They're Australian enough...
Australia, or maybe just its media, has a curious habit of claiming people as Australian, if they fill the fairly tenuous criteria of having lived here for a bit. A notable example of this is Mel Gibson, who was born in the United States, moved here with his family at the age of 12, attended NIDA, paid his acting dues with bit parts on the Sullivans, married an Australian woman and got his big break with Mad Max. I might be wrong but, with the exceptions of the Mad Max sequels, I don’t think he’s made a film here since Mad Max made his name and I think he has always been a US citizen. So basically in his 50 odd years of life, he lived here for a bit over a decade before going back to the US. This didn’t stop us claiming him as “Australia’s Mel Gibson” until recently - it has only been in the last couple of years since he’s turned out to be bat-shit crazy that we’ve conceded he’s American.
Perhaps it’s an inevitable result of being a migrant nation but it turns out that some of Australia’s most successful peeps were born somewhere other than Australia. Heaps were born in the United Kingdom (Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton-John, Barnsey, Farnsey, most of AC/DC), New Zealand (Keith Urban, Russell Crowe, John Clarke) and we will give anyone citizenship if there’s a possibility of them winning an Olympic medal for us. Nicole Kidman was born in Hawaii (to Australian parents though - I think her father was studying there or something) and Cate Blanchett’s father was from Texas. Celebs who marry Australians may be alarmed to find they end up with 22 million in-laws.
But anyway, we’ve called ourselves on it so often that now we are actually giving away those who are in fact ours. And no, I’m not talking about Rupert Murdoch (can we at least point out at every opportunity that he is an American citizen?).
At the moment, because of Triple J’s Hottest Australian Album of All Time poll, the nit-picky question of whether Crowded House can be considered Australian keeps coming up. They’ve appeared a couple of times on the countdown and every time someone has said “Aren’t they a Kiwi band?”
The short answer to this is only sort of. The long answer is Crowded House started off in Melbourne as “The Mullanes”, following Split Enz coming to, well, an end. Neil Finn, a Kiwi who at the time was a Melbourne resident, formed the band with two Australians, Nick Seymour and Paul Hester. So, a three piece band, formed in Melbourne, comprising one New Zealander and two Australians.
To look at it another, way, does New Zealand have an exclusive claim on the Crowdies? Well, it would undersell the contributions made by Nick Seymour and Paul Hester, no? Yes, Neil Finn was the creative force behind the band but it wasn’t the Neil Finn solo project was it? In a recent interview on Triple J, Neil Finn said he felt privileged to belong to both Australian and New Zealand, which was very diplomatic of him.
So it is best to settle it by saying they are an Australasian band, equally at home on the hottest 100 lists of both Australia and New Zealand. And to complicate matters, further, if you include the current line-up, they’re a little bit American, too.
Really, if people are going to be that pernickety then there are plenty of other acts which shouldn’t be on the list as well, such as AC/DC, John Farnham, Cold Chisel, the John Butler Trio, Gotye (he’s from Belgium, you know)….
Yours trivially
Perhaps it’s an inevitable result of being a migrant nation but it turns out that some of Australia’s most successful peeps were born somewhere other than Australia. Heaps were born in the United Kingdom (Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton-John, Barnsey, Farnsey, most of AC/DC), New Zealand (Keith Urban, Russell Crowe, John Clarke) and we will give anyone citizenship if there’s a possibility of them winning an Olympic medal for us. Nicole Kidman was born in Hawaii (to Australian parents though - I think her father was studying there or something) and Cate Blanchett’s father was from Texas. Celebs who marry Australians may be alarmed to find they end up with 22 million in-laws.
But anyway, we’ve called ourselves on it so often that now we are actually giving away those who are in fact ours. And no, I’m not talking about Rupert Murdoch (can we at least point out at every opportunity that he is an American citizen?).
At the moment, because of Triple J’s Hottest Australian Album of All Time poll, the nit-picky question of whether Crowded House can be considered Australian keeps coming up. They’ve appeared a couple of times on the countdown and every time someone has said “Aren’t they a Kiwi band?”
The short answer to this is only sort of. The long answer is Crowded House started off in Melbourne as “The Mullanes”, following Split Enz coming to, well, an end. Neil Finn, a Kiwi who at the time was a Melbourne resident, formed the band with two Australians, Nick Seymour and Paul Hester. So, a three piece band, formed in Melbourne, comprising one New Zealander and two Australians.
To look at it another, way, does New Zealand have an exclusive claim on the Crowdies? Well, it would undersell the contributions made by Nick Seymour and Paul Hester, no? Yes, Neil Finn was the creative force behind the band but it wasn’t the Neil Finn solo project was it? In a recent interview on Triple J, Neil Finn said he felt privileged to belong to both Australian and New Zealand, which was very diplomatic of him.
So it is best to settle it by saying they are an Australasian band, equally at home on the hottest 100 lists of both Australia and New Zealand. And to complicate matters, further, if you include the current line-up, they’re a little bit American, too.
Really, if people are going to be that pernickety then there are plenty of other acts which shouldn’t be on the list as well, such as AC/DC, John Farnham, Cold Chisel, the John Butler Trio, Gotye (he’s from Belgium, you know)….
Yours trivially
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