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Paul Kelly: “Christmas music gets a bad rap”

To understand why Paul Kelly would make a Christmas album nearly 30 records deep into his career, it helps to know how he spends his own festive season. Kelly is one of eight siblings and, traditionally, the gatherings feature a large and diverse cast; “the odd stray, new and old flames, gossip, singing”, as he wrote in his memoir, How To Make Gravy, “and much discussion and planning of food”.

Branches of Kelly’s family extend through Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. “We’ve all got our children and our children’s children, so if we all got together now it might be too big,” he says. Usually, there’s a get-together on Christmas Eve, where carols will be sung, before people drift back to their own camps and to in-laws for the day itself.

But this year Kelly’s eldest brother, Martin – father of nephew and bandmate Dan – won’t be there. He died on 4 December last year, aged 69, after a short illness. “We were fortunate to get up to Queensland last year just before the borders closed,” Kelly says. “It was a really close call, but we saw him two days before he died, and stayed on for the funeral, so we were very fortunate to be able to do that.”… Read more..

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Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine: Get Yer Dag On!

DAMIAN COWELL was the guy in TISM. We know because he told us so (in a song called I Was The Guy In TISM, recorded with the DC3). Anonymity can be a tough mask to shed. Think of Kiss without the war paint, or the Residents without the eyeballs: what lies beneath can only be a disappointment. Years ago, a friend of mine ripped off Ron Hitler-Barassi’s balaclava in a mosh pit. Stupidly, I asked him who it was. “Some guy,” he replied. Who did I expect?

But amid the constant clamour for TISM to reform (how many original members would it take? Who would know? Would anyone care?) Cowell, the artist formerly known as Humphrey B Flaubert, has been quietly building a catalogue that’s not far short of his old band. And if people aren’t as interested in listening to an advertising copywriter in his mid 50s as they are in TISM, maybe they’ll listen to him alongside a supergroup featuring the cream of Australian satire. Hence the Disco Machine.

The first Disco Machine album boasted cameos from Shaun Micallef, Tony Martin, Kathy Lette, John Safran and the Bedroom Philosopher, along with a bunch of other celebrities and fellow musicians: Lee Lin Chin, Julia Zemiro, Tim Rogers and Kate Miller-Heidke.… Read more..

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