Generation J

You join us as CSI: Miami try their hand at investigating the death of Michael Jackson...
This is not a post about the late Michael Jackson. He was a successful musician, broke down various barriers, has the biggest selling album in history, made a lot of expensive videos. He also had fairly questionable personal habits and spent much of the last 20 years as the punchline to a lot of bad jokes. (Though not quite as heroically awful as the ones which have been wriggling out of the woodwork on Arsebook and Twunter over the past eight hours or so. You know the ones.)

This is a post about Triple J. I'm led to believe that the national youth broadcaster gave over much of their morning today to playing non stop, no repeat MJ. All-Jacko, All-The-Time, like some sort of demented fucking commercial network. Now cloying 24/7 coverage of his last moments and his ambiguous legacy on every MSM outlet is one thing, but MJ on JJJ is most definitely the point at which I draw the line in the sand, and say 'Take your plastic fucking pop prince and fuck the fuck right out of here.' I wasn't even subjected to this and I'm fucked off about it, and have said as much in a variety of forums.

It probably surprised even me a little to realise that in my book, the sanctity and integrity of Triple J is palpably more important than the legacy of the Jacko that is (sorry was) Wacko. Fair enough, he hadn't had a hit since 1991, and Black and White was more a triumph of nascent video morphing whizz-bangery than musical genius - and to be fair, that was the story of much of Jackson's MTV-era career. So someone of my gen downplaying his significance isn't that surprising. But am I overplaying that of Triple J?

No.

Triple J saved my fucking life. Without Triple J I wouldn't be interested in music. Before Triple J all we had - other than ABC regional radio, whose idea of modern music was Whispering Jack-era Johnny Farnham - was Triple Z, a God-awful commercial FM network with a monumental programming hard-on for Shania, Celine and Ace Of Fucking Base. There's a line from In The Worst Possible Taste - quite a few updates away though - where the Duffer remarks of the Zeds, 'I knew they were planning to shake up their playlist but I figured that just meant they'd be playing Celine Dion three times a day instead of six.' It wasn't really a joke. They cranked sparing amounts of listenable material - trace elements of Pearl Jam, U2, AC/DC and the Hoodoo Gurus - but the pop princesses paid the bills, so they got the airplay.
It. Was. Awful.

Then Triple J launched their ambitious mid-'90s expansion programme, whereby they aimed to cover the nation. Northern Rivers NSW was their first new location, and served as the first destination for their brand-new 'Unearthed' unsigned act talent spotting competition. The first, and greatest, winner of that competition: the mighty Grinspoon. OUR mighty Grinspoon. Never mind the fact most of the band were only living up our way to go to Southern Cross Uni. They belonged to us, and just as quickly, we belonged to Triple J.

I don't need to explain, and aren't going to try, why Triple J is so unique, why it's a lot more than just a music station, why the National Youth Broadcaster remains unmatched by ANY alternative radio network anywhere in the world. That story has been told. This is mine, circa 1995 when the switch got thrown at the FM tower on Mt Nardi. Triple J was the Spoon, the Bait, the Chair and the Gurge. It was You Am I and TISM. It was the Badloves and the Cruel Sea. It was a hundred Australian bands who I'd never have heard of and never could have under the Previous Regime. It was Soundgarden and the Foo Fighters, Veruca Salt and Nine Inch Nails, the Offspring and Stone Temple Pilots, the Breeders and Rage Against The Machine. It was Oasis, the Presidents, the Chili Peppers and Alanis before commercial radio fucked with them. It wasn't Celine or Shania or any of the pop princesses... though Ace of fucking Base still made the airwaves, for reasons best known to Satan. And it was Roy and HG, Dr Karl, Kingsmill, Helen and Mikey, and even fat little Michael Tunn after his ABC kids TV gig wound up. IT. WAS. AWESOME.

No word of a lie, changed my fucking life it did. Blew my fucking head off and I've never been the same since.

Triple J were the soundtrack to my HSC study, not to mention pissup parties at Dawso's and Amiga gaming weekends at AJ's. And Triple J made me buy music albums for the first time. The first CD I bought - having owned nothing but crappy pop hits compilation cassettes previously - was TISM's Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, closely followed by the Presidents' debut album, both of which were hammered by the J's in the back end of 1995. I no longer have any concept of how many CDs I've bought over the past 15 or so years. Many, many hundreds. To be honest, it's what every disposable dollar I had in my pocket from the day I left home to the day I left Australia has been spent on. Many fortnights as an undergrad at New South were spent on the bones of my arse with the arse out of my trousers because I'd blown my budget at Red Eye or Utopia in the Sydney CBD earlier in the pay period, and later Skinny's (RIP) and Rockinghorse in Brisvegas when on the comparative affluence of a PhD stipend. I don't buy many albums any more, not because I've gone download-apeshit or I've turned into a miserable old fart who doesn't 'do' modern music, but because I have no Triple J to introduce me to anything new. (And cos my fave NZ record store went a bit tits-up and closed its D-town branch.)

Without Triple J there would have been no live shows, at least not with me in the crush and thrall. No Livids or Homebakes or Big Days Out. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. My first date with Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo was UQ's O-Week live gig with Eskimo Joe and You Am I. In five years there were four Livids, four BDOs, four Homebakes and a Splendour In The Arse, as well as countless live shows, the highlights of which were posted here as the Twelve Days Of Deafness Parts One and Two.

I know the J's have changed. The post-grunge of the '90s and garage punk of the '00s is gone now, their current playlist groaning under the weight of trendy fluoro-tinged nuff-nuff poptronica and domestic hip-hop. And the faces change - some of which were only ever faces suitable for radio in the first place, of course. Breakfast with Helen and Mikey became Breakfast with Paul, Mikey and the Sandman, then Adam and Wil, then the swearier half of Frenzal Rhomb, then the current lot of scruff. Roy and HG's 20 year innings lasted right till last year until the commercial rock station offered them more money than God, coincidentally now making State of Origin games absolutely unwatchable sans their commentary. And of course we're all older and More Grown Up. "Don't listen to the Jays any more, all they play now is fucken shit" is the refrain, as it probably was for the 2JJ generation when grunge and skate punk invaded the airwaves in the early '90s. I can't listen to the Jays, I don't get the choice. I would if I could. And the importance and the uniqueness of the Jays is still valid today, even in these short attention span, download-heavy times. A couple of our previous years' honours students spent time in Canberra for summer studentships, and came back raving. Not about the place, cos it's shit. Not about the nightlife, although the concept of playing Australia Day 'Goon of Fortune' using a Hills Hoist was clearly not one that had occurred to them before. But about Triple J. They'd never heard a station that played so much good shit for so much of the day - and this was from a couple of perennially seen-it-all Gen Y'ers. In fact one of them stayed. I don't think it was for the goon laybacks either, though she is that sort of girl.

So without Triple J, no good times. No gigs, no festivals, no mountain of CDs. And no In The Worst Possible Taste, which when you reduce it down to its most basic essence, is a love story between me and the rock music Triple J introduced me to, and for which I will be forever grateful.

And cars.

And chicks with big tits.


The Doctor is OUT.