Lout's Honour

By Chelsea Hunter, 2003

If Rove, with his cheeky boy smile and 'What the..?' catchphrase, is the kind of boy that mums love to watch and Will Anderson, with his sarcastic media watch humour, has the vote of the edgy younger crowd, then where does John Safran sit? If his new show on SBS, John Safran's Music Jamboree is anything to go by, his anti-establishment pranks and intelligent humour will win over the culture jamming, cyber savvy kids itching for a saviour to lead them out of the wilderness. But is he up for it?

Sitting in the offices of SBS in Sydney with a pile of Bonds t-shirts covered in band name transfers in front of him, awaiting his hit of caffeine, Safran is nowhere near the manic personality spewed forth on TV shows. From his baptism of fire on the ABC's Race Around The World in 1997 to his well publicised early morning biffo with Ray Martin over the rubbish bins outside the media king's house, Safran is a headline maker. But get him away from the cameras and he comes across as a guy who wonders what all the fuss is about; he says he's just up for a bit of harmless fun.

Fortunately John Safran's Music Jamboree is just the show to indulge all his whims for hijinks. Running at a just under 30 minutes for each episode, Safran picks a theme each week and follows it to its sometimes illogical conclusion. From instigating an on-air clash with talkback radio announcer Steve Price to dressing up in '80s gear and dancing to Kenny Loggin's 1984 hit Footloose at his old Orthodox Jewish school, Safran hits the mark every time with his well researched and insightful comments that will have you in stitches as you ponder the truth behind the gag.

Regular segments also include The World Of Music where bands like Magic Dirt play traditional Pakistani instruments and The Music Mole, an un-named identity dressed in a giant mole suit who spills the beans on the music industry while playing croquet in a park. It may be nutty, but all indications point to a man ready to head out of the media wasteland to make headlines once again.

Q: How much research went into each of your shows?

JS: When I do a story I want it to be about something, a particular thing because it just makes it easier than just vaguely going out there and going 'I guess it will be on heavy metal' or turning up to the air guitar championships. I can't remember one thing that I have ever done on TV where I haven't prepared, like 'Hey I'll go out onto the street and see if anything happens'. I guess a lot of it was doing Triple R (Melbourne community radio) in the mornings. We have to talk about stuff for three hours and I always check the news services and there is occasionally a couple of times a week there will be some weird little music based story which is irrelevant to the editors of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald or whatever, so it never makes it.

So I'll download it onto my computer and read it out, so after a year I had all these weird little stories. A lot of it is stuff that I half remembered and I read magazines and books all the time. There was one about Glenn Danzig from Danzig getting kicked off a record label and I'll half remember someone telling me about it and the internet is great for finding out more information and you hope that it is a reliable source. I'm not naïve about the net, it's the reason I was able to write 10 episodes for this show and I'm trying to think before the internet, how would I have verified this stuff?

Q: I often wonder how people did their research before the net.

JS: I'm actually quite embittered that the internet wasn't around when I was younger. I would have achieved so much more. People are naïve 'about it, they're going through the stage of, if something is on a page then it must be true' Generally because I knew I was going to air - I always try to verify stuff with a some kind of source.

Ed: Come on, this site went up when you started on Race. Just because you didn't know about the web doesn't mean it wasn't there....

Q: Your background in journalism no doubt would have helped in this area then as well.

JS: I guess so. I guess in general I find it so much easier to come up with potent ideas like when you're clashing ideas, like something totally silly with something that is true. I guess that gives you an angle and most sketch comedy shows wouldn't do that, would they? Well, maybe they do a bit.

Q: Did you approach SBS with the idea or was it the other way around?

JS: SBS Independent wanted me to do an idea for a show so I kept sending them stuff and they didn't like any of it. Then Glenys Rowe, when she joined SBS Independent, liked the music show idea. I don't remember how we pitched it, like Video Hits meets Stuart Littlemore, which it is nothing like at all. It really did evolve, that's what was so exciting and freaky about it when we were doing it, it isn't this thing where I cock a leg and go 'Well we have this master plan' and we followed it.

It really was quite loose at the start and then it started forming as it went on. Even me dressing up and even though I'm badly acting, I'm actually doing that as opposed to not acting, which I have never done. All my previous work, I think I once dressed up as the Dalai Lama and that is it. It has always been an edited version of my personality in front of the camera. Then we did the Prince thing and it kinda worked and I was like 'Man, unreal. I'm going to dress up in costume all the time now'. That was the turning point. I liked hiding behind costumes. It's really freaky confronting people, it's so much easier if you can hide behind a suit. Especially when things are out of context. By the time it gets to TV I set it up about Jehovah's Witness and then it all makes sense but then no-one knows that. A person has just got out of bed and opened their door and there is me dressed up as Prince, singing and dancing.

Q: How many doors did you knock on for that segment?

JS: That was all day. That was an example where even on the day it didn't seem like because I've done enough TV, I know that you're not actually going to feel 'Ahh, that's the moment'. It's so rare that you have a golden moment and they're filming it and you go 'Yes, we got it'. I've done a few doorway things before and thing that you don't realise until you do it is that so many people's front of houses don't look like front of houses. Like the door is around the side or behind a tree and you can't film from across the road. But this was a lot easier.

JS: Can you tell us who the Music Mole is?

Q: Oh no. That's our big secret. That's why he has to be our mole.

Q: Can I ask when the tape is turned off?

JS: No. He's just a guy. He's a real mole.

Q: Is it Clinton Walker?

JS: No. No. Sorry. I was lucky with that segment, well not lucky but I reckon for this show having those two consistent segments The Music Mole and The World Of Instruments is really important. It helps because you've got half an hour to 25 minutes to fill out every week and it is all just too hard to bludgeon ten ideas - shock ideas - out each week so it is good to have something that is constant.

Q: Were there any sacred cows that you wanted to have a go at or havoc you specifically wanted to create?

JS: I didn't really have that vendetta attitude this time, but it is definitely going to come across that way though. I was looking back at a couple of stories and I was just going 'Man, people watching this are going to think I'm out for revenge'. Like with the Rabbi thing, it's going to look like it has been eating me up for ten years, but it really hasn't. When I look back at stuff I can see why people have this perception of me. For some reason when I am on TV I really seem ten times as intense about things. I just think that something would be funny or entertaining but by the time it gets on TV it looks like I have got all these vendettas against everyone.

Q: Like the Melbourne radio talkback host Steve Price?

JS: Yeah (laughs). DJs can be really good. I used to listen to his shows and he is really funny all the time, not on purpose but he is always having these ridiculous fights with people who would ring him up. So that was one where I was going 'Oh man, I reckon if we can prod him, we'll get the right reaction'. It was all about tapping into the whole ego. How could he resist it because it was a story about him, 'cause people are ringing him up going 'You and your radio station is so influential that people are pressing up drugs'. It taps into his fears of the kids gone wild on drugs. That was a weird story because I actually don't have a problem with Steve Price and all he was doing was just being anti-drugs, which is fine.

Q: I guess the thing with that piece and busting kids into the exclusive night club, is that you are really blowing open constructs. You're showing how easy the media is to manipulate.

JS: Yeah, I guess so. I guess with talk back radio it just shows how anyone can affect public debate, it is so easy.

Q: The name Music Jamboree, were you ever a scout?

JS: I was a scout, yeah. I don't know why we called it Music Jamboree. Initially it was called something really lame like Rock'n'Roll Cool Bus and then SBS wanted to call it all these danger names like Access All Areas, or the John, He's Edgy, Show. I was like 'Oh no'. I really like the name Jamboree for some reason. I think in Spinal Tap when they have a flash back to Spinal Tap in the early days, I keep on meaning to double check this, you know how before they were a heavy metal band they were a Beatles type band, I think when they are on some show it's called Jamboree or something like that. I was very happy when I found out that no-one had taken the musicjamboree.com name yet. I thought 'I can't believe this. My God'. But I guess there is quite a connection between scouts and the word Jamboree which I didn't think about. In later episodes there are actually references to my scouting days. There are a couple of stories which are personal, not as in crying or anything, but there is one story about my university band Raspberry Cordial, which is totally self indulgent because it takes up a third of the episode. It is just my embittered talk about how I never succeeded. And there is another one about when the Beastie Boys toured and my experience when I met them back stage and stuff like that. I think in those ones I make a reference to scouts. I think there is one story where I show photos of me as a kid because it gets a cheap laugh, so I think I have possibly done it one time too many in the show. By then end it will be 'Oh no, not John again crapping on about his childhood'.

Q: Were there any segments that you weren't allowed to show due to legal reasons?

JS:No, it has all been fine so far. Unless they're all lying to me. There were a few issues but that is more like copyright, like I can only show ten seconds of a music video not thirty because otherwise you have to get clearance. It was all weird things like that as opposed to 'Man, I've gone bad'. SBS just haven't had a problem from a controversy point of view. There is one that touches on teen suicide which I imagine would not get on air anywhere else. SBS were like 'yeah, whatever'. I think the ABC don't want to get into trouble and all the commercial networks want to get into trouble because it is such a commodity but they want to dictate the topics. SBS are good, they're not like 'Hey John, turn up to Patrick Rafter's press conference and ask a cheeky question'.

Q: In the Eminem sequence you've shown the similarities between the rapper and Dr Seus's style of writing, how many of the lyrics are actually from Green Eggs And Ham?

JS: I'm not quite sure, it was a combination of what I half remembered of Green Eggs And Ham and what I half remembered of Stan. I didn't actually sit there with either the book or with Stan, it was just my preconception. It will always be my downfall, the fact that I find song parodies more amusing than anything else. I love Weird Al Yankovich. I love all that parody stuff and silly comedy like in Austin Powers. But I get the impression that everyone else thinks it is juvenile. Everyone who knows me who will be watching that Stan I Am one will just go 'That John, he just can't help himself can he?'. I like that Joey Fatone bit because maybe you expect more from me, like that is just really juvenile, I'm picking on somebody for being really ugly. But I mean surely no-one is going to think that I actually loathe Joey Fatone from N*Sync that much. No-one still likes N*Sync anymore do they? I'm fucked when it goes to air if they do.