Suicide is painless
According to yesterday’s AFR (no link, I’m afraid), Colin Barnett’s campaign launch opened to the sounds of a school band playing the theme from M*A*S*H.
It’s called Suicide is Painless, and the lyrics include:
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
so this is all I have to say.
[…]
The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I’m beat
and to another give my seat
for that’s the only painless feat.
[…]
A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied “oh why ask me?”
How appropriate.
Beautiful, Robert. Just beautiful!
I remember in Tasmania a few years back the Libs used that Hunters & Collectors ’search for the holy grail’ song. They didn’t get permission though—and wound up being sued for copyright infringement during their campaign. To make it worse the band put out a statement saying that even if they’d been asked they’d have said no, because they didn’t believe in anything the Liberal Party stood for. I wonder who owns the theme to M*A*S*H?
Mark Seymour is a member of the ALP and had good reason to be upset :-)
Also, The Libs also got into strife for using Boom Crah OPera’s Better Day’s for one of their campaigns without permission as well, so they’re known as musical philistines :-)
But then again Kahmal is a known Howard supporter so they could’ve used “The Sounds of Goodbye as Colin’s theme :-)
New Liberal Policy: Promise to build an ‘Old Man River’
or the p[olitically correct version by Stan Freberg - “Elderly Man River” :-)
I’ve downloaded the original movie version with vocals and have sent it to Robert :-)
Hopefully he’l upload it to his webspace so you can all here the song in it’s proper context :-)
The MASH fan in me is currently rolling around on the floor dying of laughter. Especially considering that Barnett’s a LIBERAL… which supports a WAR… which is using music from MASH… which I seem to remember being rather ANTI-war…
I thought that Kamahl-Alan Jones feud was still running, can’t remember what started it. So maybe even Kamahl might be a little harder to negotiation those song rights, people can be so cruel.
They can always get Peter Costello to do “Money, money, money”.
The Boom Crash Opera song in question was actually “Dancing In The Storm”. I had the ‘pleasure’ of being present for it’s illicit playing.
Liam has it wrong about the Libs in Tas being sued. The venue that was hired had paid the APRA fee so the Libs were told that no permission to use the song was needed.
Mark Seymour, like everyone, is entitled to his political views and was given a great opportunity to air them.
Maybe a little less conversation and a lot more information is what needed….
To clear up the confusion, here is a news report from the time of the dispute.
Freekin Genius.
Mark Seymour is not a member of the ALP (to my knowledge). The members of Hunters and Collectors do tend to be Labor supporters, though I know one did vote Greens in 2001. For my Hunters and Collectors site (www.humanfrailty.com) I talked to him about this topic before the 2004 election:
—
Stu: At the last election [2001] you were in the press promoting Labor… Is anything likely to happen this time?
Mark: Well, I don’t actively pursue those sort of relationships but if they approach me to be a spokesperson for the Labor Party, I will definitely be there, no question about it.
Stu: I have to admit I’m biased because I can not stand John Howard and many aspects of policies…
Mark: Well there’s only one party that’s going to beat them and it’s the Labor Party.
Stu: … and I joined the Labor Party.
Mark: Did you? Aaah yeh, good on ya.
—
The general Hunters and Collectors support for Labor was shown by the playing of Do You See What I See? at the federal campaign launch when Mark was leaving. The song was used with permission.
By the way, “Better Times” is a Black Sorrows song. The guy who wrote it, Joe Camaleri, did not comment on the use of the song by the Tasmanian Liberals. Mark and co were extremely pleased with having dented the Tasmanian Liberals campaign - their agitation with the use of “Holy Grail” made the front page of the Mercury :)