Aussie Music - Viggo's Two Cents

V: After listening to Aussie radio stations a bit, and perusing music publications, and viewing some TV music shows, an observation to make is that the music scene here is quite interesting, and . . . odd.

So, I've been desirous of posting a little commentary on music Down Under. And this is particularly timely, as AC/DC is here in Melbourne, performing three concerts on their Black Ice tour, but we aren't going. It is fun to see the fans and freaks out and about prior to the show, though!

Every street busker we've heard, be it guitar player or ivory keys tickler, has played Beatles' songs. Nothing but Beatles' tunes. And rightly so.

Around mid-January, just after we arrived in Darwin, some TV show was recapping the "100 Best Aussie Songs of All Time". It was quite revealing.

Sure, Olivia Newton-John, Air Supply, the Church, Men At Work, INXS, the Bee Gees, Hunters and Collectors, the Go-Betweens, Icehouse, the Triffids, Little River Band, and Midnight Oil tracks, among other bands I knew, and some I had never heard before, were in that countdown list. But the top three really were revelatory to me.

The #3 song, from the early '70's, was a Viet Nam protest song "Khe Sanh", by the band Cold Chisel. Yeah, I know, most Americans have never heard the song, or the band. But, the song is interesting as it chronicles an Aussie Viet Nam vet's return to Australia, and his problems adjusting to home life. (Yes, not many know that Aussies fought with us in Viet Nam.)

#2 song was an AC/DC classic, but probably not one most Americans would name. It is their early, very fine, bagpipe-laden, Bon Scott-sung tune, "It's a Long Way to the Top." Interesting.

And song #1 was by John Farnham . . . who once was a member of the Little River Band, my American music aficionados. The song is "You're the Voice". I know, I had never heard it before, either.

And I have to note that it seems like music stopped here in about 1980, because it is all classic American and British rock and roll, and pop, and soul songs on the radio, most of the time.

My sister Lisa and brother Eric, and maybe even Mom, may get a real kick out of this next comment. On the radio we heard a couple of Boney M songs--"Rasputin" and "Rivers of Babylon". Yes, Boney M, that Germany-based band of Caribbean islanders with huge Afros, who had one super-great, disco-esque album Take the Heat Off Me, in about 1976 or so, which my siblings and I discovered on one of the family trips to Norway, and have enjoyed listening to ever since. Another great song of theirs is "Daddy Cool," well worth checking out. And now Karen wants to make sure that I get that Boney M album, or their greatest hits, on the iPod, when we get back.

And just recently, you may have read or heard, one of the most popular world-wide songs from an Australian group, Men At Work's "Down Under", lost a plagiarism lawsuit. Apparently that flute interlude in the song was deemed to be a rip-off of a melodic part of the Aussie folksong "Kookaburra Sitting in the Ol' Gum Tree", or whatever that tune's title is.

Oh, and the latest AC/DC concert in Melbourne set the record for the fastest sold-out show in Australian history, and they haven't performed in about 10p years here, I guess. Dinosaurs of Rock rule.

So, there're my observations on the music Down Under.