Harper And Big Oil

Midnight Oil
Album: 10,9,8,7,6...
Song: Power And The Passion

Back from hiatus. Immersing myself in music at the moment, digging most of it. Lots of blog posts to come in the near future. Thanks for your patience.*

But before we explore more of the good new stuff...

Laurel and Hardy. Bonnie and Clyde. Sonny and Cher. Two peas in a pod, all. To that list let me add our very own Stephen Harper and Yo-Yo Ma.  Here the frown prince shows us his -- to this point extremely well hidden -- light hearted and mischievous side.



He gets high with a little help from his friends. Nary an ironic wink to be seen. This guy has some chutzpah.

Alright, enough tomfoolery. Listen to this. A little Aussie band called Midnight Oil with a penchant for social criticism and political activism. Which is cool and all but I like them cos their lead singer is a spastic bald giant. Check out in particular 1:35-1:45 when that great ranging ostrich of a man grabs a bouncer by the collar and tears him a new one for being too rough with an aspiring stage diver. You just can't fake this shit.



What does this have to do with our lovable PM Harper? Well, that spastic bald ostrich is Peter Garrett, who for the last six years has been Australia's Minister for the Environment and Performing Arts. So, while we get a passionless dorky ditty from our political leader, the Aussies get this.  Incidentally, both performances took place within six months of each other.

Dammit.  We already knew that Norwegians are cooler than Canadians.  So are Aussies, it turns out.  We're slipping, folks...

* Incidentally, thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion during my absence. Some great stuff there. In particular I appreciate the efforts of Scott and GC to get to the heart of Joanna Newsom's tune. Both of you approached the problem from interesting perspectives and frankly I think both of you came closer to the "truth" than I did. Hopefully we can continue to dive into the analytical waters on a regular basis.