Achmad appreciates Australian popular culture, in this case the songs of Kevin Bloody Wilson.

Appreciating Australia: Kevin Bloody Wilson

As a gesture of goodwill in this fasting month, I’d like to help build bridges.. There have been some harsh words thrown on this forum, so I’d like to help heal and unite IM readers by throwing light on other cultures.

As a Ramadan gift, I present to you the first in a series of Appreciating Australia.

Australians are a simple and fun-loving folk. It’s true, the subtleties of Indonesian humour such as Dono, Kasino, Indro, or Tukul, are probably lost on them. But as a more sophisticated civilization, we Javanese have a duty, especially in Ramadan, to understand our crude brothers and sisters down south. (We will, of course, be ruling them one day).

Here we profile a quintessential Australian comedian, the great, the one and only…

Kevin Bloody Wilson

The 61-year old Kevin Bloody Wilson has been strumming his guitar in pubs in the English-speaking world, since bursting onto the underground music scene in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 1984. Two decades of songs about farting, rootin’ (having sex), and drinking beer have won him a global following, which he claims includes Prince Charles.

Kevin Bloody Wilson

Kev represents the essence of Australian humour. What Aussie can forget classics such as:

• “Mick the Master Farter”
• “I Gave Up Wanking”
• “That F–kn Cat’s Back”

Sure, the cultural attaché at the Embassy in Jakarta, might rattle off names of Australian comedians like Dame Edna Everage, and Clive James. But those two snobs left Australia in the 1960s. Let’s not forget the greatest cultural attaché Australia has ever had: Sir Les Patterson, himself a great fan of Kev.

To many, Kev is primarily a great entertainer. Repeated themes include farting and matters of the anus, (Festival of Farts, Mick the Master Farter, Chucka Browneye), masturbation, (I Gave Up Wanking, Grandad’s Got A Stiffy), and sexual intercourse, (Rootin’ in the Back of the Ute, Do Ya F–k on First Dates?- aka Kev’s Courtin’ Song), and female genitalia, (Absolute C-nt of a Day, You Can’t Say C-nt in Canada).

Songs about Australian identity have always been important to Kev. In “The Shane Warne Song”, Kevin exhorts a famous cricketer to focus on his training, whilst volunteering to take on Mr. Warne’s duties to “Do the Rootin’ For Australia”. Elsewhere, Kev calls on listeners to “Chucka Browneye for Australia”, encouraging them to lower their trousers or outer garments and display their anus as a tribute to their nation.

But a closer listen to Kev’s lyrics and songs reveals a serious exploration of the human condition. As such, Kev reveals a philosophical heart (or fart) to the ubiquitous, beer-gutted Australian man (and woman).

“Grandad’s Got A Stiffy”.

Consider, “Grandad’s Got A Stiffy”. In “Grandad”, Kev explores the ravages of age, of loss, but the importance of facing mortality with optimism and hope. Grandad tells the story of an elderly man committed to a nursing home who burst his colostomy (bag), whilst masturbating.

The old bastard laid sprawled on the nursing home floor,
He’d been wanking and fell out of his chair,
As he fell on his guts, his colostomy bust,
Splattering muck and guck and sh–t everywhere,

Despite emptying the contents of the bag all over the wall and his nurse, Grandad maintained a positive attitude, and indeed refused to cease his favourite hobby!

But he wouldn’t stop wanking,
So we chucked on a blanket,
So the women and kids couldn’t see,
his battered banana hangin out his pyjamas and the cum stain an shit on his sheets
…but that filthy old bastard sat cackling laughing, just waving his slug in the air

Nor has Kev been afraid to court controversy. In “Living Next Door To Alan”, Kev takes on the thorny issue of race relations. This song lampoons a group of Australian Aboriginals who use their welfare payments to compete with Australia’s wealthiest man (in the 1980s), now-failed entrepreneur Alan Bond. “Living” alleges that the aboriginals used welfare payments to purchase luxury cars, houses, and even rent a warship from the Australian navy. Critics claim such welfare payments were inadequate to buy such goods.

Kev maintained he was the people’s poet, telling Brisbane’s Courier Mail: couriermail

I’m just voicing the sort of thing people want to hear. I don’t want to sound as if I am on a crusade, but I just write what most of us are thinking. It involves lampooning everyone in the process.

Dismissing critics, Kev proved his commitment to appreciating cultural diversity with “the Bali Belly Song”. Kev’s account of his trip to the Hindu island consisted of several verses describing his time on “the throne” with diarrhea and intestinal problems.

[audio:bali-belly.mp3]
Listen to “Bali Belly”.

Love, however, could be the most enduring of Kev’s themes, with his many ditties perhaps rivaling Shakespeare. In “Rootin’ in the Back of the Ute”, Kev celebrates a time-honoured Australian mating practice. “Da Ya F–ck On First Dates”, is Kev’s demonstration of a chivalry rarely attributed to him.

Since his smash-hit 1984 album, “Your Average Australian Yobbo”, Kev has proven his fair-dinkumness (authenticity) as a true Australian by refusing to bow to the warriors of political correctness.

Kev has defied the self-appointed custodians of Australian literature and music by focusing on themes that obsess ordinary Australians everywhere, drinking beer, rootin’, farting, and amusing themselves by stringing together obscene words.

Some of the more famous songs include:

• Hey Santa Claus
• You Can’t Say C—nt in Canada
• The Pubic Hair Song
• Dick’taphone
• Ho Ho F—kg Ho,
• F—k Ya Guts Out
• That Damn Anal Fiend

To his critics, Kev would probably simply quote the signature he offers fans at his various gigs, “F—k You! Kev!”.