The Chaser Report - Ben Lee Still Hates Andrew Hansen | Featuring Barles Birth

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Other podcasts promise high, and always under deliver. Here at The Chaser Report, we know the importance of keeping your expectations low. Here's the time Andrew Hansen settled his feud with Ben Lee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Charles and Dom. Two names that belong to some gentlemen you've not heard from in quite some time now. And look, as producer Lachlan, the big dog in this joint, I've got to say, I'm pretty disappointed in them. They told me today that they couldn't record an episode because, of being busy or being sick or some weak excuses like that

and I laid down the law I said to them Charles Dom I'm not disappointed I'm angry this isn't good enough this whole oh I can't record I've got a broken rib just isn't gonna cut it

so you put yourself in front of a microphone and you apologize to our listeners today and I got to say even though I was scared to use my firm voice on the gents like that it got some results. Hello, it's Dom here. Just please add this producer Loughlin to the replay that we're having to do.

Apologies for the very dodgy A audio and B, lack of new podcast. We're having a rough week. Charles has, I don't know, hurt his ribs or something. I've got some sort of virus headache thing going on. I've spent the evening in bed, which is bitty because there's actually quite a lot to talk about. But with luck, we'll be able to do a new episode for you. tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy this selection from our ridiculously extensive archive that has arisen from doing this podcast every single day for years. By the way, my new book

The Dictionary of Terrible Ideas comes out today. I've included podcasts in there, of course, but I think I should have put an entry specifically for daily podcasts. Let's face it, it's quite honest at times. Anyway, we love doing it. We'll see you soon. Hi there, Charles here. Just heard Dom's intro. and I just wanted to add my own. Yes, I have broken a rib, which means I'm completely out. You can't podcast with a broken rib, obviously.

But no, the good news is that I have been prescribed painkillers. So I'm looking forward to going on a journey over the coming months where I get addicted to painkillers. And, yeah, I mean, who knows where that's going to lead. But stay tuned. Oh, hi, Dom again. Just heard Charles' little intro. And look, in not unrelated news,

I'm going to be looking for a new co-host for this podcast soon. Something tells me. I just put your application and a sample of your hosting skills to a podcast at chaser.com. And the least insufferable might well get the gig. Well, hello there. This is Ball's

birth No no relation to that horrible Charles Firth fellow Anyway I'm hoping

that you'll accept my application to co-host this podcast I would be delighted and not in all insufferable Oh

no one's ever said that about me before anyway Tata Actually, jewelling voice memos is a great way to do this podcast. Let's always do it like this from here on. There you go. Turns out sometimes all you need to get a pod happening is a bit of tough love.

Not entirely sure why Dom thought he'd use the moment to get all self-promoting, but yes, his book is coming out soon. Look out for that. Also look out for Charles Firth as he undergoes his Jordan Peterson-esque dive in. to painkiller addiction. Now, we've been a little bit self-indulgent this morning, so I thought in for a penny, in for a pound, why not just pick an episode that I think was really nifty and has absolutely no relevance to the current politics of the day whatsoever? So for that reason, I'm going back to an interview that we had in 2022 from our Chaser Report election edition, where for some reason,

we managed to get an interview with Ben Lee, the guy who sings Catch My Degrees and a couple of other songs from before I was born, that's for sure. It turns out that Ben Lee has a bit of bad blood with Andrew Hansen, so they beefed it out on our podcast during the middle of an election. And honestly, it was a lot of fun to hear these two guys talk about self-deprecating humour and pretend to have a feud. So have a listen to how that interview goes.

after this ad. Yes, we still have ads. I don't care what Charles says. There's definitely ads. I mentioned that there were two musical legends on today's podcast. We've already had Andrew Hanson, the hot one from The Chaser, but we now have Ben Lee, the legendary Australian independent artist from Noise Addict,

lots and lots of hits on the aria chart, second in the hottest 100 twice and so on. And not hitherto, a noted commentator on Australian politics, Charles. How did we organise this one, do you know? I assume he's just got something to plug, surely. Isn't that the reason anyone comes on this? Oh, yeah, that's a course later. Well, he has had, he did write the song that I think sums up the election

better than anything else so far. Nothing matters, but a lot goes on. Look, I think he's here actually to settle the score with Andrew Hansen, but let's find out. Ben Lee, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Now, congratulations on getting onto this podcast. because this is, of course, the Chaser Report election edition podcast.

So I assume the only reason that you're here is because you're entering politics. Are you running in this election or something? Yeah, I've, you know, I've been considering it. I think I just missed the cutoff for the official ballot. But no, I'm definitely like, you know, it's one of those weird things as an artist where, like, I'm passionate about it, but I'm also skeptical and innate. cynical. Like I like the way poetry affects politics. So, you know, we all try and chime in and do our bit. What do you think of Scott Morrison's ukulele abilities? You know, his ukulele abilities

are not that bad. It's just that he chose to show them off. Like, like, if that was a hobby that we never heard him do, it would be absolutely acceptable. But the fact that he thought that was a good idea to demonstrate those abilities you know there's a lot of people that play music as a hobby and it's just a wonderful thing for them and that's where it should be kept because it felt like even his family didn't really appreciate his ukulele maybe we're asking too much but i feel like our elected leaders a basic ability to read the room is sort of a part of what we're voting for would you have preferred him to do one of your songs ben maybe cigarettes will kill you could have been a public health message Yeah, no, there are certain cultural moments that you sort of feel relieved to be left out of.

Do you use yuk yourself on your recordings ever? Do I use yuk? I have used yuk. It's not a great instrument, is it? You automatically conjure images of, I don't know, like Hawaiian culture, and it just sort of has, like, it's hard to get it out of its stereotypes or something, or tropes. Now, we should probably address the elephant in the room, which is 14 years ago, Andrew Hanson went on national TV and made a song about you, which was not very kind to you.

Is there still a feud between you two? There was never a feud. I thought the main issue wasn't that it wasn't kind. It was just like not quite funny enough. No, no, no. I just think because I think the thing about like the way I've always used humour is that like I think actually perform, because I'm deeply entrenched and always have been in like crossing over into the world

comedy and I am I love working with comedians and everything but I also think comedy reaches a certain limit where performance art doesn't like it can't touch what performance art can touch and I think at the end of the day I was funnier than that song was and so that's at the end of the day it's just got to be about what's funnier you know brutal brutal well look in my defense and I'm going to throw Chris Taylor in front of the bus here because he's now he's not here to answer for his crimes but the idea for the song and most of the lyrics were written by by him they're written by chris taylor and this was what was interesting at the time ben because i i remember at the time and still um i actually had no prior you know it's a song about

finding ben lee a bit irritating that's what the song's about and at the time i remember chris presented this script to the script meeting and said here's a here's a song about ben lee being slightly annoying is this is this amusing and and and could you play it andrew he said because i was I was the one who plays and sings And I had no feelings about you at all, Ben I'm not going to say that You know, you're insignificant or whatever But I had no problem with you

I had to say to Chris Look, I don't spend parts of my day thinking about Ben Lee I don't spend hours like you do You know, wrapping myself in In agonies over Ben Lee So I felt awkward about being the face Of that song But in the end we had to fill half an hour

Ben Lee rhymed correctly with the reason. I don't think it even rhymed. Yeah, no, it does rhyme with a few of the words in the song. I mean, I think, look, we're all roughly the same age, and we grew up in Sydney, those of us who love music, and Chris is very much into his music. We had to, from the age of what, 13, 14, we all had to hear about how amazing Ben Lee was for many, many years.

Since you started noise addict, Ben, and I think for Chris it probably just built up as intense jealousy, manifested in a somewhat mean lyric. But on the bright side, a lot of Musazes would say it was flattering to be mentioned in the same breath as people like Michael Jackson. Yes, of course. And also, the other thing is about it that you're talking about somebody who was deliberately trying to be as annoying as possible.

That was my entire, like all I was doing for that whole decade of my life was living and breathing Andy Kaufman videos. Like, all I wanted to do was provoke people and annoy people. so it was like it's not much of a criticism to say oh you're a bit annoying to someone who desperately only wants to be annoying but i do remember being at the lands down i think i was seeing sleepy jackson and um i hadn't heard the song but i holly throsby was there and i think are you friends with her i think she was the person who first told me about it yeah she was like oh there's this song on the chaser have you heard of it i said no i haven't heard of it and she's like oh it's a bit

mean to you i think he was there was concern you'd be upset about it and i was like i it was It was honestly not that. Like I said, like I just, I, to me, that was like, um, steroids. Like, all I wanted was to be irritating. It falls into a very, a small but esteemed category of songs. There was, um, the Ataris had a song called Ben Lee. Um, Klinger had a song called Ben Lee. And, um, and I think those, oh, and then, um, the multi-peachers, one of their first songs is called I Wish I Was Ben Lee. So I think it's those fortunes, um, are, um, the canon of songs that discuss the pros and cons of being a fan. Are we not even the best song about Ben Lee?

I mean, we can't compete with the mouldy peaches. That's very depressing to hear. So you've got a new song out. It's called Like This or Like That. Remembering that this is an election podcast, is there any link at all to the election or Australian politics that we can sort of weave in? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what that song like this or like that is about is about choices that seem arbitrary,

but ultimately they're not because they're how we express our values, right? So when I was growing up, when you guys were all the same age, whether you were a Pearl Jam fan or a Nirvana fan was a really big deal. It actually said a lot about what your value system was. It said a lot about what you wanted out of art, what you wanted out of like conversation out of, you know, different types of the tribe you were part of. And similarly with, you know, the Beatles or the stones, like these are all kinds of silly things. But they do express, like, they express who we are and what we want out of our lives. And I think, because I live, you know, most of the time in America, we got pretty involved with Biden's campaign in 2020.

And it was undeniable that Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, were not anybody's dream candidate dream platform. It wasn't even worth arguing about that. Like, you know, my stepdaughter, who was at the time she was 19, and very idealistic and, you know, a real lefty, the way, you know, a 19-year-old should be, she couldn't bring herself to campaign for Joe Biden, for the Democrats, because it just did not resonate with, like, her deepest held core belief system. Yet, as you get older and you become pragmatic, but you also become, you understand that it's sometimes the small choices that don't seem that. different where we actually make these kind of like key decisions about how we're going to approach the future. And I think particularly when you look at climate, similarly within America, I'm under no delusion that like suddenly we're going to like curb climate change because Labor gets voted in. I mean, these are like huge international and almost like cosmic

problems that all these multinational corporations and lobbyists are all part of influencing and it's like I remain optimistic that they can be addressed but I also sort of just believe that like whether you go down swinging is part of what makes us noble as a species I want to go down swinging if we're going to if we are actually going to destroy this planet and destroy our species which there is a chance that we're going to do. I want it written in like the cosmic records that I disagreed. And so I think making those choices, even if they're not going to like solve the problem, they're the stories we're going to tell our kids. They're the stories they're going to tell their kids about, you know, it's like

what role did you play as the bus was going over the cliff? And it's, I want it to be known to my grandchildren that it was not standing silently while Donald Trump was reelected. It was not you know giving scott morrison another chance to have another four years of just ignoring the biggest subject that we need to be talking about and that's so you know it's like in a way you have to be a little bit hardened by life and have a certain amount of cynicism to realize that like damn we can't fix it all with a vote but like this or like that those choices do matter that's a very impressive uh link i got to say ben so on on may 21st choose like this or or like that i guess Well, just realize that, like, it does matter and it doesn't matter at the same time.

I'm not going to try and convince a 19-year-old that if they vote for the Labor Party, all problems are going to be solved. But I do think at a level of, like, the integrity of our species, we have to try and make progressive choices. So you've got the album coming out, August 19th. I'm fun. How fun can we be in that context you just mentioned, Ben? Where do you find fun?

Well, that's the whole thing, man. Like, you know, I come from punk rock. I come from underground music. It's like you guys come from like, you know, poking at the bear too. Like what's what we're all doing, right? We're all like on the fringes of culture trying to like take a few jabs from where we stand.

The mainstream, the machine of the mainstream and the music that it jams down our throat as a culture, I'm not going to be able to topple that just the same way I'm not going to be able to topple climate change with one vote. But like I do think that toppling an empire like, it has to be done with a smile on your face. Yeah. I love it. So, fun, it's subversive.

Always. Always. Because, because in a way, like, our rebellious nature is beaten out of us with our depression and our cynicism. You know what I mean? Like, we become, like, so trapped within a system that we feel we can have no effect on and we're sort of useless and we just got to accept it. And then we may as well just become these, like, whiny, complaining voices because we don't believe we can affect any real change fun is like fun is cheeky and i i really come from that like like like like like i said andy coffman but also like abby hoffman you know like like um like people that sort of fought the system by um by just like with a wink you know and making you making you kind of think like huh like maybe the next generation are if you could just give

them a wink at the right time, you can say, hey, they didn't beat me. They didn't beat it out of me, you know? And that's like I think, like as we get older, we sort of are becoming like, our generation, we're becoming like the elders, you know, of like Australian showbiz or whatever that is. And I just like, I really like connecting with younger artists and kind of mentoring them and like just fostering their sense of cheeky rebelliousness and their sense of fun. because I think that's where, like, real change can come from. Yeah, it's sad that we're no longer producing comedy songs and making fun of, like, emerging artists in their 20s.

No, but we've really lost to. But we do. We've got a number one song at the moment. That is true. I heard. I've been following it. We are number one in the charts, in the iTunes charts. Cole makes me come.

Number one. Is there a problem? Like, have you found that with your latest single, like this or like that, you've run into problems because, you know, there's a far more successful song out there, Col Makes Me Come, that's just preventing your single from getting out there. Oh, look, as always, I think that the dualism that you are reflecting as if it can only be the chaser or Ben Lee, you guys are like, you guys are caught in a dualistic mindset that

you've been in since 1999. We can both coexist. Hey, Ben, it's been delightful chatting to you. It's great. It's great to connect with you guys. And honestly, congratulations on, like, yeah, what you've, this moment you guys are having with this song. It really is. It's the spirit, you know, it's silly, but it's not silly. And it's like, I think silliness is, like, way undervalued. And it's like, I just love that the spirit is alive in you guys after all these years to do something like that. So it's awesome. And it's a banger tune. Like, it's an earworm. Yeah. That's the thing I like it. Yeah, yeah. Who actually, who did the, Who actually did the music? Well, none of us. None of us. Cam Smith, our editor.

So you talked about working with the next generation. That's who Cam Smith is. He's now the editor of the Chaser, and he's a polymath. And he did this banger of a tune. And I mean, Scott Morrison as vocalist, really, I wouldn't have thought he had it in him based on the April Sun in Cuba. Well, I'm hoping he's going to win an aria for best rock vocal. I mean, surely he's eligible now, isn't he?

he is the lead vocal in the song. We're in the ARIA charts. We're like number seven or something. Amazing. It's so amazing. So, so cool. So Ben's song,

Like This or Like That, his single is streaming now, wherever you get your streams. And his new album, I'm Fun, is out on August the 19th. And touring, touring in June. Touring in June. The parents get high tour.

Puring and June. Ben, are you after a support, if you're after a support act, I'd be more than happy to come and play the annoying Ben Lee song before you're set. Wait, we should actually do that, Andrew. I'm serious.

Wait, are you in Sydney or Melbourne? I'm based in Melbourne these days, but I can... Okay, let's do it in Melbourne. Let's do it. That'd be really fun. I think that would be funny. Brilliant. That's great.

Okay, you're on.