Australia: Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons/Hit and Run

Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons: Hit and Run
[purchase]

When I saw the album, Screaming Targets by Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons described by the WPRB reviewer as being from the “Australian Graham Parker,” I was certainly intrigued. I had become a huge Parker fan after the release of Squeezing Out Sparks, and used my access to the record library in the basement of Holder Hall to investigate his back catalogue. And the reviewer wasn’t wrong—there was a definite Parkeresque feel to Screaming Targets, whose songs included the rock, blues, soul and reggae influences that were all included in Parker’s work. “Hit and Run,” is a fun tune with a reggae feel, and my other favorite from the album, “Only The Lonely Heart,” is more of a straightforward rocker.

Of course, calling someone the Australian Graham Parker is unfair both to Joe Camilleri and Parker—both are unique artists with individual sounds. I remember how much fun David Letterman (him, again) had bringing performers on his show that were, say, the Elvis Presley of Uruguay, or the Frank Sinatra of Hungary (I’m making those up—I can’t find the real ones online), and while they certainly were reminiscent of whoever they were supposed to sound like, it did sort of diminish their own talent.

But Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons was a fine band in their own right. Formed in 1975 in Melbourne as Jo Jo Zep and His Little Helpers to record a cover of the Chuck Berry holiday classic, “Run Rudolph Run,” it took its name from Camilleri’s Maltese-derived nickname. The band began gigging, cycled through members and renamed itself before releasing their first single in 1976, sung not by Camilleri, but by then-guitarist Wayne Burt. After releasing their debut, Burt left, and the band focused more on R&B and blues music. By their third album, released in 1978, they had achieved popularity in Australia, as well as fans overseas, such as Parker and Elvis Costello, who covered the band’s “So Young.”

Screaming Targets, the band’s first U.S. release, spawned a world tour, but apparently, it led to tensions among the members. After another album, which was pretty good, but not as good as Screaming Targets, was unsuccessful, the band began to break up, and the “Falcons” name was jettisoned. A move to include salsa music in Jo Jo Zep’s sound led to “Taxi Mary,” a hit in Australia, a few more releases, and the end, before a reformation in 2003 and the occasional one-off performance.

Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2007. Were they a great band? I don’t really know, because my familiarity with them is really limited to two albums, one of which was excellent, but I don’t really think so. But as Camilleri stated in an interview before the induction, "I'm chuffed. I think the Falcons did play a part in the Australian music explosion ... I'm happy it's been acknowledged. The Falcons were a band out of time. What we played wasn't what was being played. It was an R&B/reggae sound in the time of flares and funk and pop music. Somehow we slotted in."

Australia(n): Men At Work/Down Under

purchase [Down Under]

There really isn't anything more Australian in this genre than Men at Work's <Down Under>.
I've checked the SMM records: surprisingly, there's no record of either Men at Work nor Down Under!

Maybe that's not such a surprise: the group had but a single major hit (some lesser hits, OK). But this song is the first that comes to [my] mind when you say "Australia". No?

Back in 1982, I used to record MTV to VHS tapes so that I could watch these hits again and again 10,000 miles away at any time I wished.

The SongFacts web site provides some depth to the bottle-clanging in the official video for the song:

>It was just a little bass riff with some percussion that he played on bottles which were filled with water to varying degrees to get different notes. It was a very intriguing little groove.
I really loved it, it had a real trance-like quality to it. I used to listen to it in the car all the time.<

Avicii & Men at Work above (more Avicii here)

Australia: Midnight Oil/Blue Sky Mining

Midnight Oil: Blue Sky Mine
[purchase]

There are many great bands and musicians from Australia, and I hope that we get to a bunch of them over the next two weeks. I’m going to start off with my favorite, Midnight Oil. Like most Americans who have heard of Midnight Oil, I first became aware of them with what is still probably their most famous song, “Beds are Burning,” from 1987’s Diesel and Dust (released in the US in 1988). It is a great song, highlighting the claims of indigenous Australians to their historic land. And the album raised other concerns of indigenous Australians and environmental matters (and had another great single, “The Dead Heart.”)

Not surprisingly, there was a bit of a backlash about a bunch of white guys raising these issues, but it seems that the band did all of the right things (like donating their royalties to indigenous organizations and touring with indigenous bands), and it seems that eventually, most people appreciated the fact that Midnight Oil’s popularity raised the profile of these issues.

It was the band’s next album, 1990’s Blue Sky Mining, that made me a confirmed fan—in fact to this day, it remains one of my favorite albums, and is included in any conversation about my “Desert Island Discs.” I think that while it lacks a single track that has the staying power of “Beds are Burning,” each of Blue Sky Mining’s 10 songs are strong, and the album holds together from the opening sorta title track, “Blue Sky Mine,” about the experiences of workers at the Wittenoom blue asbestos mines, to the environmentally focused closer “Antarctica.”

The band decided to both make their music a little more accessible and make their message even more political, and it worked. Not to mention that the success of their prior album gave them the opportunity to work at a better studio, so the sound of the album is much cleaner. There are songs about the need to remember and examine Australia’s difficult history, corrupt politics, divisiveness, and other environmental and political issues. Damn—all of these issues are still problems in the world. Here’s a nice article about the album, including an interview with guitarist Jim Moginie and producer Warne Livesey, looking back on it after 25 years.

Midnight Oil’s environmental and political emphasis was not just empty rhetoric. On the tour supporting Blue Sky Mining, the band, in New York to play at Radio City Music Hall, pulled up on a flatbed truck at Exxon’s nearby headquarters, unfurled a banner that read “Midnight Oil makes you dance, Exxon oil makes us sick” and played a 30-minute lunch-hour set to protest the prior year’s Exxon Valdez spill. Peter Garrett. the band’s 6’4” shaved-head frontman was the President of the Australian Conservation Foundation in 1989–1993 and 1998–2002, and during 1993–1998 he was on the International Board of Greenpeace. He also served in the Australian House of Representatives and in the Cabinet as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts and later as Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth.

David Letterman loved Midnight Oil, and I loved Dave. He usually introduced them with some crack about how Garrett scared him, and referred to them as “bushmen,” which seemed funny at the time, but hasn’t really aged well. Here’s a video of their performances on his show, and in the last one, you can hear some of Dave’s comments.

Being who I am, I did go back and get copies of most of the band’s albums before Diesel and Dust, and they didn’t totally grab me, and I didn’t listen to them much. They seemed to be searching for a style, mixing punk, pop and even prog influences that really came together in a trio of albums that started with Diesel, continued with Blue Sky and ended up with its successor, Earth and Sun and Moon (with a fine live set that was released during this period). After that, although they put out some good music, to my ears they never again reached the peak of that three album run. They are a band that I have never seen live, and regret it.

Midnight Oil disbanded in 2002, when Garrett left the band, although they reformed intermittently for benefit shows. They reunited for a world tour in 2017 (somehow, I missed their NY dates) and are touring Europe and the UK later this year.