My City of Sydney

In a seminar last week, I mentioned this time capsule, the closing message Channel 7 showed in the 70s and 80s. Tommy Leonetti, the singer, hosted a variety show, but for many this was his most memorable moment on Australian television. Leonetti was American.



The song observes a similar logic to the "city symphony" albeit in miniature, offering a variety of perspectives on the cinematic liveliness of the city's arteries and nodal points. Its nightclub ambience and topographical drift from the Harbour to the Cross orients the viewer to her city as a place of adult recreation, which seems odd since it immediately precedes the cartoon of a kangaroo putting her joey to bed, kawaii before its time. Perhaps its implication is that the night-time, and so sleep, is an adult playground, one which ties it directly to the surrealistic dreamscapes we are investigating this fortnight. Sweet cosmopolitan dreams!

The dating of the clip is ambitious; the Opera House is still under construction (so it's pre-1973), and Tommy's outfit suggests to me we are on the cusp of the seventies. To give you an idea of the way in which this clip oriented the feeling of being a "Sydneysider" in the 70s, you might want to watch the punk cover by XL Capris, also at YouTube. Frenzal Rhomb also did a cover, in the 90s.