Countdown to the good ol’ days: Sound of music back on Sunday

More than 30 years since the final Countdown, a Sunday-night music show is coming to ABC TV.

Broadcaster and author Jane Gazzo will host The Sound, a new live music show to premiere on ABC TV this Sunday. Picture: Aaron Francis

For a generation of Australian music fans, Sunday evenings in front of the television have not been quite the same since Countdown ended its 13-year run in 1987. From this weekend, however, ABC TV will begin a new ­series named The Sound that seeks to re-establish the timeslot as a home for in-depth artistic discussions and live performances.

“It’s a long time coming for Australian music television,” said co-host Jane Gazzo. “I just really hope people embrace it, and the fact that it’s all Australian music I think is really, really important.”

The hour-long program will air from 5.30pm, and the first ­episode will feature exclusive prerecorded performances by established and emerging artists including DMA’S, Eskimo Joe, Nick Cave, Kate Ceberano and Lime Cordiale, while actor Bryan Brown will appear as a guest host.

Molly Meldrum in a classic interview with Elton John on Countdown in 1979.

Gazzo first appeared on national television in the late 1990s with the Saturday morning program Recovery, before later presenting for Foxtel and on Triple M radio in Melbourne. Her biography of singer John Farnham was published in 2015.

“I just love that I get to be back at the ABC again,” she said. “It’s got a long history of incredible music television programming, from GTK through to Countdown through to Recovery, which I was really fortunate to be part of. The fact that they have chosen this timeslot makes me feel that they believe in it.”

While the pandemic has wreaked havoc across much of the Australian music industry, one bright spot during lockdown was Music From the Home Front, an Anzac Day broadcast of unique at-home music performances that attracted 1.4 million viewers nationally. An accompanying album release of the same name recently spent two weeks at No 1 on the ARIA chart.

The Sound is created and filmed by Mushroom Vision, the same team that produced the Anzac Day broadcast as well as the recent online video series The State of Music, which Gazzo co-hosted with the customary enthusiasm of a lifelong fan.

“I still think of myself as a 14-year-old girl when I listen to music: does it move me? Does it make me want to dance?” she said. As for her pick of the emerging acts to appear on the first episode of The Sound? “Benee, the young artist out of New Zealand,” said Gazzo. “She has got a set of pipes. I predict big things for her.”