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In A Garrett

Australia has a new government. This could be good news for the world, since the last one seemed to be in Bush's pocket. Meanwhile, the tall, bald, gaunt, herky-jerky lead singer of Midnight Oil - Peter Garrett (above) - is the new Environment Minister (except for global warming). I have fond memories of Midnight Oil. I was first given a mixed tape of their work in 1986 or '87, I think it was, by some Australian debaters travelling through Montreal on their way from the Worlds that had just happened (Lindy and friends). The early Midnight Oil sound. Angry, haunting, very left-wing, and propulsive, it was, to me, a fresh way of thinking, and a new way to hear music, and I loved them. Somehow, they were eclipsed, as Simple Minds were, also, by U2, as the committed stadium band de jour, but, at the start of the 1990s, they were internationally huge. As they once sang, "short memory..."
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