James Weir: The poisoned chalice of Australian entertainment

This major televised gig is a total trap. And our biggest entertainers are getting burnt.

COMMENT

Being the opening musical act at any televised Australian event is showbiz Russian roulette.

It doesn’t matter if your performance is pitch-perfect – the gig is a poisoned chalice. Perilous. The dangers outnumber any potential positives. Don’t be fooled by the honour.

Delta Goodrem is the latest victim after she opened the Melbourne Cup this week. She breezed through a medley of hits and totally nailed it. No surprise – she’s a pro.

But Australians have high standards. We also like ripping things to shreds. After two decades of exposure to TV talent shows, we the viewers know there’s always something to criticise.

For Delta, her downfall was the backup dancers who — with their orange silk neckerchiefs — were compared to Jetstar flight attendants.

Once your backup dancers get compared to a crew of Jetstar flighties, all bets are off. Open slather. Sharpen your hashtags. Words like “torturous” were being thrown around on social media along with lots of gags about the “Delta variant”. Cue the headlines: Delta performance divides the nation!

We see these headlines a lot around this time of year because of the football grand finals and the pre-match entertainment that never quite hits the mark. There’s always a microphone issue or some other technical problem.

When you’ve got a gig at 1pm and a Melbourne-to-Sydney flight at 3.

DJ duo Stafford Brothers and instrumentalist Timmy Trumpet were sledged a few weeks ago for their performance at the NRL Grand Final. And the month before, all the AFL pre-match entertainers — which included Eskimo Joe and John Butler singing random covers — got the same treatment.

The roll call is endless. Tones & I is also in the grand final fail club.

Katie Noonan experienced a double whammy when she sang at both the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Trashing these acts is the number one national pastime and Meat Loaf is to blame. Nothing has brought our country together quite like his widely ridiculed 12-minute performance at the 2011 AFL Grand Final. This is the gold standard of bad performances. It sparked so much joy and we’ve been trying to recreate the glory ever since — panning anyone who dares sing on stage at a major event.

There is no way to win if you’re the opening act. It’s a trap. You will get put through the meme machine.

Meat Loaf really paved the way for ridiculed performances.

Even Tones & I got burnt by the Grand Final curse.

Our most respected musical icons need to stop signing up for these doomed gigs – it’s beneath them. It’s like if Cate Blanchett agreed to appear on Big Brother VIP.

We need to treat these performance spots as lowbrow and find the talent to match.

Being the opening act is like being a modern-day court jester – you’ve got to go into it knowing that the crowd will throw tomatoes. Instead of getting the Deltas and the Kylies and the Guys, organisers should aim lower and tap musicians who are already accustomed to being a national punching bag.

We’ve got plenty to choose from. Redfoo. Shannon Noll. The Rogue Traders. Why isn’t Nikki Webster getting winched into every stadium on a wire cable?

Nollsy is the perfect candidate.

Redfoo should be on a five-year contract to perform at all NRL Grand Finals.

There’s an entire catalogue of former TV talent show rejects to rotate through. Lee Harding doing a mashup of Wasabi and the national anthem is premium Grand Final material. Let’s get The Young Divas back together and give ‘em a whirl around the MCG.

All these artists will agree to it despite the guaranteed backlash – the same way all those freaks apply for Married At First Sight and all those tabloid characters sign up for SAS: Australia. They’ve got nothing else going on and they need the spare change. Hell, they’d probably even do it for free.

They’re controversial identities with zero to lose and everything to gain. Toss ‘em a microphone, crank up the backing track and wheel out Delta’s Jetstar dancers.

Now that’s the kind of opening act this country deserves.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir

Originally published as James Weir: The poisoned chalice of Australian entertainment