[NanCohen@aol.com]

This appeared in this morning's Mercury News in advance of the Warfield show 
tonight.  Nice coverage by Brad Kava, the music columnist, who often inveighs 
against commercial radio and commercialized music.  

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/3213155.htm

Posted on Tue, May. 07, 2002

Midnight Oil battles for independence, viability

By Brad Kava
Mercury News

``This is real music made by real people. This isn't a commercial for 
Cadillac or a soft drink.''

Australian rocker Peter Garrett is reminding audience members at a recent 
show at Great America that when they see his band Midnight Oil, which comes 
to the Warfield Theater on Tuesday, they are seeing something rare.

Maybe Garrett, a tall praying mantis of a guy, sees the irony of an 
environmentalist playing an amusement park that got development permission in 
part because the city of Santa Clara considered the use ``open space.''

But as Garrett well knows, it's impossible to stay completely pure in this 
business.
He has run for political office in Australia; he's the president of the 
Australian Conservation Foundation, his country's version of the Sierra Club.

His band, which had a political slant and anthemic guitars similar to U2's, 
was a mainstay of FM rock radio in the late 1980s. But it never quite had the 
mainstream power, or the hits, of the Irish band.

Its sales peaks were the 1987 album ``Diesel and Dust,'' which sold 4.9 
million copies, and 1990's ``Blue Sky Mining,'' which sold 2.6 million 
copies. The group's sales have fallen off sharply since, although the music 
remains intelligent, rocking and vital.

Now, Midnight Oil is another veteran rock band without a major label. Its 
latest album, ``Capricornia,'' was put out on an indie label and distributed 
in the United States by Sony.

``The point of the battle is to be out there,'' he says in a phone interview. 
``Whether a band like Midnight Oil will survive is very much an open 
question.''

Assertive leader

Garrett has used his band as a bully pulpit for environmental and political 
issues, but -- unlike many of his peers -- he has gone so far as to stop 
shows because he didn't like the way the audience was acting.

At Berkeley's Greek Theater in the 1990s, he refused to play unless fans he 
saw assaulting women in the mosh pit were escorted out of the theater. Most 
other bands ignored similar behavior, leading to a debacle at Woodstock III 
in which women were raped and assaulted in public but musicians took no 
responsibility.

``It's certainly not a case of wanting to restrict the audience. It's a case 
of saying there's an inequity of aggression at play and that runs counter to 
what Midnight Oil is about,'' Garrett says. ``I've always felt no one else is 
going to stop it or take responsibility for the audience. You have to do it 
yourself.''

It hasn't always been easy, or lucrative to be a band that stood for 
something, especially when those around you are racing to sell everything 
they've got to anyone who will pay.

``I don't know what's gotten into our major artists. They certainly don't 
need the money. Maybe the little Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Midnight Oil club 
doesn't seem that much fun to be in.''

Garrett fears a day when bands will be sponsored from inception by major 
corporations.

``Whether it's jeans or soft drinks or toxic waste, they won't see anything 
wrong with it. It will be corporate music. You'll hear it on hold when you 
call the company. Bands will be discovered by a bunch of marketing guys and 
gals trying to design Muzak for their corporation.

``There's never been a time when music was more straitjacketed, and artists 
only care about the unquenchable desire for fame and success. And, unlike the 
days when there were other benefactors, Enron is no Medici, Bill Gates is no 
Austrian duke.''

Going with the flow

The band's current album is based on a book of the same name by Xavier 
Herbert about a clash of cultures in Northern Australia. Though it has upbeat 
moments, the ultimate message, Garrett says, is that you can't stop the tide.
``You can ride it, but you can't stand in the way or you will drown.''

Literary themes, the plight of the downtrodden and the environment aren't the 
recipe for Britney Spears-like pop success, but they have built a small but 
devoted following for the Oils. It has kept them selling records since 1975.

``I didn't expect Midnight Oil to last this long,'' Garrett says. ``But we 
were never in the business so we could drive a Cabriolet but because we love 
hearing the intersection between words and sounds, and we love seeing it go 
through a little hole in people's heads and making their feet move.''

He figures, they have to sell 100,000 copies of the album to make a profit 
and stay on the road. The band is getting some local airplay on KFOG.

And if the money dries up, Garrett says, the band will still want to tour.
``Midnight Oil, cyber troubadours, busking in a hall near you. When the 
economy dries up, you'll find us on the back of a flatbed truck playing for 
cans of food.''