Melbourne garage outfit TTTDC recently embarked on what many Australian musicians will tell you is a bonafide rite of passage – submitting a music video to Rage, our favourite late-night music video program.
The clip for ‘Reiterate’, taken from the band’s recently released second album, ACRONYM, features the band members dressed as Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, and Christopher Pine, engaging in all sorts of lewd, illegal, and excessive activities.
If John Safran’s Music Jamboree is anything to go by, the Rage submission process is easy. You just send your video in, the Rage peeps review it, and if they decide it’s good enough, you’re telling your friends and family to stay up to see the premiere.
However, the members of TTTDC were surprised when they received a rejection letter in their inbox. Not because ‘Reiterate’ wasn’t making it to air, mind you. What surprised the three-piece is why Rage had decided to avoid the clip.
“It’s official people, the ABC — more directly the staff that oversee the day to days at Rage HQ — have all deemed our song and clip un-Rageworthy,” the band write in a statement posted to their Facebook page.
“We have been banned by Rage! Not bad,” they continue. According to the band, in a series of emails, TTTDC expressed their concern to Rage programmers that they are now “persona non grata” on the program.
“There’s no such thing as ‘persona non grata’ at Rage, we don’t care where or who a video comes from when deciding whether or not to play it,” programmers allegedly replied. “We only care if it’s a great video and, to a lesser extent, a great song.”
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“We have a responsibility as the ABC to remain unbiased, which means there must be solid justification for playing a clip that could be perceived as politically partisan (such as this one). In this I don’t think the video or song are strong enough to justify its addition to the playlist.”
“The reason for the delay is that I wanted to get the opinions of a few of my colleagues, and they all agreed. I’m sorry that I can’t be the bearer of good news this time. However I’m sure that you’ll have no problem getting the video shared around online, given its content!”
Readers can check out the clip for ‘Reiterate’ below and decide on its merit for yourselves. As for TTTDC, they still have unanswered questions: “I don’t understand [Rage‘s] fear of being perceived as politically partisan if [they] did play the clip, but no such fear if Rage does NOT play the clip. Ummmm…?”
