Since opening this site, we have received more corespondence about Zero Zero than any other project. The album was recorded in 1982 during Mike's round the world voyage aboard his motor yacht 'Braemar'. It was originally commissioned by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) as a live concert to be performed at the Sydney Opera House to celebrate their 50th anniversary. It was, however, actually recorded as an ambitious studio production directed by Mike and Australian John Eastway. Zero Zero's ambitious graphics were part of Mike's original concept, and his sketches for the sets, costumes and animations began at sea on the voyage from Los Angeles to Australia via Honolulu and Fiji. When he arrived in Sydney he had a nearly completed score and a set of quite advanced drawings from which to work in the production of the piece.

The production was dogged by union problems, and cancelled twice before eventually being produced as a co-production between Mike's own company and the ABC. The weird deal stuck with the Australian Equity Union was that two quite separate productions would be made; one with Mike playing the lead part of "Number 17" and one with an Australian (Graeme Watson, the choreographer) playing "Number 17". This was in order to preserve work for Australian Equity members but ended up creating artistic havoc, and double the expense for the ABC, who scrapped two operas in order to make the show, because of budget restrictions. The deal deprived several hundred equity members of employment in the operas and meant that every shot of the TV show had to be recorded twice, once with Mike in the lead and once with Graeme in the lead. The version with Mike (the international version) was agreed never to be shown in Australia, and the version with Graham was agreed never to be shown outside of Australia.

Thankfully, Australian equity is a far different organisation these days than it was then, and insane deals of this type are hopefully a thing of the past.

The show was transmitted on Channel 4 in the UK (Mike having bought the international rights to the production from the ABC), and when initially transmitted only one side of the stereo soundtrack was broadcast! Channel 4 therefore retransmitted a few days later and over the years the show has built up something of a cult following. The duration is 42 minutes, and it takes the form of a visual and musical 'trip' into some time zone in the past or future, where love has been abolished and is regarded as a disease to be avoided. Our hero, Number 17 ("but you can call me Ralph") falls in love with Number 36, and is eventually committed to an Emotional Decontamination Centre called Zero Zero. The name Zero Zero is therefore completely coincidental and does not refer in any way to either the year Zero of Polpot's Khmer Rouge, nor is it a reference to the year 2000.

JULIANNE WHITE AS NUMBER 36 (Who Mike met on this project, and who became Mike's wife in 1985)

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EXTRACTS FROM TEXT FROM THE ALBUM/VIDEO

1. Introduction

Mother: Oh, isn't it beautiful! or he, isn't he beautiful I should say. And he'll be number seventeen of generation forty-three. He looks like a number seventeen, doesn't he? Something about the eyes. Everyone in the corridor is talking about it, - even across the campus, right out to unit ninety-five. I think they're probably a bit jealous actually. So few people in our unit get the chance. He comes from eighty percent western scientific stock, but they say he has a sprinkling of the crossbred artistic balance from generation twenty-six; - which, let's face it, was a very good year.

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System 605

I was born number 17,
Romeo Delta 59,
System 605,
Unit 91.
But you can call me Ralph;
My friends do.
And you can come and meet my mother,
Any day you like,
On System 605,
Unit 91.

She cooks a mean hamburger,
She learned from a leaflet,
Better than the kind that you get from a take-away.

She cooks a mean hamburger,
She learned from a leaflet,
Better than the kind that you get from a take-away.
I was born number 17,
Romeo Delta 59,
System 605,
Unit 91.

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Love Makes You Crazy

I was reading in a history book,
Before the seventh war,
They used to have a thing that they called love,
That we don't have any more.
I don't know the feeling,
But I'm told it was an evil thing,
It used to make you crazy and fall down,
No one knows what it could bring.

Love makes you crazy,
Love makes you cry,
Love made them crazy in days gone by.
Love makes you crazy,
That's what you say,
Love made them crazy in the olden days.

It must have seized the body and the mind
Like a strong disease,
Another plague that science has erased
Even from the memory.
Or maybe evolution wiped it out
So just the strong survived,
And no-one with that feeling could exist
In the race to stay alive.

Love makes you crazy,
Love makes you cry,
Love makes them crazy in days gone by.
Love makes you crazy,
That's what they say,
Love made them crazy in the olden days.

Love makes you crazy,
Love makes you cry,
Love made them crazy in days gone by.
Love makes you crazy,
That's what they say,
Love made them crazy in the olden days.

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Produced, arranged and conducted by Mike Batt.
© 1982 CBS Records. Epic is a registered trademark of CBS Inc.