Mike Brady (musician)

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Mike Brady (born 28 February 1947 -) is an Australian musician most commonly associated with the Australian rules football anthems "Up There Cazaly", referring to 1920s and 30s St Kilda player Roy Cazaly and "One Day in September". "Up There Cazaly" topped the Australian singles charts in September 1979 and briefly held the record as best-selling Australian single. Both have become synonymous with Australian rules football and are traditionally sung on AFL Grand Final day in September.

1 Biography
2 References
3 Further reading

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Brady was born in England in 1947 and migrated to Australia in the 1950's with his family. He was one-third of the 1960s pop duo MPD Ltd. which stood for Mike, Pete and Danny which had hits in Australia including "Little Boy Sad" and "Lonely Boy". The band toured Australia and played shows in Vietnam for Australia. After the break up of MPD Ltd., Brady continued to record occasionally including a top 10 hit with "Sympathy".

[edit] Up There Cazaly

He started working as a jinglewriter and was very successful. He also started his own record company "Full Moon Records" and a publishing company "Remix Publishing

In 1979, the Seven Network approached Brady to write a jingle promoting its AFL singer. The Mojo Singers had reached the top of the Australian charts with a single "C'mon Aussie C'mon" which had been written to promote World Series Cricket shown on Channel Nine and Seven was looking for a jingle to promote its Australian Rules broadcasts.

Brady wrote "Up There Cazaly" named after a phrase used by teammates to encourage Cazaly to take his spectacular marks and had since been used by Australian troops in World War 2. He worked with Pete Sullivan on recording the jingle.

The popularity of the jingle led to the release of the song credited to the Two-Man Band. It reached #1 in the Australian charts in September 1979 and was the most popular single recorded by an Australian artist that year. It sold 250,000 copies making it the most popular single released by an Australian artist in Australia ever at that stage.

[edit] Later career

Brady had established recording studios in Melbourne. In July 1980, Joe Dolce and his group the Joe Dolce Music Theatre recorded a song "Shaddap You Face" that had been a success in Dolce's cabaret show in Brady's studios. Dolce took the song to Mushroom Records and Festival Records but neither label was interested. Dolce went back to Brady who agreed to finance the record.

By November 1980, the song had topped the Australian charts on its way to setting a new record as best selling Australian song in Australia ever. Elton John had made a bid for the rights but had been knocked back. By February 1981, "Shaddup You Face" had reached the top of the UK charts and was becoming an international hit in Europe and the US. The song would sell four million copies worldwide Elton John had persuaded Andrew Sachs of Fawlty Towers to record a version but it failed to chart.

Since then, Brady has continued to work in advertising writing jingles. He has continued to write material for AFL. In the early 1980's, he reworked "Up There Cazaly" into a theme song for the Sydney Swans relocation into Sydney. He wrote "One Day in September" about the AFL grand final and recorded versions of many of the AFL teams theme songs for an album in 1987. Brady also cowrote and produced another popular AFL jingle "That's What I Like About Football" sung by Greg Champion. "Up There Cazaly" was reworked in 1999 with Haley White for its 20th anniversary but failed to make the same impact. It was reworked as "Up There Australia" to show support for Australian troops in the War of Iraq in 2003.

Brady has written songs for popular Australian artists such as John Farnham and Tina Arena and produced albums by Arena and Colleen Hewett. He also wrote the song "Courage in their Eyes" for the Seven Network's Olympics coverage. As well, he is now working on Melbourne Radio Station 3AW.

[edit] 2006 controversy

In 2006, Brady's song "Up There Cazaly" was plagiarised and released as "Up There Old England" by Cliff Portwood & "Members of the 1966 World Cup Team". ^[1]