In 1983 I was watching MV3 - a syndicated music video show that was manna for cable TV-less, and thus MTVless, folks like myself - that was co-hosted by KROQ DJ Richard Blade (now the 3-9 pm DJ on SiriusXM's 1st Wave channel) and skewed heavily to New Wave artists like U2, Oingo Boingo, Devo, The Bangles, Berlin, Men at Work, INXS, etc., when a video came on with a very spare beat and riff and this tall, bald singer spastically "dancing" around. He looked like the guy from The Hills Have Eyes and was a total freak show to watch. This was "Power and the Passion" by Australian politirockers Midnight Oil.
I caught a live set somewhere on TV with more songs from their 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 album and picked up the album which had several memorable bangers like "Read About It", "US Forces", and "Short Memory." They came from a decidedly Oz-centric POV and put their politics in their prose. In 1984, they released Red Sails in the Sunset with a striking cover depicting Sydney Harbor nuked into oblivion. A guy at my school did "When The Generals Talk" off that album for the school Pop Concert.
It was in 1987 that the Normies finally caught on to the Oils with their Diesel and Dust album and the breakout single "Beds Are Burning." I found it amusing that people were singing along to a song explicitly about Aboriginal rights in Australia, but it just proves my theory about songwriting that you can sing about the heaviest subjects as long as it sounds like a pop song.
What all this frabba jabba is leading up to is set up Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, a documentary which covers the band's history from the Seventies when they were a surf band and Garrett had long blonde hair to their struggles getting labels to understand their politically-charged tunes through their increasing fame which eventually tailed off some leading to the band going on hiatus while Garrett ran for political offices, eventually winning a seat in their House or Representatives and being named Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts and Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth. After drama in the party, he retired from politics and eventually resumed making music.
While I am generally annoyed by Leftist musicians' political preening and generally ignorant mouthing off as well as their endemic hypocrisy (e.g. flying private jets and having mansions around the world while scolding Normies that their minivan is killing the planet and they need to live in a tiny apartment to save Gaea), the Oils have gotten grace from me because they're not reflexively anti-American as much as pro-Australian and the issues they highlight are usually genuinely outrageous abuses of governmental or corporate power that you don't need to be a Commie to be appalled by.
And they put their money where their mouths are unlike millionaire fraud poseurs like Tom Morello who just put out a replica guitar with Fender that sells for $1700 and has a Soviet flag on it which is illegal in certain parts of the world. While watching Midnight Oil protesting the Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill with a concert in front of Exxon's HQ in NYC which went over so well that the cops let the band keep playing for the growing crowd, I snarked to the missus...
"Rage Against The Machine is Temu Midnight Oil."
She laughed hysterically and it's one of my sickest burns, thank you very much. I rule. Back to the review...
With such a long and storied career along with their visits to the Outback to commune with the natives and Garrett's political moonlighting to cover it's naturally going to be impossible to go as in-depth as one would like, but the music itself - the songs that spoke of their ideology in a way that hacks like Rage, incoherently yapping like a retarded chihuahua for stupid kids wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, could never dream of - gets shortchanged.
The ability to blend politicizing while rhapsodizing is rare, but the Oils did it; it just would've been nice if a documentary about a band featured more of it. As it neared the end I was internally grumbling how they skipped "Read About It" and "Forgotten Years", but they were saving the best for last as both appeared in live form in the home stretch.
Despite its shortcomings, Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is a good primer on a band which really should be more regarded in the thoughtful music ranks, equal to The Clash in many ways and lightyears beyond what Rage FOR The Machine ever did.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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