In 2005, I was studying audio engineering at a technical college in NSW. We learnt how to record music in a studio, how to edit, mix, master tracks. One of our major projects was to record a song, and one of our final projects was to create a music video. We decided to do a piece of satire, writing a song to send up then prime minister, John Howard.

International man of mystery

While Howard was still prime minister, there was a joke going around that he was an international man of mystery. How's that? No matter where he goes in the world, people hear his name and say "Who?"

Nevertheless, many of you might remember John Howard for his interview with John Oliver, claiming that his gun control policy had been an unequivocal success.

That's not entirely accurate, but that's a story for another time.

Bullying the prime minister

John Howard was an easy target, his diminutive stature, his awkward stuttering way of speaking, along with every problem that just about every politician has, being a lying, no-good sack of shit. Most of the song focused on the idea of how John Howard was in the pocket of George W. Bush, more interested in sucking up to the American government and being a lackey, than trying to stand up for what was good for Australia.

Running on a budget, and looking for a way to imitate Howard in a video, unable to find any appropriate masks from costume shops, I printed out a black and white picture of Howard's face, and put it onto a piece of cardboard. It looked pretty good, and whenever Steve moved his head back and forth, the mask increased and decreased in size unnaturally, looking like we'd actually edited it into the video later.

We put the video together, with a lot more visual gags, showing Howard apparently rubbing his crotch, but when the camera comes around, he's actually rubbing a cricket ball against his leg before bowling.

Unfortunately, we missed the shot where John Howard smashes the guitar. I'm pretty sure it was my fault for starting the recording at the wrong time, and not letting Adam know, so he came back and pressed the record button, thinking he was starting it, but actually stopping it.

Professionals

A few months or a year after we finished the video, I decided to shell out the cash, to put it on Betamax (being the superior quality video cassette), to send it to "Rage", the Australian Broadcasting Commission's late night music video show. They played it around 4 in the morning, and we all got about $16 worth of royalties - each! Professional musicians at last!

An odd coincidence

A couple of years later, somehow I stumbled across a video from a certain Australian act, of national and occasionally international notoriety, Kisschasy. Watching the video, something sparked inside saying, this seems vaguely familiar.

Guitarist and creator of the video Sean Thomas said it has nothing to do with the actual song. "I just wanted to make my own South Park," he said in an interview.
Wikipedia link

Great artists steal, so they say. My hypothesis was that Thomas was up at 4 am watching Rage, and decided it was an idea worth... fleshing out, to phrase it nicely.

Assuming they did get some strong inspiration from our clip, I still ain't mad, because it was such a good idea it was definitely worth a second shot, with a better budget. And of course, they put some spin on it to make it their own, making Tony Blair into George W. Bush's girlfriend, with Howard as the annoying tag-along brother.

So, thanks and well done to Kisschasy for taking our idea and pushing it to the limit. 👍👍 👌