Street - The long and winding way to the top: fifty (or so) songs that made Australia

Andrew P Street is the author of The Short and Excruciatingly Embarrassing Reign of Captain Abbott and The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull, the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat. But before he ventured into political commentary he was a music journalist. Hes been published internationally in NME, Rolling Stone, Time Out, GQ, the Guardian, and Virgins Voyeur in-flight magazine. Locally hes appeared in pretty much every masthead with a freelance budget, from the Sydney Morning Herald to Elle, the Big Issue and Australian Guitar. He also played in an Adelaide band (or two), The Undecided and Career Girls.

Other books by Andrew P Street

The Short and Excruciatingly Embarrassing Reign of Captain Abbott

The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull, the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat

First published in 2017

Copyright Andrew P Street 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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ISBN 978 1 76029 372 7

eISBN 978 1 76063 378 3

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Cover design: Julia Eim

Cover image: iStock / PeopleImages

To James P Street.

May all your adventures have a glorious soundtrack.

To listen to many of the songs mentioned in this book go to Andrews Spotify play list at https://open.spotify.com/user/andrewpstreetplaylist/56vkN9RusgrLMc8Tl56JT0

or watch

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF9rS90U3-U&list=PLykiZAB2RssAOtBx4cqdVaZ7oJKrKqgwY

In which your humble author explains the thing youre holding in your hands

You know what? Music is great. (You almost certainly agree if youve picked this book upthat, or youre spoiling for a weirdly one-sided fight for some reason.)

Music gives us so much. It lifts us when we feel down. It soothes our ravaged soul in times of crisis. It covers our squelchy sex noises and gives us a thing to play loudly in our bedrooms after we tell our parents that they dont understand us.

And it illustrates the journey of our nation.

At least, thats the premise of this book, which is the definitive and final statement determining once and for all exactly which are the most important songs ever to be made in our nations history and yes, Im joking.

This is an attempt to tell a storycertainly not the storyof Australian culture, signposted by fifty-ish songs which mark important points along the way. Which seemed like a nice, easy, fun sort of idea right up until the point I started making a list of what songs would obviously need to go in such a book, got to 476 and went, Oh, this might be a lot harder than I thought.

And thats a testament to just how much killer music our nation has produced since the first primeval guitarist crawled out of the oceans and engaged in a mating display by putting its foot atop a prototype stage monitor and doing a bitchin power chord.

Theres another reason to write this now. At this particular point in Australian history there seems to be no shortage of blowhards determined to define what is and what isnt an Australian Value and, when patriotism is being weaponised into nationalism for short-term political advantage and long-term cultural damage, its a really good time to be reminded that there are plenty of things about which Australians can be enthusiastically excited and legitimately proud.

Australia consistently punches above its weight in the creative arts, especially music, which is a little something worth remembering next time you hear that a newly gentrified suburb is shutting its live rooms or the ABC is having its funding cut or community radio stations are being squeezed out for commercial radio licences. As youll see in these pages, our enviable creative legacy is a result of our live scene and our access to the airwaves, and those things need to be aggressively protected if theres to be any hope of a sequel to this book in sixty years time.

Many of these songs could sustain entire books of their own, and by necessity this is going to be a race at breakneck speed through several decades of magnificent songsmithery. So maybe think of this as a compilation album: some well-loved hits, a few unfamiliar tracks and at least three absolute stinkers that hopefully inspire you to do some exploration of your own.

The songs in this book have been chosen on the grounds that they either changed the national conversation in a significant way or they illustrate something about Australia at the time in which they appeared. Thats especially true of some of the later ones, where their cultural impact is less a matter of historical record than an educated guess.

And while youve already probably looked at the contents and gone, Hey, why isnt [awesome song] there?, take some comfort in the fact that a lot of songs get referenced in the course of the book even if they dont get to be the focus of a whole chapter. Theres a lot of songs in here, is what Im saying.

There were a couple of ground rules: one song per artist, with as much of a spread of genres as possible, and a genuine attempt not to get bogged down in Australias ridiculously fertile 19761990 era. As youll see, none of these rules ended up working especially well. Sorry, country music lovers and fans of Australias underrepresented dance music community. I had the noblest of intentions, honest.

Hopefully therell be a few moments of Oh, I had no idea about that! in here that make you listen to some familiar songs in a new light.

And every arbitrary list needs an arbitrary starting point, so lets choose the birth of Australian rocknroll with a little number called

_______________________

Im pretty sure this is in Darwins On the Origin of Species. Its, um, somewhere near the end.

See if you can spot them all!

Spoiler: Starting with Everybodys Getting a Three Piece Together. Incidentally, #1 on that underrated list would be Au Revoir Sex Kitten by the Plums. Goddamn, how was that not a global smash?

In which Australia learns, finally, to get its kicks

In the 1950s Australia had a difficult choice to make. Would we continue to gratefully accept the cultural cast-offs and scraps from an increasingly contemptuous Britain, or would we use our post-war prosperity and newly forged Anzac spirit to finally stand up and gratefully accept the cultural cast-offs and scraps from the genuinely indifferent United States?

This was an important decision, because those were literally the only two options on offer. Australia was deep in the aesthetic and intellectual naptime that was the era of Robert Menzies, so seditious notions like independence or being a republic were, um, still about as far away as theyd continue to be for the subsequent eight decades and counting. Thus, as with so many of our significant leaps forward, we turned to a huckster from overseas to identify how to fleece some rubes and make a tidy profit.