Robot Claw

Some of my all-time favourite songs by Australian bands (Nick Cave excluded):

“Reckless” by Australian Crawl
aka “The Boofhead Song”. Back when I was a shrimp, I recorded this one from the radio one time, perhaps accidentally, and used to fast forward past it all the time because I (and BS) hated it. Now I just love it to death, and believe it’s one of the all time classics of Australian music. I love the line about the Manly ferry. Every time I’ve ridden the ferry, I can just imagine someone sitting next to me writing the lyric.

“I Hear Motion” by The Models
A pop band during the 1980s, that had that distinct sound of Oz pop (more rock than british pop music). The Models actually had a tonne of fantastic songs, and their dark sound kept them on the periphery of other genres, such as goth or straight rock. This, their first big hit, is my current favourite. (Incidentally, the lead singer sounds incredibly like Nick Cave in this song)

“I Send A Message” by INXS
I saw INXS live once (free, at Spears Point Park) and hated them. Most of their later catalogue doesn’t do much for me, but that doesn’t detract in any way from the fact that The Swing is one of the finest crafted albums I own. So many great songs on that album! This is currently my favourite 🙂

“Street Cafe” by Icehouse
Ignore the song for a sec (if that’s possible) and check out that video. Holy Cow! This was 1982, and even Duran Duran hadn’t produced their video opus’s yet. Iva Davies was so ahead of his time in both music and video. He was a monster of Oz Rock back in the 1980s, and hopefully songs like this show you why.

“Say Goodbye” by Hunters & Collectors
God this video is awesome. Could they have possibly known, so many years ago, how nostalgic to an ex-pat this would eventually become. Look at the sky on the horizon. That’s 100% Australia! I used to know a girl who had such a crush on the lead singer of this band (Mark Seymour) and seeing him again here I understand why! This song has one of the most beautiful and powerful and evocative lyrics of any song I’ve ever heard, which is ironic since it was beloved by the sort of crowd one would hardly associate with poetic beauty. Read the comments on youtube and feel the passion! This song is a tour-de-force, a masterpiece. This song is one of the best songs ever written and I’ll love it until the day I die. And then I’ll play it in the Pure Land 🙂

“Down Under” by Men At Work
The song is almost a cliche these days (5.5 million youtube views!) but I still love it. Even though I always did, I believe this song has a special place in the hearts of Australian ex-pats, because it so skilfully summarizes the sorts of things about Australia the world seems to think 🙂

And of course, this one.

I’ve blogged it before and I’ll blog it again. That last entry is not just one of my favourite ever Australia songs, it’s one of my favourite songs period.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.