Mike Brady
Mike Brady was born in England and moved with his family to Australia when he was 11 years old. His recording career began in the mid 60’s with the formation of MPD Ltd (Mike, Pete & Danny). MPD Ltd went on to become one of Australia’s most successful pop groups of the late 60’s with hits such as “Little Boy Sad”. The group toured overseas, including England and Mike toured extensively throughout Vietnam during the war. When MPD Ltd disbanded, he continued to record the occasional solo single, one such single being the hit “Sympathy” which reached the National top 10.
After MPD Ltd, Mike spent the majority of his time building his career as producer and writer of advertising jingles for Television and Radio. One such piece of jingle songwriting brought Mike back into the recording industry limelight. He was asked to record a promotional song for Channel Seven’s Football program. This song being “Up There Cazaly” went on to be the biggest selling local single of its time, with sales in excess of 250,000 and has become the unofficial Anthem of all Australian Rules Football Fans.
His song “One Day In September” has become part of the Football language. Mike has since written and recorded club theme songs for many of the Football Clubs in the Australian Rules League. He also co-wrote and produced Greg Champions huge hit “That’s What I Like About Football.
Over the years, he has been responsible for some of Australia’s most catchy advertising jingles. Mike’s jingles include; classics such as “Lucky, Your with AAMI”, “Hard Yakka” and “SPC Baked Beans and Spaghetti”, and many current music tracks on TV. Mike has written jingles for most of Australia’s famous brands.
During the 70’s Mike formed his own Record Label and Record Production Company, Full Moon Records, and publishing company, Remix Publishing. Two hugely successful singles released by Full Moon were Mark Jackson’s “I’m An Individual” and Joe Dolce’s “Shuddap You Face”. “Shuddap You Face” broke the record previously held by Mike’s “Up There Cazaly” as the biggest selling single in Australian History and has been translated into many different languages. Mike and his company have produced albums for artists such as Tina Arena, Colleen Hewett, Mark Gillespie and Mike Rudd and Bill Putt. Many of Mike’s songs have been recording by leading artists including Sammy Davis Jnr, Tina Arena, John Farnham, Rene Geyer, and Dianna Trask.
During the heady boom years of the 1980’s and early 1990’s Mike “diversified” into areas not associated with his core talent – property development, hotel acquisition, timber milling, restaurant ownership and various other ventures. This was at first a great success but the good times did not last and Mike slid from the top of the heap to the bottom.
This was a major lesson to be learnt – to stay true to what one knows, which in Mike’s case was music and jingles.
Over the recent years Mike has continued to write music for films and television projects including a children’s TV series for Channel Seven “The Adventures of Chuck Finn”, together with writing songs for various sporting events – “Courage In Their Eyes”, which was used to launch Channel Seven’s media broadcast for the Olympic Games and “Rise To The Moment”, which was the Paralympic Official Team Song for the 2000 and 2004 Games.
Late 2006 saw Mike in the home of country music, Nashville Tennessee. He had a swag of songs he’d written over the years that he had always wanted to record. “Nashville musicians continue a skill tradition that is like a living culture handed down and improved on from generation to generation”, says Mike, “It was a daunting task for me but the courtesy and respect shown by these professionals was something unexpected.” Mike brought these music tracks back to Melbourne where he started on the vocals. It was a big job. If it was to be a Nashville record Mike had to have a Nashville twang. So with Mike’s brother Doug helping him as producer, he set out to find somewhere between Nashville and Melbourne. The album is titled COUNTRY TO COUNTRY and is available now through Shock Records.
Another aspect of Mike is his live performances and motivational speaking. Mike is the driving force behind The Mike Brady Band. His band is one of the hottest corporate acts in Australia.
When Mike gives a talk, he takes the audience on a journey through his early days as a young immigrant kid, through to the exciting teen years as a member of MPD Ltd. He talks of his rise in economic circumstances as a music writer and then to the reasons he felt the need to leave it all behind for a career in business and entrepreneurialism. During Mike’s talks, he uses his music and jingles to help tell the story about the lessons he has learnt. Mike puts great emphasis on the benefits of staying close to what one knows and the power of fighting back and winning.