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Cold Chisel
Chisel - The Ultimate Best of Cold Chisel
Expert Witness, Guest CD Review
Oh, come on. This is the second time in TISM's career that we have been asked to review an album. And guess who it was last time: Right. Cold Chisel. What is it with you people at Inpress? "Oh shit - another Cold Chisel album has been released - better wheel out TISM to review it!" Oh yes, we can see it now. You're all sitting around sipping short blacks in your favourite Albert Park cafe, drumming up emotive hyperbole to describe the new Art of Fighting album, or some other obscurity you can rave about to confuse and intimidate your peers, and when the latest Cold Chisel album comes along, you hand it with metaphorical poo tongs over to the boys from TISM, happy in the knowledge that good ol' Tall Poppy-cutting TISM will slag it off and let you bask in the self-congratulatory haze of your own prejudices. Oh yes, it's pretty damn cool to slag Cold Chisel, isn't it? When you interview some shithead from the latest here-today-gone-tomorrow darlings of the rock cognoscenti, and ask them to list their favourite albums, you just know there'll be no Chisel in amongst the fucking Coltrane and the fucking My Bloody Valentine, will there? Oh no.
Well, I'm sorry, but you ain't getting TISM to do your dirty work that easy, Inpress. We're not going to bend over for this Groove Police cavity search. We are not afraid, and we are going to spell it out:
There's nothing wrong with Cold Chisel.
Well, OK, except that they were responsible for an incredibly annoying song that is played at the end of every outer suburban Year 12 Social to a group of vomiting underage drinkers, and every function involving boorish Rock Spider Aussies making utter cocks of themselves abroad, and every footy trip/Grand Final barbeque/buck's night, or any other gathering popular with people who's main philosophy is 2-4-6-8-Bash-A-Gay-Til-He's-Straight...
And yes, there is the fact that Cold Chisel's equipment-smashing performance on the Countdown Awards was, like silverchair smashing their gear at the ARIAs, and the guy from Powderfinger turning up unshaven in a floppy old hat, and every other pathetic attempt by a rock band to show us how they're only in it for the music and they don't care about awards, a direct personal insult to everyone out there watching who struggles daily with a real job and gets no glamourous treatment because of it.
OK, it's true that I always hated the way in Cheap Wine Jimmy Barnes finished each chorus with "Come on!" even though the whole song is about telling people to go away.
OK, so we all secretly suspected that Barnesy's much-flaunted badge-of-authenticity, the onstage plonk-flagon, was actually full of iced tea.
OK, so Ian Moss' interminable guitar solos and "Mick and Keef" onstage posing made me despair that Punk had never happened.
OK, so they were from Adelaide.
OK, so Shane Warne likes them.
OK, so - oh, am I out of time?
TISM may release an Ultimate Best Of one day as well.
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