choose from any song ever made, ever, and (surprise!!) Smells Like Teen Spirit came in first place again.

Eleven years on, they're at it again. Voting has begun for the fifth Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time, and the polls close at the end of June. But how do you choose only ten songs to vote for out of every song that has ever been released, EVER? The discussions started this morning.

I launched into full on panic mode pretty much straight away. What do I choose, how do I order them, do I vote for songs because I truly love them but may not be in the list or do I vote for songs I am not as in love with because I know that they'll make it into the list and I'll still be happy with it? It was crazy times from very early.

Mr AGirlCalledKill parked himself in front of the computer and compiled his top ten list within the space of about 25 minutes. It irritates me that he can so easily achieve things that regularly take me hours of thinking, analysing, list-making, cross-comparing, ticking and crossing out. But I digress.

He voted for:
Russell Morris - The Real Thing
Eagles - Hotel California
Clash, The - London Calling
Crowded House - Mean To Me
Beatles, The - A Day in the Life
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Redemption Song
Deep Purple - Highway Star
Doors, The - La Woman
Cult, The - She Sells Sanctuary

This is a damn good list. The Real Thing has this glorious, psychedelic, wall-of-sound crescendo, which is just sublime. Crowded House's Mean To Me leads their debut album like a shot out of the dark - one of the finest pop songs ever crafted. Everyone chooses Smoke On The Water when they think of Deep Purple but it's obvious Highway Star shits all over that song. And A Day In The Life is 60's psychedelic rock refined to a sharp point.

Now, his Favourite Band is Tool. He did not vote for any Tool songs, which launched a 24 minute discussion about why he made that decision. I questioned why, and he said that he had Stinkfist in his shortlist, but that when it came to choosing the top ten, they didn't make the cut. I then questioned why it's even worth having a Favourite Band, if none of their songs are good enough to make your Top Ten List of best songs ever. You may as well choose a different Favourite Band, if you're just going to vote against them, right?

I couldn't imagine not voting for the Foo Fighters Everlong in any list of the best songs ever. Pretty much whenever the Hottest 100 comes around, I check to see if the Foo Fighters released any songs in the voting year, and vote for one of their songs by default. It's like in the footy tipping - you always tip your own team, even if they're the suckingest team of the season.

So that means I only really have 9 spaces, because I have to vote for Everlong. It's just my favourite song. Always has been.

So I am thinking about voting the following way:
1. Foo Fighters - Everlong
2. Green Day - Jesus of Suburbia (all five movements)
3. The Beatles - Within You Without You
4. U2 - Bullet the Blue Sky (live Rattle and Hum version)
5. The Eagles - ?
6. Led Zeppelin - ?
7. The Clash - Clampdown
8. ?
9.?
10.?

When I think about what to slot into 8, 9 and 10, my head starts to spin. Pink Floyd. Jeff Buckley. Cold Chisel. Tori Amos. Ani DiFranco. David Bowie. Creedence Clearwater Revival. Metallica. At The Drive In. Midnight Oil. Queen. Hunters and Collectors. The Cure. Gaah! It's all too much.

I need to take a break from all this and kinda clear my head a bit. If you had to choose your ten favourite songs OF ALL TIME, what ten songs would you choose?

Monday Mix List: Songs About Fire

By now, pretty much everyone with access to a news service knows what's been going on here in Victoria, Australia. People are dead and homes are destroyed. It's a textbook example of SRS BZNZ.


Watching the news and seeing the death and destruction was getting depressing - so I present, with the intention of injecting a little levity into this dreadful situation, (and with the utmost respect for all those who have lost their homes, possessions, pets, livelihoods and loved ones), the first ever Monday Mix List: Songs About Fire.

Franz Ferdinand - This Fire




Talking Heads - Burning Down The House




Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water



Nirvana - Lake of Fire


Johnny Cash - Ring Of Fire



Jessica Mauboy - Burn




The Prodigy - Firestarter




James Taylor - Fire and Rain




The Doors - Light My Fire




The Bloodhound Gang - Fire Water Burn




Sinead O'Connor - Fire On Babylon



John Farnham - Burn For You




Ben Harper - Burn To Shine




Jerry Lee Lewis - Great Balls Of Fire



Lastly, the last month or so, the Country Fire Association and the Victorian Government ran an ad encouraging folks to prepare for bushfire. The song they used was Flame Trees by Cold Chisel - artfully fading out the vocals just before the line "...and there's nothing else can set fire to this town", presumably in the hopes that nobody would notice. Unfortunately, basically everyone in Australia knows that song, so it wasn't a great decision. Nice one, Victorian Government.


Here's the ad:


And for comparison, here's the original song:

If you want to donate to help the bushfire relief efforts, please visit the Australian Red Cross. Thanks for your generosity.

Won't You Help To Sing, These Songs of Freedom

They were strange days, the early 2000’s. It was a time where people flew passenger jets into buildings, where nations went to war on the back of a bit of hearsay and some blurry aerial photos, where it was beginning to seem like anyone could be blown to smithereens at any second, and where what was truth in Monday’s paper turned out to be a lie in Wednesday’s. But this wasn’t some Orwellian dystopia. This was the brave new world we were living in. Our governments were doing things that many of us disagreed with, and for some reason, we kept re-electing them.

It made for great songwriting inspiration. People were angry and confused, and popular culture was reflecting that. Ani diFranco wrote Self Evident in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the USA. The Dixie Chicks got themselves into hot water over a comment made at a show in London. All over the world people marched on their houses of government, protesting their nation's involvement in the Iraq Invasion, singing peace songs made famous by Cat Stevens and John Lennon. Everything old was new again. Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War would have noticed striking similarities - both with the impetus for war and the mobilisation to protest.

In 2004, Fat Mike of NOFX launched the Rock Against Bush project, and Lindsay McDougall of Frenzal Rhomb produced the Rock Against Howard compilation album, both aimed at mobilising young voters into overturning the right-leaning governments of the day. When George W. Bush used the Foo Fighters' Times Like These as his campaign song that same year, Dave Grohl did his nut and joined the John Kerry campaign. Despite a great deal of effort, both George W. Bush and John Howard were re-elected, Bush for his second term and Howard for his fourth (and final) term.

After George Bush was re-elected in 2004, the dissent kicked up a notch. Green Day's concept album American Idiot had been released shortly before the US election, but found a new relevancy in the days following. It seemed to be based on an unbending faith in the power of rock and roll to hold back the darkness. It became a rallying point for thousands of young people, many of whom had never heard protest music before hearing American Idiot.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Kanye West alleged that George Bush didn't care about black people.
In the space of 9 days in April and May of 2006, Neil Young wrote and recorded the Living With War album. Like his classic protest song Ohio, it was put together very quickly in response to a current event.
Green Day and U2 teamed up for a cover of the classic Skids track The Saints Are Coming, which featured a video of re-imagined news footage, wherein US forces in Iraq were redeployed to provide humanitarian aid to New Orleans.
Even people who'd never delved into protest music in their entire careers were suddenly compelled to address their concerns - pop star Pink teamed up with the Indigo Girls and surprised everyone with her song Dear Mr President.

It seemed everyone had something to say.

In 2007, Australia had another Federal election - except this time, we voted out John Howard and his centre-right Coalition, and voted in Kevin Rudd, leader of the centre-left Labor Party. Kevin Rudd's first positive actions as Australian Prime Minister, only hours after being sworn in, was to sign the Kyoto Protocol and then in February 2008, apologise to the Indigenous Stolen Generation. And suddenly, it felt like our beds were smouldering, not burning. Australia had entered a new period of social reconciliation.

In 2008, the US electoral juggernaut took off again, culminating in the election and 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the USA. His first positive action was to order the closure of the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

No longer were the youth of the USA Rocking Against Bush...and whether or not George Bush cared about black people didn't matter anymore. All over the world government was changing, and people were feeling optimistic about that change.

I wonder, therefore, are we entering a time of relative peace? Where protest music has no place - because there is nothing to protest against? Remember the musical wasteland of the 90's? Things were pretty good then - the worst of it was probably Bill Clinton getting a gobby from a young intern. We were Mmmbop-ing, Wannabe-ing and wondering Could It Be Magic? all over the place. Sure, we had pretty good music aside from all those radio friendly unit shifters, but it was just some old guff about country houses, bittersweet symphonies and driving around in an unroadworthy car.

Optimism doesn't breed protest - are we destined for another decade of bland rubbish?

All you blood-thirsty bystanders, will you try to find your seats?

In the early to mid 90’s, Glen and Bernardette Tucker, friends of my Mum and Dad, had a holiday house in Ocean Grove, on the Bellarine Peninsula. Every summer for a few years running, we (meaning my mother, father, sister and myself) went down to this house in Ocean Grove for a weekend.
Glen Tucker was a cool guy. He was a musician, and a music teacher, and he had long black hair, and he looked a little bit like Jackson Browne, and he always had interesting things to say about music. He was real laid back as well, like he’d just smoked a joint. I could see, even at the age of nine or ten, why my Dad was friends with him – Glen was much cooler than my Dad was, but my Dad gained cool whenever he was with Glen; cool by association, rather than action. At any rate, Glen really loved The Eagles. So did my Dad, but Glen really loved them. He had all their albums and could play most of their songs on his guitar, and he was good.
We used to sit in the backyard until all hours of the night with an open fire barbeque crackling away (even us kids – we were allowed to stay up late on trips away), and Glen would play records on the old battered record player he had out there. Occasionally he’d play songs on his guitar, but mostly we’d listen to albums and eat bits of sausage off the barbeque. One night, it must have been a Saturday night, we were all out there, and it was deliciously warm. The mosquito coils had been lit, and an enormous leg of lamb was roasting on the spit, and combined, they were giving off a most intoxicating smell of citronella blended with roast meat.
Glen came out of the house holding Desperado.

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard it before; in the house I grew up in it was difficult to escape The Eagles entirely, as Dad often played them in the car, or if he was feeling in a particularly pensive mood, he’d turn the TV off and put the Hotel California album on. This was rare, as my Dad was quite a TV man. I remember days as a teenager when I’d be sitting in front of the hi-fi listening to something, and Dad would come home, plonk himself on the settee and turn the TV on, with not a thought towards the fact that I was sitting, listening to something in the exact same room. But occasionally, very occasionally, he’d choose an album over a pointless TV program.

Anyway, regardless of whether or not I’d heard it before, I’d NEVER seen the cover. What was up with that cover art, anyway? Four surly looking guys dressed up like cowboys with handlebar moustaches and weird hats, holding guns? Just looking at it gave me the chills, but when Glen put it on, it started crackling and popping the way old records do, which, at the time, I saw as kind of quaint and old-worldly. But when the guitar started up, and first mournful harmonica melody from Doolin-Dalton rang through, I was captivated.

As was usual through one of Glen’s listening sessions, we were treated to his occasional commentary on the album itself, the writers, what a particular track was about, or some such.
Desperado, according to Glen, was a concept album. It was a story of the Wild West, the story of cowboys and brothels and card games and showdowns at high noon.
It described the brevity of youth, the transitory nature of life, and the enduring nature of regret. An ambitious set, surely, Glen had said, but one that was ultimately successful.

I didn’t give much thought to Desperado after that initial experience. Over the years I heard a few tracks off it from time to time and correctly identified them as Desperado tracks, but I didn’t hear the album in it’s entirety for some time.

In late 2003, I found a cassette copy of Desperado in a box of old tapes that my aunt had (she told me I could have it – she preferred Dylan to The Eagles), and I put it on, plugged in my headphones and listened to it again. I have always preferred to listen to music through headphones; the sound is crisper and purer, they block out the external noise of people and television and shouting and just all the buzz that exists even in the quietest room. Desperado, even coming off an old cassette in an old cassette player, captivated me once more. The story it told, the time and place, and characters it evoked were so real, so tangible that I felt like I could reach out and touch them.

Some albums lose their appeal over time. We grow out of them, we get over them, something better comes along, they sound dated compared to the artists later work, whatever. There are a myriad reasons why albums lose their appeal. But Desperado, 30 years old, as it was, still felt fresh to me. Perhaps that was because I’d only heard it a few times in the intervening years since I’d first heard it, but even today it still enthrals me. It’s a celebration, a lament and a warning. It celebrates life and youth and dreams, laments the loss of those dreams and warns us of the ephemeral nature of existence.

The Doolin-Dalton/Desperado Reprise always carried me away the most. I think Don Henley was my favourite of the Eagles, purely because I liked his singing voice best. Around the time that I re-discovered Desperado, a boy from a nearby school had been murdered by another boy at the local train station.
When I was in high school, we used to congregate there at the end of the day and hitch our skirts up so the boys would notice us. We’d gossip about school and teachers and boys, and we’d bitch about people we didn’t like. That station was the scene of many a youthful drama, but had never seen anything like what unfolded there in October 2003.
It was his last day of year twelve, he was about to go out for drinks to celebrate with his friends, and begin his exams the following week. He was standing on the threshold between youth and adulthood, the very threshold that is the theme of the Desperado album.
I didn’t know the boy, as he was a few years younger than me, but I know one of his best friends, and his senseless death really shook the community up. His death at Essendon Station was a growing up period for a lot of people, even those of us who didn’t know him or had finished school long before. We were all shocked that our stomping ground, a place we went to every day could be the scene of something so horrific.
The Doolin-Dalton/Desperado Reprise seemed to describe what happened. I listened to it almost exclusively over the week of the boy’s death, and it was such a fitting eulogy – as I’ve said before, both a warning of the transient nature of this world, and a lament for youth lost.

“Now there’s no time left to borrow
(Is there gonna be anything left)
Only stardust
(Maybe)
Maybe tomorrow…”

“Desperado…”

That was Desperado. When I was young it made me yearn for adulthood, as an adult it makes me yearn for youth, and it describes, in loving detail what happens when the two collide. I never liked Westerns, but I love Desperado. I’d love to find an old copy of it on LP. There’s something about a cracking record that is just so real, so organic. It’s haunting beauty will always remind me of roasting lamb and citronella mosquito coils at Glen and Bernardette Tucker’s holiday house, in the times before youth became adulthood, and death became a part of life.


(Caution: this video is 35-some years old, and the sound quality isn't great, so turn up your speakers a little for better enjoyment)