“How can we dance when our earth is turning, how do we sleep while our bed’s are burning?” – Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil
I remember my first onstage encounter well. The year was 1984 and the Oils were at the peak of their game and they were awesome! 10…1 had recorded amazing sales throughout Australia and my band (Huxton Creepers) were playing at the Entertainment Centre in Melbourne before the Oil’s, who were on their “Red Sails in the Sunset” tour.
So there we were, four 20 year olds who six months earlier had been playing to 15 of their friends in a tiny pub and now six months later we had record companies chasing us and we were about to go onstage in front of 10,000 people. The dream sorta stopped there, as soon as the stage lights went up and our singer said “Hi we’re the Huxton Creepers” an orange went flying by his head and just missed my head and then the Oils fans spent the rest of our set throwing coins at us during the songs and then chanting “Oils, Oils” between the songs. It was a rough initiation but at least our road crew got to buy cigarettes with all the change that landed on the stage!!
