Random Music Talk CV: The Human Fund - Money for Leo

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U2 got 69th in the Pazz and Jop? Here's my thoughts: nice.

Also, for what it's worth:

T-127. Every Breaking Wave (5 mentions)
T-308. The Miracle (2 mentions)
T-537. Sleep Like a Baby Tonight (1 mention)
T-537. Volcano (1 mention)
 
Politcised music is not dead in Australia - Melbourne's The Smith Street Band have just released a song called "Wipe That Shit-Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face"

I've never actually listened to the band, I figured it would be a Frenzal Rhomb (lame repetitive "punk") but it's actually quite serious. I'm a wee bit torn. I think I actually like the song but I don't know if this band is considered any good or not, Ax will have to help me there. And the lyrics get a bit lazy towards the end, the Abbott govt is hardly the first to have refugees drown at sea on their watch. There may even be less drowning now than with the previous, less conservative govt (although that doesn't mean they aren't dying, they're just dying out of our area so we don't have to feel guilty). But, I'm down for a decent tune ripping on someone I strongly dislike.

https://soundcloud.com/thesmithstreetband/wipe-that-shit-eating-grin-off-your-punchable-face

d90881f9aa9bf47034c46117995c74a4-640x360.jpg


I’ll sink slowly into cement, running round the city square
I’ve always felt a little different, now I can breath in the anger on the dirty air
grubby beauty blocked out by streets and time
painted their slogans on the silhouette of my skyline

It is not enough to be quiet on the train back home
A change is gonna come, our country’s mind can’t stay this closed

Enter the decade fearing failing and our heart starts beating in time
with the white noise and the ranting and raving, their official party line
we must respond we need a fight, decide how the destitute will survive and then die

So wipe that shit-eating grin off your punchable face
these people are human beings that you’ll destroy and displace
when you sit in Kirribilli House and there’s no one else around do you know just to keep your job you’re putting bodies in the ground
drowning refugees at sea, kiss babies screaming vote for me
I’ll take you to the future via the 1950s

Were we supposed to feel hope when you said you’d stop the boats?
cause that’s some fucking evil shit, politicizing killing kids, drip feeding fear into our brains, new leader clearly insane
gonna change the culture in our cultured minds
start a war with an alibi we can justify
 
Just checked the last page in the previous thread; didn't realize we were in danger of another Cobbler disaster (which he tried to hasten with a series of garbage posts).

Nice work, El Mel.
 
There's a memo here from accounting telling me there's no such thing as the Human Fund
 
I wasn't wild about Taylor Swift's last album, but I look forward to the day when Style is on the radio 10 times an hour. That song is awesome.
 
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Politcised music is not dead in Australia - Melbourne's The Smith Street Band have just released a song called "Wipe That Shit-Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face"

I've never actually listened to the band, I figured it would be a Frenzal Rhomb (lame repetitive "punk") but it's actually quite serious. I'm a wee bit torn. I think I actually like the song but I don't know if this band is considered any good or not, Ax will have to help me there.

The Smith Street Band is one of the most respected bands in the Melbourne punk scene and frontman Wil Wagner has a fairly sizeable personal following too. I've never actually been that into them - I listened to their quite well received album Sunshine & Technology and it didn't do a whole lot for me either positively or negatively. But most people in the various heavy music scenes here have lots of praise for these guys, both musically and as people.
 
Politcised music is not dead in Australia - Melbourne's The Smith Street Band have just released a song called "Wipe That Shit-Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face"

I've never actually listened to the band, I figured it would be a Frenzal Rhomb (lame repetitive "punk") but it's actually quite serious. I'm a wee bit torn. I think I actually like the song but I don't know if this band is considered any good or not, Ax will have to help me there. And the lyrics get a bit lazy towards the end, the Abbott govt is hardly the first to have refugees drown at sea on their watch. There may even be less drowning now than with the previous, less conservative govt (although that doesn't mean they aren't dying, they're just dying out of our area so we don't have to feel guilty). But, I'm down for a decent tune ripping on someone I strongly dislike.

https://soundcloud.com/thesmithstreetband/wipe-that-shit-eating-grin-off-your-punchable-face

d90881f9aa9bf47034c46117995c74a4-640x360.jpg


I’ll sink slowly into cement, running round the city square
I’ve always felt a little different, now I can breath in the anger on the dirty air
grubby beauty blocked out by streets and time
painted their slogans on the silhouette of my skyline

It is not enough to be quiet on the train back home
A change is gonna come, our country’s mind can’t stay this closed

Enter the decade fearing failing and our heart starts beating in time
with the white noise and the ranting and raving, their official party line
we must respond we need a fight, decide how the destitute will survive and then die

So wipe that shit-eating grin off your punchable face
these people are human beings that you’ll destroy and displace
when you sit in Kirribilli House and there’s no one else around do you know just to keep your job you’re putting bodies in the ground
drowning refugees at sea, kiss babies screaming vote for me
I’ll take you to the future via the 1950s

Were we supposed to feel hope when you said you’d stop the boats?
cause that’s some fucking evil shit, politicizing killing kids, drip feeding fear into our brains, new leader clearly insane
gonna change the culture in our cultured minds
start a war with an alibi we can justify

Speaking for myself only, I really can't stand The Smith Street Band. I don't consider them a joke band (a la Frenzel Rhomb), they are serious, but they're also seriously dull. Good on them for putting their two cents out there though.
 
What about this song?

Still don't really have any strong feelings about their style and I find their guitars rather plain. It's not really my sort of heavier music. But it's nice to see bands getting angry about Tone's rule.
 
Didn't The Basics have something out a while back too? Maybe it's time someone did a whole album a la Midnight Oil's Redneck Wonderland (fat lot of good that did though, but it was a cracking good record).
 
Didn't The Basics have something out a while back too? Maybe it's time someone did a whole album a la Midnight Oil's Redneck Wonderland (fat lot of good that did though, but it was a cracking good record).

Yeah, they had a song that actually used Donald Horne's "lucky country" phrase correctly, i.e. negatively. That pleased me, because every time I hear some drongo praise Australia as the lucky country I want to hit them around the head with the weightiest copy of Horne's book I can find.
 
I figure that whenever somebody misuses "lucky country", they're one of the second-rate people to whom Horne referred in the full quotation.

For the benefit of the non-Australians, this is what we're talking about: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."

Written in 1964 or 2014? Hard to tell really.
 
I figure that whenever somebody misuses "lucky country", they're one of the second-rate people to whom Horne referred in the full quotation.

For the benefit of the non-Australians, this is what we're talking about: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."

Written in 1964 or 2014? Hard to tell really.

And sadly (at least some of) the second-raters of 1964 were giants compared to the non-entities who run us now.
 
Didn't The Basics have something out a while back too? Maybe it's time someone did a whole album a la Midnight Oil's Redneck Wonderland (fat lot of good that did though, but it was a cracking good record).

Great album that is.

"REDNECK WUHHNNDAAALLAAANNDD -- *duhnuhnuh duhnuhnuh duhnuh duhnuh duhnuhnuh*"

A bit forgotten as far as discussions of Midnight Oil's top albums go, isn't it?
 
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