The city of Adelaide has given rise to some great Australian artists over the years. The Twilights, The Masters Apprentices, Young Modern, Mad Turks, Exploding White Mice, the Greasy Pop label, and of course it’s the birthplace of one Paul Kelly. Fraternity (fronted by a recorder-toting Bon Scott) even moved there from Sydney and recorded their incredibly named ‘Flaming Galah’ album in the City of Churches. Dave Graney started his musical journey in Mount Gambier, roughly 300 kilometres away. There’s been some top quality musical alumni from that part of the world that’s for sure.
Of course, there have been a couple of handy footballers to come out of South Australia too. Ron Kneebone, Malcolm Blight, Sticks Kernahan, Fabulous Phil Carman, Garry McIntosh, Johnny Platten, Tony Modra, Mark Ricciuto…we could be here for days reeling them all off.
The reason we raise all of this is that Adelaide is home to Bad Dreems, a top musical outfit responsible for one of our favourite songs of 2013, ‘Too Old’. It’s like the musical equivalent of a sigh of regret. It’s the tale of a gulf in age, of distance, boredom and confusion. There are echoes of the great Go-Betweens in the melody and guitars, but really, the credit is all theirs.
When we saw them play live earlier this year, we somehow sensed that the Adelaide Crows premiership t-shirt being worn on stage was no mere ironic indie rock affectation. How right we were. The band are football lovers, and footballers all. It therefore makes total sense that the video accompanying ‘Too Old’ is comprised entirely of footage from SANFL matches of the ‘eighties and nineties, and features the commentary of the one and only KG Cunningham. You quite simply could not make this stuff up. It’s as if someone answered a prayer we were certain no-one would ever hear, but gave it a go anyway. Great song, great video, and we thought, the perfect lead in to another weekend chasing the twin sirens – rock and roll and football.
(Bad Dreems are playing shows and conducting handball clinics* this weekend and next)
Friday 26th June at the Gasometer, Melbourne
Saturday 27th June at The Metro, Adelaide
Saturday 3rd August Spectrum, Sydney
AK
*The 2nd part is not strictly true
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