Earlier this year, Canberra punks Super Best Friends released their killer LP Status Updates.
Featuring Fuzzy guitars, huge drums and Johnny Barrington’s distinctive, snarling, vitriolic vocal delivery, Status Updates was nothing short of a triumph from the trio.
To celebrate one of the most politically important local records of the year Johnny Barrington the band’s vocalist (and ex-triple j Hack reporter) gave us a track by track run down of the message behind each son on the album, the unofficial being “Behind the rants: what inspired the songs on ‘Status Updates” – get comfortable, this is a long one, but definitely worth a read.
Introduction
A year ago, Super Best Friends wouldn’t have expected words like ‘important’ and ‘relevant’ to be used when describing an album released by them. The Canberra three-piece has been writing politically and socially-charged music for years, but it’s only since a swing back to conservative politics in Australia that their lyrics have started cutting through.
Does this say something about the bandwagonism of hating the more hateable of our recent Prime Ministers or have Super Best Friends just gotten better at what they do? Does having a Melbourne-bassed bassist help? Singer/guitarist Johnny Barrington dissects the rants behind each track on ‘Status Updates’…
Conscript
This song has the potential to piss a lot of people off, especially as we mark 100 years since the Gallipoli campaign without batting an eyelid when politicians and the media describe a failed military campaign – where a British fuck-up sent hundreds of Aussie and Kiwi boys to the slaughter – as “the birth of a nation” (the birth of a nation that looks nothing like the way it did 100 years ago) and the sloganisation of the “ANZAC Spirit”, which doesn’t count multicultural or indigenous Australia or women, for that matter.
For me, Australia wasn’t born until after the White Australia Policy was dropped and after Indigenous people got the vote and I’m a firm believer that we need to be re-born with a new national day and flag that reflect who we are now. I’m not saying get rid of ANZAC Day, we just shouldn’t put war on such a pedestal that it gets to take credit for the nation we’ve become since April 25, 1915. It totally makes sense to remember those who have died in the name of their country and those serving now, but war is shit and I don’t trust that those in power don’t use ANZAC Day as an annual national recruitment drive or justification for increased defence spending (Joint Strike Fighter Jet, anyone?). Australia Day on the other hand. Let’s move that shit well away from January 26 aka “invasion day”.
So, that’s the background to the song and the fact I’m also the son of a World War 2 veteran. I’m the youngest of 4 (two older sisters and a brother) and my Dad had two sons before he met my Mum, which explains why he’d be 91 if he was alive today. Apart from being old, my father was sick for most of my life because of war-related injuries and he died when I was doing my HSC. Naturally, this makes me anti-war and ‘Conscript’ is about the fact that I would never voluntarily march off to war the way my Dad did in 1942, unquestionably proud of his country. This is no reflection on friends of mine who are serving now, it’s just for me personally. I couldn’t go take the moral high ground fighting injustice in another country, when we’ve got plenty of injustice back home, especially towards Indigenous people where we want to take away their “lifestyle choice” of living on their own lands. If there was a new Vietnam War and I was conscripted, I’d be a white-feather worthy draft dodging coward.
Dog Whistling:
This song is not as subtle as ‘Conscript’ and the lyrics and name of the track speak for themselves. It’s a reaction to the “stop the boats” and “fuck off we’re full” mentalities and retrospectively, the ‘Reclaim Australia’ movement. Boat people from 200 years ago telling boat people from today they’re not welcome and the fact white invaders are terrified of being invaded, because they’re isolated and surrounded by water.
Our good friend Emma Fish from Canberra made a hand-drawn animated music video for this song. She came up with the concept and story herself and really brought the whole thing to life. Emma also highlighted the fact that maybe when the Government says “stop the boats”, they’re actually not talking to the people smugglers or the boat people themselves, they’re talking to the voters who will keep them in power, aka the “fuck off we’re full” mob, aka the dogs who hear the whistles. I apologise to actual dogs, because as far as I can tell, actual dogs like everyone.
All My Friends Are Leaving Town
So, I think Blunt Magazine ragged on us for having song titles that are way too cryptic, but ‘All My Friends Are Leaving Town’ is about the fact that all my friends have left town. If you’re not into politics, hopefully this a song that’s relatable, especially if you grew up in a regional area.
I’m from Batemans Bay NSW, Jesse (drums) is from Young NSW and Dan (bass) is from Bendigo VIC. We all had to leave town for study and work. I went to The University of Canberra (aka Belconnen High) and met a host of new amazing friends, who I care about just as much as my old school mates. Now that “Canberra crew” is spread between Melbourne and New York and we may never be in the same room again! Woe is me, right? Anyway, it was worth writing a song about. Artificial harmonics up the wazoo.
Gentrified
The Annandale Hotel or The Hopetoun Hotel in Sydney; The Bakery or The Hyde Park in Perth; The Penny Black or The Palace in Melbourne; all great live music venues that have been either shut down permanently for an apartment block to go up or gutted and polished up to attract a higher class of patron (who can afford to live in those new apartment blocks and enjoy more expensive booze and aperitifs), with the same bland on-trend décor straight out of the latest interior design magazine, minus the historic character and the sweaty rock fans to whom the place actually meant something.
In Canberra, we lost The Green Room years ago and recently Smith’s Alternative Bookshop because they just couldn’t survive. You hear often about threats to the Old Bar or Cherry Bar in Melbourne, and The Tote actually closed for a while. To all venues passed. Lest we forget. To the venues staying alive, despite the gentrification of the surrounding neighbourhoods, where the art school kids, students and rock fans can no longer afford the rent, thank you and stay strong!
A Billionaires’ Club
This song is dedicated to Australia’s mining magnates and media moguls, for whom billions of dollars and tax avoidance aren’t enough, that they have to buy or force their way onto TV executive boards like Gina Rinehart, or both houses of Parliament like Clive Palmer and his Palmer United Party, so they can have a say on the issues that effect the rest of us, despite not knowing what it’s like to not have (at least) a billion dollars.
The big daddy of them all is Rupert Murdoch, who left Australia in the 1970s, has values from the 1950s, but still feels the need to influence our governments on the economy or climate change denial and partake in brazen xenophobia when it comes to Australian Muslims. Money is power and these fine upstanding citizens and ex-pats have both. They’ve got influence, remote control and climate control. At least Clive Palmer is abstract, outrageous and hilarious at times and owns a theme park with life-sized dinosaurs in it. He spared no expense.
Out Tonight
This song was the first single off Status Updates, which we released late last year with a music video directed by Arlo Cook, starring Gay Paris’ Dean “Slim Pickins” Podmore having a progressively worse night out on the town, after planning the best night ever in his calendar for weeks.
We filmed it in Melbourne, but really the song is about Sydney’s lockout laws, and countless stories from Kings Cross or the Gold Coast of roided-up macho dickheads punching on, for whatever reason that they can’t hold their booze or are on too much speed. It’s not an anti-drinking or anti-drugs song, it’s an anti-dickheads song.
There’s a violent, macho culture that’s emerged in Australia and it’s ruining it for the rest of us who can hold our poisons without king-hitting or stabbing someone with a kebab skewer. It’s about the rest of us having to feel intimidated every time we go out on the town or head to a music festival. I hate to be all “studies have shown” but studies have shown that Germans drink just as much as us, but violence is not a problem for them. The easy thing for Governments to do is blame drinking and drugs but the real issues are fuckwittery, male aggression and blood lust. As a chubby little white guy, I may also be a tad jealous of those who are “ripped and massive”, so there’s that too.
The Man Song
I spent ages labouring over these lyrics. This was probably the hardest theme of the album to write to, because of how fraught the conversation around gender politics is right now. This song comes about at a time of harrowing statistics about violence against women in this country and growing awareness of entrenched-misogyny and inequality in Australian society. This song doesn’t deal directly with those issues, but they are important pieces of the background. Let me state now too that this song is in no way meant to be “meninist” or something for the #notallmen crowd to get behind. It’s intended to parody those kinds of attitudes.
So, having said all that, this song is about the depiction of Australian males on television and in advertising, as a monocultural, white, frumpy, bumbling group of simpletons, who match a stereotype the baby boomer ruling class wants to perpetuate, because it’s a stereotype they’re comfortable with and don’t see as threatening – and maybe helps keep consumers in their place. You only see gay guys on a car commercial or a “brown person” on My Kitchen Rules, if someone “kooky” is required to sell a product or generate discussion about a stupid reality cooking contest.
The idiotic Dad with the boring cheque shirt who resents his attractive wife and kids as mere obstacles in the way of a fishing trip with his dopey mates – all while swigging Carlton Mid – is apparently the best way to sell beer to me when I’m watching the footy. But, what message does that really send? For me, it says women are fun-hating nags, men are stupid, and you’re not really Australian unless you’re white and dumb and have nothing going for you. It’s misogynistic, racist and just totally ignorant of what Australian men (and women) look like, act like and do today.
Working at Melbourne Uni for two years, I spent a lot of time on the 19 Tram between Brunswick and the Melbourne CBD, and then the 57 or 59 out to Dan’s place in Flemington. The guys on the Carlton Mid ads are in the minority these days. Maybe this stuff isn’t worth worrying about because TV’s dying out as more folks turn to Netflix or torrents or YouTube, right? Well, television is still the most powerful communication medium we have and it is still highly influential to kids and people without much money or a decent internet connection, or who sometimes just want to flick on the tele and turn their brain off for a while.
Moving Backward
Oh hai, remember 2007, when we all voted for Kevin Rudd because he was going to say sorry to the Stolen Generations, do something about climate change, improve the experience of asylum seekers and uni students and close the gap? Well, he went a bit wrong, but then we got a female Prime Minister in Julia Gillard who took on misogyny with great class in the House of Representatives.
Weren’t we a proud, progressive, world-leading nation for a while? But then, Labor kinda imploded and brought Kevin Rudd back, and then he pretty much backflipped on everything we voted him in for in 2007 because the polls showed voters were leaning towards the conservatives again and all of a sudden, Labor was no longer the Government, (despite a last minute promise to the left that they’d support same-sex marriage if re-elected)? No, we don’t remember that, because Tony Abbott! Two years on from the 2013 election, and it is pretty hard to look beyond the Abbott years, but this song is just a smartarse reminder to voters who wore a “F#@k Tony Abbott” shirt to a protest the week after he became Prime Minister, that maybe he’s not the cause of all your problems.
Radio Silence
This song is dedicated to Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Ray Hadley, John Laws, Miranda Divine, and all the other right-wing shock jocks and News Limited fear-mongers paid with advertising dollars to say what they think about immigration, asylum seekers, Muslim Australia, Indigenous Australia, climate science, welfare and the economy for no other reason that they are extremely arrogant, loud-mouthed and opinionated, and somehow have made it their careers to say these things.
They are the downside to democracy and Radio Silence is about the secret fascist dreams of pinko, left-wingers like me, who wish they could silence this type of dissent for good, just like Stalin did with his dreaded Gulag. Today on The Bolt Report… nothing! Hooray!
Paranoid Peter Pandroid
The original lyrics on the demo version of this song that Jesse our drummer recorded are actually about being an overgrown kid, still playing in rock bands, despite the fact that 30 and all the perceived societal expectations that come with that age, were looming.
It’s actually the only song to get a complete lyrical re-write during the sessions with Tom Larkin at The Studios In The City in Brunswick. It was my choice and I thought it’d be fitting to capitalise on the franticness and speed of this track (and the ace face-melting solo Dan our bassist laid down), by writing a track that summed up the essence of ‘Status Updates’ in one final blow. (Tom said I had to keep the title though). So, what the lyrics are based on now, are just the circumstances we find ourselves in as a nation, with examples from the 2014 May Budget, which Joe Hockey handed down on my 30th birthday.
It reads a bit like a political speech, where you cover a range of things quickly in a few minutes. So it’s about cuts to welfare, the end of entitlement, higher uni fees, cuts to the ABC, changes to Medicare and Joint Strike Fighter Jets! It also reflects on Australia becoming less of an egalitarian place based on the “fair go” and more a land run by the big end of town and the institutions that don’t allow my gay and lesbian friends to get married. At the same time, it might just be me being paranoid about the “big bad men in suits”. I mean, everyone’s just an animal, trying to survive and protect their own, right? Tony Abbott just wanted the best for his daughter, when he got her that scholarship, even though other uni students were copping higher fees.
Slow Dance
The secret track, that isn’t really a secret track, because no one does secret tracks anymore. Just about me having an amazing woman in my life that I don’t deserve. Based on the idea of the swing dance classes we do occasionally, where the guy’s the lead, whereas in real life, men shouldn’t try to be the leader or boss of their relationship. My attempt at admitting that our future’s not all about what I want, even if I am more often the selfish one, distracted by music and such. So, we finish the album with a rant about how shit I can be sometimes, after calling out everyone else for being shit for the previous 30 minutes.
