Listen to a ANZAC Day Mixtape

This week as Australia marks 100 years since the Gallipoli landings and goes into a frenzy of nostalgia, nationalism and marketing, we take a look back at the 1915 Triple J Hottest 100 to find out what songs sung by men with very deep baritones may have been playing in Anzac Cove trenches.

The number one song in May 1915 was “A Little Bit of Heaven (Shure, They Call It Ireland)” by Canadian-born George MacFarlane. Yeah its sounds like it could have been written by a leprechaun for a St Patrick’s Day parade, but back in 1915 this jam was getting serious play in parlours all over the joint as mothers, girlfriends and wives wrote letters updating their boys on the price of lard or which neighbors had died of typhoid. Yes, life could be shit, especially when being bombarded with shells, but at least there were songs like “A Little Bit of Heaven” sung by an early version of Michael Buble.

Songs that included geographical names were big in 1915 and for good reason. With the globe bombing itself to buggery it made sense that songs that reminded people of the warmth and comfort of home were popular. As he lay mortally wounded in a trench with mustard gas wafting about, nothing made a solider feel as good as humming a nostalgic tune about the sweet hills of Tipperary.

“Carry Me Back to Virginny”, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary”, “Hello Frisco”, “Alabama Jubilee” and “I’m On My Way to Dublin Bay” all appeared in the top twenty songs of 1915. Apparently the larrikin Aussie diggers would often adapt “It’s a Long Way From Tipperaray to “it's a long way to Sydney/Western Australia/Moonee Ponds”. Jokers.

One of the best-known Australian songs of the time was “Australia Will Be There”. Written in 1915 by Walter Skipper Francis, a guy with the most 1915 sounding name of 1915. The song praises the courage of the Australian solider and celebrates Australia’s freedom and intent to fight for “those who have their backs against the wall”. (Obviously a time when boat people only came from Ol Blimey).

The song became the march song of the Australian Expeditionary Forces and was used to rally the troops as they marched away from home. Kind of like a WWF entrance song for an entire nation.

There was no SONOS in the trenches so while the bourgeois, British scum got to use gramophones in their toff officers quarters, the hard working and battling ANZAC diggers had to rely on a good old singy-songy before they jumped over the top and get blasted to smithereens.

This was when the Aussie soliders would take the larrikinism up a notch and come up with bawdy interpretations of popular songs such as the parody of a popular march song “Colonel Bogey” which became one of the first ever diss-tracks:

Hitler, has only got one ball,
Goering, has two but very small,
Himmler, has something similar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

After the evacuation of Gallipoli in December 1915 and January 1916, a parody of the Victorian-era parlour song, “Come Into The Garden, Maude” became popular with Australian troops. Inspired by the actions of General Sir Stanley Maude, who refused to leave the beach until he had been reunited with his servant and baggage, it became one of the first punk songs ever written and rumored to play a big part in Zach De La Rocha penning “Killing in the Name”.

Come into the lighter Maude,
And never mind your kit.
The waves grow high,
But what care I, I'd rather be seasick,
Than blown sky-high.
So, come into the lighter Maude,
Or I'm off in the launch alone!

The anti-war, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi, captured a growing skepticism about participating in a European war. Though it’s from the point of view of an American mother, it could easily have been written by an Australian woman about her baby Douglas, Leonard or Graham going off to fight in a foreign land.

It was later covered by US outlaw country band Eli Radish Band who also performed that other anti-authoritarian classic, “Take This Job and Shove It”.

On the other sides of the trenches traditional Turkish folk music was as popular as it today. Actually the number one track on the Turkish charts in 1915 is the same now in 2015.

If these songs are to teach us anything, it's that even during times of wartime, a ukulele and Hawaiian music still makes you think of colourful shirts and sipping tropical cocktails on Waikkiki Beach.