Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Re: What Got You Started?

cathiejohn cathiejohn@optushome.com.au
Mon, 2 Jun 2003 20:52:22 +1000


When "Head Injuries" came out I was a serious schoolboy , totally wrapped up
in Bruce Springsteen and a collection of Yes, King Crimson and Van der Graaf
Generator CDs I'd inherited from an older cousin recently gone "New Wave".

The Oils seemed to me to sum up all of that stuff, AND to be singing about
places I'd actually been to. So I was already pretty sold.

Anyway, they then did a gig at Penrith Park (my local football club) for the
"Jobs: Every Home Should Have One" afternoon, that I went to with some
friends from school. For the benefit of those not in the know, Penrith is in
the outer Western Suburbs of Sydney: an area (then and now, to a lesser
extent) constantly ridiculed in the press and treated like some sort of
leper colony by the inner city cognoscenti. That the Oils were actually
bothering to come out to play for us was unbelievable.

I was hooked from that day.

It was also, while I'm in a nostalgia mood, the day of my first (and last)
taste of a "bong". When Peter sang "Some kids got no time for Malcolm" (the
then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser) I laughed so much the bit of hose fell
out of the Mr Juicy bottle and my friends got shitty.

Schooldays, huh?