VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR by THE BUGGLES. Story by Smokie Dawson.

The family lounge-room , 1977-1981

It would be impossible for the modern Australian child to believe that, for a dozen or so years from 1974, new pop music in this country was discovered largely through the prism of a weekly television show called Countdown. Our family was no different to thousands of others around the nation in that, once the Sunday roast was consumed and the dishes were done, we would gather in front of the t.v. in our lounge room to watch a combination of film-clips and music artists miming their songs in front of a teenaged studio audience.

Countdown host Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum would over-enthusiastically praise every new song, and then urge all and sundry to “do yourself a favour” by purchasing or listening to these latest releases. But my sisters and I didn’t need ‘Molly’ to tell us what tunes were going to be smash hits or forgettable flops, because in our house we had our own personal music guru – our mum.

The strange thing was that, apart from being a Beatles tragic, Mum wasn’t an avid music fan. Her listening was mainly confined to a Saturday evening over a few drinks with Dad, when they would relax by dropping the stylus on whatever album they might dust off from the shelf. She would tolerate 3XY being played on the car radio, and would politely feign interest in whatever new album I had purchased from the record store. But of a Sunday evening, like some sort of musical sage, she would confer pronouncements on whether or not a song was going to be a hit within only a few bars of hearing and watching it for the very first time on Countdown. Her impeccable strike-rate never ceased to amaze us.

It all started with the song My Mistake. We were dubious, but mum had seen past the quirky film-clip, strange costumes, and ridiculous hair-cuts to announce that she really liked the song. And, sure enough, it became – to that stage – the biggest Australian hit for the New Zealand band Split Enz. After that “I told you so” moment, there was no stopping her. Mum’s prognostications added extra enjoyment to our Countdown viewing experience.

The first time she saw the film-clip for Echo Beach, by a Canadian band named Martha and The Muffins, like a savant Mum said simply, “This will top the hit parade”. She portended that Counting The Beat by The Swingers “was going to be huge”, and she was instantly besotted by Soft Cell’s Tainted Love. On the flip-side was a cavalcade of songs on which she would bestow the dreaded words “this is a dud”. Sure enough, these tunes would disappear into the dustbin of musical history.

One evening, my sisters and I asked her to explain her method for deciding whether or not a song was going to be popular. It transpired that her philosophy was simple. A music video was playing on the screen. Mum nodded, pointed at the television, and said: “I don’t care what type of music it is, a good song will always be a good song”. Like magic, that particular song, which was initially of no interest to me, grew to become one of my all-time favourite tunes.

 A Melbourne pub, 2007

My wife Margaret and I had received an invitation to the engagement party of Grace and Jack, acquaintances who were much younger than us. We were delighted of course, but a little surprised as we were at an age where celebrating milestone birthdays was a more regular occurrence for us. The function was on a Sunday evening in the back room of a city pub. But as we approached the venue, we could hear the incessant electronic beat bouncing down the street. I grimaced and exchanged nervous glances with Marg. The generation gap we were expecting to encounter was suddenly feeling like it would be a generation gulf.

Inside, we discovered that everyone at the gathering was being subdued into submission by the distorted din being blasted through the speakers. Responsible for this cacophony was a d.j. on the far side of the small dancefloor. He was straight from central casting: dark sunglasses, tattoos, baseball cap worn back-to-front, head nodding to the beat, one hand holding headphones to an ear, the other hand twiddling knobs on his mixing desk. Worst of all, in his own little world, he appeared oblivious to everyone and everything. Because rather than encouraging people to dance, the “doof-doof” beat was acting as a major deterrence to people letting their hair down.

It took only thirty or so minutes for me to decide that enough was enough. I walked over to the d.j. and asked if he took requests. To my surprise, he replied in a friendly manner that he would indeed accommodate my request. So much for first impressions! As I walked away, the bass-heavy techno stuff suddenly morphed into the song I had asked for. And before the keyboard intro had even finished, like a dam wall bursting, most of the party guests were hurrying onto the dancefloor. Feet stamping, a chorus of a hundred or more voices began singing along. I surveyed the dancefloor and silently congratulated myself for lighting this fuse.

Later, as the party raged on, a soundtrack of ‘80s music had replaced the ‘doof-doof’. What generation gap? Groom-to-be Jack approached me and knowingly nodded his approval. “Excellent music choice,” he said. “But what on earth made you choose Video Killed The Radio Star?” I could have pithily channelled Molly Meldrum and said something about “doing him and the party a favour”, but instead I paraphrased my mum’s prudent hypothesis. “It’s simple, mate. A good song will always be a good song!”

Stereo Story #885

See also Rick Kane’s story about watching Countdown with his father.

Darren ‘Smokie’ Dawson is the author of the Stereo Stories pocketbook, Before Too Long. It is  available from Book and Paper Williamstown and also by contacting Vin Maskell: stereostorieseditor@gmail.com. $20, plus postage.