Everett True upsets an entire country

I used to carry a massive grudge against Everett True, on the basis of a review of The Charlottes he wrote for Melody Maker that I considered had unfairly slighted the band. It was several years later that I found a clipping of the offending review, only to discover that rather than being the cruel trashing I'd recalled, it was just a mild rebuke.

I suppose I'm lucky that this was in the pre-internet era, otherwise I might have instantly sent him an ill-considered vituperative email.

Now Everett has managed to upset not just the fans of The Charlottes, but the much larger category of 'everyone in Australia'. He wrote a blog for The Guardian's music website where he pointed out that not every Australian band brings honour upon their homelands, and has, for his efforts, been rewarded with being turned into some sort of hate figure. Line-by-line denunciations in The Age; burning of True in effigy on Ramsay Street; the revelation that his real name is Mr. T. Legend, that sort of thing:

The Courier-Mail story ran the following day, on page seven (just behind the ubiquitous Olympics), with an accompanying editorial from the paper's music critic - disrespectfully, it was given more prominence than the story of Isaac Hayes dying. It was also posted on the internet, alongside similar stories in the Courier-Mail's sister papers in Perth, Melbourne, West Australia...and, most particularly, on Courier-Mail's parent site.

The Charlottes didn't last much beyond True's judgement. If we were Australia, we'd be worried.