The Australian album review: ‘Rewiggled: A Tribute To The Wiggles’, December 2011

An album review for The Australian, reproduced below in its entirety.

Rewiggled: A Tribute To The Wiggles

Once you get past the initial cognitive dissonance of listening to well-known Australian adult bands cover songs written by coloured skivvy-clad adults for children, there’s a lot to like about Rewiggled.

The concept is simple: 20 contemporary artists are given the chance to reinterpret the Wiggles’ songs, with consistently interesting results. Some bands sound right at home: Spiderbait’s Rock-a-Bye Your Bear is a cute, taut rock number, the Snowdroppers inject a bluesy swagger into Wags the Dog and Adalita’s Get Ready to Wiggle is full of hazy, down-strummed chords, true to character.

Megan Washington and her band bring a surf-rock feel to The Monkey Dance, while Architecture in Helsinki’s Wiggly Party becomes a neon-tinged, hyperactive dance number (which, admittedly, is one of few tracks here that grates on repeated listens).

The Living End thrashes out Hot Potato with such vigour one suddenly wishes they’d do a whole album of Wiggles covers. While most tracks are upbeat, there are some calmer moments: Sarah Blasko’s I Love It When It Rains is an earnest, piano-and-voice affair, Angie Hart’s midtempo Our Boat is Rocking on the Sea is drenched in reverb, and under Clare Bowditch’s guidance, Georgia’s Song becomes elegiac.

The musicianship is so solid — and the songs so damn catchy — that Rewiggled could find its way on to the stereo without kids’ prompting.

LABEL: ABC Music
RATING: 3-1/2 stars

This review was originally published in The Weekend Australian Review on December 24.

Readings book review: ‘Real Wild Child’ by Narelle Gee

A book review for Readings. Excerpt below.

Real Wild Child: An Insider’s Tales From The rage Couch by Narelle Gee

As head programmer of rage – ABC TV’s late-night music video fixture since April 1987 – for nearly 14 years (1995-2008), Narelle Gee is well-placed to report from behind the camera lens trained upon some of music’s best-known names, while they hold forth from ‘Australia’s most famous couch’ as rage guest programmers.

In Real Wild Child, Gee – a former print journalist – paints herself as more of a music fan than a professional television programmer. It’s a style that suits the book, whose study of artists’ off-stage personalities is frustratingly shallow. Too often, the author glosses over important information that would otherwise form unique insights into world-famous artists. The book seems skewed toward the casual music fan – or in rage terms, those viewers who stumble upon the television program.

Judging by the brevity of most chapters, Gee didn’t apply her journalistic background during her rage tenure by taking notes or keeping a journal, as much of Real Wild Child’s content focuses upon the artists’ music video selections and the resultant conversations. Such observations could be gleaned by watching archive footage of each band’s to-camera footage and glancing at their playlist; in short, hardly the ‘insider’s tales’ stated on the cover.

Visit Readings for the full review. For more on Real Wild Child, visit its Facebook page.

Bachelor Of Communication

Is it arrogant for me to state that my Bachelor Of Communication is worthless? Probably.

Aside from being a physical reminder of my ability to (somewhat) focus on a goal for three-plus years, a degree is only useful if a potential employer needs to check that box before hiring me. Since I don’t see myself applying for a job that requires a résumé ever again, can you see why I feel this way?

Andrew McMillen became Andrew McMillen, BComm on July 24 2009. An old dude who speak at the ceremony said to my fellow graduands something along the lines of: “Having invested years of your life studying here at the University Of Queensland, you understand that a university education is more than simply attending lectures and handing in assignments.”

Cue sniggers, because that’s exactly what I found my university education to be: a matter of attending lectures and handing in assignments. Essentially, doing enough to pass, without extending myself.

Why didn’t I extend myself? A good question. The old dude was hinting that a university education is what you make of it. There was a whole lot of extracurricular bullshit like networking, volunteering and university politics that absolutely didn’t interest me. So I opted to show up to class occasionally, hand in assignments, and do enough to pass.

I suppose I always felt that studying Communication was a waste of my time. The cute summary of the program I give to people is that Communication is half journalism, half media studies. And entirely rooted in events that happened decades ago; practices that were established centuries ago.

Why didn’t I quit? Another good question. I’ve made it clear that I don’t value the certificate that’ll sit in my closet for eternity. I guess I took the easy way out by sticking to what I’d started, rather than course-correcting from what I constantly felt was a misguided pathway. Call it parental pressure, call it social expectation; my boss last year told me I’d be fired if didn’t finish the degree. Another example of me not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to cause a scene, not wanting to stray from the presupposed outcome I’ve allowed others to dictate since high school, even while feeling nothing toward the journey itself.

As I write this, I feel a misguided arrogance tickling the edge of my consciousness. It prompts me to spout something like: “Almost everything I was instructed to learn and understand throughout my degree was written at a time before the internet! Newspapers are dying, traditional journalists are displaced! The internet changed everything! That a university education is valuable is a fucking fallacy!”

That’s my irrational response to this discussion. I’ve attempted to curtail it many times, both psychologically and in conversation, but it still tends to rear its head. I know there are a thousand arguments against what I just wrote; entertain me with them if you wish.

I won’t pretend to empathise with my fellow graduates, Communication or otherwise. But as I sat among the hundreds, I thought thoughts like:

• How many of them feel entitled to the certificate they’re about to receive?
• How many of them feel that they deserve to walk right into a job, a career, simply because they passed classes for a couple of years?
• How many of them are prepared for the world in which we live – one that values the sharing of ideas rather than the submission of formulaic assignments that fit into predetermined criteria?
• How many are going to proudly call themselves ‘professional communicators’ for the rest of their lives, without irony?
• How many are going to fail to realise how sad it is to self-define by a Bachelor/Doctorate/Master ‘of’?
• How many of them blog?

I’d like to think that I’m being realistic, here, expressing these sentiments. Refusing to accept that life is as easy as the steps set out by the people who run the business of tertiary education: study, degree, career, happiness, death.

I’d like to think that I’m being honest with myself, and that I’m achieving something by sharing my feelings of discontent.

I’d like to think that I’m being pragmatic by shrugging off congratulations; the myth that completing a degree is worthy of recognition.

But it’s probably pretty clear that my assertions are filled with contradictions, hypocrisy and half-truths. I’m not looking for reassurance. I know where I want to be and who I want to represent, and I know that I didn’t need a certificate to signify either.

Maybe I’m alone on this among my peers, but I’d hope not. It’d make things a lot easier for me were they that delusional, but mostly I’d just pity them.

Kind of ironic that the graduation ceremony’s guest speaker, ABC reporter and journalist Chris Masters – whose speech greatly inspired and motivated me – has been awarded honorary doctorates and degrees, but chose to never set foot within a university.

It’s not all bad. My time at university prompted me to write the first post on this site, in May 2008. That single decision – inspired by frustration and helplessness – pointed me in what felt like the right direction. Namely, far from sandstone hallways and dull classrooms.

Thanks for boring me into action, University Of Queensland! IOU $16,306.