And The Storm is Breaking Now

1990

I truly believe if junior high sucked for you, you will likely have some negative bias against that decade. I believe that is the reason why I loathe any '80s night gathering. Sure, if you're younger and didn't grow up in that decade, I can understand it, but as for me, I couldn't wait for the '90s to begin.

The Cold War was over. Popular music was slowly starting to shun hair metal and boy bands and embrace such oddities as Public Enemy, Faith No More and Sinead O' Connor. And after a decade of excess, there was a general sense of "Ok, we've partied enough, I suppose I should get serious on a few things."

If there was one moment that captured this feeling, it was the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It kicked off an environmental movement that did not resurface when Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth and even during the recent oil disaster in the Gulf. And even though the album was finished way before captain Joseph Hazelwood decided to have a few too many and let the Valdez strike a reef, Midnight Oil's Blue Sky Mining managed to capture what millions were feeling even though only a few hundred thousand picked up the album.

Environmental-wise, Midnight Oil was beyond reproach. The band has long involved themselves in environmental causes. And Blue Sky Mining has plenty to say about the environment, not to mention the world in general.

As an idealistic 16-year-old, I seethed when I continued to see videos of the Valdez disaster. Combine that with living through a year of high school where a series of suicides claimed at least two students, there was plenty of angst to tap into. For a good three months, my walkman had either Blue Sky Mining or Soundgarden's Louder Than Love playing.

While Louder Than Love supplied the straight up anger, Blue Sky Mining had a more mature outlook on the world. It seemed to sum up the utter confusion I was feeling about my internal world as well as the what was going on around me. And for every song of anger, there was a solution, mainly in the song "Shakers and Movers."

It is one of the first songs that I believe Peter Garrett actually SANG. The song opens up with a soulful introduction, then drummer Rob Hirst propels it to the chorus. "I can shake / I can move / But I can't live without your love / I can break over you / But I can't live without your love." It sounds like a moody love song addressed to a lover, but it's really about man's relationship to the environment.

As the song progresses, it reaches its beautiful climax "And the storm is breaking now / Yeah the storm is breaking now / Yeah the storm is crashing down." For an album that sounded like a menacing storm, that line sounded like the first few breaks of sunlight through the clouds. Yes, change is going to come, yes, that change will hurt, but doing nothing will hurt even worse...