Author name: Andrew Stafford

Girls to the front

Sometime in the mid-1990s, at around four in the morning, Melbourne music teacher Stephanie Bourke’s phone rang. It was Courtney Love, the lead singer of Hole. One of the students at Bourke’s famed Rock & Roll High School, Brody Dalle – who would go on to fame with the Distillers – had come to Love’s attention. […]

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Michael Gudinski 1952-2021

For more than 45 years Michael Gudinski, who died on Monday aged 68, was a dominant, domineering, polarising but above all passionate figure in Australia’s cultural landscape. He lived and breathed Australian music. Everyone who met Gudinski had a story to tell about him, not all of which are printable. What is indisputable is that life

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Powderfinger: Unreleased 1998-2010

Albums of Odds & Sods (the name the Who gave to one of the first compilations of rarities, released in 1974 in an attempt to short-circuit bootleggers) are often more interesting than best-of collections. While the latter are usually predictable roundups for casual fans of an artist, albums of outtakes, B-sides and strays are for the diehards.

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Bones Hillman 1958-2020

The first time I saw Wayne Stevens – better known by his stage name Bones Hillman – was at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on 26 September 1987, making his debut as Midnight Oil’s new bass player. Tall and upright, he was standing to the left of the band’s even taller singer, Peter Garrett, who introduced him

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AFL Grand Final 2020: Dustin Martin

It was the 17th minute of the last quarter, with Geelong’s Sam Simpson sprawled out on the turf and awaiting a stretcher, when the chant started from the Richmond cheer squad on the eastern side of the ground. It was reminiscent of the crowds that roared Dennis Lillee in to bowl to terrified Englishmen in

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