Meticulously Murdering Music

I used to love Triple M. I listened to Doug Mulray in the morning, then Stuart Cranney, Ron E Sparx, Rob Duckworth, Nick Bennett, all the old school dudes, right through the day. The announcers had stuff to say that wasn't just spin for some sponsor and Mulray especially was a true star. It was a commercial rock station with some real character and they ruled the Sydney FM band for years without being topped. 2DAY didn't get a look in. When I was at uni, the film group I was with made a doco about the Ms and we spent the day at the studios at Bondi Junction interviewing the on air talent, including Mulray who was exceedingly generous with his time. I also got to talk to and meet Charlie Foxx, the program director who was a minor hero of mine from his on air days at 2SM (when that was rock station).

Later on, I went through a JJJ stage but I still had a soft spot for Triple M once in a while, even though it was rapidly becoming the joke of a station that it is today. Because while most other music stations have evolved in some way over the past 20 years, Triple M has not. Triple M still plays pretty much the same songs now as they did then. If you could travel back to 1989 and tune in to the Ms, it would be just like it is now, except without Nickelback and the inane presenters. If ever there was a radio station that needed a make-over, it is the once proud and great Triple M.

So enter Slash, a guy whom Triple M thinks hasn't recorded anything since 1990 but who suddenly has a Top 10 album and a sold out Aussie tour on his hands. In an amazing PR move, the Ms seize upon the top-hatted one and pay... er, ask him to re-record "their" ancient theme song -- which is actually a reworking of "Journey of a Fool", the intro track from Mike Batt's 1979 album Tarot Suite, although hardly anyone actually knows this. In this amusing story from the Daily Telegraph, Slash "blasts" contemporary rock like Nickleback as homogenised. While it's hard to argue with that, this is coming from a guy who was in Velvet Revolver and has Fergie from the Black Eyed fucking Peas do vocals on his new album. But the best part? "Slash agreed to re-record [the theme] for a station that has supported his career."

Triple M has indeed supported his career, by playing the same two Guns N Roses songs every day for the last two decades. The same way they support Alice Cooper by playing that one song he wrote or keep the spirit of Zeppelin alive by playing those three songs of theirs. In fact, there's nothing Triple M likes doing more than supporting rock dinosaurs, as long as it doesn't mean playing anything any of them have recorded since 1989, and as long as they don't have to play any more than three or four (at most) of their best known songs. And when it comes to bands that only released stuff after 1990, then they'd better be called Pearl Jam, Nickleback or Green Day if they even think they want airplay on the Ms. Unless a program director gets a hard-on for an obscure track like "Deep Water" by Deadstar and decides it needs to be played four times a day for six months straight, which happened a few years back for no apparent reason.

According to the article, "Craig Bruce, Austereo's head of content, said teaming with Slash was part of a "wish list" of ideas planned for the station's 30th anniversary". Fair enough. But if Bruce doesn't want the station's 30th anniversary to also be its last, he needs to completely rethink Triple M's content and bring it more into line with what listeners under the age of 45 want to hear.