Titus O.

I was really into a number of bands from Australia when I was in high school in the mid 80′s, and even later into college. There was no particular reason I was into bands from Oz, save they seemed disproportionately skilled at crafting really catchy New Wave tunes. And, I became obsessed with (Midnight Oil singer) Peter Garrett’s bald head – I spent an entire printmaking class in high school using it as subject, which seems really weird in retrospect. Was I anticipating shaving my own for a few years, as I did during years of Zen training?

Maybe it began with “Unguarded Moment”, the Church’s first minor blink on American radar, no doubt due to MTV. The only record of theirs I really got into was “Heyday” a couple years later – 1985? I had it on tape; it was good to drive around to, but not timelessly great. After that, I didn’t care about them at all. Kinda pretentious, aren’t they?

I saw Icehouse’s “Hey Little Girl” on MTV, and I loved that song. But they may have really hit their peak earlier, still calling themselves Flowers, with “We Can Get Together,” a near perfect nugget of New Wave pop gold. The video sums up an entire (brief) era of design and fashion. Like most other half-way decent “new wave/college” bands of the time, they turned quickly into power ballad shlock meisters. But discovering that one song on youtube blew me away.

Later, Midnight Oil was a fixation, as mentioned, before they turned into national protest anthem writers. When I first heard Power & the Passion, something pivotal shifted in my psyche.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that INXS was never more than a band I didn’t change the radio/TV when they came on.

Later, early in college, there was one great record from Hunters & Collectors – Human Frailty. With the wonders of youtube, the loss of thousands of abandoned LPs years ago becomes slightly less painful.

About the same time, that first Crowded House record was much loved – the bass player is the brother of the singer in H&C. And speaking of brothers, there was Neil and Tim Finn of Split Enz, another fave, who are actually from New Zealand I think; Neil formed Crowded House in Melbourne, home of H&C too. I met them all later when I lived there, sharing a house as I did with artist musicians who all lived on the dole, smoked too much weed and embodied the classic bohemian existence. God, it was a good life.

I ended up in Melbourne my junior year in college, when it came down to deciding where to study “abroad”. My main options in art school were Italy, New York, or Australia, and to me it was a no-brainer. I wanted to go as far away from Reagan America as I could get – even though culturally, Europe would have been stranger. The president of KCAI had become pals with his counterpart at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, and they concocted a literal student exchange. I was the guinea pig.

They sent some shockingly handsome, charismatic con artist kid who in his one semester stole $5000 of tools, wrecked a girl’s corvette, slept with a number of guy’s girlfriends, and even got my girlfriend’s English roommate pregnant (like him, she also turned out to be kind of a slut, so the paternity was probably murky). By the time I returned 12 months later, he was legendarily loathed. When I got to Melbourne, after a few weeks the head of the department I was in admitted that they felt bad because I was such a committed student and nice guy. They had sent who they did simply to get rid of him. It seemed typically Australian to me at the time – practical, irreverent, humorous, and a bit lazy. I saw the 80′s come to a close somewhere in the desert outback. I had an absolutely fabulous time in my year down under, but couldn’t wait to get home in the end. People said I looked different, at best only like the old Titus’ cousin, complete with mild Aussie accent. I can’t believe its been almost 20 years since I was there.