#2: Bandstands to Grandstands
Image supplied by Sarah Smith.
Episode Description
In ‘Bandstand to Grandstands: The Footy Song’, we look at group singing in one of the toughest games on the planet, the AFL. What makes a good club song, and a bad one? Why do these songs elicit such a deep response from footy fans? What does this tell us about our need to connect with other people?
In this episode
Guests: Sarah Smith
Intro Theme: First Kiss Goodnight - “Story One”
Music Credits: Davey Lane - Richmond Tigers Theme, GWS Giants Theme, Fremantle Dockers Theme
All Ears is produced and presented by Annaliese Redlich, with mentorship and editorial support from Broadwave.
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Annaliese Redlich I want to say before this episode starts, thank-you for joining me for episode 2 of All Ears. I’m so glad you’re back and if this is your first time with us, g’day! Remember to subscribe to All Ears on your preferred platform, and if you can rate the show and leave a review, it is super easy and quick to do this, I would really appreciate it. It makes a massive difference to how many people will hear little independent show.
Annaliese Redlich [00:00:05] Hi, this is Annaliese, and you're with All Ears.
[00:00:30] When I was growing up in Brisbane, sport and creativity were very much a binary. Like at school, you had to choose between taking the sports class or the music class or art or drama. At the time, it was kind of fine by me because I didn't connect with what I felt was a real jockish sports culture. It kind of scared me, to be honest. But I did love sport. And when I moved to Melbourne and started going to shows and playing in bands and found friends who were really active in music-making and were obsessed with footy, it really surprised me that it wasn't a binary. You noticed things when you come into a group as an outsider that others within it don't notice. And with AFL being one sport where clubs and fans make a big thing, I mean have a real connection to their club songs. I always thought it was funny how emotional people get over these songs contrasting what is a very macho setting. So, I wanted to interrogate this a little more, and I found the perfect person to explain it and to give us a little insight into footy culture. So join us as we link arm in arm and raise our voices on this episode of All Ears, 'Bandstands and Grandstands: a look at the footy song'.
Sarah Smith [00:01:47] It is an extraordinarily macho sport and an extraordinarily serious sport. You know, if are a footballer and you live in this town, you are under so much scrutiny constantly. And those guys out there are serious and they're doing really serious things to their body. And then in this instant, a game finishes, can be on a knife edge and the whole well can depend on it. You know, men or women can be tearing each other apart and then it stops like that. And suddenly all of us who are standing in a crowd stand up and start singing this friggin show tune! Which is ridiculous. Like, it is so ridiculous. And, we have our arms around each other. And then these men and these women who are so tough go into a little room together, put their arms around each other and sing a show tune, like it is so ridiculous!
Annaliese Redlich [00:02:30] So, why do these glorified show tunes plays such an important role in AFL culture? How do they manage to unleash so many feelings?
[00:02:41] This is Sarah Smith. She's a radio presenter on three Triple R FM, music writer and editor. Someone I would call a professional music lover. And she's also started up her own podcast about AFL fandom called 'Fan Grrrls'. Check it out. It's great. It is also vital to mention at this juncture that she's a massive Richmond Tigers fan.
Sarah Smith [00:03:02] Huge. Disgusting Tiger tragic. Yeah, it's gross. You'll be upset if you don't like the Tigers. I'm so sorry in advance.
Annaliese Redlich [00:03:10] Now, for the uninitiated, Australia is a sports-loving nation. And AFL is pretty much at the top of the tree when it comes to public interest and engagement with the sport. The game has deep connections in this country with it’s first incarnation known as Marn Grook from the Woiwurrung language. It originated in Victoria, but has spread across the country and it goes by several names. AFL, AFLW for the women's league, Aussie Rules or Footy.
[00:03:33] It's played on a huge elliptical field. Its size makes it one of the largest grounds of any spectator sport. The games are made up of four 20-minute quarters. Teams have 18 players on the field at all times, and it is a full contact and very physically demanding sport, with lots of tackling, leaping, kicking and full on running. There are 18 teams in the AFL with the majority based in Melbourne. Tasmania and the Northern Territory don't have teams.
[00:04:02] The oldest club is the Melbourne Demons, tracing back to 1858 and the newest teams, both established in 2009 are the Greater Western Sydney Giants and the Gold Coast Suns. There, that should be enough info for now.
Sarah Smith [00:04:20] Today, we had deep in the Tiger heartland at the London Tavern in Richmond. It's finals time, so it's getting fever pitch. We can already see the colours coming out on the houses around here, the yellow blacks coming out again. There's a new Tiger mural just down the road and Rowena Parade. So, you know, things are heating up in tigerland.
Annaliese Redlich [00:04:40] Nowadays AFL players are more likely to be owning pubs, Sarah, than working behind them. But that wasn't always the case. And case in point, the Rose Hotel in Fitzroy used to see footy players like Matthew Richardson wiping down the bar.
Sarah Smith [00:04:55] Yeah, it's really bizarre. That's only something that I learnt recently, so the rose is kind of one of those places that footy fans have gone for years to watch the football because, one, they had a great little setup in the front bar. I guess it was because early on there used to be footy players working behind the bar as well. So that was kind of a novelty factor. But also, at the end of every game, they always had the winning song cued up, ready to go, and they'd play, they'd played the winning song. And it's one of the very few bars in Melbourne that would do that.
[00:05:22] I don't even think of football songs as songs, if that makes sense? You know, it's like I have one brain that's for listening to music and being critical about music that I have to write about and talk about. But then when it comes to football songs, I always sit and I think this from most sporting anthems, they kind of sit in a world of their own, and even the way that they're made, you know, like these songs that are based on old show tunes. So, say the Richmond song is based on this song called 'Row, Row, Row', and part of that was extrapolated and then a kind of tune was was written around it and then the words were added on top of that, and that's kind of changed slightly over the years. The way it's put together isn't even like a song should be written, and I think maybe that's why I don't think of it as a as music, you know, that I listen to to enjoy.
Annaliese Redlich [00:06:07] But it still evokes, I'm sure, a visceral response in you, like other music does?
Sarah Smith [00:06:13] Right. So that is the point here. I don't understand that. It's such an extraordinary, it's an extraordinary response that I have to that song. So I have, there are certain songs in my life that I hear, and I think this is the same for anyone, that is so linked to emotional moments in my life, whether they're a person in my life that has passed away or whether they're just me as a teenager listening to all Oasis songs back to back, you know, and then hear 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and I get tears in my eyes, like I get a lump in my throat because it takes me back to being 13 years old. I had that same visceral response when I hear the Tigers anthem, and in part I guess that's because, I mean, the two places I'm most emotional in my life, are probably at shows and when I listen to music. And at the footy and I'm an emotional person, but you get the extremes of my emotions at those two places and at the football, I'm at such a heightened level and a heightened version of myself at all moments that I think when the song plays, well one, it means the team has won, so all of these feelings have kind of come, have kind of risen up to this momentous point. And maybe it's a bit like Pavlov's dog, like it's Pavlovian. You played a song and then I release all of those emotions. And, um, sometimes that involves tears, like I some of them have to fight back tears at a game because the song is playing and I'm singing it. And I don't look like a dickhead because it's round two. And there's no, you know, who cares if we have beaten whoever it might be or, you know, round one and was beaten Carlton, it's so and it's interesting.
Annaliese Redlich [00:07:41] So, what are the best and what are the worst anthems?
Sarah Smith [00:07:46] Okay, I think and I'm not just saying this because I'm a Tigers supporter, but there seems to be this agreed upon thing in AFL communities that the Tigers have the best theme song. This is in part because we have a really good tune that goes with it, but mainly because of the line in it 'yellow and black'. It is just a moment in the song where supporters stop singing and scream the words yellow and black together, and it's so funny that the thing that makes the song great is the thing that is at least some like about it is kind of this chant.
[00:08:18] I love the GWS anthem as well. So they are fairly new to the AFL and they have these great kind of Kossak tune and they went against the Showboat tunes of the other teams and went with these kind of weird Russian folk song. It's got this great beat and you can kind of almost see Kossak dancers doing little kicks up in the air when that song plays. It's so genius that brought that in! And I feel like, I did wonder too, whether it was just them taking the piss a little bit. Like I've got the opportunity to write a footy song and I'm just going to make it this funny little jaunty folk song.
[00:09:07] I think one of them. Well, there's lots of debate over the worst songs in the AFL. Some people hate the Saints, 'Oh when the Saints come marching in', because that is one of the songs that is most identifiable to its root song. So we all know you know, we all we probably learned on recorder..."Da doo doo doo da doo doo doo." And I think maybe that brings back those memories for people that aren't Saints supporters? I'm not a fan of well, a lot of people accuse Freo as having one of the worst songs as well, because they have this, um, kind of manly, boatman's call in it that goes..."Freeo, Freeo Freeo"...And I actually love it because it makes me laugh so much.
Annaliese Redlich [00:10:07] Is Fremantle the one that sounds like the 80s hair metal?
Sarah Smith [00:10:10] Yes!
Annaliese Redlich [00:10:11] And it actually sounds a bit like like a Warrant song?
Sarah Smith [00:10:14] It does, doesn't it? And it was writ-... That makes sense 'cause it was written by contemporary musicians. And in fact, it was so maligned that they had a competition a few years ago to rewrite it and they ended up with a slightly different version of the original song. So it shows you how people fall in love with shit songs in, in footy and in sport, because I think everyone bagged that song for ages. But when it came down to changing it and to taking that away from the fans, the fans went: 'oh, actually, we kind of love it!'
Annaliese Redlich [00:10:44] So many of the clubs from the 1800s or the early 1900s. Do you think that it's difficult for newer teams, it's a more difficult task to take in contemporary tastes, but also match that kind of classic old showtunes?
Sarah Smith [00:10:57] Totally. You've got to go one while the other, don't you? I think Freeo went one way. They went with contemporary rock, kind of, song and say the Gold Coast Suns, for instance, had a song that almost mimics the classics. So, you've got the big baritone men singing over the top of one another and that kind of jaunty show tune style that we're really familiar with. But people kind of accused the Gold Coast Suns when that first came out of being a little bit, I don't know, like they didn't believe in it because it was trying to be this historical song that it wasn't. And so I don't know how you can win as a new club.
Annaliese Redlich [00:11:33] And speaking of fans, recently, there were lots of feelings to be had when the AFL updated club songs at the start of 2018. Things like a banjo being removed or the swapping of words and phrasing certainly get people very worked up indeed.
[00:11:48] [SFX: Richmond Tigers theme song plays in background]
Annaliese Redlich [00:12:06] Sarah, explain to me what you're feeling right now?
Sarah Smith [00:12:10] I can't...I suppose I've never had to put this into words before, but it's, um, it's almost like I have a big, um, watermelon in my chest that is wanting to burst out of my chest! (laughs) Is that the best description of it? It's kind of like, you know when you see um, a friend or a loved one that you haven't seen in ages and you just like, oooh! And you go like that and you're like, I actually did squeeze you. I feel like I need to squeeze someone when I hear that song because it's just like this pure, pure joy.
Annaliese Redlich [00:12:41] Does it ever come with sad feelings for you?
Sarah Smith [00:12:44] I think, like sometimes. Like when we actually won the grand final last year, I was extraordinarily overwhelmed and I cried a lot afterwards. But after the grand final and after the emotion of that whole final series, when I would hear the song, I get quite sad and almost nostalgic. And I think it was more like nostalgia for an event that had past that would never be again.
Annaliese Redlich [00:13:07] So it's pretty obvious how important it is for people to belong to a team, a tribe or a group. But what about our desire to sing together? Countless studies have gone into this and shown the positive psychological and physical benefits of group singing. But, what are our avenues for this in Australian culture?
Sarah Smith [00:13:25] We tend to consider music in singing in really serious ways in the West. Either you're either you are a musician or you're not a musician. The only way we can come together and sing really is through karaoke. So we go out and we get drunk and we have these karaoke sessions. And I think, I think it's something really special about karaoke because I think it provides that umm, that kind of...I think we're not just we don't love karaoke just because there's Paul singing Eminem really badly. We love karaoke because we're together in a room and we're singing and it's joyous. And what music provides for you, we know what it does. We know the serotonin levels go up when we're singing and when we're performing and when we're around music. So, I just wish there was an outlet other than karaoke and maybe other than the end of a football game where you could come together with people and just sing.
[00:14:18] So I'm really interested in our obsession and our love of a sporting team as it is. Like, why we place so much um, hope and dreams and energy and anger and all of these things into a team which is so intangible from me. It has nothing to do with me. It's sort of outside of my control. And I think that increasingly we we kind of find our community through these teams. We find our tribes and we band together and we believe in the same things. And there is so much to be found in this world where everything is so increasingly siloed. And we're, we're, we're increasingly alone and there's so much less connection. We don't have churches anymore, really, that we go to, you know, like kids who might have traditionally grown up going to church. We've moved away from religious organisations and we've moved away from political organisations. So I think that increasingly we put all that into our sporting teams and the songs matter so much because they become our language with one another, like they become the one language that we speak together. Nothing. You know, we don't. Yes, we can talk about players and umpires and things like this, but the one common piece of language that we have are these songs and we sing them together. And you never get to sing together with anyone else at any other point in your life.
Annaliese Redlich [00:15:47] Well, there you have it perhaps human connection is what it's all about. This year's AFL season and pretty much everything else is off to a very slow and rocky start. The pandemic has recalibrated the way we interact, and for me, anyway, highlighted all of those precious connections with others that we usually take for granted. What a giddy thought it is to imagine being in a crowd at a concert or at the footy! In the meantime, podcasts. Thanks to Sarah Smith for being part of this episode. Be sure to check out her podcast called Fan Grrrls. That's G-r-r-r-l-s. Thanks also to Beth Atkinson-Quinton for editorial support and First Kiss Goodnight for our theme music. Check them out online or in episode notes for this show.
Sarah Smith [00:16:32] Freeo, Freeo, Freeo! (Laughs).Multiple voices [SFX: Broadwave, Broadwave, Broadwave, Broadwave, Broadwave.]