Almanac Music: 33 1/3 Reasons Why – Way of the World (Max Q)

 

 

 

As a 7” single it really should be 45 reasons why, but anyhow …

 

RIP Ollie Olsen.

 

Saturday mornings are gym mornings in our household.

Although these days I am usually that physically and mentally ‘cooked’ from another week spent in the white-collar professional rat-race, that it is all I can do to sit on the stationary bike and blast some psych rock through the headphones to clear the mind.

 

Visually, there is not much on offer.

The bikes are lined up facing the wall.

Two of the (close-captioned) tv screens are tuned to the Channel 7 and 9 weekend breakfast shows. (There goes my will to live …)

Another is tuned to an infomercial channel where the other guy from that old ‘Home Improvement’ sitcom is flogging some hardware that no one really needs, before he is replaced by a tv chef that is pulling an assortment of awful looking stuff out of an air-fryer. (What’s for dinner tonight? Brown.)

Thankfully the closest screen is tuned to the ABC news, so at least I can catch some headlines and overnight sports results.

But importantly, at 9am it flicks onto Rage. (Should it have been named: Rage – I’ll keep watching to see if the next song’s any better? It rarely was.)

 

Today I happen to glance up at the Rage screen at just the right time.

Up next:  Classic like a version (Classic? Maybe go with fair to average instead.)

Then:  Pearl Jam Special (Stop! Not the new stuff! Give me Even Flow.)

Later:  Ollie Olsen Tribute (Shit, he must have died.)

 

A check of the phone reveals that the post-punk and electronic music innovator, Ollie Olsen, had died this week aged 66 after a long struggle with a rare neurological disease.

(That seems a particularly unpleasant way to go out.)

I only encountered the music of Ollie Olsen on one occasion, but it was meaningful and remains so.

It came via his 1989 collaboration with Michael Hutchence under the guise of Max Q.

I can’t say that I was a big fan of INXS either.

I liked a few of their early singles and a few songs from ‘Listen Like Thieves’.

The only purchase I had made was the ‘Kick’ album on cassette, which I chose over ‘Appetite for Destruction’ by Guns N’Roses and have regretted that choice ever since.

 

It was the lyrics of Max Q’s ‘Way of the World’ single that caught my attention.

 

You are born into this world

Looking down the barrel of a gun

And those who hold the gun

Want you to work fast and die young

And if you don’t work

If you don’t obey

They’ll make you live in fear till your dying day

Those who govern hold the gun to your head

With religions, corporations, proud of blood

They’ve shed

 

Whether it’s God or the bomb

It’s just the same

It’s only fear under another name

 

And the corporate snakes coming in to feed

On that pathetic fact known as human greed

Skin and bone being raked over those hot coals

This dump never seems to give time for human soul

And all those things that we have learnt

No time for questions, you’ll just get burnt

You’ll just get burnt

 

And those words crush you flat

Like your skull’s under a brick

And the fear’s so damned strong

That it makes you sick

And you can see right through those eyes

That make you fear, that make you lie

And you’re taught to hold high

Yet you wonder why

Dumb values forced upon you by the

Living lie

Written by:  Ollie Olsen

Courtesy of: genius.com

 

So, what was going on at that time that made these lyrics so meaningful?

On a larger scale we had:

Cold War

Reagan

Bush Snr

Crumbling Soviet Union

Berlin Wall

Tiananmen Square

Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center

Fred Nile

Corporate excess

Crash of ‘87

The recession we had to have on the horizon …

 

Personally there was:

School (year 12 in 1989)

Small town life/boredom

Culture surrounding playing adult football and cricket

I can picture five churches in town

I also remember the visible poverty

Developing insight that most people were not living that rough by choice …

 

It is usually good when songs from another era can still resonate in the current day.

However, in this case it is sad.

Sad, in that nothing has changed since I finished high school.

If anything, it has got worse.

I can’t do much about the global issues.

But personally, I can step back and question what the fuck I am doing?

It’s all still fear under another name.

 

Thank you, Ollie Olsen.

 

 

 

More from Greg A can be read Here

 

 

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