Concerts

Well, we’ve been spared a flashy arrival in a huge fibreglass egg and a dress made entirely of animal flesh, but Lady Gaga hasn’t failed to make some waves while she’s been in town.

On Wednesday night she performed for an adoring crowd of her ‘little monsters’ at Sydney Town Hall. It was all quite sedate, for a Gaga-gig. A flesh-coloured bedazzled onesie and an aqua wig was a flashy costume, sure, but it was no meat dress.

And then, there it was. The lady herself, resplendent in a black vinyl mermaid tail, emerged from backstage as only one with their legs bound together in a somewhat restrictive costume could; in a wheelchair.

Continue reading "I reckon Lady Gaga was wheelie, wheelie awesome" »

The end is nigh, well, nigh-ish.

In a farewell tour that would do John Farnham proud, Powderfinger will bid a long, slow goodbye over the next two months, kicking off their Sunsets tour in Newcastle tonight. (Well until their reunion in 10 years, but we’ll gloss over that.)

Close to 300,000 Aussies will take in a show in the tour which winds up in Brissie on November 13, but the big question with seven studio albums to choose from, is which song should be their final one?

Continue reading "Which song should Powderfinger sign off with?" »

Thousands of old people, watching a group of old men dance around in front of the Hogwarts Express. This is rock and roll.

Almost 50,000 sets of wrinkled fingers twist into pathetic hand-grimaces – weak parodies of the famous devil horns.

The Hogwarts Express is now being ridden by a gigantic inflatable caricature of Barbara Windsor - with breasts that are literally bigger than my Dad’s car. Bigger than the 4WDs owned by half of the audience.

Continue reading "Highway To Hell, first stop Redfern, then Lidcombe" »

Forget Hank Williams singing Move It On Over in 1947. And that ground- breaking 1939 boogie tune, Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama by Buddy Jones doesn’t get a look in. We can also forget Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with first talking about rock and roll music in 1951.

A controversial take on just when rock music was born is the basis of an equally controversial BBC program being shown on ABC television, The Seven Ages of Rock.

The series producer William Naylor reckons the program has finally nailed the previously unspoken truth that rock was born when Jimi Hendrix first performed in London on September 24, 1966.

Continue reading "Seven ages of rock will have you arguing for ages" »

Rogue’s Gallery lived up to its name.

It was meant to be the high point of the 2010 Sydney Festival but appeared on the horizon as a rolling, shambolic ship of celebrity vagabonds in sloppy seas. Perhaps that was the point. You can’t help thinking the early days of the rum colony that became NSW ran along similar lines. Actually, it still does.

Nonetheless, after watching Marianne Faithful struggle to read the lyrics for two songs she’s either beyond remembering or couldn’t be bothered to learn, many left feeling pillaged by the $145 ticket price. They stood outdoors for 150 minutes at the Opera House forecourt in thunderstorms and intermittent rain.

Continue reading "Was this the worst concert Australia has ever seen?" »

According to the letter of the law, the hottest act on this year’s Big Day Out roadshow is a criminal.

The remix demigod Girl Talk, whose output comprises nothing but densely layered cuts of other people’s music, is in flagrant breach of current copyright law every time he puts out an album.

The Jackson 5, Queen, Nine Inch Nails, Public Enemy and Kelly Clarkson are just five of the hundreds of artists sampled and blended with one another on his latest record, 2008’s Feed the Animals.

Continue reading "Hottest act at the Big Day Out is an innocent criminal" »

Here’s proof of the abundance of great new music. The great benefit of those end of the year lists of favourite songs/albums/bands for the previous 12 months is that there’s always some gold in them crooked ventures.

The end of 2009 was no different. A friend in Sydney tipped me to the Girls and I still don’t know how I missed their eponymous debut. It’s been on high rotation since.

As has the Canadian band Metric - their CD Fantasies came to my notice when someone picked their song Sick Muse as one of the tunes of 2009. It’s solid, art-pop-rock, New Pornographers stuff and worth a listen. Metric was a band I’d half heard but never focussed on. I’m making up for lost time now.

Continue reading "The best bands you’ve never heard of" »

They say attack is the best form of defence and so I should have expected the very personal attack from Britney’s tour promoter Paul Dainty in today’s Australian.

You see, I was the journalist who wrote on Friday night that fans were walking out of her concert.

``It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard,’’ Paul Dainty told The Oz. ``I’m so angry. We can take heat if there’s something wrong and people can review shows badly - that’s something you have to live with - but to say people stormed out of the show was an absolute fabrication.’’

Continue reading "The truth about Britney" »

Whoa whoa whoa! Australia, hold up. Let’s tread carefully here… do we really want to induce another Britney Spears meltdown?

Because that’s what we’re skirting with this teacup tempest over the somewhat faded pop star’s decision to lip synch the bulk of each stop on her current concert tour.

Since kicking off the Australian leg of her 60-date comeback roadshow at Perth’s Burswood Dome last week, Spears has faced a page one Daily Telegraph hitpiece, reports of WA fans demanding refunds (a claim the venue denied in a statement) and the sort of media harassment usually reserved for Dennis Ferguson.

Continue reading "Let’s not give Britney another nervous breakdown" »

The former Soviet country of Turkmenistan isn’t known for its trendsetting qualities. It’s dry. It’s cold and ugly. It exports lots of cotton. Not what you’d call a world power.

But in 2005 it became the first country in the world to take a strong stand, not against fascism, but lip-synching.

Declared a great crime against the culture of the proud nation, the late President Saparmurat Niyazov banned miming in all forms _ concerts, TV, even private weddings.

Continue reading "And in news just to hand from war-torn Britneystan…" »

One of the greatest bands in the history of the galaxy is touring Australia next year to play one of the greatest albums ever recorded, hands down, in its entirety.

The Pixies will be playing their 1989 album Doolittle all the way through in one of those inspired classic album tours, like Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation tour last year. The tour is scheduled for March.

For the uninitiated, the Pixies hail from Boston, Massachusetts and recorded two of the most influential records of the late 1980s - their debut Surfer Rosa and their master work Doolittle, the impossibly catchy first single from which, Here Comes Your Man, is embedded above for your listening pleasure.

Continue reading "Here comes your band" »