By Darryl Mason
I don't know about you, but this is one of the stupidest fucking things I've heard this year :
A Midnight Oil hit advocating Aboriginal land rights in the '80s is being used in the noughties to mobilise nations to combat climate change.
The band's former frontman and now Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, helped write new lyrics to Beds Are Burning, as part of the celebrity-led initiative.
Yes, Bob Geldof is involved. So is Duran Duran. Nothing in music is sacred, not even a Midnight Oil song that helped to bring the idea of Aboriginal reconciliation to a new, more open-minded, less bigoted generation. The only consolation I suppose is that Bono isn't involved.
Well, not yet anyway.
The original Beds Are Burning lyrics....
''Out where the river broke/The blood wood and the desert oak/Holden wrecks and boiling diesels/Steam in 45 degrees''.
....have become :
''Down at the river bed/The earth is cracked and dry instead/Farms a failing, cities baking/Steam in 45 degrees.''
This :
"The time has come/A fact's a fact/It belongs to them/Let's give it back."
Has become this :
"The Heat Is On"? Someone call Glenn Frey!''The time has come/A fact's a fact/The heat is on/No turning back.''
Garrett won't be singing on the rebake, and it will be given away online.
In a few years time, if global warming doesn't turn out to be the "clear, catastrophic threat" that Rupert Murdoch predicted, and the Earth turns more icy than melty, Midnight Oil could always rewrite the lyrics to Cold Cold Change.
Great fucking song. By the way, Cold Cold Change is now 30 years old.
