ABC Radio National will launch AusMusic Month when they give listeners an opportunity to experience an exclusive special broadcast of a live, previously unheard Midnight Oil performance.
At 8pm on Friday 2 November Robbie Buck will present a celebration of live Australian music with a blast from the past featuring a selection of Midnight Oil’s hits and audience faves. The gig was recorded over two nights at Canberra’s Royal Theatre in 2009. Buck will also present an interview with Peter Garrett, Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie in an intimate studio setting.
Specially mastered for the ABC Radio National broadcast, the Canberra concerts were the warm-up shows for Midnight Oil's performance at the Sound Relief Concert in March 2009. The gig was held in honour of the victims of the Black Saturday Bushfires in Canberra due to Peter Garrett’s parliamentary commitments. Garrett said, “(it) was a pretty surreal experience, literally taking the suit off in my office after Question Time had finished and thinking, ‘okaaay’ - here we go.”
Rob Hirst said, “We really did approach every gig as if it were our last. We (used to have) oxygen backstage for us, Pete would fall over, I’d fall over, (we would) get dragged out the back, slapped around like a boxer and put back out there again...it was quite gladiatorial.”
In addition to the broadcast, ABC Radio National is offering a free download of the live version of Read About It mastered for the AusMusic Month launch, an exclusive-to-Radio National download of the Canberra tour poster, and an on demand stream of the broadcast, all available on the Radio National website for the duration of AusMusic Month.
