Australian band Midnight Oil still carries weight

Kirk Baird

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001 | 8:48 a.m.

Spurred on by the success of the single "Beds Are Burning," the environmentally conscious Australian rock band Midnight Oil became an overnight U.S. sensation in 1988.

It didn't hurt matters that, at that time, the nation was still firmly entrenched in its Land Down Under fad, spurred on by the success of "Crocodile Dundee" and its star and unofficial Aussie spokesman, Paul Hogan.

Just as quickly as the band's popularity came, however, Midnight Oil disappeared from the U.S. music radar, along with the Australian craze.

Now, nearly 15 years later, the band is returning to the States. But Peter Garrett, frontman for Midnight Oil, insists it's not a comeback.

"I don't think we were away really," Garrett said recently in a phone interview from a hotel room in Los Angeles. "We just didn't hang around in America that long."

Actually, Midnight Oil, which performs Saturday at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, hung around the United States longer than many think.

The quintet continued to release new albums throughout the '90s and occasionally played cities throughout North America through 1997 on a brief tour.

"We did a lot of touring in the mid-'90s," he said. "You do reach a stage where the whole world looks like it's been designed by Holiday Inn's architects."

As a result, Midnight Oil toured less and less outside of its homeland, instead concentrating on playing dates there. This decision, Garrett said, caused some to mistakenly believe the band had split up or was no longer of any relevance.

"The fact that it wasn't happening in America makes people think you're not doing anything, even though you've been doing shows," he said. "Ultimately the band has chosen to run its own race in its own time zone. We pretty much exist in our own places.

"Fans of the band who've followed the band closely know that we've been fully occupied."

With a new record deal on a small independent label, Liquid 8, and a new album scheduled for a February release, Midnight Oil decided the time was right to return to the States.

"For us it was time to come and rub noses with our audience and reacquaint ourselves with those who listen to the band," Garrett said. "We've neglected North America for quite some time. We wanted to play some clubs and get people reacquainted with who we are."

He said Midnight Oil is booked for 30 North American dates before it returns to Australia. Then the band will return for another U.S. tour in February to coincide with the new album's release.

"We're allocating a fair amount of time to come back here and work here and play to our audience," Garrett said. "It seems like a good time for Midnight Oil to be around. There's a lot of plastic, say-nothing music out there. Maybe there's a place for a nonplastic, say-something music."