It's not often the Wombats find ourselves wishing for more Peter Garrett (admittedly the old, "Save the planet and fight for justice" Garrett, not the new "Let's build uranum mines and wood-chip old growth forest" Hon. P. Garett MP), but today is unfortunately one of those days.
We have just sat through a truly cringe-worthy four minutes as our ears were offended by the latest vomitous concoction from the ever popular "Sir" Bob (I'm a miserable self-aggrandising tosser) Zenon Geldof and friends.
Sir Big Tossoff - well-meaning, we're sure - has teamed up with a plethora of nobodies, has-beens and neverwillbe's in ripping the soul out of one of the finest Midnight Oil songs - Beds Are Burning - a song about the colonisation, rapine and theft of Australia from its indigenous inhabitants, a theft and opporession that continues today.
Now, we admit that it's nominally for a good cause - fighting climate change. But the new version (which we refuse to embed here, or download, or ever listen to again) is insipid, bereft of meaningful content beyond bland references to climate change,
The main reason that Sir Tossof and his mediocre menangerie seem to have chosen the song is that it contains the words "45 degree", "desert", "earth" and "burning", and the phrase "the time has come".
We're not so much pissed off that Sir Tossoff has colluded with "artists" to produce a song about a meaningful topic (the unforgettable Live Aid attempt to connect christmas-time to starving millions in Africa springs to mind, as well as the artful "We are the (Western) World and we're not going to feed you"), but the least he could have done is write something new (although I understand that might be challenging for Bob, as it requires talent).
As it is, millions of people will now have a substandard piece of insipid filk in their head every time they hear the tune to "beds are burning", a circumstance that can only turn them off listening to the song (and probably off doing anything about climate change - after hearing it, I wanted to have a long hot shower to wash myself clean of the dreadful attempts at scantion and the frightful "harmonies" that pollute the new song).
The nett result? The new recording will objectively hamper the struggle for indigenous rights and the struggle against climate change. In the immortal words of Sir Tossoff - "let's cock it up together".
About the only positive that could come out of this wouldbe if the leaders of the world's countries promise to cut their emissions to safe levels on the strict condition that Geldof and his ninnies promise to never, ever, ever, try to "help" ever again...
Ever.
And let's just be thankful that Bono isn't on the recording...
As Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher said with regards to Geldof's most recent farce, Live 8, which served quite nicely to undermine the Make Poverty History protests during the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005:
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing "Sweet Dreams" and thinks, 'Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know?' And Keane doing "Somewhere Only We Know" and some Japanese businessman going, 'Aw, look at him… we should really fucking drop that debt, you know.' It's not going to happen, is it?"Word.
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