Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Oils article in Georgia Straight

j p niven poppycocteau@flashmail.com
Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:37:53 -0800


Midnight Oil Is Still Burning
by Steve Newton
The Georgia Straight, November 15-22 2001

Midnight Oil is one of the most politically motivated and socially conscious
guitar-rock bands in the world. Although best known for embracing Aboriginal
land-rights issues in its native Australia via the 1988 hit "Beds Are
Burning", the quintet has always kept an eye out for international causes to
support. In the early '90s, the group took it upon itself to vociferously
protest the logging of Clayoquot Sound, outraging B.C.'s forest workers in
the process. And on the 1982 album _10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,_ the band made a
serious case against American military interventions with "US Forces". When
the _Straight_ contacts Oil's drummer, Rob Hirst, en route to a gig in
Detroit - with a concert at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom scheduled
for one week later - he's asked if, in light of recent world events, his
band is still actively pushing the antiwar cause. "Well, we're certainly
pushing antiviolence messages," reports the outspoken rocker, "particularly
when it comes to violence directed at innocent people. That would certainly
be a constant. As far as the New York show goes, of course, it'll be a very
different kinda show than the one we would have done before September the
11th. We're taking the view that people are getting on with everything, and
life goes on, but we'll obviously make that a special show, considering the
circumstances."
   Although Midnight Oil may be tailoring its New York gig to fit in with
the prevailing mood in the bruised but unbowed Big Apple, Hirst confirms
that numbers like "US Forces" - and other antinationalist songs such as
"Short Memory" and "One Country" - have not been deleted from the current
tour's set list. When the band plays the Commodore on Thursday and Friday
(November 15 and 16), it will include a smattering of such tunes from its
'80s heyday, plus selections from its overlooked '90s releases and its
upcoming _Capricornia_ CD. The latter album, due out in February, was helmed
by Matthew Good Band producer Warne Livesey, who was also at the controls
for the Oil's top-selling _Diesel and Dust_ and _Blue Sky Mining_ discs. But
Hirst - one of the most prolific songwriters in the band - points out that
_Capricornia_ isn't nearly as politically driven as past efforts. "It's not
really a cause-based kind of album," he relates. "Thematically, it was tied
with a famous Australian novel of the same name by Xavier Herbert, which
some Australian schoolkids read when they're younger. It's got some good
stories about the interaction at the top end of Australia a hundred years
ago between the first white settlers and Aboriginal people up there, so that
provided the context for some of the songs. But other than that, it was just
a product of the writers getting together and making an album of songs which
we hoped would be stronger than anything we've done before."
   Although the next Midnight Oil album might not include as much outraged
finger-pointing as usual, neither will it be a frivolous chicks-'n'-cars
romp. The band is still quick to lay its concerns on the table when it comes
to contentious issues - like the recent assignment of Aussie fighting forces
to the war in Afghanistan. "Australia has a history of putting its hand up
first to offer young Australian men and women to go and fight in whatever
war," Hirst asserts. "It's been going on since the Boer War - actually, I
believe it might even have been before then; I think we sent some troops to
the Crimean. My own view is that we could have waited a while and offered
our support without necessarily sending in troops."
   The last time Midnight Oil made big political waves on a worldwide scale
was when it performed at the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Olympics in
Sydney, its members sporting black outfits emblazoned with the word _Sorry_
in bold white lettering. The idea for that far-reaching stunt came while the
band was staying in the Australian outback with some of the ripped-off
Natives it feels are owed an apology. "We were sitting out there at a
campfire near Papunya," Hirst recalls, "tossing over the whole idea of
whether we should appear at the Olympics at all. Then we found out that
Yothu Yindi - who actually toured with us all those years in North America -
were coming on directly after us and singing 'Treaty', which is clearly a
land-rights song from a major Aboriginal band in Australia. So we decided
that to maybe give some meaning to the Olympics we should actually go
further than we normally would have.
   "We weren't sure how it would be received until we walked out," he adds,
"but immediately we had such an enormous roar of support from the people in
the stadium, and got such an overwhelmingly positive response from people -
except for a bit of the lunatic right in Australia - that we felt vindicated
by wearing the suits and playing _our_ land-rights song, 'Beds Are Burning'."