Aussie Bands Making the Big Time

My best friend Bryce put it best, better than anyone in the music industry by far - 'Australian bands aren't worth celebrating just because they are Australian, they should be celebrated because they are good' I think I may have already spoken about the Australian music phenomenon. On my Ipod I have two Aussie bands - Regurgitator and Skunkhour.
I listen to Syn FM everyday. I wake up to Syn FM I wake up to 1 of 2 things auto-dj or the last hour of the graveyard shift. Sometimes I sleep in too late because the prepubescent voices of the graveyard shift dj's talking ill informed shite and reading aloud text messages they are recieving from one lousy listener with emotional problems dominates the 20 minutes between thrash metal songs designed to shock me so early in the morning resulting in me turning my radio alarm off.
Sometimes though you get a real crazy weird bunch, uni-philosophy students or mechatronics students playing a weird arse mix of songs from a diverse and eclectic bunch of sources from Darryl Sommers cover of 'Why are there so many songs about rainbows' to Red Hot Chilli Peppers mothers milk classic 'nobody weird like me'
On these occasions THESE occasions which aren't rare and aren't common the grave yard shift upstages 'the hoist' in the hour where the hosts are only semi lucid, admittedly the hoist hosts aren't really any better off having most likely just woken up themselves rather than delusionally sleep deprived.
The hoist is dedicated to Australian music and it took me far too long to figure out what 'hoist' referred to which I'm not ashamed of as only the oldest of youth culture can probably remember swinging around on a hills hoist clothes line it's not really an Australian icon to anyone born into modern city living which is becoming increasingly back-yardless.
2 hours a day dedicated to Aussie musc. I hear an hour to half an hour of all Aussie music a day and I'd scratch my head to name an Aussie artist unless of course its Skunkhour or Regurgitator. I really cant, I am trying now and sorely tempted to check out the Syn website for a refresher from the hoist top ten list - I think maybe 'sounds like chicken' is Australian.
Why is it so? Why is Aussie music like this, so important we dedicate 2 hours a day airplay to it and in that you have all the subprogramming of an entire radio station itself - request day, oldschool day, top ten countdowns, aussie hip hop everything bar Aussie world music day. I just remembered another band Hill top hoods infact I've got them on my ipod I actually really like those dudes.
One of the DJ's made a passing remark on playing a female singer songwriter 'there aren't enough of those in the aussie music scene' and that prompted me to think at the time 'yeah who the fuck from these record labels is discovering *another* female singer songwriter with an accoustic guitar and thinking this acts gonna be the next big thing and break through the charts win an aria. The australian market for female singer songwriters is so saturated it needs it's own category. R&B and Hip Hop outsell all other music genres combined, a female singer songwriter on the accoustic guitar section in a record store would probably be larger than the hip hop section and sell less albums than Darryl Somers - 'Why are there so many songs about rainbows' remix by Sonic Animation.
So that question puzzled me and I don't want to pick on female artists either I can discern between missy higgens and the rest of them and Bic Runga (new zealand I know) is kinda hot which is more than I can say for Aussie Punk outfits infact the only stand out band there is the Spazzy's an all female act (but I hate their stuff).
So who is signing up this plethora of shit that I can't tell one from another even given my modest exposure. Why have so few aussie bands caught my attention since the Gurge and Skunkhour were big and that was way back when grunge was big.
It could be that I'm a loser that still lives by the grunge philosophy of no effort achievement, that's probably right but is it possibly to do with Aussies just having no talent?
No I can't believe this, and here's why in year 12 I was doing a ENTER prediction session where teachers came out with what they thought we'd get for their subject and find out 6 months early what we were expected to do better than given the teachers expectations of how we were going to do given how we'd done so far. The principle a prize cocksucker but inspirational non the less I have to admit was remarking on the phenomena that girls did better than guys at VCE he posed a similar question to mine 'does anyone believe girls are smarter than boys?' no one did. Same question different answers same issue.
Australia has produced one boundry pushing bass player in the form of Red Hot Chilli Peppers' bass player Flea. Infact by most accounts Flea is the second best bass player in the world and by far the most popular. Compared to flea Australian artists have struggled to make an impact overseas the most notable exceptions being Silverchair and recently Jet (and yes Savage Garden and the Wiggles too) but none of these have enjoyed the fame nor been as influential to upcoming generations of artists as flea, they had their day in the sun and faded or changed into something else.
The difference is Flea grew up in the california bay area, THE area for alternative rock a risk taking music industry where flea goes to school with anthony keidas who goes to school mike patton of faith no more who takes on support act primus headed by frontman Les Claypool (#1 bass player) who went to school with Mettalica's Kirk Hammet.
Melbourne is one of the best gigging towns in Australia and you may see the next jet or you am i or any of those not quite anything rock bands. Chances are if you saw a band singing a metal composition with vocals about anal fisting you wouldn't be in australia right because Oz hasn't produced any weird arse bands like Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd or Tool that have changed the way people think about music, created new genres or taken dead ones and reinvigorated them.
So are Australians just genetically deficient in the talent department. Our higher brain functions cant handle a drum kit like Danny Carey? cant play guitar like frusciante? cant slap a bass like Claypool? its bullshit infact of course we should be because support of the Australian music industry has only really taken off after baby boomer Howard grabbed triple j's balls and took the Oz music show from a once a week 3 hour special to 2 hours a night and cut into the request fest which had been shit for years - ie taking away a program that allowed youth to decide what they wanted to listen to themselves and forced them to listen to oz music a strategy that wouldn't work if at the time Triple J had any formiddable competition. Myself I just stopped listening to radio altogether till my best friend started running a station.
Anyway for those artists that went to sleep listening to 'It's time to pick up everything and put it away' or possibly stayed on listening to mix up or the three hours of power we've been inspired by the worlds best. It's just I never got dedicated to bass and joined a band but I wouldn't be playing punk if I did.
And there's the key I just wouldn't get signed.
If I didn't play the same old generic crap no risk averse australian record label would actually sign us, them whoever all the talent out there artistic enough to push for something different. They wll scramble to sing up girls with accoustics and aussie punk outfits with less raw talent than the sex pistols but none of their vision and creativity.
The frontman from the Black Eyed Peas was so outraged by the industries neglect of the innovative talent in the unrecognised australian artists he now will live in Sydney for 6 months each year to sign up this neglected source of talent.
Why would someone aspire to be daniel johns when they could be hendrix? what happened to the Australian bands of the 90's that I could recognise and tell apart, the tisms, liquid, primal scream, beaverloop, frenzal rhomb (okay we know what happened to them), custard, super jesus, skunk anansie, pangaea, spiderbait etc. quantity has increased but not quality. Some of these artists still outsell the next big things in Aussie music in the entire post Living End era.
Wolfmother I salute you, you and the hilltop hoods. The rest well if I knew who you were because I could tell who you were when I heard you on the radio, I might care. Right now the Aussie music scene seems to be the sad Sydney bandwagon mentallity of trying to imitate the world by getting excited about local celebs that don't deserve it aka James Packer, the former host of My Restaurant Rules etc. But think what the music industry could be if our record labels where signing up all those crazy friends we know who have a weird perspective more inspiring than 'hey rollover dj' I mean roll over beethoven was a pretty shitty song to begin with.