When Kate Ceberano played the Australian Made tour with her band I’m Talking in the summer of 1986-87, she was already a veteran of the Australian music industry at barely 20 years old. The concert series, which saw Ceberano and her band rubbing shoulders with INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls, Mental as Anything, Models and the […]
Kate Ceberano: still brave, still burning Read More »
Stephen Cummings was disembarking from a flight into Brisbane when everything went sideways. He steadied himself against the wall of the aerobridge. An anxious flyer, he assumed it was the after-effects of a Valium he’d taken to calm his nerves, and that it would wear off ahead of that night’s performance. The veteran Australian singer-songwriter
Stephen Cummings’ post-stroke comeback Read More »
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,
Dave Graney & Clare Moore: still hip Read More »
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
Michael Gudinski 1952-2021 Read More »
In his “mongrel memoir” How To Make Gravy, Paul Kelly has a chapter on circle songs – songs that are built on a chord progression that cycles in the same order from beginning to end. The melody may vary, but there’s no bridge or change in the chorus to break the circle. Wide Open Road, by the
Camp Cope: How To Socialise & Make Friends Read More »
There’s an old, inconclusively attributed aphorism that talent borrows and genius steals. Genius is a word used far too loosely, particularly in the arts, but there’s no doubting this: Melbourne singer–songwriter Jen Cloher is a thief of the highest order. Or this: that her fourth, self-titled album is a work of real brilliance, a brave,
Jen Cloher: Jen Cloher review Read More »