There's a moment in the episode where I intervened as editor as something was bugging me about one of the track discussions. We'd got a single word wrong which threw us off compass. I sought and found a direct source of the story behind the song The Eternal as recollected by Joy Division guitarist Bernard Sumner. You can find the interview here.
Episode 8: Brain Space: OZ Alt Comedy
Having reminisced about the impact and legacy of the Young Ones in the last episode, we turn our attention to Australian comedy in the 1980s. Sketch comedy dominated Australian television during this time; From the political satire of the Gillies Report to undergraduate shenanigans of the D-Generation, Australian comedy revelled in taking the piss out of cultural stereotypes. That said, insipid situation comedies like Hey Dad were also popular during the latter half of the decade. In this episode, we focus on two strains of alternative humour in the form of Australia You’re Standing in it and Wogs Out of Work, the latter paving the way for a new brand of non-Anglo comedians.
Comedians like Rik Mayal, Alexie Sayle, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were an integral part of alternative culture in the 1980s. And In many ways, these figures were as innovative and iconoclastic as their cousins in the post-punk music scene. While groups like The Goons and Monty Python testify to a satirical and surreal strain in British comedy that preceded the alternative comedy scene of the 1980s, most television comedy in Old Blighty was dire. For the most part, comedy on the tube trafficked in broad stereotypes: shrill harpies, dumb bimbos, and hapless migrants from the subcontinent and the Caribbean: Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language, Are You Being Served and so on. In short, mainstream comedy from the 1970s was pretty low brow. It performed the cultural work of normalising sexist and racist prejudices that were prevalent during the 1960s and 70s. The Alternative comics of the 1980s consciously defined themselves against these immediate precursors. In this episode we re-visit The Young Ones, arguably the most exemplary televisual manifestation of the anarchic ethos of the alt 80s zeitgeist. So, let’s all go on a summer holiday to Thatcher’s Britain with Rik, Vyvyan, Neil and Mike, the chaotic, dishevelled, unruly, slothful Young Ones.
At a time when post-punquers like The Cure or The Banshees were refining and learning the power of their quieter sides (both bands released records that year than turned the volume down and the atmosphere up) they were simply no match from this trio from Cardiff who played to taped drum machines and sang like they were waiting for the jug to boil.
I traded my cassette in for a UK vinyl import when I moved to Melbourne and it became the soundtrack to the first few months of my life there as I gradually pecked at a social life to come. The sadness, whimsy and deceptive naivete of this record made good company. It was smart, funny, heartrending and literate and if you couldn't dance to it (I wonder if anyone ever tried) you could sing along (mentally, of course, don't want to alert the neighbours).
Glenn came to the record much later which is, fittingly, why we begin with his recollection.
It's been months since our last ep as we have been in Australia's longest and strictest lockdown. We thought it would be fitting to resume with some reminiscing about this city we found by various routes.
Melbourne has been my (this is Peter) home since 1985 and, while I've travelled a little, I've pretty much sprouted roots and settled. From Queensland the allure of a cooler climate and an even cooler culture was irresistible when a friend of mine invited me down to set up a share house. She knew I was at a loose end after uni and that I was looking to move out of my house, anyway. Then, after a twenty-four hour bus ride from Brisbane I stepped into a freezing afternoon. It was raining and the drops felt hard. It was spring and everything was coming true. Thirty-five years later, I'm still here and if the shady strolls of a new spring still beckon I need to savour the scent of jasmine in gardens through three layers of face mask, it still feels right to be here.
I had an idea of this town's musical power from the days of Skyhooks and their biting satirical fun. When the late '70s hit and the Hooks had lost their two most charismatic members and a lot of their currency a new crop stood to fill venues great and small with music that could clang like factories or trill like budgies, mostly with a strong pulse and turn of melody. Whether it was the machine shopped funk meets perhistoric chants of Hunters and Collectors, the dizzying synthesised riffs of Models or the lightless chaos of The Birthday Party it felt committed, it felt like the players lived like that.
Myths die hard but they do die and by the time I arrived in the southern metropolis all three of those entities were barely recognisable. There were currents beneath them but these were disappointingly rockist (that ol' Brisbane cringe keeps on keepin' on) but they were fun and there wasn't a government that felt like a truncheon to the temples beyond them. I had to look a little harder to find that spirit of exploration and I did. It was in the smaller pubs, nurtured by the expanded opening hours, a growing street press and a community radio that offered continual celebration.
About a week into being here I remember I jaywalked across a street in the CBD. The traffic cop saw me and I froze as I got to the opposite curb, then turned to face it. He was young, tut-tutted me with a gesture and a smile which seemed to say, "next time." If home was Brisbane this didn't feel like it. But it did feel like home.
From Perth to Melbourne is 58 hours on a bus. The journey covers over 3500 kilometres, and there’s very little to see on the way, save the relentless red desert of the treeless plain, and the bitumen road’s white lines flashing past. Despite the distance between them, there are many things that unite these Australian cities located at opposite ends of the continent. There’s AFL football and beer for starters. And in the 1980s there was the Indy music scene. Any Perth band with ambition had their sights set on the Melbourne, the capital of cool.
My first glimpse of Melbourne came in Black and White, accompanied by the ominous-sounding theme from Homicide, a pioneering television drama, which was still a ratings powerhouse in 1974 (this is Glenn, btw). Seated in front of a 26inch Rank Arena television set, the streets of Melbourne seemed fuzzy, distorted by the rabbit-ear antenna’s tenuous grasp on the VHF signal. I still recall the way the actors always appeared with ghostly doppelgangers, another consequence of fragile VHF broadcast technology. Homicide gave me the impression that Melbourne was a dangerous, depraved place, overrun with ruthless criminals and teeming with all manner of unimaginable vices. Even then, I knew that it was a place I wanted to see, a place where I might also find a life one day.
So, I was happy to leave the suburbs of Perth for the city of Melbourne, which in my youth became all the more alluring because of the almost mythical status of its underground music scene, perhaps most vividly portrayed in Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986). Here was an even more mysterious world than the one I encountered through Homicide. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were obviously not unknown practices in Perth, but the Melbourne scene, as depicted in Lowenstein’s film, made Melbourne the epicentre of the Australian post-punk culture. Melbourne didn’t disappoint. I have fond memories of my early days in the metropolis. The streets pulsated with the energy of people in a hurry and there was never any shortage of pleasurable distractions: jugglers and clowns on the streets at festival time; 24/7 diners serving burgers, fries, dim-sims, and souvlakis; beer, pool and bands in smoke-filled bars; bodacious girls on the avenues of Fitzroy, St Kilda, Brunswick, Richmond and Collingwood; inner-city share-house parties heaving with hopped-up students, strung-out junkies, and deadbeat dealers all dancing to the sounds of pounding drums, devil guitars, throbbing basslines and high octane voices ranting and railing, rocking and rolling. Or so it seems from this eerie, silent and solemn point in time. As my adopted city quietly negotiates the apocalypse, I cast my mind back to happier times when Melbourne roared like an MCG crowd on Grand Final day. Things may never be the same again, but we can hope.
