Dave Graney And Dennis Cometti Teach You To Baffle The World

For a couple of years now the crew behind Presentation Night have been pairing together notable personalities from the fields of music and footy to lock horns and discuss how these disparate worlds interweave, in a quest to reach ultimate communion and unlock a few of life's secrets along the way (naturally over a beer and a laugh). Having already hosted a horde of luminaries over the series to date - namely Paul Kelly, Robert Murphy, Tim Rogers, Matthew Richardson, Paul Dempsey, Cameron Ling, Urthboy and Jude Bolton, all abetted by regular host Francis Leach - this impending instalment fuses the way-out wisdom of the incomparable Dave Graney with the dulcet tones of commentary kingpin Dennis Cometti, a leftfield combination sure to take the concept to a whole new level altogether.

The ever-soulful and esoteric Graney - who's sometimes referred to as 'The Savage Sportsman' among his many colourful monikers - was born and raised in Mount Gambier, where he loved music and football equally until an unfortunate incident diverted him away from the sporting realms. He experienced a major intersection of sport and art earlier this year when his track Feelin' Kinda Sporty was the theme of Melbourne's 2015 Reclink Community Cup - and the song was covered on the day by the great Paul Kelly himself - but it's far from the first time that these worlds have collided in his life.

"In the '70s everybody loved pop music and rock'n'roll, it was everywhere."

"I grew up 300 miles from Melbourne and 300 miles from Adelaide and we used to get all of the football from each competition - the SANFL and the VFL," he recalls. "I loved the Sturt Football Club who won premierships every year. South Australia when I was growing up had the feeling of an adventurous kind of place with its politics and football, and the Sturt style of football was really great - Jack Oatey was the coach and they were the first side to have highly skilled handballing and foot passing and that kind of thing, they won about six premierships in a row. And then I barracked for St Kilda because my older brother Steve barracked for them; the oldest brother Philip barracked for Carlton because my dad barracked for them, but Steve came to Melbourne on a junior footy trip and saw Carl Ditterich play which was a bit of a pop phenomenon football moment.

“We all played for the Mt Gambier Football Club which was in the Western Border Football League – there used to be about ten to 12 teams, but I think there’s six now. It was half-Victorian and half-South Australian, and anybody from that league had to come and play for Collingwood in the VFL. I played in an under-16 or under-18 representative team that came for a country carnival in Victoria and one of my contemporaries in that team was Mark Yeates who played for Geelong. There’s photos of us in Collingwood Jumpers at Victoria Park, and I think we played a game at Punt Road Oval too.

"I was picked up by the police for buying all the booze for the team when we were staying next to the Seaview Hotel on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda and driven home in shame. Then a few years later I was playing in a band at the Seaview Hotel, so there's [the link between] music and football for me. I only recently realised that that was a pivotal moment for me - I probably would have played football a bit longer otherwise but I gave up after that."

Graney explains further that, back in the halcyon days when live music was still the country's prime leisure activity, there was less of a distinction between the footy and music worlds. "In the '70s everybody loved pop music and rock'n'roll, it was everywhere," he reflects. "Back then music wasn't like the American thing where music was for nerdy types and football was for jocks, everybody loved it."

Cometti conversely spent his youth in Perth and, as well as being a handy footballer himself (he played for West Perth and even joined Footscray for a season before succumbing to injuries and media commitments), he actually began his career on the airwaves as a Top 40 disc jockey, so music was in his blood from an early age as well.

"That was a long time ago now in the late-'60s, and I did that for about four or five years before I joined the ABC," he explains in that voice. "But I stayed in touch with music, I still download a lot of stuff and potter around with it and make playlists - it's an exciting time if you like your music, although I guess radio's gone a bit bland. They only play flashbacks nearly all the time these days with the odd new record, in those days they used to go searching for new ones - that was the name of the game, to find something new and exciting."

So he was clearly passionate about both music and footy growing up? "Yeah, it was an interesting combo," Cometti smiles. "I was playing league footy at the same time I was a disc jockey actually, which was an odd mix, and I really enjoyed that - I really enjoyed both of them, although they were two extremes in that one required a lot of dedication and one required none, just the address of the local nightclub! But it was great stuff, probably just after the reign of radio at it's very best but still in the era of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones - it was exciting radio then, and I always look at radio now and feel a bit sorry for how it's evolved but it is what it is."

"It's an exciting time if you like your music, although I guess radio's gone a bit bland."

There's even anecdotal evidence suggesting that Cometti prefers to watch footy at home with the sound down and music blaring, a trait he readily admits to. "Yeah, I do that," he chuckles. "That's not a knock on commentators, I just prefer to do that. The problem is that if you do listen to other commentators then you do pick up things they say and we all become composites of each other. I watch a lot of footy, because most weeks I'll do three games and I do like to watch during the week, so I find the best thing to do is put the fire on and put the music on and watch the footy - that's probably my idea of heaven and relaxation."

And the commentator who's renowned for dropping band and music references into his footy commentary as if it was the most natural fusion ever is firm in his belief that there's a juncture out there where sport and art intersect.

"I think in general there probably is, but certainly for me there was. I fell in love with music at about the same age that I fell in love with footy and I've known both longer than my parents, my wife, my kids - they've been with me as constant companions," he laughs. "The other things that excited me was that not only did I love music but I was [also] intrigued with disc jockeys, particularly American disc jockeys. In those days in the mid-'60s when I was a kid there was no internet obviously so I used to send away for tapes and things of disc jockeys from America, from some of the big radio stations in LA and particularly a station called KHJ. That was basically the happening place in formatted radio at that time, and I fell in love with that side of it too so the disc jockeying was like another plank in that three-tiered structure I was building; footy, music and disc jockeying! I'd be giving detailed commentary to my opponent out on the ground when he had the footy and I was chasing him, I'd be telling him exactly what was happening!"

So even though these two great Australians come from seemingly entirely different worlds in almost every regard, come Presentation Night their worldviews and mannerisms should combine wonderfully. "I just met Dennis today and we've been getting on," Graney tells. "We're both kind of vintage professionals, and we've exchanged personas from a remote aspect deep within ourselves and we've been meshing quite well. And I guess Francis Leach will come along and ruin it."

And regarding what this magical meeting of minds will hopefully convey to lucky punters on the night, the erudite Graney has that all under control already. "I think we'll just show them a way that a man can live in the 21st century," he deadpans. "How he can negotiate his way through any situation that life throws up at him, and how with poise and balance and good command of words and manners he can baffle the world."