APRAs: Midnight Oil; Aarons; Abraham; A.B. Original

The iconic rock band has a musical gift for describing this country, and pushing their causes.

Midnight Oil at the APRA awards in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: Tony Mott.

Midnight Oil — a band whose impact on the nation’s culture and character is inestimable — was presented with the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music at the APRA Music Awards in Sydney on Tuesday.

The rock quintet — which first performed under that name in 1976 — joined a list of previous recipients that includes the Seekers, Cold Chisel, Archie Roach and Lindy Morrison.

In the band’s acceptance speech, drummer and songwriter Rob Hirst noted a thread that binds the winners of the Ted Albert award, named in honour of the founder of music publishing and recording company Albert Productions. “It’s a passion for our country, and a gift for describing it,” Hirst said from the stage. “It’s an understanding of the uncommon beauty and fragility of this land we share with the First Nations — the first Australians — and it’s an urgent desire to protect and enhance what we have today for the generations to follow.

“That’s why crazy new reef-threatening coalmines in Queensland, water theft for cotton farms from the once mighty Darling River, and coal-seam gas mining in precious deep-soil agricultural areas — these all have to be resisted with strong words and direct action.”

After waiting a few beats for the applause to subside, he added: “Preferably accompanied by thundering guitars, bass and drums.”

Midnight Oil re-formed last year for a world tour titled The Great Circle. Rather than undertaking a predictable stroll down memory lane and relying on a similar set list each night, the band challenged itself by playing more than 100 songs from across its catalogue. When I saw both concerts at the Brisbane Riverstage, for instance, there was a variation of about a dozen songs, all performed with a vigour and passion more readily associated with much younger men.

Among the winners at the APRA Music Awards were young songwriters such as Sarah Aarons, Kylie Sackley and Ben Abraham. As well, hip-hop duo A.B. Original — composed of MCs Briggs and Trials — became the first indigenous artists and first hip-hop act to win the prize for songwriter of the year, as a result of their incendiary debut album, Reclaim Australia.

Given these musicians are much closer to the beginning of their careers than the end, I asked Hirst what he wished he knew about the art of composing and arranging songs as a 20-year-old that he has learned since.

“Well, it’s still a mystery, is the truth,” Hirst says. “And that’s the wonderful, magical thing about songwriting: you can’t feed algorithms into the computer and expect it to spit out all these hits. It just doesn’t work that way, although I know there are some songwriters who work exactly that way. Not our band, though. I think we have to get inspired by things we’ve heard, or something you might say today, or we’ve read. Or get angry. That’s always a good motivator: ‘Anger is an energy,’ as John Lydon said.

“So I’m not sure I would be any more qualified after all these years. I guess I could direct young songwriters to, say, a book like Tunesmith by Jimmy Webb, just to get some ideas … And I guess there’s a few tricks I could add, like always carrying a little notebook, or a recording device of some kind with you at all times. Because if these folks are anything like me, this great idea that you’ve had for a song will disappear within seconds if you don’t write it down.”