Discord and Rhyme is a podcast where we discuss the albums we love, song by song.
Everyone has an opinion about the Doors - whether you think they’re transgressive and mind-blowing, or you find them silly and overrated, or - like Ben - you just think they made some killer music. With invaluable help from Amanda, Dan, and Mike, Ben makes the case that the Doors’ 1967 self-titled debut album contains more killer music than many people realize. It might even blow your mind a little, too.
Read More“I think that a lot of us in [Australia] are scared about sticking our neck out, whether it's in music, or whether it's in some other places. And I think that we just happen to have a certain combination of belligerence, cheek, enthusiasm and passion for what we were doing and what we were saying.”
—Peter Garrett
It’s taken us nearly seven years, but the time has come. Midnight Oil, one of Australia's quintessential bands, is probably best known for its tireless political activism as expressed through hits like "Beds Are Burning" and "Blue Sky Mine," as well as the on-stage acrobatics of their 6′4″ frontman, Peter Garrett. But behind the sloganeering and agitprop, the Oils are a fiendishly creative and charmingly oddball band, and their 1982 Australian breakout album 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, recorded at a make-or-break moment for the group, was when they first really landed on their unmistakable aura. Rich has been an Oils fan literally since he was a teenager, and he’s called in Ben and returning special guest Dave Weigel to deconstruct 10 to 1 and all of the power and the passion that went into these incredible songs.
The following sources provided a good deal of the background info for this episode:
The 2024 documentary The Hardest Line is a career-spanning deep dive into the Oils, featuring interviews with every band member. As of the release of this episode, it’s only available to stream in Australia, so U.S. residents will need a VPN, which is a device that fools your ISP into thinking the toilet in your home flushes counterclockwise.
Beds Are Burning: Midnight Oil – The Journey, by friend, fan and occasional Midnight Oil employee Mark Dodgson, is a detailed recounting of the Oils’ career from someone who knew the band well, though it suffers from some structural and pacing issues.
Willie’s Bar and Grill is Rob Hirst’s memoir of the band’s bus tour across North America directly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and is an extremely funny travelogue of the band’s experiences in a different kind of outback at a very strange time in history.
Sounds Like an Ending by Glen Humphries is an exhaustively researched, track-by-track breakdown of 10 to 1 and Red Sails in the Sunset, providing loads of valuable Australian context that would have otherwise gone right over Rich’s Yankee head.
The Maralinga nuclear tests were also the subject of the 1986 song “Maralinga (Rainy Land)” by Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls. And for the record, Rich does not think that “Maralinga” by the Oils should have been a fun party song, or anything other than what it already is.
The Oils and the Wiggles have technically collaborated once, on a pan-Australian project called “EveryOneBand” that included more than 3,000 members, including Peter Garrett and several of the original Wiggles. The collective released one song called “Stand by You” in 2018.
This is Dave’s seventh appearance on Discord & Rhyme, and if you’d like to hear him again, he previously joined us to talk about Todd Rundgren, Yes, Pet Shop Boys, the Numero Group power pop compilation Yellow Pills: Prefill, Sparks, and Kylie Minogue.
The official Midnight Oil website (midnightoil.com)
Rich’s Oils review page on Mark’s Record Reviews (Internet Archive)
“US Bases” on The Chaser (YouTube)
The Big Music: How U2 Led a League of Righteous 80s Arena Rockers (UDiscover Music)
Ologies podcast on memory (alieward.com)
Discord & Rhyme’s 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 playlist (Spotify)
Discord & Rhyme’s merch store (TeePublic)
Rich Bunnell (host)
Ben Marlin (moderator)
Dave Weigel (special guest)
Outside World
Only the Strong
Short Memory
Read About It
Scream in Blue
US Forces
Power and the Passion
Maralinga
Tin Legs and Tin Mines
Somebody’s Trying to Tell Me Something
Midnight Oil:
Beds Are Burning
Blue Sky Mine
Run by Night
Stand in Line
Wedding Cake Island
Don't Wanna Be the One
Scream in Blue (live)
Dreamworld
Lucky Country
Warakurna
Kosciuszko
The Dead Heart
Redneck Wonderland
Truganini
Gravelrash
Others:
The Wiggles - Hot Potato
The Beach Boys - Surfin' USA
Kate Bush - Sat in Your Lap
Todd Rundgren - Love of the Common Man
The Wiggles - I Went to the Library
Wire - Nice Streets Above
The Waterboys - The Big Music
Simple Minds - Alive and Kicking
Big Country - In a Big Country
The Fixx - Stand or Fall
The Alarm - Rain in the Summertime
U2 - New Year's Day
The Chaser - US Bases
The Wiggles - Do the Daddy Long Legs
Candlebox - Far Behind
Prince and the Revolution - Darling Nikki
The Go-Betweens - Cattle and Cane
The Wiggles - The Fish Starts to Swim
The Wiggles - I Count Ten Stairs
Peter Garrett – lead vocals
Peter Gifford – bass, vocals
Rob Hirst – drums, vocals
Jim Moginie – guitars, keyboards
Martin Rotsey – guitars
Gary Barnacle – brass (7)
Peter Thoms – brass (7)
Luke Tunney – brass (7)
“Discord & Rhyme (theme),” composed by the Other Leading Brand, contains elements of:
Duran Duran - Hungry Like the Wolf
Amon Düül II - Dehypnotized Toothpaste
The Dukes of Stratosphear - What in the World?? ...
Faith No More - Midlife Crisis
Herbie Hancock - Hornets
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Talking Heads - Seen and Not Seen
Midnight Oil - Only the Strong (this episode only)
You can buy or stream 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and other albums by Midnight Oil at your local record store, or the usual suspects such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon. Follow Discord & Rhyme on Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky @DiscordPod for news, updates, and other random stuff. Editing and production are by Rich Bunnell, and special thanks to our own Mike DeFabio, the Other Leading Brand, for our amazing theme song. See you next album, and keep as cool as you can.
Discord & Rhyme continues its slow walk through the world of Post-Rock with an examination of the 1996 album Millions Now Living Will Never Die by the Chicago-based group Tortoise. John has been fascinated by the concept of Post-Rock for many years (even if many of the acts associated with it, Tortoise included, rejected it as a useful descriptor), and a large part of this fascination stems from a love he has had for this album for over 20 years. In this episode, John, Mike, Rich, and Dan try to make sense not only of how one should define one of the most ambiguous genres out there, but also of why an instrumental album in that genre (possibly), mostly lacking clear traditional melodies and traditional song structures (the opening “Djed” is 21 minutes by itself), is clearly one of the best albums any of us have ever heard. Regardless of whether Tortoise is Post-Rock, Prog, both, or neither, this is an album worth learning about, and Discord & Rhyme is up to the challenge.
Read MoreIf you only know Talk Talk for their ‘80s night staple “It’s My Life,” you might well wonder what an experimental weirdo like Mike is doing hosting an episode about them. However, if you know a little more about their strange and fascinating career trajectory, it makes perfect sense. The sparse, atmospheric Spirit of Eden couldn’t be more different from Talk Talk’s synth-pop origins or from anything else in the musical landscape of 1988, and it more or less doomed the band’s career when it came out, but the sound of rock music in the 21st century wouldn’t be the same without it. Listening to Spirit of Eden is an experience that’s almost impossible to relate by means of such quotidian devices as “words,” but Mike, Phil, Rich, and John are all going to try anyway.
Read MoreWe all know that Elton John is a top-tier singles artist, but he is also a top-tier albums artist. His run of nine albums from Empty Sky in 1969 through Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy in 1975 may very well be unmatched in modern music history. It was really hard to pick one to talk about on Discord & Rhyme, but we settled on Honky Chateau because it’s the perfect encapsulation of what Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin were best at (and worst at). Full of incredible musicianship, amazing singing, stellar arrangements, and awkward lyrics, this is an album that’s almost guaranteed to win over anyone who is still skeptical of Elton John.
Read MoreWell, sit right down, my wicked son, and let us tell you a story, about the subject of this year’s Discord & Rhyme holiday episode: the Pixies! (Or technically, just Pixies.) Hailing from Boston, the alternative rock quartet dealt with mounting intra-band tension with little to nothing to show for it financially, leading bandleader Charles Thompson (alias Black Francis) to break up the band via fax in 1991. But the band’s critical stature gradually grew to gigantic proportions in the ‘90s, as their albums influenced bands like Pavement, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Weezer, and especially Nirvana, who built an entire movement out of the classic Pixies “quiet-loud” formula. When they reunited for a reunion tour in 2004, they found, much to their shock and awe, that their songs had grown into anthems. Their 1989 album Doolittle is arguably the peak of their original run, featuring songs that could plausibly fill an arena without sacrificing their scrappy indie energy, so join Rich, John, and Dan as they sail away on a (festive) wave of mutilation.
Read MoreDiscord & Rhyme are taking a trip to Canterbury, England - UNESCO World Heritage Site, home of the Canterbury Cathedral, and birthplace of prog-rock legends Caravan. Springing forth from the rich Canterbury scene, Caravan created a style of progressive rock that managed to be complex while retaining a real sense of warmth. The group is not particularly well known outside of progressive rock circles, but Phil has loved them for a long time, and he’s excited to talk about the group’s most famous album, In The Land Of Grey And Pink.
Read MoreDiscord & Rhyme goes to the movies! This Halloween we're ringing in spooky season by exploring the work of filmmaker and musician John Carpenter. Best known for introducing the world to Michael Myers with the horror classic Halloween, Carpenter has built a solid filmography as a director while also providing his own distinctive musical vision with his scores. The 2017 career-spanning collection Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 features fresh recordings of some of his most recognizable and beloved soundtrack work. Join Dan, Mike, and Rich as they slightly drift from the usual Discord & Rhyme format to indulge their movie nerd obsessions.
Read MoreMike’s ongoing quest to make Discord & Rhyme more metal inevitably meant we would have to tackle the band so synonymous with metal they put it in their name, and Metallica’s incredible mid-80s prime inevitably meant we would need to tackle two of their albums in the same episode. Ride the Lightning of 1984 and Master of Puppets of 1986 are largely the same album in terms of overall flow, but the differences are every bit as important as the similarities, and the best material from these albums ranks among the best rock music (not just metal) ever created. Join with Mike, Phil, and John as they make the case for why Metallica, despite a career with its fair share of ups and downs (and baffling documentaries), should be remembered as one of the greatest bands of its time.
Read MoreHere we go, yo! It's been a while since this podcast has covered either a hip-hop album or a jazz album — so this week, we're doing both at once! A Tribe Called Quest formed in the late ‘80s in the New York City neighborhood of St. Albans, Queens, which was home to some of the giants of jazz, blues, and funk, and was a hotbed of musical activity in the years when hip-hop was simmering into existence. On Tribe’s 1991 album The Low End Theory, members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammed pay tribute to this rich musical legacy with an album that charted a new path for hip-hop by exploring its roots in bebop, hard bop, post-bop, all the other bops, and more. This album isn’t just a classic – it’s one of the sacred texts of the hip-hop genre, and it helped Rich get into jazz after years of failed attempts. So if you’re a jazz aficionado who’s on the fence about hip-hop, or vice versa, we invite you to crank up the bass and check the (discord and) rhime with us. Just watch out for the dungeon dragon!
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