The 80s was the decade of the anthem. Springsteen started it, of course, but between feel-good cheerleaders both passable (Peter Gabriel) and intolerable (Sting) and a wheelbarrow full of long-haired singers with their chins jutting out, from crazy Bono to the clowns in the Alarm, we kind of got our fill of prancing guitars and song titles like “Freedom Youth” and “Nights of Thunder.” For me it was all over late in 1987, when I saw the Alarm open for Dylan. I watched in disbelief as singer Mike Scott trotted out some tired Woody Guthrie quote he’d obviously picked up from the Springsteen handbook, patently unaware of the relationship between the author of the quote and the poor soul he was opening for.
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Blue Sky Mining had all the makings of a blockbuster: anthems were in, remember, and the Oil’s previous record, Diesel and Dust, was the sleeper breakthrough that always precedes the through-the-roof hit. Diesel and Dust took a long time to do it, but once it hit big–fueled by the exotic and powerful single “Beds Are Burning”–it stayed that way, producing about half a dozen radio standards. Blue Sky Mining’s job was to consolidate the gains and become 1990’s Born in the U.S.A./Purple Rain/Joshua Tree-style megahit. The trick–I’ve always thought, anyway–is that you have to go out and take chances, and actually push ahead musically and thematically even as you play to your strengths. Blue Sky Mining doesn’t seem worth the four-year wait. Diesel and Dust was a strange record; while its two American predecessors, Red Sails in the Sunset and 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, were persuasive at the time (the band has a radio-friendly but still rough guitar sound, and its politics are of course wholesome), in retrospect they’re not very compelling. I used to love 10,9,8,…, but now it sounds clunky; the hit, “The Power and the Passion,” reminds me of the Fixx. But Diesel and Dust catches your imagination, both lyrically–
The blood wood and the desert oak
And in its place is a bunch of anthemic radio rock. Garrett functions as front man, but he doesn’t write much of the material: guitarist Jim Moginie has his name on most of the band’s notable songs, with drummer Rob Hirst an important second writer. (Diesel and Dust credited all the songs to Midnight Oil.) It’s difficult to penetrate the band’s facade, apparently; most of the articles I’ve read are relatively superficial and they’re invariably about Garrett. (A friend at a guitar magazine told me that their attempts to do a story on Moginie alone were rebuffed.) For whatever reason, the musical heart of the group is ailing as well: “Bedlam Bridge” is an exercise in manipulative ominousness; “One Country” is hippie wishfulness; and “Antarctica,” besides requiring the band to sing over and over again the words “I’m a snow plough,” is just dull.
But something about Harding is engaging. I recently found a record I didn’t know existed; called It Happened One Night, it’s an acoustic live show from November 1988 in London, on Demon Records. On it, Harding makes a pretty strong case for himself. (Demon, incidentally, is Costello’s English label; Harding also uses Costello’s publishing company, Plangent Visions. None of this is to suggest that Harding is in alter ego of Costello’s; it’s just funny.)
