Barney and the Data Drongos: A Zap-tastic Rock ‘n’ Roll Saga
It was a scorcher of an arvo when I caught up with Barney Dawson, the gravelly-voiced frontman of the ageing rock outfit, Data Drongos. At 60 years young, Barney looked every bit the iconic Aussie muso – adorned in lived-in flannel, acid-wash jeans, and a battered akubra firmly planted atop his wild mane of salt-and-pepper curls.
“G’day mate!” He boomed with a mischievous grin. “You’ll never guess the latest drama we’ve been dealing with…”
As I settled in with a cold tinnie, Barney regaled me with a tale so bizarre, so thoroughly rock ‘n’ roll, that I could scarcely believe my ears

“It all started when we tried using this app called Zapier to automate our social media posts,” he began, already chuckling at the memory. “Seemed like a ripper idea at first – no more stuffing around with manual updates, just hit a button and bam! Our posts go out to all the fans.”
Barney’s longtime bandmate Davo, resident tech wizard and owner of the group’s most impressive mullet, chimed in gruffly. “Should’ve known it wouldn’t be that simple with those drongos involved.”
According to the pair, their woes began when they attempted to implement Zapier’s “Filter” feature to fine-tune which posts actually went live. With years of touring under their belts, the Data Drongos had cultivated a signature style – each update laced with in-jokes, teenage-angst lyrics, and of course, Barney’s “trademark” dad puns.
“We had all these custom fields set up,” Barney elaborated through wheezing laughter. “Hashtags, emojis, the whole complicated mess! But for some reason, Zapier kept dropping those juicy details like a clumsy busker drops his tip jar.”
No matter how they tweaked the settings, Zapier stubbornly ignored the custom fields, much to the band’s growing frustration.
“It was like arming a air guitar with a piece of day-old Vegemite toast,” Davo groused, flashing a rare hint of his tech-savviness. “Utterly useless!”
With roadies shouting and tantrums narrowly avoided, the Data Drongos found themselves at a crossroads: surrender to the technological overlords, or take matters into their own calloused hands.
The answer, as any true blue Aussie rocker would attest, was written in the stars.
“We had to manually map each individual field ourselves,” Barney said, slapping his knee gleefully. “Oi, now there’s a coding nightmare that’d make a Silicon Valley developer cry like a bogan at an U2 concert!”
Visions of furrowed brows, hurled beverages, and inappropriate language best left unquoted danced mercifully across my mind as the pair recounted their mastery of custom pill mapping. For weeks, they toiled through line after line of fields, gradually molding Zapier’s unruly filter into submission.
“Ya know that feeling after you’ve laid the final, perfected track in the studio?” Barney asked rhetorically. “Total bliss, mate. Absolute nirvana. That’s what it was like when we finally whipped Zapier’s filter into shape!”
At long last, the Data Drongos could trigger zaps containing not just their latest gig details, but every utterly unprofessional hashtag, uncouth remark, and soul-shredding dad pun their hearts desired. A hard-won triumph, if there ever was one.
As our interview shuddered to a close amongst roaring laughter and clinking tinnies, Barney patted my shoulder with wizened fondness.
“Let this be a lesson to all you young zap-wranglers out there,” he chuckled, words laced with the hard-earned wisdom of a life spent rocking. “If you want to reach your full potential and really make those workflows sing, you’ve gotta be ready to roll up your sleeves and do some bloody custom mapping!”
Davo raised his lager in a sagely nod of agreement, a roguish grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Either that, or just give up altogether and settle for being a run-of-the-mill triple air guitar champion like the rest of us gobbers.”
Truer words were never spoken by men who had walked Zapier’s harrowing filter road and lived to tell the tale. As I said my farewells and headed off into the shimmering Sydney evening, one thought kept rattling around my brain:
If there’s anything the world of rock ‘n’ roll has taught us, it’s that some workflows were simply meant to be unleashed, custom fields and all. No filters required.