Music

The SMH called her a “mediocre pop star” and a “fashion victim.” Every FM breakfast presenter worth their salt has cracked jokes about her having a penis, which is not very nice.

The Daily Telegraph today speculated she didn’t even have the stamina to make it through her Australian concerts.

And The Sunday Telegraph on the weekend wondered if the film clip for Telephone was too racy for her young fans. The video does address the penis rumours, to dramatic effect, and contain a bit of girl-kissing-girl. If you’re still shocked by that in 2010, you need to get out more.

Why is everyone giving Lady Gaga such a hard time?

Continue reading "Why are people so unkind, to Lada Gaga" »

Peter Corris’s Glebe PI Cliff Hardy has a modern Australian playlist in his latest adventure, Torn Apart, including the Whitlams, Kasey Chambers and Sydney’s cab-driving troubadour Perry Keyes.

Hardy listens to tunes from Keyes’s second album, The Last Ghost Train Home, which includes the song The Day John Sattler Broke His Jaw, about the revered Souths’ rugby league player and the 1970 grand final that he played with a fractured face. If Hardy doesn’t lose his obvious fine taste, he’ll be in the shops this week picking up the new Perry Keyes offering, Johnny Ray’s Downtown.

It is a stunning record; chock full of compelling, beautiful, sad and joyous songs that places this singer-songwriter at the top of the Australian creative tree. Johnny Ray’s Downtown is an early contender for the best Australian release of the year and will give international competition a shake, too.

Continue reading "The Sydney cabbie who’s writing the songs of our lives" »

Whitney Houston arrived in Australia with an airport controversy and now there’s backlash surrounding her first concert in Brisbane and her Sydney show last night.

By some accounts it doesn’t appear the shows were a resounding success. All I can say is: the poor unfortunate. I’ve never really followed her but I can empathise with anyone who has a bad night on stage.

She’s 46 years of age, has a well documented history of an excessive lifestyle and now she’s back on the road trying to recreate the magic of her hits. It’s a tough undertaking and will take a lot of strength and character.

Continue reading "Whitney’s bad reviews will be a real test of character" »

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" »

Welcome to Wednesday @ The Punch

Buddy Holly died in a plane crash on this day in 1959.

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?" »

We all know that sex sells. Some of the earliest tobacco advertising featured stylised drawings of starlets inserted in cigarette packs.

Sexy images of women are used to sell everything, from cars to spring water to internet access.Many such ads are targeted at men, but ads for products aimed at women are often similar.

Not only are sexually provocative images of women used to advertise, but they are routinely featured on television, music video clips, movies and even toys.  While adults are better equipped to deal with the bombardment of sexualised content, we need to stop to consider the impact it has on children.

Continue reading "Why should children be exposed to videos like this?" »

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole.  It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.  ~ Goethe

It’s amazing how you can carry something around with you. Tic-tac teeth for instance.

A number of years ago somebody referred to me as tic-tac teeth on National television and since that point I’ve carried the comment everywhere I’ve gone.

Continue reading "Strength and comfort from being honest about flaws" »

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" »

It’s Tuesday @ The Punch.

Australian youth radio station Triple J (then known as 2JJ) made its first broadcast today in 1975.

Welcome to Wednesday @ The Punch

Today in 1968 Johnny Cash made his infamous performance at Folsom Prison in California.

It’s Tuesday @ The Punch

Maurice Gibb who played keyboard, bass and percussion for the Bee Gees died today in 2003 at the age of 53.

I’d struggle to tell you more than one of the titles to Elvis Presley’s songs. And I certainly couldn’t name any of his movies.

His outfits are outrageous and from what I’ve seen of his wink and swaying hips it’d it be enough to make anyone gag. 

But I’m completely mesmerised by the Elvis festival that’s happening in Parkes this week. And my question is: Why?

Continue reading "Want to be Elvis? You’ll need more than blue suede shoes" »

I woke one morning in December feeling a little queasy and was instantly reminded that my tolerance for alcohol is no longer what it used to be.

I like to tell myself that lack of sleep associated with being a father of two little boys has affected my partying ability. But with the onset of a few (only a few) grey hairs, I have to ask who I’m kidding.

There was a time when I could lead the march into the dawn in search of the next club, bar or party but nowadays I’m more concerned with getting enough rest and being on top form for the following day. How boring.

Continue reading "Inspiration for staying creative as you get older" »

The just gone year was crowded with bad news and the chances are this one will be the same.

As Laughing Outlaw Records’ Stuart Coupe said when he heard that Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard had died, for many musicians 50 is the new 80.

2009 was a year that took the uber famous (Michael Jackson), the old timers (Dickie Petersen from Blue Cheer), the hugely influential and talented (piano-playing producer and engineer James Luther Dickinson), the way-too overlooked (Willy De Ville) and the iconic (guitar virtuoso Les Paul).

Continue reading "Tragic end for the talented victim of a failed system" »

Let’s call this a pre-emptive strike, or in the least a kind of Kanye West moment: “Yo Penbo, I’m gonna let you finish but your list is unsatisfactory”. Having not contributed to The Punch’s best albums of the decade I’m going to beat you dear readers to the first critique of the list.

Needless to say the 30 album list chosen by Punch editor David Penberthy, resident critic Dennis Atkins and contributor Alison Piotrowski is full of great and deserved music.

Atkins’ list is limited only to the best albums of 2009.

Thankfully there’s not a lot of cross-over, although both The Strokes and M.I.A get on two lists so maybe they have to be considered artists of the decade.

But as always is the case with these lists it’s the omissions that we seem to look out for more than the choices themselves.

Hip hop’s pretty underrepresented in Penbo and Alison’s decade lists, (no Eminem or Kanye) and whether you like them or not Radiohead probably deserved to make it somewhere - if only for the devout following they’ve inspired amongst so many.

The best indy rock album of the decade (in my opinion) was left off the list entirely: The New Pornographers Electric Version . No Elliot Smith either for you introspective types. 

But probably the best band of the second half of the decade was also left off completely: The Killers. Specifically their second album Sam’s Town which could’ve taken out the title but in the least deserved a mention. I was heartened to learn that the readers of Rolling Stone also thought Sam’s Town ripped-off in the magazine’s list of the decade.

Without further complaining (by me anyway) we give you The Punch’s best albums of the decade.

Continue reading "The best albums of 09 and the decade" »

This handy ready-reckoner is offered in the spirit of the silly season for those of you with a song in your heart at the tail end of a night out. I have now been to karaoke a couple of times and quite enjoy it - I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Rule one: Full action.

This is a term coined by a karaoke-obsessed Indonesian journalist called Donny Dahono, the first bloke to ever drag me along to karaoke, who would explode with rage if the singer remaining seated, turned away from the crowd, or offered anything less than what he defined as “full action”. Donny makes a crucial point. None of us can really sing anyway so why not over-compensate with stage presence? Also, to use a radio term, there should never be any “dead air”. When you get in make sure everyone has a song lined up and wait your turn for the first hour, before taking on all-comers in a shameless bid to sing everything.

Continue reading "The twelve rules of karaoke" »

The booming piano chords that kick off Baby One More Time by Britney Spears constitute one of pop music’s great moments. Like the start of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel or the staccato guitar strums in Faith by George Michael, the Spears intro heralds the start of what is unquestionably one of the genre’s best songs - and one of its last.

Amid all the analysis and reflection on this tumultuous decade as it winds to a close – there’s a powerful interactive trip down memory lane here – there has been a change in contemporary culture, in some ways a sad one, that has gone pretty much unnoticed.

Pop music disappeared.

Continue reading "R.I.P. pop music. We’ll miss you" »

Hit the play button. Enjoy.

I felt nothing when Michael Jackson died. It’s not like I didn’t try to summon a tear but in the end the only emotion I could rustle up was ambivalence. This was surprising because usually when a celebrity dies, I do feel sad. Often extremely so.

When Natasha Richardson died, for example, I was deeply affected, even though I couldn’t name a single film she was in. When John Lennon died, I was terribly sad, even though I was only vaguely aware of The Beatles and I was only nine.

But when one of the world’s biggest pop stars died back in June, someone whose music had been the soundtrack to decades of my life, I was oddly unmoved. As much as I tried, I simply couldn’t connect to any great sense of loss or tap into that massive international out-pouring of grief.

Continue reading "This is an excellent piece of Michael Jackson propaganda" »

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…" »

“She doesn’t do radio interviews… she says it’s a dead medium”.

A recent conversation with a publicist about an American starlet nearly knocked me for six. According to the publicist the said starlet wasn’t going to waste her time on radio, because she simply didn’t believe anyone would be listening.

While it came as a surprise to me, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard it – particularly from an American.  In the US, radio has really struggled in the wake of internet broadcasting. As listeners switch off in droves, programmers have been forced to look for new ways to reach out to their audience.

Continue reading "Radio kills the radio stars" »

This started with Punch music writer Dennis Atkins writing in the Courier Mail that Jimi Hendrix once came up in a conversation with a young Kevin Rudd. The PM-to-be said: “Who’s that?”

Punch readers suggested some songs that would suit the PM. This is the result. The full list is over the jump - add your suggestions in the comments. We might even send him the real tape.

1. Hip to be Square - Huey Lewis and The News

Kevin Rudd’s theme song and a shoo-in for the opening track.

Continue reading "Mix tape for Kevin Rudd" »

One of the more accurate musical predictions of the past eighteen months was that the sparkly retro glamour of recent years would give way to a more introverted breed of shoe gazing hipsters. 

What no one saw coming, however, was that the new kids would take a far more confident and far less faddish approach than the recent crop of faux popsters. 

A perfect example is the arrival of The XX, a morose looking bunch of 20 year olds from South West London who have created what must surely be the finest debut of 2009. 

Continue reading "The finest debut album of 2009" »

Acting funny, I don’t know why / ‘Scuse me, while I ask why the hell Kevin Rudd doesn’t know who Jimi Hendrix is.

Is this one of those momentary memory lapses, a mis-statement, a quote taken out of context? In his Courier Mail political column today, Punch music writer Dennis Atkins recalls a conversation from some time ago with the then Prime Minister-to-be:

During some music banter, the cultural icon and guitar-playing [Jimi] Hendrix was mentioned, which drew a complete blank from a 33-year-old Rudd: “Who’s he?”

Continue reading "Let’s start a record collection for the Prime Minister" »

I saw Rosanne Cash play at Dooley’s Hotel in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in the early 90s, on a bill to die for. She teamed up with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lucinda Williams, providing a small but enthusiastic audience with a banquet of musical delights.

One old mate – an unreconstructed journo who never sat behind the wheel without a traveller – slurred in my ear that he didn’t realise girlies could sing. He didn’t know the half of it.

Cash became familiar not so much through her daddy but her ex-husband, Rodney Crowell, who attracted attention as part of the Steve Earle/Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark Texas crowd from the 70s.

Continue reading "This is Rosanne Cash’s Patsy Cline record" »

You won’t find much argument to comments that the Sydney live music scene is behind that of other major cities across the country. So, with the closure of iconic venues like the Hopetoun Hotel and potential barring up of the Annandale Hotel and the Harp, one has to wonder if we’re not shooting ourselves in the foot.

Yes, the financial issues of an establishment are beyond the control of those outside, but can be helped by the simple patronage of the public.

I don’t have the influence of more established musicians, nor the years of industry insight of others who have exposed themselves to hundreds of hours of beer-soaked carpet and screaming amplifiers; but as an unknown, independent musician, the future’s looking bleak.

Continue reading "Closing live music venues will hurt your ears" »

Sometimes luck just runs. Consider California-born, Texan-by-conviction and New York resident Tom Russell, a singer-songwriter who has been making music for almost 40 years without achieving any mass success apart from being big in Scandinavia.

A week ago he was in New York promoting his new album Blood and Candle Smoke, a mission which included an appearance on the Dave Letterman Show.

Events conspired and Russell’s spot coincided with Letterman’s on air revelation about being blackmailed by a fellow CBS employee and his confession to affairs with female co-workers.

Continue reading "When David Letterman’s sex scandal does you a favour" »

When good ships go down, most of us are left dumbfounded, stranded on the desert island of despair, powerless to do naught but shout “no!” as our once-cherished idol disappears into the drink.

Disciples of the boot would recall the sinking feeling as Matty John’s sordid sexual past was plastered over the papers. Ditto for fans of a certain yeast-based sandwich spread which now appears to be a sacred part of their cultural identity.

But for fans of homegrown independent music, this week’s Titanic disaster was the news that The Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney’s breeding ground for emerging rock talent, had hit a few icebergs and wouldn’t be opening for schooners any time soon. And if you read between the lines, that meant maybe not ever.

Continue reading "Pub rocked: is there hope left in the Hopetoun?" »

A European initiative to restrict how loud you can listen to your iPod could vastly improve your next public transport experience.

In the latest attempt to protect us from ourselves, the European Union this week proposed an 80 decibel limit on the volume level on portable music players.

This, their scientists say, would protect the five to ten per cent of music listeners who crank it up a little too loud from damaging their hearing.

Continue reading "Assaulting my ears is as bad as polluting my lungs" »

As Grand Final barbecues around the country were just starting to get greasy on Saturday evening, for family reasons I was watching a balding Belgian sing Frank Sinatra numbers to a theatre full of grannies.

Unique, inspiring, breathtaking, rousing – none of these words applies to the performance of Helmut Lotti, Belgium’s answer to Kenny G. 

And yet somehow it was a ripper show. What’s going on? What is the appeal of a Benelux crooner who dances like Kevin Rudd impersonating Freddie Mercury?

Continue reading "Old crooners never die - they are reborn as Belgians" »

I’m still not sure how it happened. We headed out to Olympic Park on Friday with two other couples to see Beyonce’s Sydney show, planning to bop the night away to her awesome collection of insanely catchy dance tunes.

We ended up wiping away tears and struggling to speak as the concert turned into an emotionally-charged celebration of the best features of life in the west – women’s rights, civil rights, democracy, freedom of expression, a philanthropic sense of community.

The word “pop” of itself sounds frivolous and popular music is generally ignored or ridiculed as the shallowest cultural genre. But at some point during Beyonce’s show, the concert underwent a strange transformation, as if she’d read the “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” passage from The Declaration of Independence and decided to build a stage show around it.

Continue reading "Beyonce for President" »

It’s a record label that carries a quote from muck-raking journalist H.L. Mencken as its motto, was largely responsible for ending the death penalty in Illinois and has provided work for hundreds of otherwise unemployable people.

Bloodshot Records, set up in inner city Chicago 15 years ago this month, is one of those labels you always take notice of when there’s news of a release or one of their artists is touring. The label pioneered its own sound – called “insurgent country” because it was different to the Nashville sound and didn’t fit with what was being recorded in Austin, Texas or Bakersfield in California.

The genius behind Bloodshot came from two punk drummers, Rob Miller and Nan Warshaw (the third founder was sometime music writer Eric Babcock, who now runs a Nashville label, Checkered Past) and the company’s journey since 1994 tells the story of recorded music over the years.

Continue reading "The record label that helped abolish the death penalty" »

Reading history books about your youth makes you feel old. The discovery that archaeologists have got to work on the period you regard as your salad days makes you feel positively ancient.

That’s how it was when I read this article in the London Times, about an archaeological team digging up a nineteen-seventies camping site in southern England.

The camp site opened in 1971, when I was studying in England at the age of 19. This apparently makes it (and presumably me) a fit subject for digging up and turning over. What next? Palaeontology?

Continue reading "Digging up the past: Colvin and the Spiders from Mars" »

Kanye West has once again shown up off his guts to an award show and gotten all boisterous about who should or shouldn’t get a silly trophy, his fourth strike for the same offence.

At this week’s MTV Video Music Awards the prodigious hip hop talent leapt on stage to proclaim the clip for Beyonce Knowles’s floor-filler Single Ladies ‘one of the best videos of all time’.

I admire his passion for the music video form, but can only deride his timing: West made the statement during 19-year-old popstress Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the best female video award, which she’d won ahead of Knowles.

Continue reading "Kanye’s rant exposes the stupidity of awards nights" »

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" »

Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, which broadcasts on New York’s Sirius XM satellite radio and the BBC, produces some of the best broadcasting around. The maestro’s remarks about Australian singer and artist Rolf Harris included, after he played Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, a detailed reference to the cultural insensitivity attached to calling indigenous people “Abos” and a surprise performance on “my didgeridoo”.

As Dylan’s producer dissolved in laughter, the Theme Time host finished his playing and suggested “that’s something you can tell your grandkids”. It sure was. It’s a genius moment showing just how good Dylan’s production and research team is and illustrating what a compelling radio talent he is.

The show produced some news in the last few weeks – first, his musing about being the voice of a satellite navigation system and later talking about this 34th studio album (47th overall), being issued in time for Christmas.

Continue reading "At the roundabout, turn left and revisit Highway 61" »

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" »

WHAT a life Mavis Staples has had. Her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, was a gospel/soul/pop singer, ace guitarist and songwriter who called together his three daughters and one son in 1960 after listening to Dr Martin Luther King III in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Pops said that “if he can preach it, we can sing it”. From that day, Pops and his children would sing for King at most of his appearances and many of his church services.

From there Mavis went on to enjoy a marvellous career as a singer, with her siblings in the Staples Singers, and in recent decades as a solo artist of real renown and accomplishment.

Continue reading "Mavis Staples and a whole bunch of other talented folk" »

All the signs are there we’re about to be asked to fork out hundreds of dollars to see the latest we-spent-all-the-royalties-in-the-80s tour from a band that should have retired years ago.

Bloggers are talking about it, a reference to them has shown up on the Ticketmaster website, and people are Tweeting it so it must be almost true. That’s right - it looks like Fleetwood Mac is coming to a winery near you.

It’s time to dig out the knee rug, fill up the thermos, stock up on olive tapenade and bread sticks and rock out man.

Continue reading "You can go your own way - to the retirement home" »

It first happened to me in Newcastle, England. Sitting around a coffee table of a friend’s student flat someone played ‘The Chain’.

We’d been awake most of the night drinking and laughing and after about ten minutes they played it again.

The very next day I went out and bought all the Fleetwood Mac I could find.

Continue reading "I’d pay to see Fleetwood Mac" »

“There is nothing wrong with the music business, there is a problem with the CD business.” - Chuck D

If you reduced the last decade’s discussion about the music industry to a single word, it would be decline. 

And yet, observing music consumption over the same period, the opposite is true. More people are listening to music in more ways than ever before.

Continue reading "Don’t believe the hype: music is doing better than ever" »

Most music fans first heard about the Felice Brothers – especially us blokes – with a reference to the opening lines from their song The Ballad of Lou the Welterweight.

Email inboxes chimed with the words: “Powder your nose/pull off your panty hose/let me love you from behind/my darlin’”.

Of course this band, who have been dripping drinking, bad behaviour , remorse and death from the get-go, were richer and more inventive than this eye-catching opening stanza.

Continue reading "You may have heard of his family, but listen to him" »

Just back from a quick visit to the capital of North, or if you are to believe Mancunians, the capital of all England.  Indeed this is a city over brimming with ballsy self-confidence.

Manchester has always had a ladish swagger but glamorous football teams, shiny hotels and a vast new shopping precinct have replaced some of the grit with an unlikely sparkle.  Recently added to this is the bleedingly hip new Manchester International Festival, described as the world’s first international festival of original, new work and special events. 

In practice this means a new opera by Rufus Wainwright, a public procession by Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller and a homecoming par excellence by local legends Elbow united with Britain’s oldest orchestra, The Hallé.

Continue reading "Elbow grease for a rusty northern city" »

Rumour has it that if Katherine Jackson is granted permanent custody of Michael Jackson’s children, the brood could be raised by her eldest—and private—daughter Rebbie.

What a relief, when one considers the frightening prospect of Joseph Jackson playing a more permanent role in their upbringing.

Here is a man who has long been accused of ruling the famous clan with an iron fist and who, according to Michael, sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as the Jackson Five rehearsed.

Continue reading "Even in death Michael still a cash-cow to Jackson Snr" »

THERE was a time any song list from the ABC’s Triple J would be a talking point for at least a week. This year’s Top 100 songs of all time hardly lasted a day.

The biggest controversy was about the lack of female artists which illustrates Triple J’s appeal and audience.

However, these lists prompt reflection on your own musical choices, as it did with Punch writer Chris Deal who unleased a collection of the crappest songs of all time. That led to some of the best abuse we’ve copped so far, including being called “a bunch of hipster douchebags”, to which most of us plead a fair cop.

Continue reading "The hottest 100, for the slightly elderly" »

One of the least fascinating things to come out of Triple J’s Hottest 100 Of All Time is that Nirvana’s grunge anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit is still considered to be THE cornerstone for Gen X & Ys musical landscape, and that “alternative” music has jumped so far over the shark that it should win an Olympic medal for both high and long jumping.

And while taking pot shots at the uninspired and predictable musical tastes of the new bogan elite who have taken over the Triple J airwaves is just as predictable as the contents of the Hottest 100 in the first place, the more intriguing aspect of this gigantic rock census comes down to a question of chromosomes.

Soon after the list was finalised, the penny dropped over the Twitterverse that apart from a guest female vocal on Massive Attack’s trip-hop ballad Teardrop and Jeff Buckley singing like a whiny bitch, not one artist in the list for the ages was forced to sit down to pee.

Continue reading "No women no cry - hottest misognyist poll of all time?" »

Who can say exactly why we all love music but today’s Punch list of the 100 crappest songs of all time has made me sure of four things:

1. Absolutely everyone has an opinion on this topic
2. Absolutely no one agrees on this topic
3. While musical ability, fame, or output is celebrated, you don’t need it to know what you don’t like
4. People either love or hate Tim Freedman, there’s no grey area on this one.

Continue reading "The worst songs ever written: according to you" »

Near, far, wherever you are, you’re probably aware that this week the national youth broadcaster Triple J has released its rather ambitious Hottest 100 Of All Time music poll. And while staying positive and tallying up a rock-solid list of the songs that have brought so much joy to the world is a noble pursuit, a healthy dose of sticking the boot right in is required to address the balance.

The Punch does not endorse book burning, but there’s an argument for putting really, really bad records in a big pile and setting them on fire. And according to our scientific survey, Celine Dion should be the first to go up in flames:

Now that you’ve got it started, the next songs you should add are, in order, this one:

Continue reading "Crappest 100: the worst songs of all time" »

NO Billie Jean. No Beat It. No-one was starting something, not even a moonwalk. Of all the unlikely things, it was often quiet.

Whatever your life had been, you’d probably want it mourned this way: solemn, plenty sad, and plenty of slow songs. But this was Michael Jackson, and no one expected it be as normal as that. So it was time to put aside your thoughts about the life being recognised and be surprised.
And perhaps nothing could have surprised a viewer more than a farewell that flipped the coin from crazy heads to solemn tales - the telling of gentle and kind stories that somehow did not leave you feeling conned, despite all we think we know about the man.

Continue reading "The quiet, dignified end to Michael Jackson’s mad life" »

East Nashville is a lovely part of the world. It’s nicely gentrified, full of neat houses with neat gardens. There are funky coffee shops where people congregate early and late with their computers.

It’s pretty standard inner urban life but it wasn’t always so. There was a smashing tornado in 1998 which blew away the crack houses and the nastier parts of town.

Some people who lived there then survived. Like Steve Earle who, as was told in Lauren St John’s brutally honest biography Hardcore Troubadour, once escaped from his hospital bed and scurried off to a street corner in that part of town, ward gown gaping in the breeze, waving a $20 bill in the air, waiting for a fix.

Todd Snider lives in East Nashville. He’s a singer songwriter who settled in the country music capital after growing up in Portland, Oregon. His entry to the town wasn’t as dramatic as Earle’s $20 desperado act but he did have some bad habits.

Continue reading "Music from a time before coffee shops and laptops" »

As Lleyton Hewitt limbers up for tonight’s showdown with Andy Roddick, The Punch has gone to the trouble of writing down the lyrics for our putative national song, so that any tennis enthusiast who’s recently been lobotomised can sing along with The Fanatics and not miss a single word.

It goes: Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi. Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi. Aussie. Oi. Aussie. Oi. Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi.

It’s a ripper isn’t it? The result of more than two centuries’ development by a nation which inherited a rich tradition of song from the Celts, as demonstrated in the above video of the Irish crowd at Croke Park singing The Fields of Athenry.

There’s an Aussie tie-in with this stirring Irish song. It’s about a fellow who’s been jailed and sent to prison in Australia. The lyrics recount the last conversation he and his his wife will ever have, singing to each other across the prison wall before he’s put on the ship.

The story of Aussie Aussie Aussie is similarly powerful, in that it’s about an Aussie Aussie who Oi Oi Aussie Oi, Aussie Oi. I mean seriously - just how dumb are we as a nation? Or rather, how dumb do we like to pretend to be?

Continue reading "Are you a brain-dead Aussie Aussie Aussie?" »

There’s something about that line “Annie are you ok, are you ok Annie,” that goes on permanent rotation in my brain for days after each time I hear the song.

Maybe its because it came out when I was in year six, and I loved it then.

There’s so many other Michael Jackson songs that we’ll be listening to forever, but this is my favourite.

Continue reading "Smooth Criminal was the best Jacko song" »

The boy who never grew up is dead at the age of 50. Michael Jackson died this morning of a heart attack at his Los Angeles home.  TMZ reports that the singer was rushed to the UCLA medical centre where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His sister La Toya was seen sobbing at the hospital.

The world’s media is now cutting and pasting packages which condense several lifetimes of weirdness into the space of one bulletin. Jackson’s oddness has already been demonstrated with the roll-call of mourners - one of the first to confirm his demise was mystic Uri Geller who can bend spoons through mind-power alone.

Collating Jackson’s wackiness will take some time. The baby-dangling episode, the sinister stories out of the Neverland Ranch, his purchase of the bones of Elephant Man John Merrick, a chimp called Bubbles, a baby called Blanket, a brief and ill-fated marriage to Lisa Presley, an addiction to plastic surgery which saw his nose crumble and his black skin bleached white. To name a few.

Before we get to all that, listen to this song. And this one. And when you watch him above, and here, as a little 11-year-old kid, it’s hard not to feel real sorrow at the premature departure of a guy who with his abusive family background and his extraordinary musical genius, was probably always destined to be a screw-up. 

Anyway, the jokes have started. This one’s kind of nice though, from @davesag on Twitter:

#michaeljackson cause of death. a) Sunshine? b) Moonlight? c) Good times? d) Boogie.

All of the above.

Somebody very annoying once said that “Life is like a rainbow, you need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear”.  Let me tell ya, there are no rainbows here in Edinburgh where the sun is stubbornly refusing to shine through the gloom.  As Bill Bryson once put it “It’s like living inside Tupperware”. 

The Antlers @ Music Hall of Williamsburg from Patrick Duffy on Vimeo.

We are well into summer and it looking like topping out at a balmy 13 degrees today. This is the third consecutive disastrous summer in this part of the world and it’s even testing the patience of the hard-as-f**k Celts. 

I was talking to a friend in Sydney yesterday who was moaning about your gloriously mild winter – it was like complaining to a starving man that there were no petit fours at the end of their five course dinner.

Continue reading "An album giving warmth to a depressing northern summer" »

Doubtless we’ve all seen that gritty urban anti-piracy ad that equates half-inching cars and televisions with illegally downloading movies on the internet.

The message, writ large is “DOWNLOADING PIRATED MOVIES IS STEALING, STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW”. It’s a fair point, and surely one that only a klepto of the highest order would even attempt to argue with. You would think.

The last time I graced a cinema with my presence, for the umpteenth time my peepers were affronted with the Hollywood sign sized words “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR”.

Only this time something in me twigged. I instantly turned to my mate and blurted, “Yeah, but I would if I could download one”. And though I happily got the laughs I was after, the saddest part was, it was the truth.

Continue reading "You wouldn’t steal a car, but I would if I could download it" »

The Hideout is a bar in the ostentatiously hip inner north western suburbs of Chicago, although its dead-end location in a sea of warehouses might not suggest that at first glance.

The bar doesn’t have a sign and they say it’s been operating legally since 1932. It’s also the bar that almost everyone who is, or has been, in the band Wilco has played in.

The night we dropped in Leroy Bach, the multi-instrumentalist but mostly keyboardist who played with Wilco from late 1999 until 2005, was playing with Dan Bitney, a dude from the experimental Chicago band Tortoise.

Continue reading "Wilco has grown up" »

“Hi … uhh…. So you know times are tough for me right now…. (awkward pause) … well, I’m a couple of weeks behind on rent… I swear I’ll pay you back…”

Have you ever asked a friend for money? It’s an awkward conversation that community radio stations have with their listeners every year during their annual supporter drive.

The only problem is that when a global financial crisis hits, posing the question this time around seems to border on the absurd.

Continue reading "Can Richard Branson save a battling Aussie radio station?" »

If you do have a 12-year-old daughter you probably already know that Lily Allen is touring here at the moment. They’ve probably begged you to let them go to the concert - and you may have relented.

I’ll be there on Tuesday night with a bunch of 14-year-olds who are much cooler than I was when I was their age, and I’m really looking forward to it. Allen is very entertaining, her melodies are infectious, and she even manages to infuse some her her tunes with the kind of lessons you want young girls to learn (see above video of the very clever The Fear).

But there will be five minutes during the concert when I’ll be cringing in the corner as I look around at a room full of gorgeous young girls, who no doubt know every word of Allen’s latest single Not Fair and will be singing along with gusto. Believe me, if you’re little one is an Allen fan you probably don’t want to know the lyrics.

Continue reading "Shut your eyes if you have a 12-year-old daughter" »

Maria’s Taco Express sits on a busy expressway in south Austin, Texas, snuggled in between car yards and furniture stores. Just next door is a muffin van that promises low-fat, no-worry, health-heaven eating. But Maria’s is not just a fabulous place to have tacos, breakfast time, lunchtime or late night-dining time. It’s also a meeting place of musicians and music tragics. They love the tacos, they love the margaritas (rocks, no salt) and they love the music that appears in what in Australia would be a beer garden. Here, I reckon it’s a taco garden.

Continue reading "Star-struck in Austin: Meeting my musical hero" »

What is there not to love about Eurovision? This year we had breakdancing Albanian midgets cavorting with a man in a sequinned aquamarine bodysuit and the winner was a fiddle-wielding Norwegian boy-singer. Plus, the Warsaw Pact still seems to be in force but nobody cares.

What is there not to love about it?

Oh yeah, the music.

Continue reading "10 reasons why Australia needs its own Eurovision" »