Cringe Festival

This isn’t something I admit readily, but for a long time I had stone-cold cultural cringe about Australia. In particular, local music. Throughout my teenage years, I firmly fostered the bias that Australian songs were inferior to their British and American counterparts. This wasn’t something I marched around announcing at school, more a frequency of filtering that shone harshly while watching rage or listening to Triple J.

It shocks me now, to think back on it. I was essentially the living embodiment of, as Triple J’s Nick Findlay put it, “…a dark time many, many years ago where a large portion of Australian music fans almost didn’t see local acts as being legitimate.” A time before the grunge golden years when the national youth station went into overdrive championing the ‘Gurge, Grinners, ‘Finger and ‘Chair, cooking up a hearty slice of Homebake that Australians could proudly sink their ears into.

“Aussie music is world-class,” Triple J said from 1995 to 2005.
We listened.
Well, most of us did.
For whatever reason, I was a lot harder to convince.

So, where did my national reticence stem from? (It didn’t apply to sport. Our cricketers were world beaters.) Was it inherited messaging or learned behaviour? Was I influenced by a role model? Was it muscle memory passed on through my mother, herself born in the 1950s – the decade where cringe began? To clarify – the thinking was that anything good had to come from overseas, to the point where Germaine Greer and Barry Humphries took off for London, reaping them respect and authority they never would have achieved in their home towns.

Look, I just remember Aussie songs being really daggy in the early to mid 90s. Show No Mercy, Barnsey (and / or Farnsey), ‘Tucker’s Daughters a memory,’ Two Strong Hearts (farts), Southern Sons, Indecent Obsession, Noiseworks ‘Hot Chili Woman,’ Norman Gunston VS Effie. When an Australian song came on, it would just sound a bit… thin … hokey … dare I say it, annoying. Harley and Rose by The Black Sorrows? (In my defence I like ‘Chained to the Wheel’ now.)

Meanwhile, there was Def Leppard, Unskinny Bop, MC Hammer, Deee-Lite, Swamp Thing by The Grid and AC/DC! Hell, the only ‘Australian’ song I liked was Thunderstruck, but I probably thought Acca Dacca were English. (Technically the first Oz song I truly loved was Marvellous by The Twelfth Man feat. MCG Hammer – see, it still had to have an American in it.)

At high school, my friends were fans of Crowded House and Custard, but I had a blocker in my brain. “They’re a bit basic because they’re from around here,” I brooded.
Beck was cool. Radiohead were gods. Oasis was game-changing. Blur were intriguing. Silverchair was… okay, but I found the ‘Freak’ single a bit plodding.

Nope. I was all about Rage Against The Machine. A sound so ferocious, authentic and tough, it could only come from the bright and confident United States. Home of The Simpsons and the NBA and McDonald’s – the cultural trifecta which consumed Burnie in 1993, as daggy AFL memorabilia was sold off to buy Seattle Supersonics skivvies and Dallas Cowboy polar fleeces on special at Fitzgerald’s.

Poor Australian music. I didn’t own a single homegrown CD by the time I went to uni. My cassette collection featured Tommy Emmanuel’s Determination and How Blue Are You? which Carlton Football Club issued in 1991.

Then, Augie March happened. ‘Asleep in perfection’ was the first time I turned on the radio and heard a local songwriter floor me with beauty and urgency. Then came iOTA and George and Cut Copy and The Avalanches and The Sleepy Jackson. By 2001 my CD collection understood that Aussie groups were as valid and sophisticated and satisfying as anything by Granddaddy or Sparklehorse or The Chemical Brothers.

I’m still in rehab to rid myself of the emotional scars of my low self-esteem towards my own culture. I reckon I’ve turned it around to the point where I actively seek out Australian movies and shows. I’m proud of local music I find, whether it’s the Mad Bastards soundtrack or ‘Milkumanna’ by King Stingray or a middle-aged appreciation for Ross Wilson and Mondo Rock. I even made a playlist with two hours of nothing but Australian songs, a defiant statement to satiate the 12 year old from conservative North-West Tasmania, born into a family of staunch liberal voters. Just don’t ask me to pump up Aussie hip-hop.

My favourite band is Sydney’s Richard In Your Mind. I’ve been friends with them for 20 years and watched them produce music inspired by Beck, Ween and The Flaming Lips on par with any of those acts. Heck, on a good day I can be proud of myself and the music I’ve made. Australia is cool, in my book. We don’t have to import credit and respect. Ideas crackle over cane-fields and talent lights up this Great Southern Land.

This was the last of my columns for Canberra streetpress BMA last year. You can read the other six I wrote here.

A playlist I made to accompany this article!

See also: * Lucky I’m With Aimee / The Comedy of Dimity: Remembering Love Serenade
Plus other music related columns in MUSIC

I have a lot of respect for John Farnham now that I’ve seen a documentary about him recently which basically repositioned Whispering Jack as an indie album. I was sitting in the waiting room of my ENT in Fitzroy and this song came on Smooth FM and I was like ‘this is awesome.’ I like how Reasons doesn’t really have any definitive chorus, which is pretty unusual for a song of its kind on the radio.