Future foretold through Australian music

A million years ago, when I was eight or ten or twelve, my dad used to listen to an album called Sun Arise, by an Australian guy named Rolf Harris. The LP featured a hit from the 1960s[?] called ''Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport''. I remember thinking the whole album was great -- full of good songs, and with an interesting, exotic sound (his ''wobbly board'', plus didgeridoo and bullroarers): it was probably my first ''favorite album''.

So, in my middle school years, I copied some of the songs onto tape.

As I'm working my way through my cassettes, I just re-discovered this tape. Two things struck me. First, that it **does** sound ''Australian''; I can't pin it down (though I could probably analyze it and expound upon it, if I was in the mood). And second, it's funny that I -- a guy from Seattle -- ended up here in Aussie-land, the home of Rolf Harris (and Men at Work, another great band). It's not like I used to listen to Austrian polka music, or Italian accordian-based folk songs... no, it was a very **Australian**-sounding album: and, here I am.

(In contrast, AC/DC, Midnight Oil, etc., doesn't sound especially ''Australian'' to me. Good stuff, but not ''Australian''.)


--GG

(10/1/07 -- Addendum: Based on the comment [below], I guess I need to post an addendum: totally forgot that I listened to Falco [Austrian], Peter Schilling [Germish], Munchner Freiheit [German]. So, maybe it's more selective memory than predictive.

And actually, I had a Blue Hearts (Japanese punk rock; fairly Ramones-y) EP that I really liked -- so I could've ended up living in Japan...)