No one likes the idiot that walks up to you and says, “Cheer up!”  As if that would do anything positive!  You may think, “What is this?  A marching order?” just before the inclination to punch that person sinks in.  It’s like the Bill Hicks joke about walking down the street and someone saying, “It takes more muscles to frown than smile.”  “Yeah, and it takes more effort to tell me that than to leave me alone. NOW GO AWAY.  Go!  Good, you’re walking away.  See me smiling now.”  I know I butchered his act but you get the picture.

Someone once asked Roger Waters around ’87 or ’88 (Musician Magazine, I think) why his music was so dower.  His response was that it’s easier to write tragedy than comedy.  This is true. Just try it!  It is also hard to write pleasant music without coming off as a phony.  Music is always best when it’s honest.

This is what makes Split Enz special.  Their music is hopeful and upbeat and when it’s not, it has an ironic twist or it can be delivered in such a way that doesn’t sound self-pitying.  Take the song “Nobody Takes Me Seriously.”

“If a war broke out, I’d be the last one to know/If there was a fire, they’d just leave me to burn/I’ve as much to say as any man/ But I never seem to get my turn.”  They manage to sing this and make you smile in recognition but not self-pity.   Sometimes other people will take them too seriously like with “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.”

This song was about the settling of New Zealand.  This is fairly obvious but the BBC in their infinite wisdom decided that it was a song criticizing the Falklands war and banned it.  This was a shame because it was a very clever single.  It had different movements, it had humour, it had history and it was catchy.   They could be pleasant without making you nauseous.

As a quirky teenager with chip on his shoulder and a humourous smile on his face, I related to their music as much as I did my angry or more intellectual music.  There’s always another side of the coin.  The ’80’s produced its share of plastic music (more than its share at times) but despite the funky makeup and costumes, something genuine would shine through.  It seems that we lost our sense of joy over the years.  The most joy in commercial music seems to be in very manufactured “love” songs.  There are exceptions, but very, very few.

The question arises, “What’s so good about today?”  That question comes up in “What the Matter with You?”  As you can guess the song is about finding the humour in bad times.  It’s very true that in your most frustrating moments, if they were captured on video, you would laugh yourself silly.  It’s not funny at the time because it’s happening to you at the moment.  But if you step back . . . .

I once had a teacher who said, “You think God doesn’t have a sense of humour?  Take a look around you and see all the jokes He created.”  He’s also the same teacher that would listen to a Punk song called, “Wiggly Woe” while eating his lunch.  When a student would poke her head in and say, “What is that noise?” his response would be, “If you don’t like it, you can fly out the window.”  A real character, that guy.

Split Enz is definitely a band to check out.  I first heard them when I was 14 and thought that True Colours was their first album.  It turns out that they started in 1972.  They were originally an art band with weird makeup and hairdos along music that was incomprehensible to the mainstream (according to the liner notes of their “best of” album, History Never Repeats).  It wasn’t until Tim Finn’s younger brother Neil joined and penned “I Got You” that anyone outside Australia and New Zealand ever heard of them.

It’s not easy being serious, comical and genuine.  Most times, they seemed to have pulled it off.  Well, that’s my suggestion for today . . . .