Black Rain Falls

On May 30, 1990, Midnight Oil interrupted its North American tour for a "special guerrilla action" on the crowded Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan. The agit prop event was a live concert from the back of a flat-bed truck that eventually drew more than 10,000 people at the high noon hour. The Australian band took this chance to make public its feelings on the planet's crumbling environment "There are things we think are so important that they need to be said." Lead singer Peter Garrett told a packed international press conference after the performance. "and the best way we could say it was with song." Here are the six songs captured live that day: "Progress" (from the 1986 EP, Species Deceases); "Sometimes" and "Dreamworld" (from 1987's Diesel And Dust); Blue Sky Mine" and "River Runs Red" (from Blue Sky Mining); the apropos tribute to John Lennon, "Instant Karma"; and finally, the video clip for Midnight Oil's "King Of The Mountain" (from Blue Sky Mining) available here for the first time. The message is clear and continues to reverberate through the canyon known as Sixth Avenue, the symbol of corporate responsibility for so many of our global problems. "What happened this morning," says Garrett, "was just another of the things that this band has tried to do for the last decade or so. We want to take some of the issues that are in the songs back onto the streets where they belong."