The Metropolitan Hotel, Adelaide - September 27, 2013

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Tonight was a passionate night of balance, power, and space. Each group told us stories, ran films in our heads.

The streets are empty. Empty as in, it's Tuesday night. Except it's Friday night. Where is everyone?

Just the previous night, the suburbs decanted some 10,000 to land like a torrent of ants in Adelaide's great dome of the popular people's front to see Rihanna, who is, I am told, a superstar. From overseas.

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Annandale Hotel - August 1, 2006

If you don't like slobbering, breathless gushes, leave now. OK? I've already copped a broadside from someone about one review of a gig this week - and the fucker wasn't even at the show - but here goes...

What an in-fucking-credibly amazing show. Just about the best thing I've seen this year. The Stooges beats it (although that was surreal an experience I'm still not sure it happened). Soulful, rocking, energetic and dynamic. Perfectly paced and a testimony to a band at the peak of its considerable powers. Cruisey and light at the get go, it shaped as a righteously loud and grooving way to ease us all through a Tuesday night.

Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, Australia - June 22 and 23, 2013

My dad used to say that nothing was free. There's always a catch. There's a reason that nice man on the street is giving away Bibles, Robert.

He was right, of course. Those free music magazines you pick up for the what's on this weekend guide, the reviews of pub food, new beers and pricey wine, they make their living from the adverts. Stop putting in the stuff that the people with money to spend want to see and they'll stop bending at the creaky knees to pick it up. And the advertisers start to wonder why they're paying four or five hundred bucks a week. Self-evident, yeah? You don't change a money-making formula unless you can make more.

Craic As It Happened
By John Foy
(Past Present Future/Skull Printworks)

Tis the season for confessional show-and-tell Australian music books. Journalist Stuart Coupe had a shot with the entertaining “Shake Some Action”, and then underground label head-turned- mainstream industry publishing chief, Roger Grierson, gave us the rollicking “Lowbrow”. Now it’s John Foy’s turn.

Foy spent many years as a behind-the-scenes operative in the febrile underbelly of the Australian underground music scene. He kicked off in retail, made a mark as a poster designer and then became the driving force behind the Redeye and Blackeye record labels.

Like his mate Roger Grierson, he’s never been a household name, but if you bought or heard a record by Beasts of Bourbon, The Clouds, Deniz Tek, The Crystal Set, The Cruel Sea, Kim Salmon and The Surrealists and even Radio Birdman in the mid ‘80s or early ‘90s, you entered his orbit. Redeye gave the bands wide distribution via a hook-up with the multi-national Polygram/Phonogram major label operation.

Blues Portrait: A Profile of The Australian Blues Scene Volume 5
By Pauline Bailey (Pauline Baileyu Art)

You could call Melbourne visual artist and author Pauline Bailey a “blues preacher” but James Blood Ulmer got there first with an album title. “Blues evangelist” works better anyway.

Pauline’s been self-publishing this series of soft cover “Blues Portrait” books since 2019 but the title is a misnomer. “Blues” is a tag in such broad use that it’s slipped its shackles almost to the point of redundancy. It means many things to most people.

The Blues were born into impoverished and downtrodden circumstances but are better characterised as a feeling than a school of academic thought. As the author points out, there’s traditional blues and there’s music that’s been influenced by the blues, Her books span both.

Travel In Peace. Word and Image
by Jeremy Gluck
(Incunabula)

You remember the 1970s and 1980s. Band appears with different, infectious single. Then a few more. Then ... they develop, they change direction ... and finally splinter off. Some maintain their creative imperative, releasing occasional (often astonishing) items which don't make the hit parade but... often resonate far more satisfyingly than those callow original singles. 

It's as if the relentless click-clack-clatter of their internal engine just cannot be stopped, and they jump tracks in search of a different destination, another way home...

Now, to change the subject completely...