BLISS n ESSO - FLYING COLOURS
One of those bands that are let down by their drugged up fans..well according to me anyway. I bought flying colours for the most genuine of reasons. I didn't even have to pay for it at the time because I was working in the land of free stuff - a radio station. I DID pay for it though because I didn't want to be an arsehole, shortchanging Australian bands out of sales. (NOTE: this commitment to artists royalties is often fleeting and haphazard and while my best intentions are there, I am not beyond bowing to the beacon of free shit)
At this radio station, lets call it 101.generic shitFM, we were expected at weekly ‘team meetings’ in the boardroom on a Friday. Well, firstly, great idea in theory but when you are one of the shitkicker losers who must ask permission to leave their desks to go to the toilet (yes...it is TRUE) and you cant leave early on a Friday unlike the other 99% of the staff you don’t exactly feel like digging deep with the team spirit and limp-wrist clapping your fellow employees for having better jobs than you. Generic.FM was a call centre jazzied up with some confronting feature walls and the standard block mount record company issue gold records signed by the artist thanking the on air staff for their support (when we all know it was the record company work experience kid who got given a fat silver texta, a copy of the grateful artists autograph and told to hop to it on their 2nd day of slave labour). Despite their attempts at being a ‘google like atmosphere’ it was still grey cubicles, legionnaires diseased aircon and below average wages.
So, on this particular day of the shitkickers fighting about who gets to break the shackles of their desk and go to the ‘team meeting’ I got a short straw and went to ‘represent’ the losers. Just when I thought my numb arse couldn't take any more turds from sales patting themselves on the back a bunch of unassuming africans walked were ushered into the room. Now, stuff like this doesn't go unnoticed in this office, mainly because I have worked with one african and NO asians in my time in radio. That’s weird in itself, but I suppose they are way smarter when it comes to sniffing out a poor pay deal. The africans turned out to be the Zulu Choir from South Africa...from the land of 1000 hills. They were on a tour and dropped by to make us feel like inadequate nobodies I suppose because when they sang, acapella BTW, it was the most powerful thing I’d ever heard. Words don’t do it justice. I walked back to my desk with their voices ringing in my ears and 2 days later got the Bliss n Esso album featuring those same singers. The album is golden and it always amazes me when I hear rappers reference things that are so high brow. I revered Flying Colours for years and the moment they toured I went along to experience 2 hours of feeling like the oldest most boring person...EVER. It was my lesson in never going to an all ages show as a person of age, its repulsive to see desperate 15 yo’s jumping over barricades to get into the over 18’s area. I don’t know what those kids thought would be so exciting..the view was probably better from their seats and who doesn’t want a seat at some stage through a gig. (let the old person rest their weary feet). I watched a kid bite securities hand and bolt into the throng, was subjected to hideous sweaty steroid ridden meat heads who obviously missed the irony in how their intolerance doesn’t exactly gel with the ethos of the band.
Yeah, I’m freaking old...i’m so old I’m reluctant to use the word fucking even though its what I want to write because when you’re old you don’t like to curse in the written word.
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