The Countdown Generation

There is a whole generation of Australians for who nothing was more sacred on Sunday than making sure they tuned into Countdown at 6:00pm. From 1974 till 1987 Countdown was a primary influence on many music fans, especially for those outside the major cities.

I recently brought The Beloved the DVD Countdown The Wonder Years and last Friday we sat down and watched it. It brought back a few memories of her days in Perth but rather than me tell the story, The Beloved speaks:

Viewing the DVD Countdown – The Wonder Years (gift of The Beloved’s beloved husband, Shaun) brought back the wonder of my early rock-teen years, seeing a multitude of bands at the Perth Entertainment Centre, sponsored by 96 fm at the now seemingly ludicrous sum of $9.96 a ticket.

The Angels’ track No Secrets made me cringe to think of what my own daughter-to-be might be prone to do in future years. I had read a newspaper article about Doc Neeson, in which his real name appeared. In the early eighties, the Parmelia Hilton was the only five star hotel in town, so I phoned the hotel and asked for Doc’s room number, using his real name. Amazingly, I was given the room number, no questions asked. I hopped on the bus and once in town, lost my nerve. It suddenly occurred to me that if I knocked on his hotel room door and he answered, I wouldn’t know what to do next. I paced the pavement outside the hotel for some time then jumped on a bus home. The whole groupie concept failed to come to fruition, even though I ended up wearing my first and only black miniskirt to their concert…with fishnet stockings.

The Split Enz track I Got You reminded me of meeting Tim and Neil Finn at the nightclub The Red Parrot. I was designated journalist for a group of underage dancers, allowed into the club to perform on the strict condition of not approaching the bar. You have to love early-eighties licensing laws in relatively small cities! I took my role of reviewing their performance very seriously and had my jumbo notepad and pencil in hand the whole time. Tim was a shadowy figure with a string of model-types in tow, heading towards a private room in the club. Neil was exceptionally sweet, expressing what appeared to be genuine interest in our excursion to the dark side. I had evolved to actually being able to speak to my music gods.

The next stage in the evolution of the rock-teen was writing a long, introspective letter with obligatory song-lyric analysis to The Little Heroes. To this day, the song One Perfect Day arouses pure nostalgia. Reading back on the gentle, soulful, meandering letter of reply by Roger Hart makes me think that all the anguish of being human is rewarded by moments of innocence and connection. Although, it took me years to comprehend the subtext of Roger’s comments on Australian Crawl. Those sleazy boys!

These days with the Interwebs, iPods and so on, music fans have never had it so good. Countdown seems almost quaint given how music is promoted these days. Ironically, it was video that killed Countdown.

Countdown ended. The reasons were numerous, Gavin Wood says: ‘All of a sudden there were pop shows coming on the commercial channels ’cause it was cheaper. And when Queen did ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ that was the first real film clip. Then the Duran Durans and all of that started to try and out do each other and have a more expensive clip.’ It ultimately worked out cheaper for Countdown to run clips and limit the number of live bands they had on the show. Video ended up killing the live performances on set.

Soon the video clips were driving the record industry and Countdown started losing the edge it once had. It was also an evolutionary kind of thing, Countdown had had its fun in the sun and music programs calling out to a younger group of fans, such as Rage, started to bite in to the Countdown phenomenon.

My favourite appearance from Countdown is from around 1975. Bon in a school girl outfit, smoking a durry, flashing his knickers and whacking Angus with a mallet during Baby Please Don’t Go.