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Fave Aussie Music


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I well remember the debate about the anthem. The pm was Fraser who wanted "waltzing matilda " and I completely agreed. What a difference from the jingoistic crap most anthems have...  I would have been proud to be Australian with an  anthem about a suicidal sheep-stealing tramp. Ampol ran a campain to replace the words of waltzing matilda with jingo stuff, well I would have lived with this and always sung the proper words.

Well me and frazer and ampol lost the vote, and we are stuck with advance australia fair, a nonsense song written by a rich girl from the suburbs...  gosh, " with golden soil and wealth for toil " does not really describe australia, which has the worst soils on the planet*. And "advance" is taken by fools to mean to grow the population.

That seekers song is way better than advance australia fair , but I still like waltzing matilda...

 

* If anybody doubts this I can explain more.

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Whether you like the lyric or not, at least the tune is upbeat compared to the tune of many other Nations.

 

The National Anthem of the USA is The Star Spangled Banner. The tune is is a slow march and the lyric tells the story of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which started their Civil War.

The Russian one is just as slow. The New Zealand one drags on. O Canada declares that the people are guarding their freedom. Even the Jamaican anthem is a prayer to God for protection.

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The star spangled banner is a difficult one to sing for the average person because of it's range.

 

I spent 12 years as a musician in the RAAF band so have played  many national anthems. In 1982 we played at the opening and closing ceremonies of the  Commonwealth games as well as at arrival ceremonies at the athletes village so we covered all of the Commonwealth country anthems. There is one anthem that that I can't now recall that goes on and on and has many false endings, quite hilarious as dignitaries who are unfamiliar start to sit down only to have to spring back up when they realize that it is not yet finished.

 

As far as Advance Aus goes it a a very simple tune (which I guess may be a good thing)

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Slim's wife, Joy McKean wrote that song. It was on his 100th. album which was quite an achievement. Interestingly enough, Slim was a singer and not much of a writer, writing few of his songs. On this album, he wrote one out of the fifteen songs. But nobody could sing them like Slim.

 

People that have worked with him always praised his professionalism. One said that Slim was like a human metronome. No matter what went wrong on stage, Slim was always spot on with the timing.

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On 21/11/2020 at 7:19 PM, octave said:

The star spangled banner is a difficult one to sing for the average person because of it's range.

 

I spent 12 years as a musician in the RAAF band so have played  many national anthems. In 1982 we played at the opening and closing ceremonies of the  Commonwealth games as well as at arrival ceremonies at the athletes village so we covered all of the Commonwealth country anthems. There is one anthem that that I can't now recall that goes on and on and has many false endings, quite hilarious as dignitaries who are unfamiliar start to sit down only to have to spring back up when they realize that it is not yet finished.

 

As far as Advance Aus goes it a a very simple tune (which I guess may be a good thing)

 

Bill Bailey has an interesting take on National Anthems...

 

 

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Apologies for thread drift but that video reminded me of some trivia on the ABC radio on the weekend. A music guy was detailing the history of music recording and the different formats over the years. He mentioned Edison developing the first practical sound recorder but said that it was Tchaikovsky who pushed the idea of using it to record music. Apparently he wanted to make a recording of his music for the Tsar.

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Nope. he's dead, but "Friday on my mind" is Aussie and reckon that's the best version I've heard.

 

To be honest didn't notice it was about Aussie music, apologies for that. Now this a band I really liked and spent a lot of time with them way back in the 70's.

 

 

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