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