COME ON ARIA, stop pissing about.
You were shameful when you couldn’t be arsed organising new entrants into the Australian Recording Industry Association hall of fame for a couple of years, but you’re developing a habit of comical misjudgement now.
It is been announced that Missy Higgins will be inducted into the hall of fame this year, 20 years after the release of her first album. And that’s ridiculous. Just as it was when they inducted Kasey Chambers (19 years into her career) in 2018 and Jet (20 years in) last year.
Not because Higgins and Chambers are not intrinsically worthy: for it already is clear that not only are they major figures right now, but by the end of their careers they will have amassed awards, laudatory reviews, endless memories and the kind of widespread affection in the public that money can’t buy.
No, it is ridiculous because they are maybe midway through that career, still making what will become legacies. In the scheme of things, 20 years is a start. A solid start, better than most will ever get, but not anywhere near completed.
Apologists for the organisation try to run ARIA’s argument that rather than wait to the end or near the end of someone’s career/life why not celebrate them as they are making the music. Which is sweet, but ridiculous, and suggests somebody doesn’t understand how this whole awards thing works.
Want to celebrate them as they are making the music? That’s what your regular ARIA award is for people! You can recognise their current work as it happens, in real time you could say, on a big night, with cameras. I know right, concept!
They make a great album, give them album of the year; they are the best artist of the year, give them a trophy; they’re the best example of hard rock or hip hop or pop, here’s an ARIA Award; they use an Australian song in an ad, give them … wait. No, that’s a stupid award, you know it and we know it, stop it, you’re embarrassing yourselves.
In case it wasn’t clear when I made similar arguments with the rather contentious induction of Jet, the hall of fame is to mark a career of length and substance, one that has not just achievement but sufficient space for perspective on their significance. Not one big international hit; not a hot run for a couple of years; not a Zeitgeist moment; not the coincidence of a label CEO with marketing cash to spend to pay for the hoopla around the award.
To be fair to ARIA, some credit should be given to them for trying to redress a woeful imbalance of male and female artists in the hall of fame, something overdue and rather appropriate for an industry, and industry body, yet to seriously reckon with abuse and mistreatment of women (see links below).
But if that is the goal, Australian music is not short of candidates and it doesn’t take much thought to identify them – with what follows by no means the full list, so feel free to add your own suggestions.
Kate Ceberano has had a multi-faceted career of some 40 years and is still the woman most likely to be named by regular Australians when they’re asked to identify a significant local female artist and Sandy Evans remains a creative and inventive powerhouse of a perennially under-recognised but over-achieving jazz scene. Where are they in the hall of fame?
Wendy Matthews and Deborah Conway, Vika and Linda Bull forged substantial careers when coked-up men with roving hands and sweaty minds ruled, and are still performing, still recording, still resisting coked-up men with roving hands and sweaty minds (hmm, maybe that is the problem) while Auriel Andrew remodelled Australian country music with an Indigenous core when bars and clubs wouldn’t let “her kind” in. And don’t forget Tiddas and Christine Anu later.
Margaret Roadknight and Jeanie Lewis broke ground for independent artists generally and fiercely individual women specifically when women could barely get in the door. Jenny Morris and Lindy Morrison didn’t just establish themselves as significant artists – while we are here, Morrison’s band, The Go Betweens aren’t in the hall of fame, yet Jet are. Seriously. – but have gone on to be absolutely crucial activists and representatives on industry boards, welfare programs and government interactions. Morris and Morrison are people of substance the lightweights on the ARIA board could only ever dream of matching.
And best of all, almost all of these mentioned are still alive and available to turn up and be feted, rather than remembered posthumously one day.
Sure, none of these unquestionably important women have record company bosses to grease the palms and the wheels anymore. They can’t promise to buy ads in the pay-for-play magazines that now dominate the industry. They are not going to excite Channel 9 advertisers or executives, or commercial radio execs, all of whom want the 20something spend. But you know what? That’s not what a hall of fame is about.
(I guess we should all be thankful ARIA haven’t been cosying up to Misogyny Central, Channel 7, though no one would rule that out in the future given how much ARIA will give up for even a sniff of airtime. Is Craig McLachlan available to host next year? Asking for a friend.)
No one expects a lot from ARIA, a body flailing at the best of times, but it bears repeating to them: if you can’t remember and respect your past, what value can you bring to your present, let alone the future? So stop pissing about.
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