Midnight Oil, One For The Planet, The Palais, St Kilda, September 12, 2022.
By Martin Jones
Double J recently published a (dubious) list of 50 Gigs You Should Have Been At. This show should be near the top of that list. Two-and-a-half hours non-stop. Twenty-seven songs spanning 45 years. No filler. No compromise.
That The Oils are still standing is against the odds. The band broke up for 15 years! Even the most ardent fans might have been sceptical that their 2017 reunion might have presented a rusty, tamer version of the band. Not so. Garrett proved then that he still had the fire and the energy. The band could have bowed out gracefully then.
I’m glad they didn’t. For last night they proved that they are still the best live band in Australia. Despite the fact that they recently lost their beloved bassist of thirty years, Bones Hillman, and despite most members rapidly approaching 70 years of age.
Let’s put aside the question how a 69-year-old can still scream and shout and leap around the stage for two-and-a-half hours and ask how has the band has managed to remain relevant? It’s because, as tonight’s concert opener Liz Stringer pointed out, they never compromised, always left everything they had on stage, committed to touring regionally and always raised funds and awareness for causes they believed in. It’s because they never bought into the rock ‘n’ roll chic, or any kind of image other than their own. It’s because they were always a genuine band; a group of unique individuals that combined to something far greater than the sum of their individual parts.
For example: tonight I was standing directly in front of guitarist Martin Rotsey. At times I could hear nothing but his spiked-wrecking ball Stratocaster at searing volume. Great! That’s exactly how it always was. Why change it? Why dilute it?
And tonight they faced the task of performing their most challenging album, the unconventionally produced 10… 1. As Garrett joked in the introduction, it was going to be a challenge to get through it without fucking it up. Did they bring in extra help to flesh out the synths, strings, horns, that augment that album? Nope. Relying on the core members, with replacement bass player Adam Ventoura, and some occasional backing vocals and saxophone from Stringer and Adam Bickers, they not only pulled it off, they proved themselves, in many respects, a better band than ever, exaggerating nuances, dynamics and pauses for greater effect.
Indeed, if I’d turned up and seen nothing more than tonight’s versions of ‘Scream in Blue’, ‘US Forces’ and ‘Power and the Passion’ back to back, I would have walked away happy. Garrett nailed the high notes, the guitars were fierce and loud, Rob Hirst as coiled and explosive as ever, and the sentiment still acute.
Tonight’s 10 to 1, performance was all the more poignant for the recent death of Gisele Scales, who played strings on the album. Garrett actually shook and lost composure has he dedicated the performance to Scales.
The 10 to 1 album was, of course, The Oils’ breakout moment. It took them from pub rock heroes to global stadiums in the space of a couple of years. And while its aesthetic was a significant change in direction from previous albums, it was by no means a sell-out. If anything, it was way less conventional than anything they had recorded before, with Nick Launay’s startling production striding into art-rock territory. But for all that, the band managed to conjure mass-appeal pop songs without losing their ferocity or acumen. In short, they managed to get American college kids singing songs condemning their country’s own political actions (as they had done back home).
This year also marks the album’s 40th anniversary. Though Head Injuries and Place Without a Postcard changed my life, 10 to 1 blew my mind and, as a teenager, delivered the revelation that intelligent, uncompromised music could also be popular. It also meant that we underage fans could now get to see The Oils more often as they sprang from the pub circuit to the theatre and festival circuits. Great days.
But if we thought we were attending a run through 10 to 1, with a couple of extra hits as encore tonight, we again underestimated Midnight Oil. As they opened with ‘Knife’s Edge’ from the Bird Noises EP and then three songs later played an epic and rare rendition of ‘Surfing with a Spoon’, it was clear this was going to be a concert for the long-term fans. The ten-song opening set stopped at ‘Dreamworld’ and ‘King of the Mountain’, and revisited fan favourites from the earlier albums; ‘Burnie’, ‘Is It Now’, ‘Koala Sprint’ and ‘Stand in Line’. Thank You VERY MUCH!
The band then regrouped and ploughed through 10 to 1 without pause or comment and some of those songs even the most ardent fan would have never heard live before.
The seven-song ‘finale’ focused on the band’s later, and probably best-selling radio hits, including ‘Blue Sky Mine’, ‘Forgotten Years’, ‘Hercules’, ‘Beds Are Burning’ and ‘Sometimes’. It was a massive singalong to bring the set home, punctuated by an encore break which had the entire, jam-packed Palais theatre chanting “Oils, Oils, Oils, Oils, Oils”… a precious and never-to-be-forgotten sound.
Set List
Knife’s Edge
Nobody’s Child
Truganini
Surfing with a Spoon
Dreamworld
Burnie
Is it Now?
King of the Mountain
Koala Sprint
Stand in Line
Outside World
Only the Strong
Short Memory
Read About It
Scream in Blue
US Forces
Power and the Passion
Maralinga
Tin Legs and Tin Mines
Somebody’s Trying to Tell Me Something
Jimmy Sharman’s Boxers
Blue Sky Mine
Forgotten Years
Hercules
We Resist
Beds Are Burning
Sometimes