Radio Australiana

Adrian and i have been spending a lot of time in our car for the past 3wks – it’s been an adventure: driving on the left, blown gaskets, uncontrollable blinking lights, “hook turns”*, floods, deserts, freezing, sweating, our flannel Dino sheets, shadily looking for places to park for the night, and the inevitable deterioration of the cleanliness of the place we eat, sleep and spend most of our time.

BUT – we have fallen in love with Australian radio.  It’s an amazing mix of new and old, american, european and Australian music with shockingly irreverent sex ads, uncensored DJs, and the most multicultural and random stuff.   To be fair, we never listen to the radio in NYC so it’s altogether a new experience, and it is summer here so everything has more life and energy, but we blast it anyway.

Unfortunately, most of the Australian artists we’ve heard has been really boring metal-y rock, or uninspired and whiny emo.

We listen to classic rock, 90′s alternative, classical and opera, talk radio… and, of course, the best pop anyone has ever heard!  They play fresh mash-ups that never get old, and the DJs actually mix the songs so you get a non-stop 10min block of music… Adrian and i obviously go crazy in the car, dancing and singing – you can all picture the ridiculousness.  And this is not just Friday nights – it’s when we wake up every morning!  It makes you feel like the Australians are always partying!  And they don’t just remix pop-y dance songs – in the past 2 days we’ve heard Coldplay and Led Zeppelin remixed really well – Adrian was obviously beside himself.

Check out these few from our playlist.  Don’t judge the videos, we’ve never seen them:

**Get Shaky – The Ian Carey Project – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZfWLs05bo0 - the gays will love this

The Fear – Lily Allen – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c - Fatty, this is totally you

Kids – MGMT – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIobf__8V2w

Too Many Dicks – Flight of the Conchords – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-EN8dpAvBw

Everybody’s Free – Global DJ / Klaas Remix / Rozalla – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmyVG1xsYlg&feature=related 

Sex is on Fire – Kings of Leon – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhhcKxflMY

Work – Kelly Rowland – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P9G-kAmRS4

* “hook turn”: in downtown Melbourne, the only way to make a right turn is to pull over far to the left into the crosswalk and jet across 4 lanes of cars and 2 of trams as the light changes… someone please find me the crazy-ass urban planner who thought of this one.