Midnight Oil

Subject: FW: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television? [2 Attachments]
From: "oilyshark" <oilyshark@optusnet.com>
Date: 8/11/2012, 7:13 pm
To:

Well the printer has shit itself but as promised I want to get this story out so here goes….

 

 

It’s late March 84, the Oils have just completed a series of low key warm up shows around Sydney, and now, on the eve of their first American tour (a highly condensed and hectic 3 and a half week jaunt that is likely to be their only concession to US live work), they’re doing a late night chat show.

 

Hosted by Alan Thicke, Thicke Of The Night normally allows entertainers to perform just one song. Midnight Oil however, have demanded and received permission to do three songs.

 

“We started the show with Read About It” says Hirst, “and we’d scattered all this newspaper around this floor as an effect. So before the show I said to Pete, “look we’ve got to give these people something to think about” – and importantly the camera crew, who’d been getting a bit stroppy. So we arranged that Pete would actually get out his lighter and drop it into these newspapers on the floor and set fire to the place in the middle of Read About It, which is exactly what happened. And they went berserk.

 

Michael Lippold, our stage manager and a long time friend had actually removed the closest fire extinguisher which caused extra panic. So here was the show going live to millions of Americans homes with cameramen running around wildly stamping out this fire.. while we’re still playing.    

 

“We gat backstage and we’re sitting around relaxing after this, and the floor manager had been sent in to pay us out severely…well he came backstage, took one look at us, and I think once again the collective Oils stance made him go a little weak at the knees, and he asked us if we had enough coffee and left.

 

“So we did Short Memory in the middle and decided to be fairly diplomatic and play a fairly straight version, and saved our final coup for Power And The Passion….during which Pete started to do his manic spinning routine off into the audience. You’ve never seen so many chorus girls scatter so quickly!  The Red Sea had nothing on Pete.

 

There’s so many stories out there…..I think it’s time that Rob wrote a book

 

 

Peter

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: oilyshark [mailto:oilyshark@optusnet.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 6 November 2012 7:52 PM
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: FW: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television? [2 Attachments]

 

Apologies to all…seems my printer has seen better days.  Will send the attachments again soon when work this out.   

 

-----Original Message-----
From: oilyshark [mailto:oilyshark@optusnet.com.au]
Sent: Monday, 5 November 2012 7:15 AM
To: 'powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au'
Subject: RE: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television? [2 Attachments]

 

Sorry same…. I will have another crack tonite. I will try another way

 

-----Original Message-----
From: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au] On Behalf Of oilyshark
Sent: Monday, 5 November 2012 6:53 AM
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: FW: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television? [2 Attachments]

 

 

 

Try this

 

-----Original Message-----
From: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au] On Behalf Of Gerald Mitchell
Sent: Monday, 5 November 2012 12:26 AM
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: Re: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television?

 

 

These are really great Oils finds, the Thick show stuff - amazing but of course not the best quality, and the attachments below are so cool but not complete.

 

Does anyone know if its possible to get the Thick show Oils appearance in a downloadable format, hopefully better quality?

If not I sure hope its included in the long awaited box set.

 

Also is there anyway to get the entire writings for the two attachments?

 

Thanks, Art  

 

On Nov 3, 2012, at 6:09 PM, oilyshark wrote: 

 

Hi Chris

 

Yes the Thicke Of The Night was in 84 and was their first tour of the US….refer attachment Dateline: 34N 118W

 

Also interesting that on Rage Jim said that Lee Majors once came back stage…refer attachment…seems it didn’t go as well as the six million dollar would have wanted..

 

 

Peter

 

-----Original Message-----
From: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au] On Behalf Of Chris Hurd
Sent: Sunday, 4 November 2012 2:17 AM
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: [powderworks] When were the 1st appearances on U.S. television?

 

 

Howdy from Texas to the Workers of the world!

It's really nice to see all of the recent activity on this list, so I
thought it might be a good time to query my fellow American Powdies
about some early Oils trivia. I am wondering what were the first
appearances of Midnight Oil on U.S. network television. I know I saw
them somewhere / sometime on late night television quite a bit prior
to MTV. For the longest time I thought I had seen them on either Don
Kirshner's Rock Concert (last on air in 1981) or Burt Sugarman's
Midnight Special (also last on air in 1981). But then just yesterday I
discovered this clip on YouTube from Thicke Of The Night, a late night
talk show with Alan Thicke, in 1984:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmHco4ie9EE

And now I'm thinking, this is probably the one I had seen so long ago
before the big U.S. breakout with D&D in 1987. That is, unless you
folks are aware of any other U.S. televised appearances, whether they
were live or pre-recorded. I'm suffering not just the confusion of
age, but also the fact that back then I was young and foolish, and may
have been smoking a bizarre tobacco substitute at the time.

The clip from the Alan Thicke show linked above is really very good in
my opinion, and I'm almost ready to settle on it as the lingering hazy
memory of my first visual exposure to Midnight Oil, because it sure
rings a loud and noisy bell. Still really curious about what else is
out there from the Oils in the U.S. broadcast past though. Thanks in
advance,

CH