It is voting day and so of course one turns to trying to recall why it is good to be an Australian. One good thing about it is that very fact: that you are free to wonder that, in a broad sense (as opposed to being met by bullets, lol). I am such a fan of the Australian democratic/voting system that I make myself sick. It is real though.
I will never have patriotism, any more than I will have pride in having ten toes, but I did somehow put this record on this morning - side 3 (this picture is of my personal copy, btw, and apparently I paid $12.95 for it - value). When you think about things that you can be grateful for in Australian history (and prior Labor administrations in particular) you can think about the decision made by the Curtin/Chifley government to be the first federal government to actively allow/encourage/invite non-Anglo Saxon, non-English-speaking migrants. Thank fuck this happened. It would have been better, probably, if it had happened earlier but it was so wonderful (in two major senses of that word) that it happened at all. Out of that we got a million great things, and also, the million-and-first, The Easybeats.
The Easybeats' back catalogue really varies, horrendously, almost disturbingly. Clearly they knew what they were doing, but part of what they were doing was to deliberately either not care or not understand what made an actual good song.* They'd had a big international hit with 'Friday on my Mind', as indeed they should have. Then they set about trying to replicate it, or rather, to replicate the success, but they seemed to be flying blind somewhat. They produced a lot of amazing records though after that time, to my mind their best, mainly singles (I've never really enjoyed a 'real' Easybeats album all the way through, though most of The Shame Just Drained, which is of course a compilation but of unreleased material, is pretty amazing). I am not a huge fan of 'The Music Goes Round My Head' - too sing-song - and 'Good Times' just really pisses me off, though listening to it today (the rest of side three had to be pretty flamin' incredible to get me to play it considering 'Good Times' is track three - well, once I took the needle off and put it on at the end) it's not as awful as it was in my memory, which I guess is tainted by the utterly worthless and vile INXS-Barnesy travesty.
Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate 'Come In You'll Get Pneumonia', 'Falling off the Edge of the World' and OMG 'Hello, How Are You' which is just, you know, completely everything.
It really pissed me off that Vanda and Young were so down on their ballads, and that once AC/DC (yuk man) and so on took off so comprehensively they began to consider this kind of thing their main talent (but just to confuse that idea, really great disco like 'Love is in the Air' has also had an amazingly long life). I mean by any objective measure 'Falling in Love Again' is the best song they ever wrote, and I will always be grateful to them for creating something so perfect. But 'Hello How Are You' is basically its slightly dumber twin. Can't be faulted, dumbness can be perfect.
John Paul Young has a new single out, by the way, and it is a song by Sean Sennett and John Field which I have adored for decades - ever since it came out on Westside Records (presumably somehow a tie-in to E Street but I don't know how) as a single by The Honeymen. It never occurred to me how much 'Felt Like a Kiss' was in the classic Vanda/Young vein, though now I hear the JPY treatment it seems obvious. It's now got a different title for some reason.
But it's a fine piece of work and everyone involved should be proud.
*Obviously they knew what made a good song. But they also didn't know what made a bad song. They had no editing process, or they thought they'd let the world decide. I don't know!!! It's confusing. All I know is, they put out hundreds of things, and some are amazing, and some should never have been thought about, let alone released. There are plenty of artists like that.
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