12. Midnight Oil--Diesel and Dust
#12: Midnight Oil--Diesel and Dust (1987)
Top-Notch Tracks: "Beds Are Burning," [HJ200 #13], "The Dead Heart," "Warakurna," "Bullroarer," "Sometimes," "Dreamworld"
Album Depth: "Put Down That Weapon," "Arctic World," "Sell My Soul," "Whoah"
Weak Link: No one named "Bruce" in the band; lack of schmaltzy love ballads.
Stand-Out Lyrics: "The time has come, a fact's a fact. It belongs to them. Let's give it back."--"Beds Are Burning"
"We don't serve your country, don't serve your king, know your customs, don't speak your tongue. White man came, took everyone."--"The Dead Heart"
"There is enough, for everyone. In Redfern as there is in Alice. This is not the Buckingham Palace. This is the crown land. This is the brown land. This is not our land."--"Warakurna"
"In the desert in the dry, before the breaking of the rain, the temperature in the shade had reached a hundred and ten, again."--"Bullroarer"
"Sometimes you're beaten to the call, sometimes. Sometimes you're taken to the wall--but you don't give in."--"Sometimes"
"The Breakfast Creek Hotel is up for sale. The last square mile of terra firma gaveled in the mail."--"Dreamworld"
"And it happens to be an emergency. Some things aren't meant to be. Some things don't come for free."--"Put Down that Weapon"
"Don't wanna be an advocate. Don't wanna be a monument."--"Arctic World"
"The western desert lives and breathes in 45 degrees."--"Beds Are Burning"
"Warakurna, camels roam. Fires are warm and dogs are cold. Not since Lassiter was here, black man's got a lot to fear."--"Warakurna"
"Don't take the law into your own hands. Don't go looking for a fight."--"Bullroarer"
"40,000 years can make a difference to the state of things."--"The Dead Heart"
"Diesel and dust, is what we breathe. This land don't change, and we don't leave."--"Warakurna"
Comments: That trombone is undeniable. You can try, but you won't succeed. You can no more deny the trombone than you can deny the alligator. It can't be done.
Imagine for a moment that "Beds Are Burning" came out five or six years earlier. And then think of that song absorbed, adapted, and transformed by the Marsh Valley Pep Band into a beautiful, thunderous sonic weapon! Think of the destruction that would have resulted: the walls of the high school gymnasium shaken to the ground; ISU's Reed Gym in rubbles; the roof blown off of the Minidome like a giant tin can! (On second thought, it's probably best that we didn't wield that kind of power.)
Yes, it was probably the trombone from "Beds Are Burning" that first attracted me to Midnight Oil, but it didn't take long for it to be more than just that. The guitars, the drums, the wailing of Peter Garrett. The song first entered the Billboard Hot 100 on April 2, 1988. Most of my memories of the song are from that first year that I attended Idaho State University, in the apartment next to Loud Naked Dale. I would crank the song to get pumped up for church basketball games. (And to drown out Loud Naked Dale's incessant loud counting.)
"The Dead Heart" got a little bit of radio play, and it's a great song. (40,000 years and a bunch of singing 'do-do's' can make a difference to the state of things.) "Warakurna" also immediately grabbed my attention, with its dissing of the Buckingham Palace and its use of the album's title in the lyrics. (It turns out Warakurna is a town about the size of Arimo, so there's that, too.) "Bullroarer" feels as though it could be at home on the soundtrack from "Crocodile Dundee," and I mean that as a compliment. (Of course!) The line "the last square mile of terra firma gaveled in the mail" is enough by itself to make "Dreamworld" a great song. And, I just found out that "Sometimes" was actually the first song released as a single from the album. While an excellent song, it's no "Beds Are Burning." Still, I remember seeing them perform it on David Letterman's show on July 18, 1994, and the song rocked. ("Sometimes" begins at around the five minute mark of the video.)
The four songs listed in the "Album Depth" section above are just that: album depth. None are songs that I would seek out and listen to on their own, but each of them does a great job of helping the flow of the album.
There is one more song that appeared on the Australian release of the cd, but not on the US release. I found it way back when I first signed up for iTunes. "Gunbarrel Highway" is a very good song, and would definitely be listed in the "Top-Notch Tracks" section if it had been on the album.
And in a bit of good news, Midnight Oil isn't done yet! They are releasing a new album, "Resist," in February of 2022. The video for the first song from the album, "Rising Seas," can be found here. (Initial reaction: it's good, but not great. A little preachier than usual.) Still, I look forward to the album and a chance for more new music from Midnight Oil! (Maybe they'll even throw in a love ballad or two.) (Not bloody likely.)
Up next: The weakest of all the weak links.
It wasn't just you that got hooked on Midnight Oil because of the trombones on "Beds Are Burning." And it didn't hurt that they had a driving Peter Gunn baseline. Or plenty of woodblock banging. Or super-fun unusual lyrics to sing like "The four wheels scare the cockatoooooooooos!" But truth be told, I'm not sure why Peter Garrett's voice is so listenable. It's not a pretty voice by any means. I mean, if you took Michael Bublé and Peter Garrett, and if you placed them side by side on the stage and had them trade off singing lines of a song, we all know what would happen--Peter's dancing would knock out Michael in about 3 seconds flat. But if you put Michael behind some kind of huge impenetrable bulky barrier--maybe Meat Loaf?--and you listened to them sing together, you'd immediately say to yourself, "Meat Loaf has really let himself go." However, I'd probably say the same about the voices of Brian Johnson of AC/DC and Ric Ocasek of The Cars and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Cyndi Lauper of Cyndi Lauper. They all have unusual voices (she's so unusual!) that somehow manage to make the songs better because of their unusualishness. I mean, I wouldn't really care to hear Michael Bublé sing "Beds Are Burning." (But I would like to see Peter Garrett knock him out with a spastic flick of his wrist.)
ReplyDeleteI have one memory related to the Midnight Oil concert we went to that made me heartily ashamed of the rudeness of the audience. It was that moment after the band played "Beds Are Burning" when at least 25% of the audience got up and left the concert. I remember thinking how embarrassing it was that so many people would walk out like that. I cringed when it happened, and I still cringe thinking of it today. Peter Garrett and the band probably thought how rude all those Utah Mormons were to walk out on them.
I mentioned in a previous comment that Midnight Oil produces pretty songs about ugly things. And they ain't stopping anytime soon. I think the new song "Rising Seas" is very good--both the music and the lyrics. But that's because I'm already convinced that human produced global climate change is a thing. Anyone who doesn't already think that won't really be convinced by this song. Or by the fact that the arctic ice cap has melted enough to create new shipping lanes around the north of Canada. Or by the fact that the average sea level has risen by over 3.5 inches over the past 30 years. Or by the fact that the best-case scenario is that the average sea level will rise by 12 inches by the year 2100, while the worst-case scenario is 8 feet if we continue with high carbon emissions throughout the century. No, the song is really only going to have an impact on the people that already think Rising Seas are a problem. And that impact will be about the same impact that "Beds Are Burning" had on the return of Australian land to the indigenous Australians--which I think is none at all.
Oh, wait. The Australian government returned over 395 thousand acres of national parks in 2021. And since the mid-'90s course cases involving the Native Title Act, it looks like native title has been recognized over more than 32% of the continent.
Hmmm.... Maybe these Midnight Oil protest songs have more power to change things than I thought. Now if only they would write a protest song about Meat Loaf.
Nardo