Music

Dave Graney & Clare Moore: still hip

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

In Terry Southern’s classic short story You’re Too Hip, Baby, a white hipster hangs around the jazz clubs in Paris in the 1950s, desperately trying to ingratiate himself with the Black musicians. They quickly see through the schmuck, blowing him off with the snappy comeback.

It’s an unlikely premise for a song. But in 1993, 30 years after Southern’s story was published in Esquire, Australian musician Dave Graney and his band, the Coral Snakes, came out with their own version. You’re Just Too Hip, Baby was slinky and sly, with Graney adding a withering putdown of his own: “You take a feather from every bird you see – you’ll never fly!”

The song catapulted Graney from the margins to the edge of the mainstream, despite being completely at odds with the prevailing trends of the time. “We were never after an indie sound,” Graney says. “I think we were quite influenced by our time in the UK, hearing lots of R&B music. We came back to Australia and it was mad for hard rock.”

You’re Just Too Hip, Baby led the album Night Of The Wolverine, which marks its 30th anniversary this month. As announced on Thursday morning, the Coral Snakes – guitarist Rod Hayward, keyboard player Robin Casinader and drummer, percussionist and Graney’s life partner, Clare Moore – are making a rare reunion for a celebratory run of shows.… Read more..

Dave Graney & Clare Moore: still hip Read More »

Mo’Ju: Oro, Plata, Mata

Music / / 3 minutes of reading

It’s often forgotten that the Greek tragedy of Midas, the man with the golden touch, is actually a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga – the Filipino-Wiradjuri artist better known as Mo’Ju, formerly Mojo Juju – has not forgotten the lesson. On their fourth album Oro, Plata, Mata, Mo’Ju dedicates a song to the mythical king of Phrygia: “I won’t worship at your phoney idols,” they sing.

Some background to this high-concept album is necessary: Oro, Plata, Mata was a 1982 film made by Mo’Ju’s late uncle, the celebrated Filipino director Peque Gallaga. The title literally translates as Gold, Silver, Death – drawn from the Spanish Filipino architectural superstition that the design components of a house (especially staircases) should not be in multiples of three. The film’s three acts follow this theme: from luxury to retreat to ill fortune.

In its title and structure, Mo’Ju’s album is an homage to Gallaga. The three tracks representing the title are short, eerie and near-identical snippets, after which follow three songs each: (Oro): Gold, Money, Midas; (Plata): Something To Believe In, Bran Nue Wurld, Change Has To Come; (Mata): The Future, World Would End and Swan Song.… Read more..

Mo’Ju: Oro, Plata, Mata Read More »

A conversation with Jack Thompson

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

Before he became one of Australia’s best-loved actors, Jack Thompson had already been many things. At the age of 15, he became a jackaroo in the Northern Territory, working on the remote cattle station of Elkedra. There, he says, he observed a life that no longer exists. At camp, he was the only white person among the adult Alyawarra men.

It was fine preparation for his cinematic work in the 1970s and early 80s when he became an icon of the Australian New Wave, taking leading and supporting roles in classics including Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Breaker Morant (1980) and The Man From Snowy River (1982).

It also made him an obvious choice to record a voiceover for Our Country, a 40-screen, 360-degree celebration of Australia’s natural landscape and wildlife by Australian Geographic, in partnership with Tourism Australia. Curated by Karina Holden, and now open in Brisbane, it collates the work of 25 cinematographers who spent a combined 100,000 hours in the field.

Now 82, Thompson lives in northern New South Wales. He spoke to Guardian Australia in good humour – and with that distinctive voice intact.

Tell us about Our Country.… Read more..

A conversation with Jack Thompson Read More »

Jen Cloher: on being human

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

There is a well-known Māori proverb: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. Translated, it means “I am the river, the river is me”. For the Māori of Aotearoa, rivers are roads, supermarkets, home. The proverb can also be applied to fluidity and continuity; a recognition that change is part of being human.

I Am The River, The River Is Me is also the title the Melbourne/Naarm-based singer-songwriter Jen Cloher has given to their fifth album. It was an album born of intense upheaval: breaking up with former partner Courtney Barnett in 2018 led to the dissolution of their band, while the pandemic gave them time to think and reflect about who they were.

Cloher now officially identifies as non-binary, with the pronouns they/she. On their last album, Cloher wrote a song called Strong Woman, a homage to their matrilineal line: “Proud my mother wanted respect more than love / and her mother taught her that she could want for more,” the lyrics declare.

“I’m very happily ‘she’, and I’m ‘she’ as I acknowledge the incredible line of women that I come through,” Cloher says. “I will always keep ‘she’ in my identification because of the honour and the great responsibility that I carry coming through that bloodline of extraordinary people.”… Read more..

Jen Cloher: on being human Read More »

Paul Kelly: “I never heard back from Warnie”

Music / / 5 minutes of reading

For a brief moment in the mid 1980s, when huge crowds packed Australian sporting stadiums for 50-over cricket matches, signs reading “Like Wow – Wipeout!” began appearing in the outer, usually when a six sailed into the crowd. It was a reference to the hit song by the Hoodoo Gurus. Singer Dave Faulkner told an interviewer that he was touched, because Australia’s real rock stars were, in his view, our sporting heroes.

Paul Kelly, a longtime admirer of Faulkner, would agree. On his new album People – part of an ongoing series of thematic compilations of the singer-songwriter’s work – there are no less than four songs about athletes: Every Day My Mother’s Voice tells the story of Indigenous AFL champion Adam Goodes; Every Step Of The Way honours his peer Eddie Betts; and there are odes to cricketers Shane Warne and Don Bradman.

Kelly, a genuine sporting tragic, admits that he can get as starstruck meeting athletes just as others might get starstruck by musicians. Once, he spied tennis champion Venus Williams at Prahran pool in Melbourne. “She was sitting on a bench and it was like a goddess had come down from heaven and was just sitting among the mortals for a while,” he says.… Read more..

Paul Kelly: “I never heard back from Warnie” Read More »

Fred Negro: King of St Kilda

Music, Pop culture / / 7 minutes of reading

Fred Negro has just knocked off his shift cleaning toilets. One of the best cartoonists in the world – according to some – doesn’t mind his day job. He’s done it for a long time. “It’s just a gig,” he says. “I always wake up early anyway, and I’m finished by 10 or 11.”

Negro, artist and musician, is a Melbourne icon. He is the creator of Pub, the comic strip that ran for decades in street press which chronicled in lurid, scatological and frequently pornographic detail the ratbags and raconteurs of the bayside suburb of St Kilda.

For a long time in the 1990, Negro lived in the suburb’s Esplanade Hotel. “I had the key to the pub. I was like the king of St Kilda! I just had to clean the joint,” he tells me. At the Espy, you could reliably find him drinking and drawing everything going on around him.

The late Rowland S Howard once said you hadn’t made it in Melbourne until you’d appeared in one of Negro’s Pub strips. That was quite something coming from the Birthday Party guitarist, who had his own laneway in St Kilda named after him after his death.… Read more..

Fred Negro: King of St Kilda Read More »

Scroll to Top