Billy Bragg - Notes from Pig City

Hey ho, let’s go, DJ Albo

On Tuesday, Australia’s freshly minted prime minister, Anthony Albanese, drew on the words of a songwriter – and committed socialist – in announcing his first ministry. “Just because you’re going forwards doesn’t mean I’m going backwards,” Albanese said. He was citing one of Billy Bragg’s early songs, To Have And To Have Not, a bitter attack on inequality and privilege. Bragg said he was thrilled for his “old mate”, whom he has known since the 1990s.

Albanese has made a habit of casually dropping song lyrics into his public appearances. At the beginning of the election campaign, he quoted the Ramones’ rallying cry “Hey ho let’s go” (from arguably that band’s best-known song, Blitzkrieg Bop). In 2013, he enjoyed the rare distinction of programming the Australian music television staple Rage, alongside former foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop and Greens leader Adam Bandt.

While not as image-obsessed as his predecessor Scott Morrison, whose background was in marketing, there’s no denying that “DJ Albo” is part of the Albanese brand. Unlike Morrison, though, Albanese is not just mugging for the cameras. Quoting a dedicated activist and polemicist like Bragg tells us that Albanese’s music fandom goes beyond image: it speaks to who he is – or at least, how he defines himself.… Read more..

Kevin “Bloody” Carmody releases archive avalanche

Music, Qld Politics / April 25, 2016 / 5 minutes of reading

South-east of Stanthorpe, in the granite belt that straddles the border of the apple-growing country of Queensland and New South Wales, there’s a small property, once part of a much larger orchard, with a classically rustic farmhouse and a huge insulated shed where the produce used to be stored.

The shed is now a musical Aladdin’s Cave. Rare gig posters from the 1980s and ’90s festoon the walls. There’s a drum kit set up for occasional gigs in a room that could comfortably fit 200; another in a smaller studio anteroom, and practically everything else inside – from butter knives to oil drums – is an instrument waiting to be played.

This is where Kev Carmody – most famous for his iconic song co-written with Paul Kelly, From Little Things Big Things Grow – recorded his first music in a decade. This is how he describes it: “It’s a good little bloody space. Crikey, better than those bloody sterile bloody huge bloody studios they have in bloody major cities!”

A conversation with Carmody is invariably long and liberally peppered with such vernacular. Born in 1946 to an Aboriginal mother and Irish father, he grew up droving on the Darling Downs, and remained illiterate until finding his way into university in 1978.… Read more..

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