This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

Tim Finn @ The Troubadour

Last time Tim Finn played in Brisbane it was with the reformed Split Enz at the 13,500-capcaity Entertainment Centre, so it was a real thrill to get the opportunity to see him play at 200-capcaity The Troubadour this week.  His 75 minute set included songs from his new album, ‘The Conversation‘, plus crowd-pleasing Split Enz favourites (‘I See Red‘, ‘Shark Attack‘, ‘My Mistake‘) and Crowded House Woodface-era classics (‘Chocolate Cake‘, ‘It’s Only Natural‘, ‘Weather With You‘).  If there was one disappointment it was that he didn’t play anything from either of the Finn Brothers’ albums (the first one, ‘Finn‘, is patchy but the second one, ‘Everyone Is Here‘ is fantastic).

It amused me that when SBS started doing their Classic Australian Albums series, they included ‘Woodface‘.  Looking at the bands that they covered in the first season of the program it seemed that they had chosen the records based on a New South Wales/Victoria/Queensland/Western Australia split.  So while Queensland and Western Australia were represented by The Saints‘ ‘(I’m) Stranded‘ and The Triffids‘ ‘Born Sand Devotional‘ respectively, the program makers couldn’t find a classic Sydney album and had to go to Newcastle to get the very dubious classic album choice of Silverchair‘s ‘Diorama‘ and they had get a New Zealand band to get classic Victorian album.

 As we all know, Australians are a bit on the precious side when it comes to its bands and music, so when it comes to justifying Crowded House as an Australian band the argument seems to go that they formed in Australia, had some Australian members and recorded albums in Australia.  Which is all well and good but becomes amusing when you point out that using similar logic makes Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds a British band!  And don’t get me started on AC/DC.  No one thinks of Fleetwood Mac as an English band, so the campaign to stop having AC/DC called an Australian band starts here…

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 11:06 pm. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with Brisbane, Crowded House, Justin Edwards, Minolta 5D, Rave Magazine, Split Enz, The Troubadour, Tim Finn, www.notaphoto.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.