"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.
Back to the '80s once more for this week's Famous song.
I don't want to say music is always about passion and energy - there's a place for coolness and craft - but it's a huge part, particularly in all of the sounds that came from rock & roll.
Midnight Oil was a band founded on and driven by a very particular, geographically-specific and politically-grounded kind of energy. All of their strong songs are in the "grab up your banners and march" mode; I think this one is the most successful, but there are several others that are close.
This week, the song is The Dead Heart.
We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
The Oils sang about the plight of the Aboriginals more than once, but this is the most pointed, I think - the purest and clearest version. These days, a song this obviously in the voice of someone else might get called appropriation, but the Oils were one of the few saying anything like this in 1987, and were the loudest and strongest. I hope that stands for something; that there's not a modern equivalent of "premature anti-fascism" for well-meaning lefties.
And the song rocks. The Oils were always driving, powerful, loud and just plain rocking. Sure, it was all in the service of their causes, but they knew the music had to be there first. It always was; never more than with this demanding, in-your-face song.
Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state of things
The dead heart lives here
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