Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

Australia - The Invisible Country.

I'm reading Noam Chomsky's new book at the moment - 'Hegemony Or Survival' - and it is, essentially, an overview of America's attempts to Take Over The World, and turn into Little America(tm). Noam Chomsky scares the absolute shit out of me. I know it may sound odd for me, a strapping, powerfully built 25 year old, with steely blue eyes, a firmly-set square jaw, and a body ribboned by thick belts of muscle (see footnote one) to be scared of a skinny seventy year old man with grey hair and a monotone voice - but I am. Chomsky scares me because Chomsky makes too much sense. He's right, of course - America DOES want to own the world, and have every intention of colonising the continents, both militarily and culturally. There is little hope of resistance. At the moment, anyway.

This week, of course, saw John 'Cocksucker' Howard's evil free trade agreement with the yanks. I won't describe it in too much detail because it isn't relevant at the moment, but the one thing that interested and disturbed me were the sections regarding the media, and the flow of cultural material. Looks like the Australian television and film industries are about to be decimated as hordes of cheaply priced American drivel is pumped into the brains of Australia's consumers, the nauseating cancer of America culture being given new flesh to consume, as local talent is subverted in favour of hour upon hour of mind numbing MUST SEE T.V.

Getting back to music and film, as I always must, this poses an interesting retrospective scenario to ponder. But I'm going to preface it, so that I don't leave myself open to charges of simply being a nasty, racist swine with an axe to grind regarding our fun loving American brothers.

I do love this country very much. Oh, yes. I adore Australia. Everything about it. When I was a stupid, pretentious teenager - it was my dream to flee this cultural wasteland for greener pastures. New York! Paris! London! I had no interest in Melbourne. Pah. Fuck Melbourne. By virtue of being an Australian city, I had been convinced that it was Not Good Enough by default. And as my self-absorbed pretention skyrocketed to dizzying heights, culminating in Our Year Of Joy Division, my distrust of Australia - spurred on by the mental masturbators I was associating with, peaked. What has Australia ever produced, after all, except sheep, wheat, and some really quite good sportspeople? What good is this country at all?

I was wrong - and, looking back, I was a victim. I know that sounds like a cop out - but it is absolutely true. As a young laddie growing up in Melbourne, I was - for the most part - unaware of where I was, culturally. Australia didn't exist. But America certainly did. I could turn on the television and see it. I could go to the movies and watch it. I could listen to music that both euologized and mythologized it. Clothes that advertised it. Posters that praised it. An endless torrent of pro-American material that bamboozled me to the point where I simply forgot about Australia. I was certainly never taught to love Australia - and I was never shown images of Australia that I could relate to, and connect to. When Australia did exist in film and literature, it wasn't an Australia I knew - it was a land of deserts, farmlands, and lonesome windmills sihlouetted against blazing orange sunsets. It wasn't the weatherboard houses, rainy days, and long, chipped fences covered in cracked green paint that I was accostomed to. And, as I got older, I forgot that Australia was even there. All I knew was that I was living somewhere that wasn't as good as America - and couldn't offer me anything that I could ever want to use.

Then, at about nineteen or twenty, I began to notice that I didn't know Australia. I didn't turn on the television and see myself, or the people I knew, or the places that I loved - I had no access to cultural representations of my life, or my world. I noticed that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, I was living in an invisible country - seemingly so insignificant that any attempts to try and understand it, rationalise it, or - shock and horror! - LOVE it would be laughable. Being an obtuse, contrary sort of fellow, I decided that this simply wasn't good enough - and I decided to find Australia. I knew it was out there somewhere, and - being me, a rock geek and film nerd, the only place I could start was by jumping in the deep end of the endless sea of records and video tapes (remember them?) that were out there.

So, I started buying albums. Cold Chisel records. Dragon records. Split Enz. Crowded House. The Master's Apprentices. Russel Morris. The Easybeats. Anything that smacked of Australia, I would snap up and run home with, sitting in my bedroom and listening to them over and over again. And sure enough, I started to figure out things. I started to learn about the country I was in - and the one feature of the Australian character that I think holds the key to all of this, is that the music seems timid. Afraid. It isn't self-aggrandizing or arrogant - even the bluster of the Master's Apprentices - who locked into an incredible mass of fury and power on their live 'Nickelodeon' album - seemed tinged with a sense of inferiority; A piece of all of these bands seemed to be dedicated to the awareness that by virtue of their country of origin, they could never be recognized globally. They'd never be loved the way their idols were. There was not going to be a Beatles coming from Australia - because Australia simply didn't exist, and by association, the music didn't exist.

Of course, Crowded House saw success. They all did, to a limited extent. But outside of AC/DC, Australian music has been ignored - banished into a wasteland populated by forgotten artists and broken dreams. Go to the All Music Guide sometime, and look at the writing on Australian acts, and the one word that seems to continally crop up is 'underrated'. Oh, Dragon were so underrated. Oh, Russel Morris was so underrated.

I met Russel Morris once. I remember I was seeing this chick, and I was just becoming interested in Australia's cultural history - and I bought her a copy of Russel Morris' greatest hits album. She played it - and she couldn't believe that it was by an Australian. She'd ask me - 'How was this guy not bigger than he was? How did he not become an international star?'

I didn't get the answer until a few years later. My mother is a curious sort of lady who tends to find out about things that are happening in our area - and on this particular occasion, Russel Morris was going to be playing - wait for it - the Greensborough R.S.L. I didn't believe her at first. The guy who did 'The Real Thing' - reduced to slogging it through R.S.L clubs and bingo halls? You have got to be fucking kidding me. But, no - he absolutely was.

And we watched him. He did 'The Real Thing'. He did 'Wings Of An Eagle'. He did 'Sweet, Sweet Love'. Beautiful, soulful things, all - and afterwards, he descended from the stage and made his way towards the back of the hall to talk to the crowd.

This blew my mind. A musician actually interested in talking to us - a bunch of nobodies from the middle of nowhere? What was his game? What was the punchline?

I wanted to talk to him, so I slithered near him and yelled in his ear - "You're fucking GREAT!"

He jumped, and turned around, staring at me. And he smiled - a weird, crooked sort of smile as though he couldn't tell if I was kidding or not. I was, after all, some punk kid in a hideous mustard-coloured t-shirt, with thick, greasy glasses and comically-oversized front teeth. I figured that I needed to be taken seriously, so I racked my brain for a factoid with which to stun him.

"Hey, Russel! When's fucking 'Bloodstone' coming out on CD?"

He stared at me again, and then grinned. "Next year.", he said quietly. And then I grabbed him and pulled a 'Look who I'M touching' face, as my mother quickly grabbed a photo.

I knew this wasn't going to be a 'My friends will NEVER believe this!' moment - my friends couldn't care less. Russel who? Sweet, sweet what?

But I came away feeling sad. Here was a guy with a sublime artistic vision and a thirty year career - who was a world-class talent, and ran rings around hundreds of major-label American and British artists - yet, by virtue of being born in the Invisible Country, his talent was left to atrophy in the gruelling pub scene of Melbourne, where he was never going to be respected or honoured in the manner which he deserved.

There's a shop in the local plaza near me. It's called 'Touchdown', and every time I see it, I want to vomit. It sells Bling Bling gear. Is that what it's called? The stuff that rap guys wear. Stupidly oversized jackets, and shirts with pictures of that 50 Cent idiot on them. That kind of crap. And hanging across the entire back wall, like a swastika in the Reichstag, is the American flag. The stars and the stripes, staring out at the poor, confused shoppers. The kids go in, and they buy shirts with 'U.S.A' emblazoned on them. Windcheaters with the American flag. An endless array of paraphenalia promoting 'Gangsta Rap'.

I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry that they are going to grow up like me - robbed of their country, mindfucked by American culture, and constantly reminded that no matter what they do, no matter what they say, and no matter how hard they try - they will never be as good as America. And in the end, I think, a lot of these kids simply stop trying.

Maybe I just miss my country. Someone has stolen it - and I want it back.

I have an album here. A recording of the Sunbury '73 rock festival - and towards the end, there is a song by Glen Cardier. It is called 'Australia' - and I just want to share the intro with you.

Glen takes the stage, and in a quiet voice, says: Finishing off now with a song I wrote for Gough Whitlam. He said in the paper the other day that he wanted a national anthem. Well, I wrote a song about a lady called 'Australia'. I think she may be sitting here right now - I don't know. But, this is mine anyway.

I know how you feel, Glen. I think it is time that we all started spreading lost dog notices around the world.

Lost: One country. Answers to the name of Australia. Last seen sometime in the mid 1960's. If spotted, could someone please return her - because we love her, and we miss her.

* Footnote one - My physical description may not exactly match the one detailed above.

Posted by David at February 14, 2004 01:30 AM | TrackBack