The fast bowler, Beirut and the house track that wouldn't die
- Joel O'Connor
- Sep 28
- 16 min read
Updated: Oct 20
You can listen to audio of this article via this link or continue reading the article below:
If being witness to the singular moment of a nation’s outpouring of agonised relief, through the firing of a missile at a bunch of sticks, or finding yourself, at another time, rapping with a Islamic social commentator during the bombing of Lebanon or, elsewhere still, having a corporate giant threaten to squash the techno-tune you put out in celebration a favourite athlete is of interest to you, then read on.
All things are connected in the strangest of ways.
Of course, if you just want to jump to the part of this article where I talk about Cricket Australia (CA) trying to stop me putting out my new dance track celebrating the awesomeness of Scott Boland you can click here. Still, I'd love you to read on, to learn about the song in the full perspective of sticking it to Covid, sticking it to England, and sticking it to The Man.
Rattling sticks first. In 2021, as Mitchell Starc crossed the chalk, for the first delivery of the summer, he did more than any preceding Australian opening bowler had in that yearly ritual.
It is not hard to say that, for a large part of Australia’s population, this initial salvo is heavy in emotional symbolism. In normal circumstances, as the bowler steams in and whomps their over-sized shoe down on the crease, they cross the December line as well. Sending the pill hurtling forward, their act lifts the emotional yoke of the past year’s toil from the shoulders of the populous.
When the ball completes its journey into the bowler’s hand, as part of a performative about-face and stride back to the mark, so to the season officially turns toward the one of celebration. In that instant the eyes of the people are also drawn in the direction of the New Year.
Most times the ball just whizzes past the ears of the man standing at the other end, prompting a collective 'Oooh!'- a promise of triumph so near but not yet. An ‘Oooh’ followed by a lull filled with the satisfaction of knowing that now, with the past year jettisoned, we can eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we diet©.
The ebbs and flows in the game's drama over the coming summer, the droning commentary as familiar to the ear as blowflies, and the sporadic explosions of chaotic excitement bursting from the broadcasts, are the backdrop of the season to come.
Yet Starc, with the ball in hand on this occasion, carried something far greater with him. He held with him a promised release from the enduring agonies of a nation. It was as if, in letting fly that first delivery, there was the possibility that it could exorcise knots around the nations’ psyche caused by another year of outbreaks, lockdowns, lives lost, political point-scoring and the like.
Pock-marked and scruffy bearded, Starc bounded towards the crease on his heron-like legs, chest forward, clutching that red missive while behind him the throng bubbled with a nervous excitement at just being able to stand together again, to witness the theatre of the greatest and most enduring athletic rivalry the country has.
Starc castled the stumps first ball. First ball.
When you listen to the crowd in that moment, not just cheering for a sporting achievement, but delivering an outpouring of two years’ worth of emotion after being terrorised by a virus that overturned everything and shut everyone away from each other, it is visceral.(1)
It is a roar holding within it the frayed and desperate hope of people still wrapped in the nervous anticipation that things could go south again and joy could be warehoused once more. A fear pulsing away in the background like a throbbing toe, portending the worst.
Roar power you might call it. And a raw power certainly.
You may have heard the one about the energy generated by a stadium full of people yelling at once. Tit-bits from kids’ scientific ‘Did you know?’ books suggest that such an act can create enough electricity to boil an egg, if channelled into a make-shift device hooked up to a battery on which a hopeful saucepan sits.
Starc would have felt it on that day, in 2021, as the adoration of the crowd was directed towards him. Rory Burns, the unfortunate batter, would have known he was cooked by that roar also. If not his egg, then definitely his goose was.
Orchestra conductors perch themselves between audience and performer in a not dissimilar way to fast bowlers. Conductors do, in many cases, also have heads that resemble boiled eggs possibly because they are known to be one of the longest living of all professions. Their combination of mentally stimulating work, light-exercise that often looks like mid-morning pool calisthenics, and being in the direct path of the vibrations created by ensembles and more, can’t hurt.
Certainly, if you’ve sat in front of the pit, at a classical performance, and felt the hum of the cellos go through you, you’d likely draw the connection, like I am, that being awash with those acoustics has to play a part in these musical Methuselahs hanging around. Try it with a live performance of Dvorák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor and report back.(2)
Front and centre of such a musical showpiece, you’re in a corridor of power and, with the surge going straight through you, you become a living battery cell filled with good vibrations.
I’ve been on both sides of such electronic exchanges. As an audience member, I’ve been taken over by the manic fervour of a Manu Chao live show where power cables, generated by the kinetic friction of the rhythm section, seemingly shoot out from the stage and plug into every listener, turning them into rapturous, pogoing mannequins.
And, at the other end of the frequency range, lulled by the low, looping baritone of Archie Roach, I have been hypnotised with the rest of an audience and taken into a vision-state where I have found myself sitting at the edge of a camp-fire as I have continued to hear Archie hum.
As a singer I've been lucky enough to experience what is to be at the epicentre of power generation through music, and to be the focal point of that too. It is the ultimate buzz, it really is. I get why octogenarian rock stars keep chasing it even if they create the spectacle of over-steamed turkeys fussing around the stage looking for their lost car keys.
Take when my band, Andorra, played a peace festival in Leichhardt, Sydney, in support of the people of Lebanon and Palestine who were suffering through one of their cycles of being bombed back into the stone-age by Israel and co.(3)
From Andorra's rep for putting on festivals and music events with a social focus, I was asked by the organisers to arrange performers for the day.
We also used the occasion to debut a song I’d written called 'Keysar Trad Jazz'.(4) The track drew on the brilliant jazz stylings of our keyboardist Matt Campbell and also featured a message of peace by leading Australian Islamic spokesperson Keysar Trad.
In my inimitable way, I had arrived at singing to the crowd, on that day, by taking my self-amusement possibly too far. From wondering aloud about how something as incongruous as Keysar Trad adlibbing over jazz might sound, I was bound by my own creed to then have to make it so. My foolish fancy was to become a reality.
Well not all foolish. When the concept of the song took shape in my mind, the political reality of what was pushing people like Keysar into the public spotlight, guided what myself and Andorra created.
Geopolitically, the world at the time was in a pressure-cooker again with the deep pulse of war-threats drumming in our temples. The genocide of a generation of children denied medicine continued to play out diabolically in front of our eyes, in Iraq, and opportunists were seizing the chance, as they do, to postulate for personal gain, or shiv their enemies while no-one was looking.
Lebanon was, at this time, in the sights again and, amongst all this, we as a band, wanted to do our thing which was, not just to sing against the idea of more war in our own words, but to find the voices of those being tarred by anti-Muslim rhetoric from above, in an Australian context. We understood that people are people and just want their kids to have a safe, happy life. Most thing beyond that are really just bull.
I reached out to Keysar who was, not unsurprisingly, sceptical at first of our intent and being dragged into the batty fever-dream of my creations. Doing his own research, he determined that I checked out. He warmed to the idea when we explained that he could contribute in his own words alongside our plan to showcase the modern face of Muslim music in Australia, including the youth. I figured to throw in something of those lilting vocal melodies I'd come across and loved when tuning up and down the AM dial and landing on Middle Eastern music stations. I mean, why not? If you're gonna go, go hard.
What came of it was a track where I played a character who MC'd throughout, in a Tom Waitsian smoking-room growl, while other performers from the Islamic diaspora in Australia featured throughout. We brought together the superb Arabic singer Manelle Ibrahim, Lebanese-Australian hip-hop artist Susan Chamma and Keysar himself, who dreaded the idea of being recorded singing but who was happy to orate some considered thoughts, by rounding things out with a message of peace and understanding. Truly just madness but it worked, amazingly, with the heart of everyone involved.(5)
Manelle had laid down her vocals for us in a couple of takes, in her loungeroom, after we were whisked to her house in a community member's four-wheel drive, one afternoon. Susan preached in the studio at the Redfern Community Centre, where we had some cache. And Keysar recorded his piece in our make-shift studio in Smithy's Music Shop in Petersham (where my Andorra co-conspirator Eric Bellingham worked).
From my flight of fancy over a politically-orientated pun, the recording ended up meaning a lot to us all. Keysar tells me that he revisits the recording still, to this day, as a comforting reminder and a delight of his own artistic journey.
It was not all comfortable at the time, though. Not because we were not all on the same page, or because Keysar was a man who had to get in, get his track down and go, with the focus and brevity of Frank Sinatra on golf day. It was because, as we pressed play, war literally started.
I was stunned by the prescience of the situation we were in as Keysar asked for a second, during a level check, to answer his phone. When he returned he told us that aircraft had started flying over Lebanon and bombing Beirut. He was committed to finishing what we were doing but had to keep taking breaks from recording the vocal part he was adding, to take calls. Lebanon was being blown to pieces as we mixed and played backing tracks and parts and pulled our song together.
I was sobered in the realisation that what we were doing was anything but silly, despite the fun play on words I had started out with, and the chutzpah I used to see where that could go. We were recording something that pre-empted the destruction playing out on the other side of the world, with a counter through art, and with the words and expressions of those under psychological and legislative attack, in our own country, and physical attack elsewhere.
Fast-forward to the Peace Festival and I was there, front and centre, as the first notes of my band struck in unison behind me. At such times we often see ourselves in the frame, through observant memory but, on this occasion, my experience was two-fold.
I got to see people's eyes light up as they felt themselves awash with the sonic energy my band was creating and their delight as rhythm took them over.
We’d never played such perfect, unifying and powerful notes. I knew it. I experienced an awe as I tried to keep my attention on singing. As a unit we had arrived at a peak brought together from the years of practice, and the unconscious understanding of players for the movements and improvisations of team mates. This along with our individual hearts, energy and the beliefs that brought us to such a place all combined. The audience were enveloped in the dome made by the power the music was putting out. I could see it travelling across them like the time-lapsed thaw of winter snow as the Spring comes in and lights up the faces of flowers with the warmth of a brighter day.
Sadly, we never got to have another experience like that. The band that made that magical, resonate energy still needed support to continue. We needed the hope and belief of someone else to get us on bills, give us some promo, keep the momentum going. In terms of the grunt, it had been all me for four years, doing forty hours a week after work, to open doors, create events, get us out there to get noticed.
Not begrudging the rest of the band of course, they worked and worked to get to that supreme point. While I agreed to do the heavy lifting, they provided the vehicle for my romantic and passionate ideas to come to life. I’m ever grateful and sorry I couldn’t get us a step further. It was not for lack of trying through reaching out to everyone I could. Every label, venue, station, mentor.
‘Go for it’ scribbled Peter Garret on the bottom of a form letter that said ‘We apologise but Peter is not in a position to reply’.
‘Keep going and live your passion’ wrote John Pilger on a book of my poems I asked him to autograph- my poems that formed the basis of our songs.
Despite the encouragement, we just didn’t get the numbers through the doors to sell the pints that would mean we'd get called back, and we never found our John Peel.
Still, we’ll never lose what we created with that audience. Which brings me full circle. Cricket and the roar. Oh, and a song I wrote about it. Click here to listen to 'ScoBo. Scotty Boland':
With the elegance of understatement, the 2021 Ashes really weren’t great for England.
I appreciate you, the reader, may not be a cricket buff but let’s just say England went at twenty runs a wicket across the entire series. They got trounced. None more so than by Victorian paceman Scott Boland, the person who my song is about, particularly his efforts in the Third Test of the series, which Cricket Australia has pushed me not to put out.
Scott Boland got six wickets for seven runs that day. Unheard of. I still have the text messages I exchanged with friends on the day, as it was happening in real time. It’s a feat worthy of art.
I’ve been writing some big, celebratory house music in recent years in collaboration with a back-room whizz, who likes to remain anonymous, and with vocal part contributions from my girlfriend.(6)
My girlfriend is a sports nut too and was into the idea of doing something in honour of Scott Boland so I recorded vocal parts for us both, created a beat template, and took a couple of outtakes of commentators going nuts over Scotty’s wickets, and sent them to my man behind the scene.
I contacted CA about the process I needed to follow to get approval for attribution, explaining that the radio station on which the commentator we had sampled worked told us copyright approval had to come from CA.
So, when CA came back and said they wouldn’t licence the audio I was taken aback.(7)
It seemed like overkill for a song that was almost entirely my girlfriend’s voice and mine over an original melody with a smattering of commentary samples thrown in, to add a bit of spice and uplift.
I’d hoped it would be pretty straight-forward to get a polite acknowledgement from Cricket Australia under fair usage, as well from the agents of the commentators we hoped to use, and I hoped those commentators would get a chance to listen to the song, get the vibe and give us some encouragement.
This was because, while a house song about a cricketer is a bit left of field, what we were creating was within a well-trodden path with lots of contemporary examples of the same approach.
Like popular Australian social-media brother-duo Shepmates who use straight audio from cricket commentary and recreate it by miming to it. They have a million followers in Insta, have had their material reposted by CA channels, and have featured Australian crickets and commentators on their show. I have no beef with what they do, it’s sports-related comedy for personal gain. It’s fun, fair play to them, but it straight rips slabs of audio. So why the different attitude towards me?.(8)
Billy Birmingham made a career out of direct imitation of cricket commentators. We love it. It still resonates and makes us laugh. We should have more of it so why the big stick waived at me?.(9)
The Australian cricket team even have a theme tune which liberally borrows from elsewhere.(10)
Anarchic Australian rock band TISM used direct samples of sports commentary in their songs ‘Give up for Australia’ and ‘What Nationality is Les Murray’, at the height of their fame. TISM even do the theme tune to the radio show that the same commentators we were looking to sample work on.(11)
With all of the above, I didn’t understand why CA would go ahead and block little old me?
An Australian Lawyers' Cricket Council exec member said if I could get proof that Scott was okay with it, then the inside word was that CA would soften. So, I tried Scott Boland’s agent, and the agent of the commentators we wanted to sample, but, after some initial sympathy the lines went dead.
I appealed to CA, of course, drawing on their own public statements about having a curiosity to listen, to celebrate the successes of the athletes, to collaborate, to bring people together and develop partnerships that further the game.
That’s really everything our song is about, being true to form with the music I've made with Andorra and beyond, on Keysar Trad Jazz and a myriad other projects I might write about somewhere else, but which wouldn’t get their justice by just being listed to back up a point.
CA came back with: 'We don’t create (or work with third parties that create) music about our teams or our players. For instance we are quite different from the AFL in that we don’t have theme songs for our teams.'
Of all the sports played in Australia cricket is actually the most musical from what I can see, in terms of iconic songs, drawn from the game, that have worked their way into the cultural fabric, and well-known songs focussing on specific players. Take 'Bradman' by Paul Kelly or 'Shane Warne' by...Paul Kelly. 'Come on Aussie Come on'. The band Six & Out made up of ex-cricketers who sings cricket-themed songs and, while not Australian, the favourite cricket-orientated song of my girlfriend and I (aside from the one we have just written of course), 'Champion' by West Indian cricketer Dwayne Bravo. Dwayne has been smart enough to side-step any copyright issues of governing bodies by just writing a song about himself. Well played Dwyane.
CA is of course dependent on continuing interest in cricket to ensure it's existence. Only this week media reports covered the fact that children are leaving competitive sport in droves. Sports survive by having role-models for children to watch and want to emulate. Why CA would actively stop music getting out there, or indeed support it, in the interest of engaging young people, especially, to connect with role-models in the sport is beyond me. It seems they are wandering around like Johnny Bairstow, blithe to what is pending.
For the record, while CA told me they don't do theme tunes, here is the one for the T20 cricket side for which Scott Boland plays, as an example of how this isn’t the case.(12)
CA argued with me again, saying: 'Under Australian copyright law there is no general doctrine of “fair use”...General commercial use for making a song does not quality. [If] you are wanting to push ahead with the song using CA commentary...we have not granted permission for that use. You should speak to a lawyer.'
This was at odds with the direction I was pointed in for information [not legal advice] by Australian Lawyers' Cricket Council.
What it amounted to was CA saying things to me that are at odds with their own values and the mountain of examples where a heap more liberties have been being taken than what I sought- the end result being an inexplicable aim to suck the joy out of something pure of heart and done the right way.
You don’t need garlic to repel Dracula, just tell him you’re a lawyer.
You can only do what you can, so, I re-recorded all the audio parts I had of the commentators and replaced them with an excitable commentator I will call Bitchy Renault.
The 'new, improved' ScoBo (Scotty Boland) doesn’t lose any of the sentiment of our love of Scott and his feats which the few samples contributed to, nor the roar of celebration that has accompanied them, which was our ambition all along.
So, dear reader, don't take this as sour grapes from me, or misunderstanding copyright law etc.
What I would love you to take from this is enjoyment of the song we have made, not the weeds of legalise that some would love to mire it in.
Instead, here is ScoBo (Scotty Boland).
I hope you can share it widely with everyone you know who loves cricket, loves Australian music, including big, celebratory dance numbers, and who loves the roar.(13)
1. Starc gets Burns out first ball
2. Dvorák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor
3. Peace festival
4. Keysar Trad Jazz
5. Everyone involved
6. Ladyboner
7. Redacted email
From: Joel O'Connor < >Sent: To: < @cricket.com.au>Cc: < @cricket.com.au>Subject: Re: Copyright permission to use Cricket Australia content
Hi Jon,
Thank you again for your text message last night. I am sorry I didn't get to answer your call at the time.
I am looking forward to chatting to you in follow up and welcome a time on Thursday afternoon that might suit. Please let me know.
I previously worked as an entertainers' representative for Actor’s Equity so, being familiar with fair usage etc, what I was hoping on flagging the song with CA, was to talk about this, rather than being declined before we got to that point.
What I am hoping for is to talk to CA about how that works in practice for you e.g:
If we were to use broadcast material, how would you require attribution?
Would you expect if the song made any sales that there would be residuals for those involved- the broadcasters, CA itself?
I have never made any money off my music, but I would want to be transparent in agreement in the case where that happened.
Also, if CA needs to vet something under fair usage, I would want to make sure we had a conversation about whether there is any issue with the brand or values of the organisation.
ASPIRE
We always aim high, we are curious to listen, learn and be the absolute best we can be. We display courage in making bold decisions and celebrate our
successes.
RESPECT
We collaborate across cricket, acting with integrity, inclusivity, and showing respect and care for each other and the game.
LEAD TOGETHER
We are custodians of the game, bringing people together and developing partnerships that take the game forward.
In looking at your values it seems to me that there is no conflict. The song is designed to celebrate success in cricket, it’s inclusivity of a First Nations athlete we admire and, ideally, it would be part of a partnership between myself as an artist and CA, in promoting the excitement of cricket through music.
Lastly, there is significant precedent in Australian music for integrating broadcast material into song narratives.
The band TISM, whose song ‘Footy’s on the radio’ is the call signal for the AFL broadcasts James Brayshaw does on MMM, are a case in point.
I appreciate I don’t have the cache of a band of this prominence, but the principle is the same.
Here TISM use SBS football commentary: 'What nationality is Les Murray?': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xs1lUK4jas
And Channel 10's coverage of the 1994 Commonwealth games: 'Give up for Australia': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5nJF5MDGJg
The band could either have relied on fair usage or negotiated with the broadcasters to get permission to use the material. In either case, the nature of their songs and ability to use broadcaster material aligns with the song I have produced.
I look forward to chatting with you.
Kind regards,
Joel
8. Shepmates
9. 12th man
10. Under the southern cross
11. Shut up
12. Melbourne Stars
13. ScoBo. Scotty Boland
Comments