[Bjorn Blomquist]

> actually..my first impression about midnight oil was....man 
> the rest of 
> the band could sing....too bad about the lead singer. :)  

Well, that was my first reaction too. I had bought 'Blue Sky Mining' (on
*tape* - still don't understand why!), and after I'd listened to it I
thought "the singer wasn't very good"...

Another thing about the album was that I didn't like the two songs
composed by Hirst, especially I thought "Mountains of Burma" was a very
dark and "scary" song. Do I have to say that I love that song today!

So I can definitely say that it wasn't Pete's voice that got me hooked
to the Oils. It was just about everything else: the choruses, the sound,
the harmonies, the absence of love songs(!)... I won't go as far as
saying the lyrics though, because at the time I didn't have a clue what
the songs were about (and still today I don't understand all of them),
although I could understand the meaning of "River runs red" well enough.
To me it was "just" good rock music.

After hearing their earlier albums as well, particularly one word comes
to mind: DIVERSITY. All of their records sound different!

Speaking of lead singers, I wonder if that is the reason why I have
never got into U2 and the Clash. I don't like their (Bono's and
Strummer's) voices! OK, I didn't like Garrett's either for a start, so
maybe it's just that their music sucks! However I think that the singer
is important in what way you think of a band, because he/she is what you
HEAR. I'm not sure I would have loved the Kinks as much if Dave (Davies)
was the main lead singer instead of Ray...

/Bjorn