Split Enz 50th review, Thatcher’s heroin war, and The Zombies’ long-delayed victory lap

Split Enz in concert at Rod Laver Arena — Image: Michael Mackenzie

On The Record’s Episode 23 leans in to great songs, better stories, and the strange afterlife of pop careers.

Michael Mackenzie’s big night out is Split Enz at Rod Laver Arena, a reunion-sized crowd of “people in roughly our same demographic” packed into a venue that, he notes, holds 14,860.

The gig itself? A triumph.

The getting in story, though, is pure modern concert-going: early-buyer penalty, price drops, and the familiar helplessness of dealing with ticketing policy that seems designed to punish enthusiasm.

Once the band hits, the tone shifts from grievance to gratitude. Mackenzie praises a show that’s choreographed without being slick, with the kind of looseness that reads as confidence rather than chaos. He single-outs Noel Crombie as the living embodiment of Split Enz’s performance-art DNA—percussionist, costume conceptualist, and resident agent of weird.

There’s respect, too, for the musical core: Tim Finn in stronger voice than on last year’s solo run; Neil Finn as a “taste” guitarist; Eddie Rayner on keys, anchoring the band’s ornate pop instincts.

Check the setlist below.

From arenas to sofas, the episode then becomes a mini-guide to what to watch when you want your culture with less algorithmic beige.

Brian Wise and Mackenzie compare notes on crime TV, with the usual modern requirements: the tortured lead, the dysfunctional family, and, apparently, miraculous crimeside parking.

Wise is hooked-but-annoyed by Season 2 of Bergerac (set in Jersey, adapted from a French series), whilst Michael recommends “Legends”—a British series about undertrained customs officers sent undercover into heroin networks in late-’80s/early-’90s Britain.

And then there’s the episode’s best musical detour: the Zombies documentary, Hung Up on a Dream.

The Zombies’ arc—early hits (“She’s Not There,” “Time of the Season”), exploitation, near-collapse, and the belated coronation of 1968’s Odessey and Oracle—is presented as both cautionary tale and a feel-good ending.

Finally, because it’s On The Record, politics barges into the mix.

The hosts spar over promises, evidence, and whether changing a policy position is always a lie.

It’s not “music news,” exactly—but it is the cultural weather the music lives in.