Spurred on by the Western Bulldogs supporters camping out for semi-final tickets, I’m jumping the queue here and positing an AFL and NRL grand final week prediction: the entertainment, entirely superfluous and inconsequential as it may be, will plumb new depths. Why? Because neither league seems to realise that they’ve abandoned their own winning formula: the worse it is, the better it is.
In other words, Meat Loaf was actually good. Ricky Martin? Very good. A leathery Chris Isaak, pop “star” Ellie Goulding (there’s still no confirmation she was actually a famous person) and a malfunctioning lip-sync operation? Hmm, almost. Memorably bad at the very least.
And that is how you should do it. In lieu of a Super Bowl style mega-budget and A-list pop stars, you take a washed-up pop star who wouldn’t get a headline gig anywhere outside Australia (Leo Sayer, I’m looking at you), you have them do as little preparation as possible, and then you let them blast away like it’s closing time at a karaoke bar. On grand final day the laws of the music entertainment business are inverted: it actually needs to be shambolic and unprofessional.
Professionalism is anathema to the spirit of the day, the actual football aside. Nobody remembers competence. We don’t need a “tight” performance from some indie no-hopers. You know why I can tell you that The Temper Trap once played a workmanlike set at half-time of an AFL grand final? Because I went and scanned this harrowing Wikipedia page, which documents the cavalcade of mediocrity that has passed for entertainment in the mind of whichever person in the league marketing department went to Splendour in the Grass one time. It’s like they’d rather nobody talked about it than have everybody laugh at it.
This year’s Temper Trap, bless him, is Vance Joy, one of those cookie-cutter “quirky” singer-songwriters who may have been on a talent show once, or maybe not, I’m not actually sure but geez everything that comes out of his mouth reminds you of the time that you could only get a seat at the third-coolest cafe on the shopping strip; the cafe where, not coincidentally, Vance Joy’s music was being played. But gun to your head, you couldn’t hum one of his songs. If you managed it you’d hate yourself forever.
Put it this way, on the AFL website’s announcement of Vance Joy’s appearance, he’s holding a ukulele. That’s who he is. A musical fedora. Thankfully they didn’t bother with a picture of his support act, The Living End – 40-year-old men who somehow still look like they’ve on their way to a dress-up party as Joe Strummer’s roadies. The mere sight of them is so tragic that anyone who caught a glimpse would immediately log off, and the AFL know it. They’re not entirely stupid. At least in their case there’s a kind of demographic synergy: if The Living End’s music was an item of food it would be a Four ‘n Twenty meat pie.
The NRL have also had a ‘mare this season. Last year they straddled the good/bad divide beautifully with Cold Chisel and Jimmy Barnes, who has sounded pretty scratchy for his whole life and can really do no wrong regardless. This year, we now discover, they’ve gone with Keith Urban.
Keith Urban.
Keith. Urban.
At the risk of labouring the point, can anybody in Australia name a single Keith Urban song? Could Nicole Kidman even name one? His greatest ever feat, if we’re being honest, is that he’s been world famous for more than a decade despite having no discernible talent other than above average aptitude for operating a hair straightener. And good on him for that. But you certainly wouldn’t hold it against the bloke if he needed an autocue to remember his own lyrics. He’ll be joined on stage by Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora. Presumably C.C. DeVille had a prior engagement on a cruise ship.
But here’s the main thing: regardless of preferences or tastes, people don’t go to sporting events to hear music. Most of us would prefer that the only thing piped through stadium speakers was the odd number plate announcement for whichever poor bastard left his headlights on in the car park. That’s more entertaining than Vance Joy, surely. We don’t need music. We actually don’t need noise at all.
In the lead-up to a grand final we want to make the noise ourselves, because silence actually serves as a more compelling backdrop than The Living End, or Ed Sheeran, or whatever interminable dross they’re spraying at us this time. Silence makes you nervous. It let’s you know you’re alive among a hundred thousand people, who are all probably thinking the same thing. Given a lead-up of 1) silence and 2) the national anthem (and in the case of the AFL, an obligatory burst of Mike Brady’s Up there Cazaly), both of the grand final crowds this year would be going wild.
They won’t, with no offence intended, go wild for Vance Joy or Keith Urban. Vance Joy actually played VFL football a few years back, so I’m sure even he realises what an epic swizz this whole thing is. If it wasn’t him and his tiny guitar taking the stage I’m sure he’d rather listen to Chubby Checker wheezing his way through The Twist or watch Nena butchering 99 Luftballoons than some some part-time barista whose home-recorded single got picked up by Bedwetter FM.
And the leagues should listen to our calls: we don’t want fey hipsters or some old mate from X Factor: give us a corpulent rock god or a one-hit wonder. Give us a musical car crash, or give us silence.
