The Wiggles

The Wiggles’ generational crossover

Since forming in 1991, Australian children’s group the Wiggles have pretty much seen it all. They’ve created a vast discography spanning 59 studio albums alone: last year, they were the second-highest streamed Australian act on Spotify across all genres.

In their heyday, the original group performed to more than 1 million people a year. More recently, they’ve noticed something new: a generational crossover. Their fans have grown up, many have formed their own bands – and they’re still fans.

This became obvious in 2018, when Brisbane hard rock duo DZ Deathrays invited guitarist Murray Cook to guest in their video Like People. In the clip, a demonically possessed Cook emerges from a bathroom stall and appears to be taken over by his former character, Red Wiggle.

Later that year, Cook (who retired from live performances with the Wiggles in 2012, along with original Purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt) appeared with DZ Deathrays at the Splendour in the Grass festival. The audience went totally Apple And Bananas.

This set the stage for last year’s all-conquering cover of Tame Impala’s Elephant, for which Cook returned. It went on to win the country’s biggest music poll, the Triple J Hottest 100.

“I just started noticing I was getting stopped in the street a lot by 20-somethings saying ‘the Wiggles were my childhood, you guys are legends!’”… Read more..

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Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show gets down with the kids

Most rock bands work very hard at being serious. Credibility and being cool is everything – but if you’re a rock-star parent, those things count for nothing when it’s time to go home. Then you might sing silly songs to your kids in between chores, or when you’re dropping them off at school, before it’s time to put on the mask again and going back on tour.

Regurgitator have never worked hard at being serious, and have recorded an entire album of the songs they sang to their kids. The result is Regurgitator’s Pogogo Show: The Really Really Really Really Boring Album, with Ben Ely’s 14-year-old daughter Dee Dee doing backing vocals and telling stories in between songs.

The result is anything but boring, and sounds, well, like a Regurgitator album. For kids. That is, without the swearing, but with lots of farting.

The classic Brisbane three-piece (Quan Yeomans, Ben Ely and Peter Kostic) are spread out these days, with Yeomans in Melbourne and Kostic in Sydney. But all have children, and so too do most of the band’s Generation X fans, who’d come to the gigs on a night off (or on a date night). The Pogogo Show could catch on – especially since it’s already branching out into live shows.… Read more..

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Singing in Gunggandji: the Wiggles at Yarrabah

In a classroom of excitable primary school children in Yarrabah – an Indigenous community that lies across Trinity Inlet, an hour’s drive south-east of Cairns – language and culture teacher Nathan Schrieber makes a grand entrance in traditional garb, using biraba, or clapsticks, to call the kids to attention.

“Are youse ready?” he asks. “Are you set? Then we’d better get some Wiggle action in here!”

And from a side entrance, in they come – Anthony (in blue), Lachy (purple), Emma (yellow) and Simon (red). Schrieber asks the children to make them welcome. With that, the Wiggles bursts into Rockabye Your Bear, a song the children have been learning for weeks in the local Gunggandji dialect.

Most of them already seem to know all the songs in English, as the band runs through a short set of hits. Emma leads the Whirlybird. Simon, of course, does Simon Says. Captain Feathersword charges in, and falls over. For the finale, everyone stands to Do The Propeller.

A short time later, the band returns and sings Rockabye Your Bear again, this time in Gunggandji, accompanied by Schrieber, his sister Elverina Johnson, elder Uncle Daniel Murgha and the children. It’s being filmed for the upcoming TV series Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle, which will stream in more than 190 countries.… Read more..

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