It’s the only feeling that all Australians can truly relate to.
You switch on RAGE and hear what you know in your heart of hearts to be the best song ever; the greatest distillation of your entire essence into musical form, a melody too perfect for heaven, a chorus carved from clouds, and probably a key change or a tapping solo or something else too…
You’ve never, ever heard this song before, and given RAGE’s often esoteric musical choices, you doubt you ever will again. And because you missed the first 15 seconds, you’ve missed the name of the song and the artist. Never mind, you’ll catch it towards the end.
But you won’t.
Because this ain’t Channel [V] or Video Hits you’re tuned into. This ain’t no country club either. This is RAGE. You have one quick flash to memorise that title or all is lost. Especially during thse times when we all blindly traversed pre-Shazam pre-Google death-lands.
But why is this?
RAGE aren’t doing it to be difficult, surely? They provide one of the few national services we can all agree has benefitted our lives in numerous, intangible ways. RAGE is for the people. So why not give the people what they want?
This morning, I reached out to Rage producer Maurice Branscombe to find out why, and he explained nicely.
“This is a question that we’ve had from viewers a lot over the years”, he tells me, while windmilling his arm wildly to mimic the opening credits (not really – this exchange happened over email).
“The first answer is because Rage has a library of more than 45,000 music videos – dating back more than 30 years – and to change basically anything about the way each of those 45,000 clips are shown on would run up a bill of thousands of man-hours, and presumably millions of ABC dollars, and generally make the lives of the people who make Rage each week unliveable.
“The second answer is that we think the creators of Rage got it right the first time over thirty years ago.
“The song’s artist and title both at the start and the end would be overkill – and imagine what it would be like to watch a 1 minute 20 second punk blaster — the two supers would be on screen for almost the entire song. So no thank you.
“Also, in the age of Shazam and other similar apps, people have got options to discover song titles. Rage also publishes all our playlists online with the approximate times they get played, so really if you hear/see a song you like, and you really need to track it down – it’s easier than ever.”
So, there you have: part tradition, part practicality, and part ‘Google it ya-self’.
Now, ABC, can we chat next about bringing back Recovery?
Then we’ll tackle Seachange.
