Part 1 (of 2) of a blog on the ten Australian albums that feature the highest on my ‘101 Favorite Albums of the 80s‘ series. Originally published as a single piece in January 2020, this is the remastered 2022 edition, with probably far too many bonus bits and bobs.

The Show With No Name

It’s all Neil Johnson’s fault. I have no one else to blame but him for my longstanding, and still ongoing love affair, with the songs, albums, and bands from that other great southern land. Yes, that one – the very big island northwest of New Zealand. Neil himself was from Fochville, a small town 75 km to the west of Johannesburg and nowhere remotely near Australia.

_{“Fochville is a farming and mining town located in the Gauteng province of South Africa. It is part of the Merafong City Local Municipality, which also includes Kokosi, Carletonville, and Khutsong. Carletonville, in the West Rand of Gauteng, South Africa, is just north of the richest gold-mining area in the world. At 3,749 m, Western Deep Levels holds the record for the world’s deepest gold mine.”}

Neil started his radio career in 1980 as a studio technician on Music Radio 702 – this was before they became Talk Radio 702. He worked in the station’s downtown Eloff Street offices and studio. 702 also had a studio out in Ga-Rankuwa, which was then a settlement in the Apartheid created homeland of Bophututswana.

Through a stroke of luck, he was soon offered a presenting position at the station. Neil Johnson’s first gig on air was the 1am – 6am slot on 702. This meant he had to now live and work out in Ga-Rankuwa. Johnson’s “on-air” debut came in August 1981 – and the first song he played – was “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones.

Johnson left South Africa in 1985 to avoid conscription into the SADF. He moved first to England, and then later, to the United States. He was out of our country for about a year and a half. Gary Edwards, the then station manager at 702, persuaded Neil to return late in 1986. Edwards had offered him a Monday to Friday show at the station. Neil Johnson jumped at the opportunity and quietly returned to South Africa.

His first slot was the 7pm – 10pm show. This was later extended to end at 12pm, and ‘The Show With No Name‘ was born. On his return to South African radio the first song he played was “Pretty in Pink” by the Psychedelic Furs.

Neil would broadcast his excellent show on 702 until 1989. In October of that year, the station made the decision to become Talk Radio 702. This was not for Neil and he decided it was time to move on. In January 1990 he started at 5FM, with two three-hour shows over the weekend. He also presented a SABC TV show called the Top 20 on Thursday nights.

In 1993 he got married, had a child (a girl, Chloe), and moved to Cape Town. He joined Martin Baillie on Peace Radio – the station created by the National Peace secretariat as a non-political platform before the 1994 elections. That would be his last presenting gig which lasted from 1993 to 1995. From there, Neil became a suit joining Primedia and working for a division of theirs called Broadcast Resources. He left Cape Town in 1997 to join Johannesburg’s Radio Highveld. The station had recently been bought from the SABC by Primedia for a whopping R230million! 

Neil Johnson had a quiet, calm yet still authoritative and knowledgeable way about him – as all good quality presenters should. His warm and inviting speaking voice is still my personal radio favorite. To me, he came across as humble and seemed unpretentious.* Stephen, Humps, and I agreed that he would easily fit in at one of our braais, like a close mate.

^{[* having now met the man I can confirm that he is exactly that! ]}

Most importantly he knew his music. Especially the mind-blowing rock and pop stuff that was pouring out of Australia at the time.

“Kylie Minogue is the best thing to ever happen to Australian music“

Nick Cave

Mark Humphrey and I spent a lot of time listening to Johnson’s show or talking about what he was playing on it. “The Show With No Name” was quite simply an aural feast. These were days when radio stations were far more flexible with their playlists and what went out on air. Neil played some of what they prescribed to him but managed to more or less play what he wanted when he wanted. He played groups like Midnight Oil and INXS before they became international superstars. Neil introduced us to the Hoodoo Gurus, Go-Betweens, Eurogliders, Weddings Parties Anything, and the Triffids. These were only some of the great Australian acts of the 1980s he played. It was glorious!

I was a big fan of Grace Knight and Bernie Lynch. This Island and Absolutely are two great albums. I played songs from both on air.

Neil Johnson on Eurogliders

Continuing with the countdown of my ‘101 Favourite Albums of the 80s.’ Here are ten ‘Proudly Australian’ classics.

number🎸91

is

heyday

by

The Church

_{One of the most successful and enduring Australian bands of the post-punk era, the Church began their career with music that paid explicit homage to psychedelia and 1960s folk-rock, and with the passage of time, they refined their own unique sound, fusing pop, art rock, progressive rock, and other flavors. The Church was formed in Sydney, Australia in 1980 by Steve Kilbey (bass, vocals), Peter Koppes (guitar), and Nick Ward (drums).}

This album came to me off the back of the commercial success of their 1988 album Starfish. The Church somehow found itself on mainstream playlists around the world. Mainly due to the epic single “Under the Milky Way.” Of course, I had to explore further and discover what else they had to offer. Heyday is the LP they released right before Starfish. It’s also a cracker – a sumptuous feast of jangling guitars and a brilliant slew of songs. Released then in 1986, it is in fact their fifth album.

So go treat yourself – fire up a fatty, put on Heyday, and bliss out, man!

“From my absolute favorite Church album. Heyday is magic from start to finish. Saw them and Echo & The Bunnymen at the Aragon in Chicago on April 9, 1986.“

Douglas Knight

Rolling Stone Australia’s 200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time – Top Ten

1. AC/DC – Back in Black (1980)
2. INXS – Kick (1987)
3. John Farnham – Whispering Jack (1986)
4. Cold Chisel – East (1980)
5. Midnight Oil – Diesel and Dust (1987)
6. Silverchair – Frogstomp (1995)
7. Crowded House – Crowded House (1986)
8. The Avalanches – Since I Left You (2000)
9. Savage Garden – Savage Garden (1997)
10. Kylie Minogue – Fever (2001)

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“Australian rock & pop music entered the 80s on a strong footing. The Quota System legislated almost a decade before, forced all radio stations to play 20% original Australian music composition. The 80s were therefore payback years for the music (and same for film) industry. Technology; strong union representation by musicians, artists, and actors; government subsidies and tax incentives; plus a common goal, saw Australia take the world almost by stealth.“

Neil Johnson on why so many Australian acts succeed

“I can’t remember too much about the 80s, to be honest with you … I wish that weren’t true but it is“

Colin Hay (Men at Work)

🤔

I have always wondered how Mr. Johnson picked up so early on these acts from the other side of the planet, but am sure glad he did. I recently asked him how this came about. This is what he told me.

Neil 👇

I had an Uncle who had moved (by boat) to Australia from England in the early 1970s. In those days, we all wrote letters to each other. I used to read the letters my uncle wrote detailing this new life in Australia. It sounded exotic and fascinating. He would also occasionally send us parcels filled with all things Australian. Then one year the package contained two cassettes filled with music made in that country. I can’t remember exactly who or what was on there except for some stuff by John Paul Young. These two tapes stirred something in me, and my interest in music from somewhere other than America and Britain was born.

Politically I also found that country quite interesting. I saw a similarity between our Apartheid system and the aboriginal issue in Australia. I had already uncovered progressive politics through my aunt Jessie McPherson. She had been Johannesburg’s only (at that point) woman mayor – from 1945 to 1946. 

702 also had an unbelievable music library at their Eloff Street offices. Everything was in there. I would spend hours sifting through the long rows of vinyl. Then one day, I stumbled across an album by a group calling themselves Midnight Oil. It had come in through our music rep from CBS America and was called 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. It was a life-altering moment – I played that one A LOT down in the library.

So, it was through a combination of family, politics, and the 702 library, that I discovered Australian music.

It is also because of Johnson’s show that Humps and I bonded and became friends. Mark probably listened to Neil’s show a bit more than I did. Especially around 1984 when I was toiling with national service and Humps was at Wits University. Late night “studying,” was particularly conducive to tuning into whatever magic Neil was spinning in the studio.

I am therefore also extremely grateful to Mark Humphrey for passing on whatever he heard in these sessions while I was probably ironing my bed!

Talking of the army …

_{This is}

⚔🗡

a war story

Early in 1985, I found myself literally in a very deep hole. My good friends at the SA Defence Force signal corps had posted me to a secret underground station out in the back of beyond in the far north of South Africa. There I listlessly sat, deep beneath the surface of the earth. Half-listening for hours on end to the nervous chatter emanating from the massive banks of radios in this bleak, windowless room. Noisy telex machines endlessly spewing out pink paper ribbons of mindless military matters.

The job at hand was monitoring our ‘boys in brown’ serving way beyond the reaches of our northern borders. Their words are mainly a mixture of boring nonsense and sprinkled with dashes of excitement and fear. This hole I worked in was at a place called Boekenhoutskloof. It was close to nothing and a long way from anywhere. We were surrounded by miles of dry scrubby bush, dust, and very little else. This is what the Australian outback must look like I often used to think to myself.

“There are parts of Australia you could drop a medium-sized European country on without hitting anybody. To drive the roads that lace these empty immensities is to confront an enormity of landscape, and a concomitant insignificance of humanity, difficult to explain to inhabitants of the northern hemisphere.”

Andrew Mueller

_{number 84 is Red Sails in the Sunset by Midnight Oil}

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number 🎸 76

is

shabooh shoobah

by

INXS

Humps liked to think that the first song Neil ever played on the radio – his Night Shift show on 702 – was somewhat appropriately the sublime “Johnson’s Aeroplane.” It’s written by Andrew Farriss and is track 6 on The Swing album. But this option as his debut spin has now been proved incorrect by Neil himself. No matter, it’s still a banger of an album cut that always slips through the cracks when the best INXS songs are listed. “Johnson’s Aeroplane” has always been a favorite of mine. It’s easily in my personal top five INXS tracks.

_{According to GUARDIAN.com, the 15 best INXS songs are}

_{15. Bitter Tears (1990) 14. Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain) (1985) 13. What You Need (1985) 12. Disappear (1990) 11. I Send a Message (1984) 10. Beautiful Girl (1992) 9. Mystify (1987) 8. New Sensation (1987) 7. Suicide Blonde (1990) 6. By My Side (1990) 5. Devil Inside (1988) 4. Don’t Change (1982) 3. Original Sin (1983) 2. Need You Tonight (1987) 1. Never Tear Us Apart (1987)}

But, as you can see, no sign of the one they wrote about our Neil 👉👉

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“If you bought shares in a young Sydney band called The Farriss Brothers in 1979, by 1987 you’d never have to work again.”

Neil Johnson on the group that would become INXS

Shabooh Shoobah is their third album and comes before all the adulation and fame. Most importantly this record would launch them onto college radio in the States. The LP reached # 46 on the Billboard Top 200.

The name “Shabooh Shoobah” is an onomatopoeia of a rhythm in the song “Spy of Love“

AllMusic Guide 👇

“For the most part, however, Shabooh Shoobah is an example of a talented bunch of performers still finding their own identity. There’s a smart, slick punch to the album that suggests late-period Roxy Music crossed with younger, brasher energy, which perfectly explains the sly grooves of songs like “To Look at You” and “Here Comes.” “The One Thing” is a great way to start, a strutting number that gives Hutchence a real chance to shine as a singer, strong and commanding, while the combined synth/guitar/sax hook that drives the song is instantly memorable.”

“But if “The One Thing” is grand, “Don’t Change” is just flat-out fantastic, one of the best album closers ever dreamed up. Soaring in on a just dreamy enough synth line from Andrew Farriss and then a quick guitar burst, the rest of the band then explodes into action. It’s some of the best rock-without-apology-or-quotes sounds anyone could ever hear, crisp, fierce, and clean. Hutchence takes charge of that act like the vaunted frontman he was, delivering one of the more cryptic but still just right romance lyrics from that time with aplomb and fire. The chorus is simply killer, while the concluding, extended calls of the title phrase over the song’s last notes make up the icing on the cake.”

Ned Raggett ☝

“We’d have to suck away at oxygen cylinders between songs just so we could keep playing“

Michael Hutchence on the INXS live show

“To me, this was always INXS’s ‘Anthem’ of a song and one of their best … if not THE best. It really lit a fuse. A great time in music history and the song still holds up today. Perfection. Very anthemic. Very INXS.”

Scott Morgan on “Don’t Change“

^{Back to}

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a war story

When you reach your second year of duty whilst doing national service you are then sometimes referred to as an “ou-man.” Which translates into “old man” in English. Basically, you have now been around the army block a bit and can be treated with a smidgen of something like respect. Also, the national service corporals that made your life hell the previous year have mostly all buggered off back to civvy street.

It’s quite a relief becoming an “ou-man” as the title that precedes it is not very pleasant. In your first few months of basic training in the army, you are always referred to as a “roev” (pronounced roe-oof) Often the word is preceded by the Afrikaans expletive “fokken.”As in: “Kom hier Jou fokken roev” … (translation: “come here you f**king piece of worthless nothingness”) This popular expression is one of the many of a similar ilk, to spout out of the foul and evil mouths, of almost all the NCOs I encountered during my 2-year stint.

I asked a friend what the newbies at boarding school were called and how the South African army one came about??

“Fags” was the English school system word for skivvies. But, it’s now a no-no because of the implication. At KES it was “new boys.” In the army the name for the newcomers was taken from the Afrikaans word ‘rower,’ which in English is robber. So that’s where the shortened word ‘roev’ comes from. Apparently.

The knowledgeable JON KRITZINGER

number 🎸 69

is

under the sun

by

Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls

“Like Joe Camilleri (Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, The Black Sorrows) could be compared internationally to Irishman Van Morrison so could Paul Kelly be compared to American Randy Newman. Kelly, whose success started in Australia in the early 70s, is that good a songwriter and arranger.”

Neil Johnson

Paul Kelly is an artist where you can feel the presence of all his influences in the music he makes … The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley, and even American hip-hop! … But yet he still sounds nothing like any of the aforementioned. Maybe you don’t know what I mean by this. Basically, he is his own man and he makes his own refreshing brand of folksy pop and rock music. Nothing complicated …just drums, guitars, loads of piano, smatterings of lonely harmonica, and delightful songs about cricket, Adelaide, Sydney, Aussie footie, wine, Don Bradman, Boeing 747’s and walking through Australian city-parks. There are tales about his life, love, Australian identity, and all the many rich characters he’s concocted in his head. Or stumbled upon over the years.

“I was living there at the time and there was a folk club at Salamanca Place. They had a night, I think a Monday night, where anyone could get up. I sang Dylan’s “Girl from North Country” and “Streets of Forbes”, a traditional Australian song about Ben Hall. I can’t really remember how it went – I remember I had a lot to drink afterwards from relief. I was incredibly nervous.“

Paul Kelly after his first public appearance in Hobart circa 1974

“One of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise.”

David Fricke of Rolling Stone on Paul Kelly

From the moment I first heard the Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls single “Dumb Things” wafting from the speakers in my bedroom I was instantly on full alert. “Wow, what was that!?” Over the course of the next few nights, and weeks, Johnson played that song repeatedly. He soon followed it with “Same Old Walk,” and “To Her Door” by the same guy and his intriguingly named band. The moniker lifted from the classic Lou Reed track “Walk on the Wild Side” …. you know the one that goes …” and the colored girls go doo-doo-doo doo-doo …” He later changed the name to the Messengers due to the possible political ‘in-correctness’ of being called something so crass as the Coloured Girls. 🙄

“Singer/songwriter Paul Kelly captures Australia in his songs the way Bruce Springsteen and the Kinks’ Ray Davies have encapsulated their home lands, and he does it with the musical energy and diversity of Elvis Costello“

AllMusic Guide

“We studied Paul Kelly in high school in English Literature. He is such a formidable storyteller that his lyrics read like poetry. “To Her Door” in particular is incredibly poignant. It is not just about one family – it is about an entire culture that’s in crisis. Those final lyrics out, “he was shaking in his seat, riding through the streets“, the anxiety and dread is so palpable.”

Mike Wylie

To be continued …

SpikeySongs

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^{2022 Remastered Edition}