The Fightback Show was a weekly left wing news and discussion program which ran from 1985 to 1991 on Canberra’s community radio station 2XX. 

 

These songs are from the smattering of Fightback Show episodes we’ve uploaded so far. They’re a pretty good soundtrack for a fightback!! 

 

Music from the Fightback Show (1986-1991)

Theme – Redgum – Raggin’

Theme – Working Week – Inner City Blues

Ry Cooder – How Can a Poor Man Face Such Times and Live (lyrics)

Ry Cooder –  How Can You Keep on Moving (Unless You Migrate Too) (lyrics, notes)

Redgum – One More Boring Thursday Night in Adelaide 

Goanna – Solid Rock

Ilkari Maru – History

Louis Killen – The Blackleg Miner

Warumpi Band – Gotta Be Strong

Cherie Watkins – Prison’s Nothing Special – from the record The First Australians. Played on the Fightback Show, 27 April 1986 (starts at 28 mins)

Redgum – If You Don’t Fight, You Lose

Alex Glasgow – Close the Coalhouse Door

Strange Tenants – We Are Stronger

The Style Council – Walls Come Tumbling Down

Redgum – The Federal Two-Ring Circus

The Bushwhackers – Freedom on the Wallaby

Ted Egan and Vincent Lingiari – Gurindji Blues

Bob Marley – We and Them

Celibate Rifles – Rainforest

Leon Rosselson – Across the Hills (notes)

The New Harmony Sisterhood Band – Working Class Woman (lyrics)

Simply Red – Money’s Too Tight (to Mention)

Gil Scott-Heron – Whitey on the Moon

Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not be Televised

Marianne Faithfull – Broken English 

Coloured Stone – No More Boomerang

Malachi Smith – Victim

Alex Glasgow – As Soon As This Pub Closes

Linton Kwesi Johnson – Making History

Wild Pumpkins at Midnight – Apathetic Radical

Style Council – Big Boss Groove

Judy Gorman-Jacobs – Right Behind You in the Left Hand Lane (Cover of Truck Driving Woman by Barbara Dane)

Style Council – Money-Go-Round

Warumpi Band – Didgeridoo Blue

Breeze – Reality

Redskins – Bring it Down

Billy Bragg – Power in a Union

Redgum – Critique in G

Strange Tenants – Hard Times

Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come

The Specials – Concrete Jungle

Coloured Stone – Easy World 

UB40 – Sing our own song

Coloured Stone – Our Cry

Bob Marley – Soul Rebel

Redgum – It’ll Be Alright in the Long Run

Warumpi Band – Animal Song

Mutant Death – Priority One

Tom Waits – Tom Traubert's Blues

Specials – It’s Up To You

Redgum – Doesn’t Matter To Me

Peter Tosh – Apartheid

Utah Phillips – There is Power in a Union

Jimmy Cliff – Struggling Man

Kevin Baker – Men of Kemira (lyrics, movie). Played on the Fightback Show, 24 May 1987, (starts at 16:45)

Bob Marley – Them Belly Full (but We Hungry)

Mikey Dread – Mental Slavery

Mikey Dread – World War Three

Junior Murvin – Police and Thieves

Paul Kelly – Bicentennial

No Fixed Address – Black Man’s Rights

Jimmy Cliff – Sitting Here in Limbo 

Roaring Jack – The Ballad of 1975

Robert Wyatt – The Age of Self

Everything But The Girl – This Love (Not for Sale)

Lost Cherrees – Consider the Challenge (at 3:04)

Billy Bragg – Power in a Union (instrumental)

Mutabaruka – Revolutionary Words

Ross O’Donovan – I Want To Live In a House

XTC – Save Us From the Ball and Chain

Alistair Hulett – New Age of the Fist

Temu – Kurdish Anthem (If I Don't Have A Home, Who Am I) – from the album World Music of Struggle

James Brook – The Invasion Song

Gil Scott-Heron – Must Be Something

Bruce Springsteen – Deportees

Gil Scott Heron – Liberation Song (The Red, Black Green)

Robin Archer – Things Are So Slow (lyrics)

Elvis Costello – Pills And Soap

Us Mob – Genocide

Theme – Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues