The pond goes musical, with Campbell Newman in a cameo as a faulty flautist ...

(Above: spot the musical genius).

Unlike you, the pond doesn't go to Germany for musical inspiration.

Beethoven? Wagner? No hoper German drop-kicks. And you can take Brahms and shove him while you're at it.

The same for Italy. Don't go flaunting your Puccini in the pond's face. We don't go to Italy for musical inspiration. Let the French keep Ravel and Bizet, and the Spanish can make do with Rodrigo ...

Okay, enough you can see where this is heading. That silly goose Clive Palmer:

"Unlike the treasurer I don't go to the United States for inspiration," Mr Palmer said, adding he preferred the Australian band Redgum. (here)

That's the trouble with being musically illiterate. There are any number of reasons Clive might have presented, and any number of strategies he could have adopted, to slag off Wayne Swan's hero Bruce Springsteen, not least the way a multi-millionaire with a taste for lavish living poses as a defender of the poor and the helpless, and the way a tamely liberal lyricist indulges in stadium rock (Springsteen is aware of the contradictions, but hey).

All Clive had to do was read the excellent and lengthy profile of Springsteen by David Remnick that currently graces The New Yorker under the header We Are Alive, Bruce Springsteen at sixty-two (quick, outside the paywall at the time of writing).

He might then have been able to contrast Jon Landau conjuring up an early formative image of the Boss:

Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square Theatre, I saw my rock ’n’ roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. . . . He is a rock ’n’ roll punk, a Latin street poet, a ballet dancer, an actor, a joker, bar band leader, hot-shit rhythm guitar player, extraordinary singer, and a truly great rock ’n’ roll composer.

With a later view:

Some detected in all this the stink of sanctimony. In 1985, James Wolcott, a punk and New Wave enthusiast, found himself weary of Springsteen’s “cornball” sincerity and the level of praise accorded him by the “city-slick Establishment.” “Piety has begun to collect around Springsteen’s curly head like mist around a mountaintop,” Wolcott wrote in Vanity Fair. “The mountain can’t be blamed for the mist, but still—the reverence is getting awfully thick.” For Tom Carson, the problem was insufficient radicalism—the fact that Springsteen remained, at heart, conventionally liberal. Springsteen “thought rock and roll was basically wholesome,” Carson wrote in L.A. Weekly. “It was an alternative, an escape—but not a rebellion, either as a route to forbidden sexual or social fruit, or, by extension, as a rejection of conventional society. To him, rock redeemed conventional society.”

There you go Clive. Remember The New Yorker can be your friend.

Of course Clive could have just won it by saying he had better dress sense than the rooster.

Oh dear. We loves ya Swannie, you'd fit right in at the West Tamworth Leagues Club.

Next time Clive, remember, you don't have to resort to cheap nationalist jibes when discussing music, surely the most international language ever devised (well it makes Esperanto look pretty useless).

And what's this about preferring Redgum? Have you ever heard a Redgum album right the way through, right to the very end?

Is that the best politically orientated folk band you could conjure up when caught on the spot? You do realise that singer-songwriter John Schumann has been fronting his own band since 2005, and that he's a gormless, Flinders University radical philosopher Prof Brian Medlin trained, Democrat orientated Adelaide muso who particularly despised your hero Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the man for whom you once fronted as a media adviser. (These days, Schumann is tamer than the Boss, plays to the troops, and works in PR).

Wouldn't it have been more sensible, given your demographic, just to mention country music? Oops, sorry, the Boss took Hank Williams and Elvis Presley as particular inspirations.

Never mind, just mention Kasey Chambers, and show you're big enough to love a labret piercing. A rousing rendition of Am I Not Pretty Enough would sock that rooster Swan out of the number one oval in Tamworth.

Yes Clive, the pond is available and offers a cultural consultancy service for beleaguered billionaires. Drop us a note. Whatever you do, don't enter the Fairfax competition to link politicians to pop stars (forced video at end of link), and don't pay attention to jolly Joe Hockey (here) because he doesn't have a clue either:

The Shadow Treasurer told reporters in Sydney today that he saw music as entertainment and that he was inspired by people such as former leaders Robert Menzies, Teddy Roosevelt and John Howard.
"It says everything about this government that it is guided by the principles of a rock singer," Mr Hockey said.

You see Clive, that's the stupid condescension of a complete dickhead, or a man who was born to be a used car salesman.

You take your inspirations where you find them, and if ever jolly Joe wanted to prove he simply doesn't get life, music or the whole damn thing, he did it in that one regrettable outburst.

When he was fucking in his youth, did jolly Joe do it to the sounds of Robert Menzies droning on, or to a decent bit of rock 'n roll? Ming the merciless? Heck that's way too square for me and Maynard, whacko the diddleoh, completely uncool, living in squaresville.

Let's not begin to wonder if jolly Joe ever had a sex life, or did it to the sounds of Lawrence Welk or Percy Faith or Mantovani or Ray Conniff or Perry Como or - gasp - Liberace, because that would be verging on the defamatory.

A man who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either (Einstein), and a man who places no trust in music isn't to be trusted at all.

Mere entertainment? Wash out your mouth Jolly Joe.

On the other hand, Stephen Conroy can admit to liking ABBA, so anything's possible in politics.

Moving right along, on the subject of music, the pond was entranced to read in Crikey the similarity between a Counting Crows song, Accidentally In Love, and the Campbell Newman campaign jingle.

If you find the Crikey piece here is behind the paywall, why not head off to The Pedantic Nerd here, because it's the Nerd who made the connection, and has put up what looks to be a pretty damning and conclusive comparison on YouTube.

Now all we need to discover is whether the campaign bothered to obtain the rights from Counting Crows or if it's another blatant example of intellectual property theft by a party which allegedly is a pillar of propriety when upholding the rights of unscrupulous evil multi-national American combines - yes Sony that's you (sssh, not a word to Clive Palmer, he'll be as mad as hell).

The Nerd has set off a social media firestorm, and there must be answers.

If poor old Men at Work can get done over in the most cynical way by Larrikin Music Publishing for a minor flute riff here (that still sticks in the craw of this crow), then having a go at Campbell Newman is looking and sounding like a lay down misere.

If his campaign didn't clear the rights - my name is Campbell Newman and I authorised this message - then the pond proposes that Counting Crows be awarded fifty per cent of Newman's earnings for the time he's premier of Queensland (and perhaps a 1% surcharge on Clive Palmer's fortune purely because he doesn't have a clue).

The pond particularly commends the Nerd for the illustration he chose for Campbell Newman. That's not pedantry, that's poetry:

Lordy, lordy, the Iberia of the dark Australian north is hotting up. That's the second day in a row the pond has had to think of Campbell Newman and it's just not fair.

Let's move right along, and give a brief mention to the splendid work of Tony Abbott's sister Christine Forster, who has decided to run for Sydney City Council:

''I have this mental image of Clover Moore wanting people to be riding around the centre of Sydney with baguettes in their front baskets,'' Ms Forster, a first-time Liberal candidate for council, said. (here)

Now that's how to win over inner city residents. Call them bike-riding baguette lovers!

Talk about a chip off the old block. Forster presents an incredibly confused mix of policy mayhem:

''But what is the impact on the bakery down the street of the fact that people can no longer pull up in their cars outside that bakery and buy a baguette?''
With the cycleways network one of the few contentious topics in next month's elections, Ms Forster is certain bike paths are an issue. But she is less certain what should be done about them.
''Our policy is we like bikes, but we don't hate cars,'' she said, talking for the first time since she was endorsed by the party.

I hate to break it to Forster, but even in the old days before the bike path, cruising up and trying to score a park near the Bourke Street bakery and buying a baguette or any of their other delicious goodies was nigh impossible. As any member of the inner city elitists club could tell you.

It turns out that Forster has only recently moved into the area, and actually might like bikes and baguettes:

The Bourke Street bike path near her home was ''a great asset to the community'' and she would not to seek to rip up any existing bike paths, but Ms Forster said a review of their economic impact was needed.

So we'll review its economic impact and then we'll keep it? And piss more cash against the bike-laden pavement?

''Surry Hills is a quiet residential suburb, it's not a thriving business metropolis,'' she said. ''I'm not sure that bike paths are the answer in the CBD.''

Actually the reason that Surry Hills is a quiet residential suburb these days is because of a variety of interventions, involving one way streets, road closures, and a determined effort by various parties to keep cars out of the precinct by shovelling them on to Cleveland, Crown and the Eastern distributor. Back in the day, Bourke street was a nightmare rat run.

Clover Moore is ripe for the plucking - the implementation of the Bourke street cycleway was botched, and that's just for starters - but Forster is going to have to get a clearer message out and about if she wants to replace her. It's really hard to sound like a cross between the Daily Terror's Miranda the Devine - loving cars - and a sensible person who somehow thinks loving bicycles and baguettes means hating cars.

The pond has just the right branding available for her if she's looking for an old school totem and emblem. Not the Rolling Stones - as The New Yorker noted, they turned into their very own cover band. Bob Dylan's still solid, and Steve Earle is coming down under again, but really given her demographic, the pond suggests Patti Smith, winning by an easy musical canter from the likes of Anni DiFranco.

Oh and jolly Joe, is it so hard to acknowledge that the Boss delivers musical pleasure to many, including the pond? What a grinch, what a grind, what a sourpuss, what a dodo.

Go do something useful and steal Xmas ...

(Below: one thing the City of Sydney website does do well for local historians is a pictorial archive of the old city, here. Type in your search term and away you go. In descending order, 342-344 Bourke Street, 10th October 1927, 146-150 Bourke street, 10 June 1916, and 150-152 Bourke Street 17 December 1923 experiencing the joys of urban renewal. No baguette sipping hipsters or trees back then, but plenty of bicycles).