['On the Boarderline' is an ongoing segment on the Movies About Girls Show, in which I talk about my high school/post-high school band Doctor Rock. As the intro goes, it's done 'song by song', meaning there's probably around 100 episodes to come eventually. What follows is the script of the segment, as well as the .MP3 of the episode's featured song.]

Oh well hey, it’s my good pals the listeners. Hi listeners, i’m not on the show this week but I still want to welcome you to episode four of ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’. Over the coming weeks, months, maybe even years and possibly even decades, we’ll be working our way through the back catalogue of these sooty-faced, raggedly-dressed little blind matchgirls of the Ballarat, Victoria music scene, song by song by song by song by song.

This week, it’s time for track two from ’45 Minutes of Rock’. When I started thinking through this whole rock-umentary thing, it all seemed like a thoroughly good idea that would be filled with some amusing tunes and funny stories and laughs and good times for everyone. I got a little caught up in that. I forgot how fucking weird and awful some of the early demos are, and how uncomfortable some of it is. ‘How fucking weird and awful and uncomfortable?’, you may ask.

Well, you’re about to find out today. But uh. Really fucking weird and awful and uncomfortable – that’s the answer. As you may know by now, if you’ve been following this series and why wouldn’t you have been, ’45 Minutes of Rock’ was recorded at drummer Mick’s place, at the band’s second practise. As such, not a lot of songs were written at the time. It’s probably the same for most bands, I imagine – first few practises, you don’t have a lot of songs ready, so you end up playing odd covers because of the novelty and thrill of playing in a band. Anything you can think of really – anything that most of the band can vaguely play.

But here’s the thing – this particular cover that we’re talking about today, seems very much a premeditated effort - I seem to know when everyone else comes in, and I seem to have at least some grasp of what’s going on, and everyone seems to know how to play it. My memory’s a little foggy on the exact degree of premeditation, but perhaps it was intended as a song that would be covered on a regular basis.

Could that be right? I mean, it almost sounds right, but boy does it feel wrong. So wrong. So fucking wrong.

Fortunately, this is one cover we never performed at any live show – or, at least, not in full. Occasionally, we would play an excerpt from it in the middle of another song; one that we’ll discuss next week. So here’s the thing, right? I guess, to some degree, I’d forgotten just how embarrassing some of the material we had recorded was. It’s easy to give a copy or two of ‘Boarderline’ to [Movies About Girls host] Ken, for example, because Boarderline is late period stuff; it’s well recorded stuff, relatively well performed stuff, and it’s well written stuff.

What you’re about to hear today is the other end of that scale. It’s the earliest of the early, practically. And it’s not well recorded, or well performed. Oh but it gets worse. Not only is it a cover, and not only is it badly performed, but it’s badly sung by yours truly and at one point features a wretched attempt at MC Shan’s mid-song breakdown rap from Snow’s Informer (something I can recall and perform at will, for some odd reason, even to this day). It is a badly sung cover of Everybody Get Up by late ’90s boy band 5ive.

So listen, I’m sorry. I really am. But if we’re going to do this thing right, there’s got to be no skipping of songs. If I’m going to open every episode by describing this segment as a look at doctor rock “song by song by song by song by song”, then some weeks are going to be more interesting than others, I guess: depending on whether you find good songs or bad songs more interesting. Occasionally you’re going to have to put up with some serious crap – especially amongst this early stuff.

But hey, maybe that’s what you want to hear. Maybe you want to hear horrible boy band songs covered in a screamy fashion by a dubiously talented teenage rock ‘n’ roll quintet. Maybe. I dunno. If you do, boy are you in luck, because that’s exactly what you’re about to hear, and then you can even download the .MP3 below and listen to it all day everyday on your .MP3 playback device of choice.

If not, well don’t worry, because the clip’s a short one and no one’s going to force you to download the .MP3 (probably not, anyway). For now, let’s all do our best to enjoy this week’s song, and maybe things will be better next week. Or maybe not, actually, now that I think about it, because we’re talking about one last anecdote from Josh Feenjeen’s 17th, and discovering how some drunken on-stage teasing from the birthday boy lead to one of the more unique and inexplicably enduringly popular Doctor Rock songs. And of course, that’s assuming that Ken even lets me keep going with the series after this effort. Guess we’ll find out. Until then though, this has been another episode of ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’.

Download Everybody Get Up