Midnight Oil

Subject: Re: [powderworks] "(The Oils ran away very quickly, like deer in the forest.)".
From: "rick" <rickysan@optusnet.com.au>
Date: 24/03/2008, 2:49 pm
To:

                          I've been largely disappointed in Seymour's book....


                                I love Hunters and Collectors, so they subject matter alone hs made it enjoyable, but i HATE his writing style 



                                      He has largely written it like a novel, rather than a biography.... Which is a style i'm sure lots of people will love ....but not me    




                                                                      Rick


  
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: tr_espen 
  To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au 
  Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 3:19 PM
  Subject: [powderworks] "(The Oils ran away very quickly, like deer in the forest.)".


  Powdies,

  Would the Oils REALLY flee an intellectual joust, two decades before
  the now Environment Minister's tongue was confined to Labor Party
  barracks?:

  "Like an order of Trappist monks, we could go for days without
  speaking to each other (especially when crossing Canada). A school of
  humour emerged. Band culture was so witheringly dry it left band room
  hangers-on utterly exhausted. [afore-mentioned quote follows here]"

  Elsewhere in Mark Seymour's reminder that there have been musical
  groups other than the Oils:

  "The band's obscurity was entirely self-inflicted. We had a
  Calvinistic contempt for flashy display. We aimed for substance over
  style. Hyperbole was considered vain and corrupt. Consequently,
  promotion was difficult. it drove the manager mad. Loudly professing
  our egalitarianism was probably the closest we ever got anything like
  a message: hardly a quality likely to galvanise teenage hysteria. But
  we meant it. The sound engineer shared in the songwriting royalties.
  Years later we would famously be called a bunch of communists. It
  was pretty much on the money. Everything was shared equally,
  sometimes even the beer, which took prodigious degree of
  self-discipline. We weren't sexy, we didn't behave badly (at least
  not in public), we never won any awards, [ed. note - !] and none of us
  had famous girlfriends (except me, for three weeks and no one ever
  found out, and you won't read about it in here, either). We were a
  promotional non-event: except onstage, the one place where things
  mattered".

  "Thirteen Tonne Theory: Life Inside Hunters and Collectors" (Viking
  $32.95), Mark Seymour, reviewed in the Weekend Aus. 22.03.08



   

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