oil and vinegar ~ the aria awards 2006

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) held their 20th awards night tonight with 10,000 onlookers, including Scorsese and me! I was particularly excited to go this year (for the first time) as a friend of mine's band was nominated for 5 awards (he's the guy on the left of this photo, aka DJ Debris). He's kind of a cousin ~ his mum and my mum have known each other a long time and he and his sister grew up with me and my cousins after we all moved to Australia. While I'm not close to the band in any sense, I'm really excited to see him have this much success. In the end they (the Hilltop Hoods) won two ARIAs for Best Urban Music Album and Best Independent Release. They also performed their song 'The Hard Road" with a few members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in tow.

Cool moments:

The red carpet frenzy.
If you have never done this, I highly recommend being at the screaming fan girl section of the red carpet for an event where you have no interest in whose on the red carpet and can just stand back and observe. It is quite hilarious to watch, I assure you. The big irony for me was watching hundreds of fans go nuts for the Australian Idol contestants, at an event where not one of whom (naturally, as none of them have released music yet) was up for a single award.

The moment when I realised that cameras were allowed in.
Always a joyous thing to find out. I always sneak a camera in, just in case this happens, because it is so frustrating watching other people get shots you could have gotten, had you only known and brought a camera.

The live performances. (I'm aware some of these links aren't working...will fix them tomorrow.)
Apart from the Hoods, we were treated to live songs by Wolfmother, Eskimo Joe, Pete Murray (with John Mayer) and Bernard Fanning (with Kasey Chambers and Claire Bowditch) and The Veronicas. We also had to suffer through a Motown tribute by the weird uncles of Soul, Human Nature and Youth Group (the song, meh, but the film clip is great). These bands divied up the major awards pretty evenly amongst themselves. If you watch only two of these, make it Wolfmother and the fantastic tribute song Silverchair did in honour of Midnight Oil's induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame. (Please forgive the gratuitous pic of Daniel John's fine self, but I couldn't resist...he really is so beautiful (and ironically married to the woman I most wish I looked like *sigh*)

The Midnight Oil induction.
I have so much respect for this band, their music and everything they stand for, that this was a great moment for me. They were never weary in well-doing and I'm glad I was there to see them get some richly deserved kudos for their activism and awesome music. U2's Bono narrated the video summary of the band and their achievements. I liked his description of their music as "red earth rhythms under urban rhymes". Silverchair's version of Midnight Oil's song 'Don't Want to be the One' came next. To finish the song, Daniel Johns spray-painted "PG (Peter Garrett) 4 PM" on the stage wall. Very cool. =)


The chosha awards:
Best acceptance speech of the night: Bernard Fanning's very earnest thanks to his band, the awesome Powderfinger, for letting him go off and do his own solo thing this year "while they were all off making babies". He won album of the year for Tea and Sympathy, an album very different in style to Powderfinger's rock sound. His later comments about how he feels about making music and about how the music industry should use music to say important things, was also very moving.

Best news delivered: Powderfinger will be back working/writing/recording together again next year (hopefully with a tour to follow!!)

Best joke: One of the Wolfmother guys thanked his mother, "who is in the mosh pit for every Wolfmother show she can get to". Shortly after, one of the Hilltop Hoods guys took a moment in his acceptance speech to thank his own mother "because she's in the mosh pit for every Wolfmother show she can get to". Delivered perfectly with just the right amount of "heartfelt emotion", it was very funny.

Good time.