So long and thanks for all the Hot Potatoes

On Sunday I did something I'll probably never, ever do again in my lifetime. I attended a Wiggles concert. My fourth Wiggles concert to be precise. That's the thing with having your kids three years apart, you get to Rock A Bye Your Bear lots and lots and lots of times. 

I remember my first Wiggles gig. It was at a club local to where we lived in the Big Smoke. They did three shows there, back to back. We got the 10.30am show, the difficult show. Difficult because it's key mid-morning sleep time for about three quarters of the audience. Mr7, who I hasten to point out was two at the time, sat on my lap, unmoving for the entire show. I bought him a t-shirt - his first-ever Gig T - and we went home. I had more fun than he did. No really, I loved it. Bare stage, four guys in t-shirts, no back-up dancers, no dog, no dinosaur. They brought the house down. Oh, how the mums screamed and sang along.

By the time we went back the following year, Mr7 (then two) was a devoted groupie. He took his guitar to play along with Murray. He'd worked on the actions. He was ready. We sat on the floor with Maxabella and her crew, not far from the front. Murray and Jeff ran through the crowd and, I confess, I screamed. I am a Murray girl. Go figure. In my defense, I saw him on Spicks and Specks - he's musically very knowledgeable. It's kind of an intellectual crush... I'm not making this better am I?

Mr4 attended his first Wiggles event at the dreaded Christmas concert. Mr7 was, by this stage, at school and heavily into Star Wars. Gran, Mr4 (then two) and I took the limousine service (aka Pops) to the front door of the Wollongong Entertainment Centre, sat somewhere in the nosebleed seats and watched the Circus extravaganza. He was mildly interested. He liked The Big Red Car. I didn't scream. Too far away.

Which brings me to Sunday. Five rows back, up the road. Perfect. The four of us went - we dragged Mr7 along for old times sake and he was noted to be singing along despite his best efforts to appear above it all. He did confess to enjoying seeing Sam live for the first time - it had been Greg all the way in his day.

Mr4 had a little dance, played his ukelele, wiggled a bit. The Builder got his first eyeful of the fab-to-the-under-fours but enjoyed Mr4's performance more. And me? I loved it. I sang along, clapped in all the right spots, laughed at the dumb jokes and fully appreciated the spectacle of an Australian entertainment icon in full flight. They even played Shimmy Shake, my favourite Wiggles song. (Even as I write that I appreciate that not everyone will understand the fact that I even have a favourite Wiggles song.) One of the best things about the way the Wiggles work? They constantly watch the audience - you can see them doing it, gauging what's working, taking sheer enjoyment in the kids' enjoyment.

And so that's that. My last Wiggles concert. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Murray, Jeff, Anthony, Sam, Greg, Captain Feathersword and crew for many, many sanity saving moments over the years. I would not have survived the first years of motherhood without your DVDs and I truly appreciate the broad range of musical styles and instruments to which you have introduced my children.

I admit that I never really understood the rose-eating dinosaur, nor why you would choose an octopus as one of your characters, but you write a fine song (some finer than others) and for that reason I will forgive you some of your dicier moments - including that nursery rhyme DVD, and even Cold Spaghetti Western. I will even forgive your onward, ever onward, merchandising steamroller - though possibly not the small voice that repeats 'Hot Potatoes' over and over again in the swirly light thing that Mr4 simply had to have on Sunday.

If nothing else, we'll always have the Shimmy Shake.

[image: courtesy of Mr7 (then 4)]

What did you talk about this week?

It’s that time of the week when I share some of the wide variety of topics of conversation that came up through work or play in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Sparkling eyes, cheeky smiles, wonky stitches, Rioja, car insurance, new cars, Alla Hoo Hoo (yes, she's back), Sam Moran, scrapbooking, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Lovely Bones, guitar practice, physiotherapy, The World's Biggest Morning Tea, grant applications, pay TV, The Fantastic Mr Fox, chocolate slice, proposals, manuscripts, revisions, waiting, kicking, punching, jumping on the sofa, fundraising, Steiner, home schooling, slow cookers, garbage removal, celebrity profiles, dentistry, birthday presents, accessories, jobs of the future, blogging, firemen, and the importance of sticking with the footy tipping competition even if things look bleak.

Sam's the man to take Julie's crown

Sam Moran is the man. When I saw him singing the National Anthem at tonight’s State of Origin, I thought ‘finally, a contender’. To the crown. Julie Anthony’s crown, that is.

When I was growing up, Julie Anthony was Australia’s anthem singer. No matter what the occasion, no matter what the crowd, she’d be there. She knew the rules – you sing it straight, you sing it loud, you allow enough time between notes for the people in the cheap seats to catch up.

Somewhere around about the time that Gen X realised that the idea of ‘jobs for life’ was no longer viable, singing the anthem went from being an honour to being a ‘marketing opportunity’. And so began a long and varied parade of ‘personalities’ giving us their version of what is, essentially, a not very exciting song. Important, but not that exciting.

The ones I particularly dislike are the vocal gymnasts, more interested in showing us what they ‘got’ than delivering the song. And you often get the impression that they couldn’t launch into the second verse if, by some strange twist of fate, an encore was demanded.

Julie wasn’t like that. She could have sung that song backwards, sideways and upside down, through as many choruses as there are (only two officially now, though it began life with four). She knew the original version (‘Australian sons etc’) as well as the current, more inclusive version (‘Australians all etc’).

And now we have Sam. As the lead singer of The Wiggles, Sam knows how to deliver a tune to a packed, squirming stadium. He knows that his audience wants to sing along, not be sung at. He knows that a fast game is a good game, and his audience suffers from the modern syndrome known as ‘Short Attention Span’.

He and Julie have a lot in common. The same ringing, bell-like tone to the voice (though his is admittedly considerably deeper). The dark hair. The serious expression softened with a smile. He’s even promoting a grown-up album of love songs, a genre which Julie made her own.

The decisive point, however, is the fact that both work/ed with large, green faux animals, albeit one a dragon and one a dinosaur. (I just don’t know that Julie married hers.)

I fully expect to see him wheeled out again in the near future to claim his crown.