Gigs

Half a dozen years ago I regularly attended concerts in the dark and smaller halls of inner-Brisbane with a guy named Mick. We had very similar musical tastes and if Lambchop, Vic Chesnutt or Micah P. Hinson were in town we’d be sure to show up.

Not that I ever saw Mick but I knew he was there. At the time we worked together at The Courier-Mail, he was a young newcomer to journalism with the mark of a good writer possessed of a keen eye for those specialist fields, music and sports.

I knew Mick was there because most of the time after he’d leave the now sadly departed Troubadour or the Zoo, he’d clock on for the graveyard police rounds shift at the paper and there in my inbox the next day would be a note about how much he’d enjoyed the music of the night before.

Continue reading "A quirky southern folk rock that will send you into a spin" »

It’s not really a concept album, and their upcoming national mini-tour can’t really be labelled a musical, but the second release by the saucily-named Melbourne band Root! and the accompanying set of pub dates is one of the few innovative developments on our current musical landscape.

Self-described on their hysterically exhaustive Wikipedia entry as a cross between the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Fall, the most obvious way into understanding Root! is that lead singer DC Root used to be known as Humphrey B Flaubert, sharing the vocal duties with Ron “Hitler” Barassi in the legendary piss-taking rock band TISM, who almost went mainstream with tasteless ditties such as (He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River and Greg! The Stop Sign.

It’s probably the last thing the band wants to read, this kind of Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson reminiscence about the past history of 20 per cent of its number - but the link I’d draw is hopefully a positive one, in that TISM produced songs which were lyrically hilarious and musically irritating, with their incessant electro synth sound, wheras Root! produce songs which are lyrically hilarious but actually rock.

Continue reading "Root: a musical celebration of our beloved national verb" »