Oils Degustation
The last few months have been good ones for Oils fans with the release of a number of movies, concert footage & CDs, and the promise of more to come.
The movie 1984 hit the cinemas showcasing the year Red Sails was released and Garrett jumped into the fray as a candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party: worth watching if only for the peep hole into a different age, a time when politicians could string two sentences together rather than repeat mindless three word slogans. Watch it just to hear the Aussie accents – can you believe we all used to speak like that? But the best bit is when a schoolkid sticks it to the PM about needing a bunker to escape the fallout from a nuclear war. Oh, and there’s some great footage of the Oils in action.
Then the one year anniversary of the Great Circle Tour passed and with it the release of CDs and DVDs of some of the concerts from that tour. I’m a little disappointed by their decision to splice together footage from two concerts into the one package rather than showing a single concert. Even more annoying is the slicing of the between song rants & rambles from Garrett that in my mind only add to the occasion: the bollocking of Keating about his opposition to the concerts being held in the Domain the best example. But I’m being picky – get a hold of a copy, close the windows, turn it up to 11, raise one arm in the air with the fingers spread wide and let your voice go hoarse.
The big news is that the Oils are touring again, but unfortunately only concerts in Germany and a one-off at Birdsville have been announced so far.
Concerts are always more enjoyable when you have some familiarity with the material being performed so on the expectation there’ll be a few local gigs leading up to those concerts I’ve prepared a tasting menu for those who have not yet delved into the Oils back catalogue, for those who fall into the category of – “don’t mind Midnight Oil, they did that Sorry Suit thing didn’t they”.
This is not a ‘best of’. There are many ways to compile a ‘best of’ list; quantitative – the biggest selling singles; qualitative – those songs that due to the time and space you first heard them resonate with you. This is not a ‘best of’, this is a mere taste, a degustation if you will, of the Oils. I have deliberately left off some of the big hits, some of the classics, in the hope, hmm, expectation, that you might return to each of the albums and dive a little deeper.
Each of these songs gives you a sense of the style from each album, and in some cases builds up your immunity, your readiness, to listen to the bigger anthems found on each album. The menu is listed at the bottom and a point to remember when you work your way through it is this, the Oils are best played LOUD, on a real stereo, definitely not via the speaker on a phone, and preferably not from one of those mono ‘bluetooth’ portable speakers.
Where do we start? Right back at the beginning with their self-titled debut album, “Midnight Oil”, otherwise known as ‘Blue Album’. Consider the time this was released, back in 1978. This is now a long forgotten, rarely played hidden gem, containing as it does all the elements that made the Oils; thumping power, cutting lyrics and … beautiful harmonies …..
Your first tasting is their very first song ‘Powderworks’ with the provocative opening lines … ‘There’s a sh!t storm a coming’. Follow it up with a real rarity, an Oils love song, in Surfing with a Spoon with a line calling out to all those who dream of chucking it in and getting away: ‘I’m going up north where the weathers fine and the living is from day to day’.
Move onto the iconic Head Injuries album, enjoy the imagery of the north coast in Koala Sprint and then try not to be overwhelmed by the foot stomping protest that is Stand in Line. This is heavy, loud in your face rock, if you find it all a bit too much then step away from the screeching lead guitar and focus on the energy and beat generated by the rhythm & bass guitars. If you’re not up and dancing midway through this song …. call an ambulance – you don’t have a pulse.
The best demonstration that music can move you comes with Wedding Cake Island: play it in the car, driving through the ‘dusty dirty city’ and be transported to the coast, just before dawn, catching glimpses of the breakers as the road dips and weaves between the headlands. Remind yourself near the end, that this is the same band that produced Beds are Burning.
About this time the advice to the band was – if you want to make it big, you need to move away from singing about Aus, you need to internationalise your sound. Their response … Place without a Postcard – unmistakably OZ. Gritty, earthy, political: with lines like ‘flower people were so beautiful but straight and louds the way, goodnight the beatnik spirit’. Enjoy what must be an auto-biographical Burnie – a favourite of The Lady, and it’s fear of over development before we finish this course with the quintessential Lucky Country reflecting an image of Australia delivered staccato style – eventually others picked up on the style and called it rap …
We’ll skip their next album for now, their magnum opus, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and come back to it later.
Long before the Deaths in Custody Royal Commission the Oils were cranking out lyrics like ‘in the back of the cell, the plug and the cord, shoulder dislocation, bruised in isolation’ … you work it out ... And then backed it up with the mind blowing, foot stomping, gut wrenching Jimmy Sharmans Boxers: eight minutes of unnerving madness: amazing to think that the existence of boxing troupes is within living memory.
There is no time to cleanse the pallet: the beat only gets faster, the protests louder, the anger palpable: ‘this is not the time to be wondering why’ as we move onto Species Deceases.
Into another deviation, and what is for many, their starting point with the Oils – a dish they’ve had before – Diesel and Dust. But I’ve left off the favourite, Beds are Burning, being the equivalent of honey & garlic prawns.
Diesel and Dust is considered the greatest Aus rock album of all time by JJJ, and the song ‘Beds are Burning’ appears as #1 on everyone’s list of greatest Aus rock songs – I don’t know how such lists are compiled but I disagree with both points. Song for song 10 to 1 is a better album, and if you vote for ‘Beds are Burning’ due to it’s message, than go back and listen to Jimmy Sharmans again – the personal is political right – or jump into The Dead Heart with it’s poetic chorus: ‘We carry in our hearts the true country, and that cannot be stolen, we follow in the steps of our ancestors, and that cannot be broken.’
The mix of big big thumping rock songs and quiet ballards that is Diesel and Dust continues into Blue Sky Mining: emotions torn between enjoying the poetry of River Runs Red, and dismay at the message being conveyed: another favourite of The Lady.
By now the Oils were regularly making the point that they were not going to be straight jacketed by their back catalogue of storming rock anthems, so produced the lullaby My Country on Earth Sun Moon before reverting to type with Truginini.
As I am an infrequent visitor to the later albums of Breathe, Redneck Wonderland and Capricornia I have taken input from a fellow traveller: allow me to dine with you for the last three courses. Before we do, we must return to 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, otherwise known as, 10 to 1. If this was the only album the Oils had produced they would still be considered one of the greatest. Know this – the album stayed on the charts for over 3½ years.
10 to 1 defines Midnight Oil: the protests, the music, the energy. This truly is the soundtrack of a generation mixing some of the best rock anthems of all time in Read About It, US Forces and Power and the Passion, with deep reverberating power of Outside World and Short Memory, and the haunting Maralinga and Tin Legs and Tin Mines.
Oils Degustation Menu
Midnight Oil
Powderworks
Surfing with a Spoon
Run by Night
Head Injuries
Koala Sprint
No Reaction
Stand in Line
Bird Noises
No Time for Games
Wedding Cake Island
Place Without a Postcard
Brave Faces
Burnie
Lucky Country
Red Sails in the Sunset
Sleep
Jimmy Sharmans Boxers
Bells and Horns in the Back of Beyond
Species Deceases
Progress
Hercules
Diesel and Dust
Dreamworld
Warakurna
The Dead Heart
Blue Sky Mining
Blue Sky Mining
One Country
River Runs Red
Earth Sun Moon
My Country
Truginini
Now or Never Land
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
All.
Breathe
Surfs up tonight
One too many times
Capricornia
Golden Age
Capricornia
Red Neck Wonderland
Cemetery in my mind
