May 2018

Marlon Williams: Make way for love

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

The breakup album is a standard trope of rock music. Bob Dylan set the benchmark in 1975 with Blood On The Tracks; Beck’s Sea Change (2002) is a famous more modern example. Now Marlon Williams – the 28-year-old Melbourne-based New Zealander with the golden throat – has offered his own contribution to the form with his second album, Make Way For Love.

And Williams is making no secret of the album’s source: the dissolution of his three-year relationship with another acclaimed New Zealander, Aldous Harding, in December 2016. He even coaxed her to sing on the album’s penultimate song, the duet Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore.

“I think she saw how important it was to me, more than anything, and that song, more than any other, expresses a feeling I couldn’t put into her words any other way,” Williams says. “I’m actually telling her something in that song, and she’s responding through my words in her voice, so it’s a really important song for me.”

After a long apprenticeship in his home country, Williams burst into international view with his debut solo album in 2015. He was acclaimed for his storytelling gift and stunning voice, a tremulous instrument that’s often been compared to Roy Orbison.… Read more..

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Ian Moss: The barefoot guitarist

Music / / 9 minutes of reading

Early in Jimmy Barnes’ memoir Working Class Man, he tells an anecdote about Cold Chisel guitarist Ian Moss. In 1974 the band, formed in Adelaide a year earlier, was living on a farm outside of Armidale in northern NSW. One day, in the middle of winter, the group went into town leaving Moss behind to practice while wearing, in Barnes’ recollection, only a towel.

Late that night, as it started to snow, the band returned and were startled to spot Moss ahead of them in the headlights, miles from the homestead by Barnes’ estimation, wandering starkers in the middle of the dirt road. “Mossy was always on another planet,” Barnes concludes, “but we loved him.”

At home in Sydney’s inner west, where he lives with his partner, jazz singer Margeaux Rolleston and their son Julian, 14, Moss seems perfectly earth-bound, albeit shy. A white Gretsch guitar sits on a stand next to sheet music for the torch song You’ve Changed. On the dining table is a booklet from the funeral of the late AC/DC guitarist, Malcolm Young.

On a shelf behind him sits Barnes’ book, which he admits he hasn’t finished. So, what actually happened that night in 1974? At a minimum, you’d think finding Moss in such a state would warrant an immediate trip to hospital for hypothermia.… Read more..

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Open letter to the Queensland Premier re voluntary euthanasia

Australian Politics, Miscellaneous, Qld Politics / / 5 minutes of reading

This is an open letter to the Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, the health minister, Steven Miles, and MP for Maiwar Michael Berkman (mylocal member). The letter was written last Monday; I am posting a slightly edited version here. The original letter was also sent to the state opposition leader Deb Frecklington and shadow health minister Ros Bates.

I’m writing to you in relation to the issue of assisted dying/voluntary euthanasia in Queensland.

On Sunday I visited my mother Sue in her aged care facility. Sue is 70, and is in the final stage of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which initially forced her to take stress leave (and eventually, her resignation) from her position at Queensland Health in 2002, 15 years ago. She was formally diagnosed with her illness in late 2011, nine years after developing discernable symptoms, though they were not recognised for what they were at the time.

Sue had considerable expertise in the field of dementia beyond her own lived experience. She spent over a decade in the senior levels of the department, writing and administering aged care policy, and many years before that working with elderly people in the community in the employ of Blue Care.

Last Sunday I sat with her for an hour.… Read more..

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The Clouds/Falling Joys, The Triffid 5 February 2018

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

Back at the beginning of the 1990s, two mixed-gender Australian bands looked set to have long and successful careers ahead of them. Falling Joys and the Clouds shared many things: most often stages, including at festivals, but also management and female singer-songwriters – two, in Clouds’ case – with unique voices and visions. Both peaked early with classic debut albums, but were unable to sustain their momentum.

Now both are back, on a joint tour (delayed halfway through by a bout of food poisoning suffered by the Clouds’ Tricia Young) that’s all but sold out. There’s clear affection for both bands – the Triffid is full when Falling Joys take the stage just before 8.30pm – but there’s also some cobwebs to be shaken off: the power-pop gem Shelter lurches to a premature conclusion, and Puppy Drink has a false start before the band realises they’re in the wrong key.

Not that anyone minds too much. The crowd – mostly peers of the band, though a few parents have brought their teenage offspring along – is just happy to have them back. As we should be: Suzie Higgie’s songs still exude warmth and depth, and while the songs from 1990’s Wish List still shine brightest (Shot In Europe; Jennifer), the selections from the following albums Psychohum and Aerial underline how much her voice has been missed.… Read more..

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Memories not enough to save Melbourne’s Festival Hall

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

Like millions of others, I have fond memories of live entertainment at Festival Hall. Sure, the room was lacking in atmosphere, bonhomie, charm and sound quality – almost anything, actually, that makes a great music venue – but that doesn’t stop me treasuring the experiences of seeing the Ramones in their late-career dotage and Nirvana at their absolute apex, despite Kurt Cobain being obviously ill.

So it was a sad day in Brisbane when, in 2003, the building was demolished to make way for the construction of an apartment block. We’d been through it all before too many times, most notoriously when the beloved Cloudland Ballroom was knocked down in the dead of night in 1982 by the Deen Brothers, the premier/hillbilly dictator Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s demolition firm of choice. Their slogan was “All we leave behind are the memories”.

For Melbourne, the potential loss of its Festival Hall for another proposed block of flats has nothing to do with acoustic or architectural aesthetics – unlike, for example, the historic Palace Theatre. Like Brisbane’s version, Festival Hall was designed for sporting spectacles, mainly boxing. It was the simultaneous arrival of television and rock & roll that resulted in the room throwing open its doors to live music, most famously the Beatles in 1964, as also happened in Brisbane.… Read more..

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