A/ Australia

I feel lucky

So I did not watch the Academy Awards. Sorry. I am kind of sick of celebrity culture, plus, I did not see a single one of those movies, not even “Judah and the Black Messiah” which is about a subject I teach, since there are two things in the world that can cause me to burst into tears instantaneously and that is thoughts of either Fred Hampton or the Library at Alexandria. For me, each film nominated was more triggering than the last, and although I may get around to Judah eventually, you’d literally have to strap me down and pin my eyes open like Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” to get me to watch “The Father.” Why would I watch a film about something I am living through? I get that art is supposed to be cathartic, but NOPE.

Here’s what I’ve watched on television during the pandemic instead. “Call My Agent,” “Lupin,” “Ugly Betty,” “Superstore,” “G.L.O.W.” (twice), “Ted Lasso” (four times through and counting) and “Upright,” also twice. I have Thoughts about all of them, but especially the last two which, when this whole thing is over, will burn in my memory like good deeds in a naughty world. I think most people know about “Ted Lasso” but have you heard of “Upright?” It’s an eight-episode long series from Australia, and you can watch it on the Sundance Channel. The online description of it, barfily enough, begins like this: “Two misfits are thrown together by chance,” which is incredibly off-putting. But it stars Tim Minchin, who wrote the soundtrack to “Matilda” which is my favorite musical, so I knew it couldn’t be as bad as that makes it sound.    

“Upright” is your classic road trip movie. In this version, a rock band has-been drives across the Australian continent with his upright piano in the back of his pickup. At the start of the trip, he is thrown together with an obnoxious companion – in this case, a teenage girl played by Millie Alcock – and their journey then becomes a Quest, punctuated with moments of Buddy Flick and Chase-caper, all unspooling along beautiful and eerie shots of the landscape of Western Australia, most notably the Nullabor Plain.

Photo: The Great Australian Bight

Minchin’s character, called Lucky here, was supposed to have been in a band called Swamp Dogg with his brother, from whom he is now estranged: one part of the plot revolves around the idea of how difficult it is for people to come to terms with the fact that their glory days may be over. It’s not overt, but I think the band here is based on INXS, which contained not two but three brothers, and while as far as I know they never lost touch with one another  – nor, I think, fell as low as Lucky’s band Swamp Dogg – there is something faintly INXS-ive about their whole set-up, and I am giving myself permission to say that, because in 1987, just before that band broke big in America, I was sent out ‘on the road,’ as they say, with them, as they toured the Eastern Seaboard.

I know, right?? I felt so lucky, even at the time. Of course I lost the clip a million years ago but recently I bought it back on E-Bay and here’s a tiny excerpt of what I wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls – the main event is about to begin. In this corner, the hometown favorite, Suburban Decorum and School Spirit. In the challenger’s corner, Dirty Old Rock ‘n Roll. Your referee – a muttering cluster of record company employees, an hour and a half outside their native Manhattan, wandering restlessly and eating lunch meats. These people don’t like having to go to Brooklyn, let alone the swamps of New England, but they are obligated to check out the latest next sensations, and this is as close as INXS will get to New York City for months. It’s early autumn and this is a warmup tour. If the record company gets fired up enough, if radio agrees, if the press and MTV and the moon all align properly, INSX’s new album Kick will be the smash they’ve skirted but so far not attained. Then the band will return in four months – in February of 1988 – to play the big city arenas. So although the environment is not exactly conducive, this rickety old gym matters. The record execs check the hall. Only half full, echoes like a blimp hanger. The odds are not with the Aussies tonight.

The band appears and launched into “Kick.” They must be nuts! The album’s been out less than a week – the kids don’t know these songs. It’s compelling material but…they proceed to play more unfamiliar songs: “Mystify,” “Need You Tonight,” and it’s working. The crowd’s jumping and shaking to the new stuff. Hutchence dances around like a cross between Jim Morrison and Madonna – a young heir to the great tradition of ambisexual rock stars. INXS rides a broad loping rhythm with colorful keyboard washes, hooks that grab you without being obvious, erotic beats that never quite reach a climax. Then they swing into a seemingly endless supply of familiar hits: “Black and White,” “Don’t Change,” “This Time,” “What You Need,” “Listen Like Thieves.” The kids are standing on their folding chairs now, falling off, waving their arms in unison and singing along at the top of their lungs. So are the Manhattanites. So are the roadies and security guards. So am I.

Hutchence, wearing a pair of black spandex bikers’ shorts, hiking boots and nothing else, winds up the set by introducing the song “Mediate” as, “a poem I wrote,” reciting the words from a piece of paper which he tears into strips as he reads. You’d think form the sensation that he causes that he was tearing up the Ten Commandments. INXS has no illusions, except for the ones they create on stage like this, illusions about sex and glamor. Neither illusion holds up under close examination, and neither is supposed to. According to INXS, sometimes you kick and sometimes you get kicked, and on this particular evening, it’s the band’s turn to give circumstances a beating. By the end of their two-hour concert the seats have all been thrown all over the tarpaulin. The gym looks like the Incredible Hulk struck back - or fight night at Madison Square Gardens.

There’s more of course, but I won’t bore you with it: basically, what I found out from hanging out with INXS for a little while back in the day, was that Australian bands are great live because they had to hump themselves and their gear across the country, playing every bar from Perth to Brisbane. “Upright” riffs on this concept via the piano, which plays a prominent role in the plot, and which like the proverbial gun in the old adage - if it doesn’t go off, why bring it on stage in the first place? So it does get played periodically, usually in highly dramatic situations in the middle of the desert. Then, and on the soundtrack for the series, what we hear throughout are songs by other Australian bands, including INXS, but also Tame Impala, the Church, Paul Kelly, Sia, and many other less well known acts. In my favorite scene of the whole shebang, Lucky and Meg are camping with a bunch of Nullabor nomads at a campground near the Great Australian Bight, and Lucky plays “Under the Milky Way” and everyone dreamily sings along.

I like to think that in Australia “Under the Milky Way” is like ‘This Land Is Your Land,” and though of course I know full well that’s not so, at this moment in time I would prefer you leave me to my romantic illusions about other places and other lands. I’d like to thank the academy, and now on to the letter B….