This week all the videos are worth watching. I think there are at least 4 which are visually evocative:

1. Road to nowhere, Talking Heads
2. Mad hatter, Melanie Martinez
3. Be Good Johnny, Men at Work
4. One of us, Joan Osborne

Out of these four, the "Be Good Johnny" video really captures in the rather negative pressure that was put on my generation of Australian males to be good at sport. I really like the caricature of the older Australian male asking the boy "are you going play cricket this year Johnny? Nah, Nah, Nah... So tell me, what kind of boy are you Johnny?"

Melanie Martinez song is of course really out there in terms of visual imagery fitting the LSD-type altered reality of the Mad Hatter.

The video for "One of us" goes really well with the lyrical content of this song. The video switches back and forth from Joan Osborne singing to images of humanity living their lives in the strange reality in which we all find ourselves. The images have been purposely red colour-shifted so the whole thing has a more observer-like quality as one watches the various scenes unfolding in the video.

Yet this week my vote goes for Talking Head's video "Road to nowhere" as the imagery in this video consistently matches the theme of the song reflecting on the apparent meaninglessness of life's progression. I particularly like the sequence from 1 minute to 1 minute 21 seconds capturing a couple going through their whole life's events and ending in a dancing kiss — what a cool way to resolve life's apparently meaningless paradox!

OK so yesterday I said we were required to write about two songs in our high school English assignment. The second song I chose (a 70s classic) was Piano Man on account of the clever line:

"They're sharing a drink they called loneliness, but it is better than drinking alone"

I guess this is a particularly apt line given the current challenge we are facing. As this song perceptively points out it is possible to be physically with people and yet relationally alone. Yet if this is true then the reverse must also apply. It is possible to by physically separated from people and yet relationally together, especially with the advent of modern social media. I guess this is what we need to achieve over the next few months as we get to grips with this virus. We need to remain socially united while physically distant if we are going to work together to defeat this threat.

OK I will admit this wasn't going to be my original entry but then Anthony Holmes reminded me of this album in one of his posts. It makes sense to post it today because it also fits with my rock collaboration theme where Sting does the "I want my MTV".

However, another reason for posting is because I have quite a funny back story to this song. In 1985, the year after I had left school this album was released. That year my school friend Mark Short, who was doing journalism at the time, rang me to ask if I knew anything about an unfolding story of the 1985 Higher School Certificate papers being stolen. I was nonplussed that he should think I would know anything about such seedy goings on.

Yet of course Mark was one step ahead of the game as it turned out that the whole unsavoury affair was centred around our local high school (Balgowlah Boys High School, oh yeah mate that the sort of names we give our suburbs in Aus) where some characters in that school managed to get hold of the national test papers before they were sat by the general public. How do I know this? Well my dear late friend Jonathan Higgs, who was one of the top students in the school, was approached by one of the boys, who had the 2 unit HSC mathematics paper, and asked if he could solve a particular problem from it. Of course Jon did not know it was his year's HSC and given he was a 4 unit maths student, he never sat the 2 unit paper anyway. Looking back so many years later, it still makes me laugh.

So why is this story connected with this song you ask? Well after the fiasco blew over, some cheeky group released a cover song of Money for Nothing which was all about the stolen 1985 HSC papers. I don't remember any of the lyrics except for the iconic Sting line: "I want my MTV" which they of course changed to "I want my HSC".

This is the first Green day song to make Covid Island Discs. I didn't realise how long ago this band formed which was all the way back in 1987 while I was till just an undergraduate at the University of Sydney. This song was released in 2004 and was on their American Idiot album (interesting title!).

There is also some interesting history behind this album. This is taken from Wikipedia:

In the summer of 2003, the band went into a studio to write and record material for an album, tentatively titled Cigarettes and Valentines. After completing 20 tracks, the master recordings were stolen from the studio. Instead of re-recording the stolen tracks, the band decided to abandon the entire project and start over, considering the taken material to be unrepresentative of the band's best work. It was then revealed that a band called The Network was signed to Armstrong's record label Adeline Records with little fanfare and information. After the band, who concealed their identities with masks and costumes, released an album called Money Money 2020, it was rumored that The Network was a Green Day side project, due to the similarities in the bands' sounds. However, these rumors were never addressed by the band or Adeline Records, except for a statement on the Adeline website discussing an ongoing dispute between the two bands. The bands "feuded" via press releases and statements from Armstrong. Several journalists openly referred to the group as a Green Day side project, although it was not confirmed as such until 2013.

So let's kick of week 63 with a song from the Australian group Icehouse. The video to this song is also pretty cool although I think Iva Davies got the opening idea of his video from the horror movie Play Misty For Me. For any Sydneites out there, enjoy the scenes of our beautiful city.

Time for a trip down memory lane with this 80s rock classic. Tainted love first appeared on the Australian radio airwaves in 1981. At the time a good friend and mine were avid listeners of the Sydney radio station 2SM and this station used to produce a top 100 chart which consisted of a piece of A5 paper in different colours with a list of songs that were in the charts that week. Both of use had a great little collection of these A5 lists but sadly over the years I lost mine. I don't think my friend ever liked this song although hearing it again after so many years did fill me with delight

This song is pretty technofunky and captures very much the music of the 80s. I still remember so clearly when this album came out. My brother bought the album for me on vinyl and I literally played this song over and over for about a week. At the time I was off school with shingles and I remember sitting on the sofa in our house which was 55 Gurney Street Seaforth Australia looking out at the glorious views of Sydney middle harbour while listening to Time, the ELO album which contained this song.

Yet there was another song on the Time album called "21^st century man". A line from that song that also stood out to me was: "I wish I was back in 1981" (the year I was actually listening to the song). I remember at the time wondering what my life would be like in the 21^st century and to be frank, I now realise this line would turn out to be prophetic, at least in relation to my life. When I compare the simplicity of the 20^th century; without the knowledge of global warming, the constant battle with computers and passwords, the tribalism of social media, the success of right wing political parties despite the continued dramatic growth in wealth inequality, or the bullying woke cancel culture of the left, it is hard not to pine for those distant days when life just seemed to be so much easier to negotiate in so many ways.

Another song from Lorde. This song reminds me of another song especially the lines:

But I hear sounds in my mind Brand new sounds in my mind But honey I'll be seein' you 'ever I go But honey I'll be seein' you down every road I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it

At the time of writing this post, I can't remember the song that it reminds me of. I wonder if it will come to mind before the end of Covid Island Discs?