Yothu Yindi

Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

At first, all is darkness. There is a hiss of cymbals, followed by a rude bang, thump and wallop. The lights go up. We see the late Australian music mogul Michael Gudinski, sitting at a drum kit, pounding the skins arrhythmically with his hands, making a point at his default setting: maximum volume.

“Well, you can obviously see I can’t play any music,” the Mushroom Records founder bawls in that sandpaper and gravel voice, familiar and weirdly soothing. “And that’s why I’m good at the music business. Because I don’t wanna be a pop or rock star, but HELL, I LIKE WORKING WITH THEM!” He rubs his hands together, ready to deal.

If we believe the galaxy of stars lining up to pay homage in Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story – now in Australian cinemas – Gudinski was bigger than all of them. Australian artists whose careers Gudinski nurtured, including Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Barnes and Paul Kelly, are joined by international heavy-hitters Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, Billy Joel, Sting and the obligatory Dave Grohl.

They paint a picture of the ultimate music fan, tirelessly enthusiastic, driven by art ahead of commerce. But Gudinski was a ruthless businessman first. Ego tells the story of how, over a boozy lunch in 1975, five men stitched up the Melbourne music business via the formation of booking agency Premier Artists, and later the promotions juggernaut Frontier Touring.… Read more..

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The pioneering legacy of No Fixed Address

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

Picture the scene. It’s 1982 and Australia’s future prime minister Bob Hawke – then the shadow minister for industrial relations – has accepted an invitation to launch a mini-album by an emerging Indigenous rock-reggae band called No Fixed Address. Hawke’s daughters are fans, and he recognises the importance of both the release and the symbolic gesture of a white politician endorsing it. There’s just one sticking point: the final song is called Pigs.

They’re always on the move

They call them the boys in blue

They’ll kick you in the head

Until they leave you dead

It is difficult to imagine even the current prime minister – a self-confessed music tragic – launching such a provocative release today. But Hawke goes ahead with it, saying the album is great – “but that’s not to say that every man and woman in blue is a thorough bastard”. The band’s drummer and leader, Bart Willoughby, turns around. “Yeah, there are good police out there – we just haven’t met any yet,” he shoots back.

The story of this radical group is told in a new book of the same name by Donald Robertson; on the back cover, Goanna’s Shane Howard describes No Fixed Address as “the tip of the spear” that plunged into the dead heart of middle Australia.… Read more..

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Stephen Cummings’ post-stroke comeback

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

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 – a fixture of Australian music since the late 70s with his band the Sports, then as a revered solo artist – had two sets booked at the Junk Bar, a tiny club in inner Brisbane. While playing, he realised he was having trouble forming chords on his guitar. Indeed, he was having trouble staying upright. He completed the gig, but felt disturbed, and had a sleepless night.

Even so, it wasn’t until he returned to Melbourne and staggered out of the terminal that the seriousness of his condition was immediately apparent to his wife, Kathleen O’Brien. Cummings’s mouth was crooked, and he was struggling to walk. “I’m taking you straight to the Alfred [hospital], you’ve had a stroke,” she told him.

This was in March 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was breaking out in Australia. Cummings had actually been intending to retire: he had turned 65 the previous September, and had just two more gigs booked in Melbourne.… Read more..

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King Stingray: Yolngu surf-rock kings

Music / / 3 minutes of reading

It would be an understatement to bestow the cliche “long-awaited” upon King Stingray’s self-titled debut album. The Yirrkala band from north-east Arnhem Land have already teased us with five singles. The first of them, Hey Wanhaka – which means “what’s happening?” – was released in late 2020; Get Me Out, Milkumana, Camp Dog and Let’s Go have all followed.

Adding to the considerable hype are the band’s bloodlines: the singer, Yirrnga Yunupingu, is the nephew of the Yothu Yindi leader, Dr M Yunupingu, while the guitarist, Roy Kellaway, is the son of the same band’s bass player, Stuart. Both also play in Yothu Yindi themselves.

The five aforementioned singles make up a full half of this album’s 10 tracks, with Get Me Out and Milkumana both nominated for APRA awards as song of the year. They have been all over the airwaves – and deservedly so. The fact that their self-described Yolngu surf-rock will already be familiar to many listeners in no way detracts from this sparkling record.

Indeed, it’s great to have them together in one place, fleshed out by five more songs that sit well alongside one another. Most bands would be proud to have a collection like this on a greatest hits album.… Read more..

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Michael Gudinski 1952-2021

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

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 in Australia changed in a profound way when Mushroom Records – the label he co-founded in 1972 – released Skyhooks’ first album Living In The 70’s (complete with its errant apostrophe) a couple of years later.

Living In The 70’s topped the charts for four months, selling 240,000 copies. Beyond the sales, the album changed perceptions of what Australian music could be. Many of the lyrics (by bass player and songwriter Greg Macainsh) were hyperlocal to Gudinski’s beloved Melbourne.

In many ways, the album was a reflection of Gudinski himself: brash, hyperactive, coarse (more than half its tracks were banned from airplay), unapologetic and funny. It helped that it was released just as the music television show Countdown first appeared in Australian lounge rooms, with the support of Ian “Molly” Meldrum propelling Skyhooks to stardom.

Over the next decade, Mushroom released dozens of albums that presented their own interrogations of Australian life, from the Models’ Local &/Or General (1981) to the Triffids (Born Sandy Devotional, 1986), Hunters & Collectors (Human Frailty, 1986), the Go-Betweens’ 16 Lovers Lane and the Church’s Starfish (both 1988).… Read more..

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Archie Roach critically ill during ARIA performance

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

Singer and songwriter Archie Roach has revealed that he was critically ill at the time of his induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame on 25 November last year, performing from a venue near the hospital with a medical team in tow and an ambulance waiting outside.

Roach has lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years, but it escalated in November. He was admitted to Warrnambool Base Hospital, where he spent some days in intensive care.

He was taken from the hospital in an ambulance to accept the award via a broadcast from the Lighthouse theatre in the south-west Victorian coastal town, where he also performed, with his medical team standing by backstage.

Roach sung his most celebrated song, Took The Children Away, sitting down and breathing through a nasal cannula, before being taken back to hospital for several more days.

“It wasn’t looking too good for a while,” Roach said, speaking to the Guardian ahead of rescheduled dates touring what is likely to be his final album, Tell Me Why. “Fluid had gone from my legs to [around] my heart, so I had to go to ICU for a while, while they tried to get me under control.… Read more..

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