5 June

A provocation. I think Cold Chisel are probably the greatest band of all time. The greatest songwriters at least. Unlike The Beatles or Elvis or any of the other huge names, the songs found a way to marry white and black music in the most authentic way. White music is famous for its melodies, black music for its rhythms and grooves. If you listen to a Chisel song you find these traditions blended in the most seamless way. It’s what Australian rock maybe does. (AC/DC did the same thing with Chuck Berry, so well that many never noticed.) The huge English acts like the Beatles, or Elvis in the US, used ‘eclecticism’ instead, where they emulate both styles in their songs. It’s all a bit arm’s-length, like tribute acts. The English have their eccentricity too, which became a bit of an affectation (and is heavily part of the allure of The Beatles). But it’s a bit shallow somehow, pantomime culture. The Americans and Brits also have their folk traditions, terribly earnest and a bit dull and serious (evolving into a whole swathe of existential angst artists), riffing on all of the problems of their cultures. But it becomes just a soundtrack to those problems, a bit wallowing. Hard not to see this as an offshoot of Australian culture itself. Always hybrid, always mixed, a penal colony abandoned on the other side of the known world at the time. The culture is intrinsically one of osmosis, not the battling group identity wars of other places on the planet. Listen to Chisel songs and you’ll hear it. Gorgeous melodies, but with a groove too. But married in a way that is totally seamless, into something very new. Not ebony and ivory living side by side, as the Brits and Yanks might say. A hybrid osmosis of both. Australian.