We must first of all dispute the Wikipedia entry on bogans though, which claims the term is ‘usually pejorative or self-deprecating’ and indicates ‘a person who is, or is perceived to be, of a lower-class background.’ Boganism is an attitude not dependant upon your income. It is also celebrated as a positive description, often.
Wiki goes on to say ‘According to the stereotype, the speech and mannerisms of “bogans” indicate poor education, cheap clothing and uncultured upbringing. ‘Bogans’ usually reside in economically disadvantaged suburbs (often outer metropolitan) or rural areas.’ We should note though that later this website does admit to the celebration of bogan culture just indicated, finishing by acknowledging the site bogan.com.au has been archived by Pandora (it is of lasting cultural importance).
Anyway, that’s all just introductory small-talk. What we are interested in here is how the emotional range of the bogan is composed and articulated. Are they prone to experience greater pleasures and pains than that of the normal (we conflate sophisticated and normal here, for our own inscrutable purposes) person? Is it because of the cultural product attached to their prevalent fashions and attitudes? Should they be allowed greater community tolerance because of this? As a Socratic interlocutor might say in answer to all of these question, Yes indeed. It is to be our first and only three-part-hypothesis.
In the beginning of ‘Saturday Night’ we hear the title repeated by a number of voices a number a times. Four notes ascend to finish on a crisply shortened ‘Night’; then to this is added the famous whistling riff. The feeling is of hushed expectation, if of anything, tinged with joy (we can say this almost certainly inheres in the whistling). They got this right. For many of us – bloggers included – going out on a Saturday night, or Friday night is usual, and despite the usualness of it all, it tends to bring on the usual sense of anticipation. This is associated with many things.
But the petulant Don Walker then launches into the verse proper, which is a descending lament in a minor key. Apparently Chisel aren’t going to dally in Saturday night for too long. He sings ‘Saturday night’s already old / Walking into Sunday, and I find / All desires are cold’. What’s that about? We were just getting ready to go and have a few beers at the local, to get a nice relaxed buzz about us and to slip into that old sentimental anecdotal vein. It’s far too early for the regrets, isn’t it? We may have thought so originally, but what needs to be understood is that bogan-life gives one a special capacity for feeling, an extended emotional range, and therefore (perhaps lamentably) an ability to dwell in a state of premonition. And so what is said need to be put below what is felt. This is the way we need to read the song. Literary allegory doesn’t come into the bogan aesthetic because it’s too much about the words. Boganism is all about predicting the future in a manner haphazard.
Don Walker then tells us that the light of your company (you? girl ambiguous?) helps to show him the path on which he’s bound, the other benefit being a blurring of what he’s leaving behind. But as said, the lyrics, the apparent grasp at metaphor, must be cast aside in favour of context. He’s drunk, thinking of a girl he once loved (picture a beautiful girl from a town somewhat smaller than Sydney. Or an outer suburb – indeed this would fit the Wiki entry better, and sits well with the video clip that has a camera pulling back over the Harbour Bridge at the end of the song…) and he just can’t remember what he did earlier in the evening. All he knows is he’s walking. Walking into this Sunday morning which suddenly doesn’t look so good (unless he superimposes a past image of a girl).
Then, strangely, the triumphant chorus announces itself. Barnes begins to scream on about having ‘the keys to the city’, some ‘luck’, ‘two days money’. This is punch your fist in the air kind of triumph. This is the feeling when it’s great to be out in the city – nicely addled, having a great time. And yet. The light comes back. ‘If you light me up / this heart will shine’. Poor bogans. They are cast adrift in this sea of chasing love on Saturday nights. There is no good time for a good time’s sake, unless it involves scoring with a hot chick. It’s risky because often that won’t happen. And then you start dreaming of the one you don’t have, perhaps even quoting French lines about being a slave to love in a song that never really needs or wants such a thing.
It is all an up and down journey for the bogan and it just can’t be easy on their emotional well-being. But we must put it to you that this song at least helps us (remember, us: sophisticated / normal) understand the plight. Imagine if you were forced to experience the highs and lows such as are in this song in such quick succession. Then, imagine if the succession wasn’t linear (like when the intro’s hushed expectation comes back in sax-form combined with the bombastic guitar of Barnes’ chorus). You too would reject the more measured approach to analysis. You too would reject approaches to fashion that demonstrate work, hours spent in focussed craft. All you know is the circular upheaval of work, lust, recreation, sadness, nostalgia, violence. Only the random admixture of these forces makes sense. With just a little understanding – and promulgation of this understanding we must think of as being the major achievement of the Cold Chisel song – harmony can be attained.
Amazingly intelligent, articulate and odd.
If I may be so bold, “You too would reject approaches to fashion that demonstrate work, hours spent in focussed craft.” Is a touch contentious. I have found that we often respect most in others that which we feel we lack in ourselves. I have always considered, “Working Class Man” one of the low points in Australian culture but “Cheap Wine” one of the high points. So I am once again, boggled. A truly spectacular piece of writing you have carefully crafted here and I doff my hat in passing.
thanks paul. i remember seeing that philosopher guy on tv, the on who puts things in a popular way that normal people can understand, & he said a similar thing to what you propose, in that architecture & our choice of homes demonstrates something that we feel lacking in ourselves… ie. grandeur, simplicity, eco-friendliness. you may have something there.
also, i was hoping someone would immediately comment on this post & say ‘ah, when you wrote ‘he sings’ you were talking about don walker, when in fact he does not sing the part in question’. i could edit it into correctness but won’t. i guess it shows my familiarity with chisel is not that great, thus i am not so much a bogan. it also shows my method of composition is to write quickly with nothing more than a vague idea. i like that it shows this.
but then again my lack of familiarity doesn’t show certain thing, & perhaps this is a failure. i should indicate now, i really liked this song when as a youngster it would often flow from our car cassette deck. i would like it without knowing anything more about it than how catchy it was. unlike a lot of songs, i think there are 3 distinct tones generated (instead of the more usual 1 plus variation of 1 functioning as chorus). therefore, my emotions give me away. i am not an apparent bogan but also feel comfortable being one. i admire that about myself too, indicating a definite lack, somewhere.
I think you should do a zine derek!…. (bwor why is my type so small)
because i know nothing about it, before doing a zine i wold have to do a workshop on zine-making, probably at some sort of writers’ centre. maybe anna could run one here just for me.
i could call my zine ‘low-culture really is higher than high-culture (the two are not simply equal) & you’re an idiot for not noticing’.
or i still like the facebook-generated one: ‘othering others with your otherness’.
mate, zines are easy. pen, paper, photocopier.
not sure what i think of this analysis – gonna have to go listen to the song and read this through again.
hi adam. i see you run zine workshops though – is that the entire lesson?
& yeah, you probably shouldn’t read my analysis too closely, or take too much stock in my argument. i have a feeling it will all unravel with scrutiny.
& i’ve moved on. i spent today learning stevie wonder’s ‘part time lover’ on guitar. what’s he doing in that? is there really a tinge of sadness in the song, but an upbeat tinge, something that suggests part-time-lovin is pretty good, but always reminds you that there could be more to love, but then maybe is just damn inevitable. what is permanent?
part of the purpose of the zine workshops i run is to demonstrate how easy the spontaneous, independently inspired creative process is. the people that attend usually aren’t actively engaged in creative practise, so what i teach in the workshops is very first-steps. someone like yourself wouldn’t in all likelihood get much out of them.
making a zine’s just self-publishing, after all. but if you want help demystifying any of the process, happy to help out. just shoot some qs my way.
stevie, hey? well, it’s a song about having an affair, which is always a kind of bittersweet thing, esp. with the last verse where he suspects his girl might be sleeping around too…
Stevie should have cheated on the synthesizer a long time ago… he’s way too committed to that.
This post reminded me of an ex-boyfriend’s passionate love for the songs of Cold Chisel, Meatloaf, and ACDC. That guy said some meaningful things to me.
what kind of things did he say?
With all due respect and so as to bury the point deeper under unnecessary verbiage. Name magazine, Jacket or foam:e or Cordite, whatever, maybe not them I think they are owned already, select template, find techie who loves to fiddle with computer if necessary or just start with a free wordpress blog but spend twenty bucks on getting the dot wordpress removed. Ask your friends who presumably can write for submissions and throw links. Ask them to write cool stuff about how hip your magazine is and how cool it is to be in it. Silliman is only famous because he and his mates manipulated the google algorithm. It works by weighting links, not the traffic that goes through them. A good internet writer can write good links. And what a cool job, man. Wherever you are bash out a bit of citizen journalism or poetry or plain old fashioned bullshit, like Silliman whilst sitting on a beach drinking beer anywhere in the world. You are all too prissy and poetical. Hahahahahaha, Friday night. Anyway staplers and photocopiers are dangerous and when a kid wants to know something about poetry he googles it. Create your own careers you lazy cynical bastards. What do they teach at universities these days. Did you see Tao Lin, selling shares in his publishing future? Haha. It’s not hard but you gotta be smart, smarter than me cos I am too honest. Have fun. It’s the only thing that works, my friend, if that not a premature assumption. Oh, and write everyday if you can and put it in public, it is good for your writing. How much did Goethe write, by candlelight,
You can delete that and this comment but enable pingbacks, Mr Motion. Or not if it is too much bother.
i have no idea what pingbacks are. maybe i’ll look it up & do what you say.
for someone so knowledgeable on just about everything i am surprisingly ignorant about a lot of things. & that’s like one of those zen paradoxes that has no answer but clears your mind. makes you feel better. gives you more energy for various debaucheries.
jimmy barnes – cashed-up bogatron now from bowralville (southern highlands, nsw), where i grew and played junior cricket on bradman oval (as a paddock) and attended post cashed-up establishment schools (a number of years after patrick white, malcom fraser, et al) – used to raise the curtain, hip flask in bum crack, and manage back stage raucousness at the local littlies school concerts. them were the days.
Dear Typingspace JT,
Were you once an architecture student?
As you know, few guitarists have better tone than the Moss. In fact, vibrato, tone and phasing are three ingredients that make Ian Moss’s playing what it is. That, combined with a little bit of haught, a little bit of ego, and a deep knowledge, understanding, respect and love for his instrument.
The tone you try and wrestle from yo’ keyboard, however, smacks of a kid sitting in Allans in the 80s with a strat copy and a shitty amp trying to show his mates how to play Stairway to Heaven the wrong way.
One thing the Moss and the Walker weren’t in the day was pretentious.
thanks!
but no, i never studied architecture.