Mike BradyAM is an Australianmusician most commonly associated with the Australian rules football anthems "Up There Cazaly", referring to 1910s St Kilda and 1920s South Melbourne 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 songs have become synonymous with Australian rules football and are traditionally sung on AFL Grand Final day in September.
Early life and career
Brady was born in England in 1948 and migrated to Australia in the 1950s with his family. His first job was at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation factory in Port Melbourne, Victoria, as a sheet metal worker. He started performing when he was 15 and he was one-third of the 1960s pop act MPD Ltd. which had hits in Australia including "Little Boy Sad" and "Lonely Boy". The band toured Australia and the U.K. Brady also toured Vietnam entertaining troops, with a different band which included Wayne Duncan, Gary Howard and country brother and sister act Ricki and Tammy. After the breakup of MPD Ltd., Brady continued to record occasionally and had a top 10 hit with "Sympathy".
Brady started working as a jingle writer and was very successful. He also started his own record company called "Full Moon Records" and a publishing company called "Remix Publishing". In 1979, the Seven Network approached Brady to write a jingle to promote the Victorian Football League. The Mojo Singers had reached the top of the Australian charts with the 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", referencing footballer Roy Cazaly. 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 on the Australian charts in September 1979 and was the most popular single recorded by an Australian artist that year. It sold 250,000 copies.
Later career
Brady had established recording studios in Melbourne, Australia. In July 1980, in Brady's studios, Joe Dolce and his group the Joe Dolce Music Theatre recorded the song "Shaddap You Face", which had been a success in Dolce's cabaret show. 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. The song would sell four million copies worldwide. In 1982 Brady wrote "You're here to win" as the theme song for the XII Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia. Since then Brady has continued to work in advertising, writing jingles such as "Dodo, Dodo, internet that flies" for Dodo Internet and "Lucky you're with AAMI". He continued to write material for the VFL. In the early 1980s he reworked "Up There Cazaly" into a theme song for the Sydney Swans' relocation into Sydney. He wrote "One Day in September" about the VFL grand final and recorded versions of many of the VFL team's theme songs for an album in 1987. Brady also co-wrote 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. In addition to his jingle writing and performing, Brady also works at Melbourne radio station, 3AW He is the host of Mike to Midnight, Saturday nights from 6pm until Midnight, during the non-football months and occasionally fills in on other 3AW programs such as Nightline. Brady is also the chairman of , a predictive people analytics company that uses cognitive neuroscience software for talent management; recruitment, productivity and organisational development. Brady has for a number of years sung the Australian national anthem before the start of the Puffing Billy Great Train Race in Belgrave.
1982 re-recording
In 1982 "Up There Cazaly" was rewritten and released as "Up There Old England" by Cliff Portwood and members of the 1966 FIFA World Cup team. Cliff Portwood was a long-time friend of Mike Brady and had permission to use this song along with Peter Sullivan, Cliff's pianist in Australia for the World Cup in 1982. Mike flew to England to help Cliff record the song, but unfortunately it was never released, due to the B side of the song having a portion of "Land Of Hope Glory" on it, creating a minor licensing issue just as it was getting major airtime on the radio.
Brady is a board member on the Prostate Cancer Foundation Australia Victorian Board and has performed at many men's health events. He has been a board director of Variety Victoria and is a Life Member of the organisation. Brady is a patron of the Bali Children Foundation and the Australian Huntington's Disease Association, and is involved with the Bluearth Foundation, Melbourne Legacy and the Yooralla Society. He is also an Australia Day ambassador.
Personal life
Brady lives in Melbourne, Australia. He has four children.
