Please Enjoy Thirsty Merc’s Frontman’s Expletive-Heavy Rant About ‘In The Summertime’

Let’s be real for a minute here — it’s more than likely been a hot minute since you thought about Thirsty Merc.

The Sydney band were certified hit-makers around 15 years ago, scoring five consecutive top 50 singles from their self-titled debut album, which itself went platinum. Among those singles was ‘In the Summertime’, which is best known for serving as the theme song for Bondi Rescue and arguably becoming the band’s signature song. So why, you may be asking, are we discussing it right now?

Well, you can thank the Merc’s frontman Ray Thistlethwaite for that one. Over the weekend, the man with the Guy Fawkes facial hair took to his Facebook page to post an unprompted, expletive-laden six-minute video talking about the creation of the song.

“No one’s actually asked me this,” he begins, “but I figured I’d just fucking crap on about it for a bit anyway.”

That he does — essentially, the Cliffsnote version of the video is that Thistlethwaite was genuinely trying to write a hit song when he penned ‘Summertime’ and is sick of artists denying that it’s what they’re setting out to do. He leaves no stone unturned and no F-bomb un-dropped as he proceeds to tell his 22,000 Facebook fans how he really feels.

“Was I trying to write a hit? Fuck yeah I was. I was fucking trying to write a hit, I wanted it to get on the fucking radio. I wanted it to get played like a fuckin’ motherfucker, and generate as many royalties as possible so I could make as much fuckin’ cash as possible,” he says.

“I wanted the thing to be as fucking catchy as fucking velcro, and I wanted to fucking get that shit crackin’ to help promote an album I was fucking putting out, on a fucking major record label.”

“I’m just being honest about, because I’m not gonna fuckin’ pretend like a lot of fuckin’ other artists.”

Credit where credit’s due, no one can accuse Thistlethwaite of being dishonest. It does beg the question of what exactly prompted this spiel, however, as well as what our mustachioed hero hoped to get out of this. Perhaps he’s angling for Thirsty Merc to take the Darryl Braithwaite/Toto slot at Falls this year? Whatever the case, the video is the most liked, shared and commented-on post on Thistlethwaite’s page by a considerable margin.

Perhaps we’ll see him shooting from the hip more often from here on in. In the meantime, you can watch the full oral history below, as well as revisiting ‘In the Summertime’ itself. With any luck, it’ll TAKE YOU BACK TO THE…