Midnight Oil

     Whenever someone asks me what act I'd like to see live that I haven't seen before, I give two answers. The first is David Bowie, who I will write a post about in the future, and the other is Midnight Oil. You may be saying to yourself, "Midnight Oil...really?", but I've loved them since the 80's. You may also be wondering why I've never them since they've been around for over 30 years. As you may recall from previous posts, I grew up in the middle of nowhere and never went to concerts. My first concert was in the mid-80's at CMU when Starship came to campus. Yes , it was the tour for "We Built This City on Rock and Roll". Why do I keep admitting crap like this on the internets? Then I saw Rush a few times in the 90's and that was it until the 2000's when I started going to concerts on a regular basis. At that point, Midnight Oil weren't an active touring band. I have quite a bit of their music in my collection, mostly on vinyl. Today, I bought their recently released career retrospective Essential Oils. This is kind of sad, because I already have their previous best of collection, but this one is even better.
     Of course, everyone knows Diesel and Dust and it's hits "Beds Are Burning" and "Dreamworld". I own that album on cassette, cd, deluxe cd and vinyl and strongly recommend it to my kids. Everyone also knows that they have a seven foot tall, bald, spastic frontman (Peter Garrett). He is never ranked among the great rock frontmen, which I feel is a travesty. He writes powerful lyrics, has a powerful voice and is extremely high energy. I don't know the first thing about Australian history or politics, but when I listen to Midnight Oil I feel like part of whatever cause he's on about. If anyone out there knows of a good Australian history that's not written by a right-wing fascist let me know. I'd really like to learn more about it.
     I also like the band's alternative, surf-rock guitar and drum sound. I don't know if they will ever tour again because Peter Garrett is in the government, but if they do I'll be there even if I have to travel. I also own Blue Sky Mining on blue vinyl and 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and Earth and Sun and Moon on cd. I really recommend all of it to my kids, but definitely Diesel and Dust and Essential Oils. Midnight Oil are one of those bands that when you hear their music it transports you to another place. You can breath the dust and feel the heat on the back of your neck. You can visualize the landscape and the people who populate it. And considering how much I hate to fly, that's probably as close as I'll ever get to visiting Australia. Peace.