Music

At about 8pm each Sunday night, having digested my fill of weekend sport, I sit down and pen a Monday sports column for The Punch.

This weekend was different. This weekend I was on the NSW south coast with the wife and kids and another family. We were much too busy playing beach cricket and spotting bandicoots to catch any TV sport. We did, however, watch an exciting TV contest which had hype, tight scores and girls in even tighter dresses. There were even commentators.

Eurovision was great fun for the whole family, and if the Twitter trends were any guide, Australia watched in huge numbers. Partly we tuned in to laugh at the once great continent of Europe, whose musicians are tragically stuck in a 1980s time warp of synth pop and big hair. Seriously, when you see these guys lagging years behind in culture, it’s no wonder they can’t get their finances together.

Continue reading "Eurovision, the only game worth watching this weekend" »

Earlier this week - having heard three consecutive songs on the radio that I didn’t recognise - I realised I haven’t properly listened to new music in quite some time.

With the exception of one or two albums and the odd track, new additions to my regular playlist over the past year have been extremely rare. In fact, the last album I downloaded was a Christmas carol compilation - because I thought it was a nice way to celebrate my 91st birthday.

This isn’t some deliberate hipster thing where I only seek out bands who play at venues that exist inside the walls of other venues and whose names are never spoken aloud - save for the whispers of only the most enlightened Tibetan monks and that guy with the sweet scarf you see at gigs sometimes. I’ve just gradually, for whatever reason, drifted out of the loop.

Continue reading "I’ve rocked out of my generation’s la-la-loop" »

One great thing about art is the way each of us has our own in-built quality detector. This detector allows us to evaluate art with a level of accuracy and conviction that cannot be gained from formal education or experience. This quality detector is known as the goose bump.

Unlike other state of the art detectors, the goose bump does not malfunction. As such it is a trusty guide.

Goose bumps are a nutritional supplement for your soul. You can sustain yourself without them, but if you’re really looking for enrichment you need to hunt the bumps.

Continue reading "A goose bump guide to Florence and The Machine" »

Bee Gees star Robin Gibb has died at 62 after a long battle with cancer. There will be some funky beats at the pearly gates today.

The Gibb brothers who co-founded the band (Maurice, Barry and Robin) sold more than 200 million records over four decades. The disco genre was dominated by the music of African-Americans. It’s incredible that a bunch of boys who lived in Brisbane (ex- of Manchester, UK) could make such a lasting impression on that scene. Indeed, they pretty much owned it.

Whether you consider yourself a Bee Gees fan or not, your love for them probably runs deeper than you think. Here are three examples of songs they wrote for others: Diana Ross’s “Chain Reaction”“, Dionne Warwick’s “Heartbreaker” and (Punch editor Tory Maguire’s personal fave) Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s “Islands in the Stream”.

Continue reading "Disco, the music that stubbornly refuses to die" »

For the last three weeks there has been a strong sense that unless you were performing some sort of essential service at 7.30pm on a Monday night you were watching The Voice.

The ratings were mega. The love for the judges (well, the male judges) was overflowing. The talent was dazzling. And people who’d sworn off television talent shows were drawn back in.

Anticipation for last night’s first live show was frenzied. More than 2 million of us tuned in. And then the wheels fell off. Perhaps the charm and talent which had set The Voice apart from its competitors was the product of slick editing. Or maybe it’s the vagaries of live television.

Continue reading "The night my Voice broke" »

A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan.

He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him.

Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology.

Continue reading "The seedy little CD store where music is strict taboo" »

When Wayne Swan is at his desk he likes to work to music. He told journalists during the week that his Budget song this year had been Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams”.

Perhaps it was two lines in the opening verse that struck a chord with the Treasurer:

You don’t know where you’re goin’
But you know you won’t be back

Continue reading "Saints and sinners, whores and lost souls" »

You don’t have to read very far into Steve Earle’s 2001 short story collection, Doghouse Roses, to know he might not have been the best husband and father. While the book is not entirely autobiographical, Earle admits much of what he writes about was informed by his own life’s experience.

After a spectacular relationship bust-up in the desert around Joshua Tree east of Los Angeles, one character in the title story falls into a self-destructive spiral. “…he had his publisher wire him some cash and prepay a plane ticket to Nashville, where Bobby continued to do all the right things to kill himself for three more years. No money. No Car. No place to live. But the worst was yet to come.”

Followers of Earle’s life story will know from Lauren St John’s raw biography Hardcore Troubadour, life in Nashville for the Texan was as hard as it gets. At one stage he’s admitted to hospital after an overdose and wakes in his bed, wondering what had gone down.

Continue reading "A rocky upbringing but a bright future for son of a star" »

Wally de Backer, better known as Gotye, is a legend.

Not just because lately he has stoically endured a significant increase in strangers hideously mispronouncing his stage name as Goatee-yeah, Gotya and Goiter (it’s gore-ti-yeah), but because he’s a consistently creative artist who has made an art out of producing his own style of his music.

After owning the Australian charts late last year with Somebody That I Used To Know, Gotye’s hit whooshed to the top of the US Billboard charts this week, not long after it was performed on Glee. As one Twitterer put it, how often is a song at the top of the US charts recorded in someone’s home studio?

Continue reading "If you’re a fan you should stick behind your man" »

I loved gangsta rap. Of course I did. I was a middle-class kid in an ethnically diverse public high school in Sydney’s inner west, in the 1990s. That’s many ticks in some record-company’s market research survey.

Warning: explicit language.

The music doesn’t resonate with me the way it once did, but when I hear the blasting horn intro of the Joe-Cocker sampled California Love, the wannabe ‘G’ inside resurfaces and I want to pour one out for my homiez, and wish I could see Tupac or Biggie in concert.

By ‘Pac’s death in ‘96 hip-hop was well into its golden age. It was at a turning point where the genre was going mainstream, but hadn’t yet mutated into mindless pop-rap. It was a time where there was no possible universe where Snoop Dogg would collaborate with Katy Perry. And when that happened, all hip-hop heads ever talked about was how Pac and his deceased contemporary, Notorious B.I.G., would never have teamed up with these ‘sell-outs’. But Tupac’s posthumous performance as a hologram at Coachella showed us this scenario was definitely possible, whether Pac 1.0 (the flesh and blood one) wanted it to be or not.

Continue reading "Coming to a venue near you: Performing live, while dead" »

UH-OH. You looked into Seal’s eyes, didn’t you. Rookie mistake.

It’s OK, you’re not alone. On Sunday night, while pretending to read my iPad, I noticed The Voice on in the background. It wasn’t long before the background became the foreground, and I regressed into a teenage girl.

On Monday, I accidentally emailed this confession to the entire News Limited online network, after a video explaining how The Voice operates was prepared by a news.com.au journalist:

Continue reading "The Voice: His dreamy eyes just Sealed the deal" »

Brisbane songwriter maestro Robert Forster fell into an old but reliable trap last month when he used Bruce Springsteen as a contrast at the beginning of a brilliant critique of the Dirty Three’s latest opus Toward the Low Sun.

After listing four song titles from Springsteen’s show-stopper record, Wrecking Ball, Forster says the names of the tunes give away the whole disc as a dud. “...these song titles, shop-worn and spare even by Springsteen’s standards, offer little encouragement to listen to an album that seems to be stuck in old ground,” he wrote in The Monthly.

Never judge a book by its cover, our betters told us when we were young and learning. Never a truer word, as they say in the backstreet bars of any town with a musical heart.

Continue reading "A complete course in modern culture in one album" »

Click on the video below. I dare you. If you’re brave enough, watch it all the way to the end.

Eck. It probably doesn’t “light up your world like nobody else” does, but you’re hardly the target audience. Over the past few months the hit song of visiting teenybopper supergroup One Direction has lit up the musical worlds of the 8 to 16 year female demographic. Simultaneously, it’s lit a fuse of ridiculousness that’s threatening the sanity of Australian parents and people of good music taste alike.

The national tweenage hysteria alert level rose to amber yesterday as the band, cobbled together by pop mastermind Simon Cowell, flew into the country for a concert series and a gig at the Logie Awards.

Continue reading "Why tweenage girls go crazy over an average boy band" »

Australian musician Jimmy Little died yesterday morning, aged 75.

Little was best known for hits Royal Telephone, Danny Boy, Baby Blue and One Road. Royal Telephone, released in 1963, reached number 1 in Sydney and Adelaide, and #3 in Melbourne.

A groundbreaking indigenous artist who recorded 34 albums, Little started a foundation sharing his name in 2006 dedicated to increasing the life expectancy of indigenous Australians in rural Australia. You can learn how to donate to the foundation here.

The music legend had been battling illness for some time. His wife passed away last year. Vale, the both of them.

Little talked about his youth with writer Benjamin Law in this insightful interview last year. He said:

You have to know yourself, trust yourself, and even love yourself to a point. Be yourself and keep trudging on down that path, because we’re all here in life for a reason.

Do you have any memories of Mr Little? What else is on your mind today?

I was taking a short cut through the tent pegs when I came upon one of the most charming musical scenes I had ever accidentally encountered. Amid the canvas a couple of elderly blokes were on guitar and fiddle, and a little girl singing with them.

They were playing a rollicking American traditional song with skill and gusto, and she was matching them note for note and dancing her own personal jig. . The beaming old blokes were thrilled to have the youngster joining a spontaneous eruption of the joy of music. It probably made their day. It did mine.

On another occasion I found a pair of country boys, barely highschool age and neatly dressed with a mother’s care in elastic-sided boots and hats with big brims, squatting together to intently play guitar and fiddle. They looked so serious, but it was clear they were having fun.

Continue reading "A festival that doesn’t worry about being cool" »

No ads on the ABC? Don’t believe it for a minute. Last Sunday’s Insiders was chockers with ads.

The political interview guy, Graig Emerson, was plugging his book, Vital Signs, Vibrant Society, even offering to sign copies for an extra buck.

Then host Barrie Cassidy gave a big leg up to sometime Insiders couch buddy George Megalogenis’s new volume of thoughts, facts and analysis, The Australian Moment.

Continue reading "Serious music for serious times" »

Monday after Mardi Gras is busy in the House of Priscilla costume hire store on Sydney’s Oxford Street.

Customers traipse in to drop off their outfits, many still bleary-eyed after 48 hours of partying. Word is, this year’s Mardi Gras was a good one, even if American drag queen RuPaul was a letdown. But there’s one thing every gay man on Oxford St agrees with: Kylie Minogue stole the show.

Kylie appeared at her third Mardi Gras this year, performing a half hour set at 2am at the post-parade party. The crowd loved her. She loved them. And why wouldn’t she? The 43 year old has pretty much built her entire career around pleasing her gay constituency.

Continue reading "A National Treasure who treasures her gay fan base" »

He was always so healthy. Always looked after himself. I can’t believe Davy Jones, member of sixties pop sensation The Monkees, is dead of a heart attack at just 66.

I first met Davy Jones in the south of England in 1990. I was in England writing stories for a racing magazine owned by Kerry Packer and I was down near Brighton to interview the keeper of the queen’s horses, Lord Porchester.

Lord Porchester wasn’t available that day. But I had put in another call to Davy Jones, who lived nearby. He called me and said “come down to my house”.

Continue reading "I’ll never forget the day I got sent to Davy Jones" »

Paris Hilton has had it all. The money. The TV show. The perfume range. The perfume range for men. The fashion line. The week in jail. The nomination for the Best Frightened Performance award at the MTV Movie Awards. The hit single. The autobiographical tome and Pulitzer Prize winner, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose.

However, Paris has copped considerable amounts of flak with each of these achievements. Her critics have scoffed at the talents of the perfumer, lyricist, Chihuahua advocate and essayist extraordinaire.

To her credit, Hilton has been expanding like the universe after the Big Bang ever since since she exploded to fame many years ago. Obviously not physically. But into different areas of expertise. Her latest? Poetry.

Continue reading "Paris Hilton is not a poet, shame she doesn’t know it" »

One of the more controversial articles we’ve published on The Punch was Lucy Dayman’s piece last year which questioned whether triple J, the youth broadcaster, does as much for Australian music as it claims in its promos.

Dayman asked whether triple J’s slogan, “We love Australian Music”, was of the You’re My Soul Mate kind of love, or love in the way “drunk guys tell random girls at clubs in the wee hours of Sunday morning”. Well, nine months on, The Punch has the answer—with some hard data to back it up.

And thank god for triple J. Because they’re one of the only popular stations on the FM band that not only play, but cultivate, Australian musical talent. That is, unlike their commercial radio counterparts, who argue that they shouldn’t be obligated to play Australian music at all. Because hey, it’s so much better to pollute the airwaves with nonstop AutoTuned Katy Perry ballads about how her present emotional state resembles a plastic bag.

Continue reading "Commercial radio sucks, and not just because of Kyle" »

“Illegal music downloading is like casual racism; widespread and inevitable. That doesn’t make it acceptable!” That was a frustrated exclamation from Sydney singer-song writer Josh Pyke during our recent interview.

It’s a notion that’s drummed into children from a young age by parents and teachers: “just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right”.

Apparently millions of adult Australians have forgotten that advice, and as a result we’re not only breaking the law en masse, we’re cheating hard-working musicians out of deserved pay. As Pyke says, music piracy is similar to race-based bigotry; inherently wrong yet widely accepted.

Continue reading "Punch: Piracy on the High Cs is music’s greatest enemy" »

Three moments in my life have prompted me to question humanity at its very core.

The first was when Jerry Seinfeld observed: “People, they’re the worst.” I thought about this for a moment, remembered I’d once carried my cat by its tail, and decided he was right. The second was when I woke up from a big night at a friend’s party, and discovered my mate’s pillow had been callously stolen. Who steals a pillow? Ugh, people. Right?

The third was when I learned #WhoisPaulMcCartney? was trending on Twitter during the Grammys.

Continue reading "People in 2012 are asking: Who’s this droning old fart?" »

So Whitney Houston died and the news broke social media.

Facebook exploded, pieces fell off YouTube and Twitter practically melted as music fans around the world took to their keyboards to tell how much their hearts hurt and how all of this was that BASTARD Bobby Brown’s fault. Tsk. Not humping around. Indeed.

Any celebrity loosely qualified to deserve the title issued a solemn statement of sadness and love.

Continue reading "It was the Greatest Love of All inside of me" »

Whitney Houston has died, aged 48. Poor Whitney, who was a shining star in the 80s and 90s, but ended up diminished by drugs, dishevelled, a mess. Another celebrity fall from grace.

There are no details on how she died.

A Punch team member who shall remain anonymous has vivid memories of imitating Whitney in I Wanna Dance With Somebody (above) and begging their mother for a Whitney-esque perm, which was - thankfully - refused.

Have you got a favourite Whitney moment? Did you see her recent tour? Share your memories here.

It was a moment that cut me but I tried so hard not to show it. In 2007 on a fine Saturday morning we walked along Ewingsdale Road to Belongil Fields for Splendour in the Grass.

A car full of mouthy Gen Y guys spluttered past and one of them took a look at my grey hair and shouted: “I bet you’re going to see the Finn brothers.” Old rock and roll fans hate being reminded of their oldness and to be typecast by a bunch of young ones who weren’t even thought of when the Rolling Stones put Let it Bleed on vinyl does make us bleed.

This is especially so when in fact we were not setting out to take in the musical genius of Tim and Neil Finn but hanging out for a dose of the equally young upstart, Ryan Adams.

Continue reading "What happened on the road to Splendour in the Grass" »

Audiences tend to put films, novels and other texts through a wringer of meaning. If enough sense doesn’t come spurting out the other end, they are readily disgruntled.

“I don’t want to see a ghost/It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast”

But there is one art, one type of text, that has garnered a sort of diplomatic immunity from this requirement of meaning, and that is songwriting. Lyrics are consistently permitted to soar over details such as sense. 

Which is not to suggest that lyrics are the simple cousin in the arts family. Many lyrics are brilliant, and the way they can sweep over the globe is exhilarating. But there is something remarkable about the way utterly inane lyrics can achieve meteoric success.

Continue reading "I’d rather have a piece of toast than listen to crap lyrics" »

Just looking at him, elderly Miami resident Pedro C. Alvarez is not the type who would be inclined to take in the scenery on Ocean Drive. It’s not his kind of place.

There, on famous South Beach, along the row of deco hotels, including the one where they shot the chainsaw scene for “Scarface”, wild-looking babes endurance test the elastic on their overbrimming bikinis.

Coke dealers, or possibly dentists, or maybe they’re porn stars, drive their black Bentley convertibles at stall speed down the main drag. Miami’s a look-at-me place, until you leave its shiny edges.

Continue reading "Paradise lost, but a pocket of America found" »

Long before the abomination known as Moves Like Jagger (Maroon 5 your days are numbered), the rubberfaced Rolling Stones frontman made a different move. He wore lipstick and lavish beauty products and took much more time than most of his male counterparts when getting ready.

Yep, Mick Jagger was the first Metrosexual. He was The Man…who slightly resembled a woman.

Modern day metros like Pharell Williams, David Beckham, Marc Anthony and Orlando Bloom should doff their fedoras to Jagger, the grandfather of metrosexuality and an outstanding individual who championed individuality.

Continue reading "Mick Jagger’s still putting the sex into metrosexual" »

Springsteen has done it again. You’ve got to look for the silver lining in these troubled times and if the economic and social train wreck that’s engulfed the mighty United States of America has to be endured at least it’s producing some of the best new music heard in years.

From Todd Snider’s biting Excitement Plan through Ry Cooder’s gritty Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down - and much in between and next door - we’ve heard some fantastic commentary set to heart breaking and soul lifting music.

Perhaps Aleo Blacc’s I Need A Dollar is the anthem of the hard times so far but the Boss comes roaring back with a very bitter judgment on social inequality and you can bet it will stir some controversy.

Continue reading "The Boss is still the boss" »

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" »

The “Australian of the Year” awards were presented last night, but today the focus for those musically-inclined is on metaphorical silverware.

The “Triple J Hottest 100” countdown is touted as the “largest public music poll in the world”, and today marks the 22nd instalment of the fan-voted list.

Inclusion in the best ton of songs of the year is highly coveted, and a top ten berth is an indisputable endorsement of a track’s timbre.

Continue reading "Rocking like an Aussie: Our top ten songs of 2011" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit column. In a world full of bunkum, it’s often hard to narrow the field down – but today there is a clear winner. Mark Wahlberg and his funky bunch of bollocks.

The brother of a NKOTB member, actor, producer and all round ripped guy told the Men’s Journal he could have totally sorted out those September 11 terrorists. He was meant to be on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre. He told the journal:

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”

Continue reading "ICB: Is Mark Wahlberg really Hangin’ Tough?" »

Someone had to pay for disco. Nile Rodgers took the bullet in late 1979 when it finally became official: disco sucked.

Rodgers was co—founder, with Bernard Edwards, of the band Chic. Rodgers played guitar and Edwards, now deceased, the bass.

They were more of production team than a true band, putting changing voices in front of their music to produce late 70s hits such as “We Are Family”, “Le Freak” and “Good Times.”

Continue reading "Disco: When music made straight for your groin" »

Here’s a nice story by Alison Stephenson over at news.com.au.

Meet the 44th Sunset. You might be hearing a lot more of them in the future. The Perth indie-rock quartet beat out 500 talented high school bands to win a $50,000 Sony recording contract and a place on the Big Day Out line-up, alongside big acts like Foster the People. 

They’re all 16, and lead singer Nik Thompson is calling it the highlight of his life.

Top stuff, guys. Let’s hope there are many more highlights to come.

It’s Tuesday. What’s on your mind Punchers?

Dear Harvest Festival,

You have no idea how excited we were about you. What music fan wouldn’t be excited about a brand new musical festival, in the backyard of the Werribee mansion, with some of the best bands of the last 20 years? For weeks everyone was talking about your line up, but by the end of the night the only thing anyone was talking about was lining up.

We should have seen the warning signs early on, when one of our friends headed off to buy everyone a beer and then didn’t come back for two hours. It took her an hour to get the tokens to buy the beer the beer and then another hour to exchange the tickets for the actual drinks. Seriously, the Gillard government could not have created a system this bad. 

Obviously queues are a part of any public event, but your queues were not normal. All across Werribee Park, lines of people stretched out longer than a Led Zeppelin guitar solo. At one stage the crowd outside the bar was bigger than the entire crowd waiting to watch Mogwai, who were one of the headline acts.

Continue reading "The great Harvest line-up. And we don’t mean the music" »

Welcome to a new semi-regular segment on The Punch, where we try to extract something meaningful from the week that was.

In yet another week dominated by the carbon tax and financial turmoil, the other big story was the guilty verdict on Michael Jackson’s personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who slowly poisoned Jacko with a toxic mix of anaesthetic and sedatives.

Jacko wanted a cure for insomnia so he could rest up for his imminent comeback tour. The thing is, why did he need drugs at all? According to the man himself, dancing could solve all problems. Let’s examine the video evidence…

Continue reading "This week’s lesson: Dancing will not solve your problems" »

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a regular column looking at spin and shenanigans, skulduggery and pseudoscience. This week we’re having a crack at Kylie Minogue’s honorary doctorate.

A UK university has awarded the Singing Budgie a doctorate in singing. Pardon? Did you say it wasn’t for singing? For music? No? Health Sciences?! Are you serious?

A doctorate is the highest academic degree in any branch of knowledge. So you’d want to be quite… knowledgeable, wouldn’t you?

Continue reading "ICB : Sorry, Kylie, but I won’t be calling you Dr Minogue" »

Disappointed by 80s rockers charging you a fortune to go through the motions on their greatest hits in echoing stadiums? I certainly was at Motley Crue’s awful affair at the Entertainment Centre recently.

But have you been itching for a real concert of ear-blasting power with real stagecraft and non-stop drama?

Who else are you going to call - but a clean-living, happily-married Christian in his sixties who plays golf six days a week, and owns a sports bar and grill with award winning Guy Chipotle Chicken Pasta?

Continue reading "Age is no excuse for making bad music" »

Meat Loaf is one loose unit. That’s why anything could happen when the headline act for the pre-game entertainment at tomorrow’s AFL Grand Final between Collingwood and Geelong lets rip with a medley of his biggest hits. Five songs in twelve minutes will be some feat for a singer whose tracks are often “epic” in running time.

Fingers crossed the whole show is a catastrophe because, let’s face it, the only reason anybody watches the grand final “entertainment” is to see one spectacular disaster. Good, bad or ugly, the “Bat Out of Hell” will be flat-out trying to upstage the biggest horror show involving song, dance and choreography ever seen at a major sporting event.

The worst in history is Angry Anderson and the Batmobile. I remembered this atrocity after coming across a great article by leading sports blogger The Mad Chatter.

Continue reading "When Mr Loaf meats AFL anything could happen" »

Emmanuel Jal was around seven years old when he was recruited as a soldier for the Sudanese Liberation Army. He’s now become a hit musician. But how did he get from one to the other? He explained his story to The Punch.

Can you describe for us how you were recruited to the Sudanese Liberation Army, and how you felt at the time?

I was 7 years old and I had been sent to a refugee camp in Ethiopia by my father to receive schooling and to leave the war behind. Whilst I was at the camp, under the UN’s nose SPLA commanders were rallying the children and young people together.

Continue reading "Punch Q&A: From child soldier to hip hop star" »

Vince Neil is fat and out of breath. He can’t hit the notes. He flops around the stage like a useless blonde carp.

A chubby twelve year old girl with a new karaoke machine on Christmas Day. The band sound muddy and flat, like AM radio played through a 700-watt bass stack.

It’s Friday night’s Motley Crue concert at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Continue reading "A Motley performance from an ageing Crue" »

No matter where you are right now, if you listen really hard, you can probably hear Gotye and Kimbra’s song Somebody That I Used To Know. Hell, you’ve probably been humming it all day. It’s as ubiquitous as the waft of cherry blossoms and has racked up 140,000 sales (double platinum!), 6 million views on YouTube and a legion of international twitter fans via Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry and others with actual music taste.

It’s a very sad song making a lot of people very happy. So why has Gotye and Kimbra’s paean to pain resonated with music fans all over the world? It’s a tricky question but one I can answer for you, curious reader.

Partly, it’s about empowerment. A tight arrangement, catchy verses and soaring chorus can make you forget all about that person what dun you wrawwwng. But mostly it’s not about that at all. Mostly it’s about recognising – almost subliminally – that a sad song has more truth in it than a happy song.

Continue reading "Rolling in the deep: Why sad songs make us happy" »

The Beatles had 20, Elvis had 18 and Michael Jackson racked up 13. Even Wham! managed a respectable two.

No, we’re not talking about girlfriends, but something just as hard to get – Billboard Hot 100 number one hits.

So how is it that the biggest star of the millennium, with as many screaming female fans as The Beatles or Elvis, hasn’t scored a single US number one hit some seven singles into his career?

Continue reading "Bieber’s number one with the girls, but not with Billboard" »

Paul McCartney: Maybe I’m amazed at the way you love me all the time. Maybe I’m amazed at the way I love you.
Jewish Mother: What, so maybe you’re not amazed?

Van Morrison: Have I told you lately that I love you?
Jewish Mother: No. And you haven’t mowed the lawns either.

Bette Midler: I could fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings.
Jewish Mother: Don’t think I’m letting you go up there.

Continue reading "Oy vey. If love songs were sung to Jewish mothers…" »

Amy Winehouse, the sultry and deeply troubled UK singer, died this weekend aged just 27. That voice, that incredible voice, will live on, and both music greats and her dedicated fans continue to pay tribute. 

What is it about 27? People talk about the “27 club”, the group of famous rock stars who died at the same age - it includes Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Maybe it’s the age where people who go off the rails in their teens and early 20s start to run into serious trouble. Maybe they’re just not meant to get old.

What were you doing at 27? Were you being sensible, or stupid, or self destructive? Tell us, or chat about anything else here.

Poor Stefani Germanotta. Not only does she have to clomp and totter around the globe in monstrosities masquerading as shoes and spend hours being squeezed and pummelled into her Lady Gaga outfits every day, but the poor darling has to deal with being constantly compared to Madonna.

Sure, Gaga and Madge (in her time) might both have a soft spot for a conical bra, a scruffy boyfriend and a penchant for a generous splattering of religious iconography, but make no mistake - Gaga’s no Madonna and Madonna’s never been a Gaga.

Because, when you peel away the wigs and the body glitter and the raw meat, there are massive differences between the two pop princesses when it comes to sex, religion and politics – you know, all the simple stuff.

Continue reading "Pop princess Lady Gaga’s no Material Girl" »

Of the many challenging aspects of parenting, one of the greatest is the pressure to restrict or ban your kids from watching or listening to entertainers who push the boundaries of decency. The seamier parts of popular culture are so pervasive that it often seems impossible to shield your children from what the classification people like to call “adult concepts”.

Consider the program Masterchef. It’s terrific family entertainment - fun, civilised, educational. Masterchef has Katy Perry’s “Hot and Cold” as its theme song. After watching it a few times the kids love this catchy tune and ask you to download it from iTunes. Next thing you know you’re playing it in the car and your five-year-old son is singing along with the offensively incomprehensible line “And you PMS like a bitch that I know.” Terrific stuff.

Should you step in and play the censor, you risk drawing their attention to something they either don’t understand, or hadn’t even noticed anyway. And if you go fully down the path of banning them from a certain performer, you also risk turning that person into such a mysteriously illicit figure that your kids are much more interested in them than they were in the first place.

Continue reading "Miley Madness and society’s irreversible moral decline" »

In music, “polyphony” is when a composition has more than one melody playing at the same time. This term should be adapted for the political sphere. So, all and sundry, I hereby declare the label ‘polliephony’ be applied to those times when pollies try and win both sides of the argument - in other words, when they try to walk both sides of the street.

Polliephony is unfortunately a technique that is pervasive in almost all Australian political debates. However, for purposes of “programmatic specificity”, I’ll focus on its use in the asylum seeker debate.  This is because the asylum seeker debate is ripe for the use of polliephony, as it has two distinct sides of the street to walk on: one ‘tough’ and the other ‘humane’. 

Which brings us to one of the more remarkable and indelible uses of polliephony in modern Australian politics. Kevin “Bonhoeffer” Rudd’s notorious “tough but humane” approach to border protection.

Continue reading "Phony pollies and polyphony on asylum seekers" »

“We love Australian Music” is Triple J’s tag line, but do they? Really?? Or do they love it in the way that drunk guys tell random girls at clubs in the wee hours of Sunday morning? 

Take Triple J’s “all Australian” music program “Home & Hosed” for example. The show features up and coming and known Australian bands who perhaps wouldn’t get any airtime on any other station.. 

At first blush this sounds like a badge of pride. But when it’s put into perspective, it’s less impressive.

Continue reading "Triple J loves Aussie music, but loves ratings more" »

It was when the Captain Matchbox Whoopie Band let fly with its dated fart joke interlude that I started thinking about drinking. Overcome by nostalgia, I went to see the Captain and his mates (they had amused many of us back in the 70s) in a far-flung tent at this year’s Byron Bay Bluesfest, which is now held on an old Tea Tree farm at Tyagarah near Mullumbimby.

It had been a very good Bluesfest, although a few standout disappointments (a clearly past it B.B. King, a headed towards past it Blind Boys of Alabama and Bob Dylan and his band sounding like week-old soup) took some shine off the event. But there was enough really great music – hunt down Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and his band, Avenue Orleans for starters – to make the five day a revelation and confirmation of the power of music.

Back to drinking. Sad Song Junkie, a new album by Boston singer-songwriter Dan Baker is a delight, bringing together a superb collection of tunes, including a love song to the martini – “When I was young/Just a boy/I’d eat my cereal/Juts for the toy/Not much has changed/For my little treat’s the olive/Way down at the bottom/Of my favourite drink”. It’s such a louche, sweet surrender that I found it hard to stop playing it, despite the power and beauty of the other sad and sorry songs.

Drinking has been a constant theme of song writing, sitting proudly next to love, lust and loss. So, with this new entrant at hand, let’s dive in and nominate the top 25 drinking/drunk songs.

25: Little Old Wine Drinker, Me by Dean Martin is for the devotee of wine (“I’m praying for rain in California/So the grapes can grow and they can make more wine”) by a man with a big reputation as a drinking enthusiast – helped no doubt by his vanity number plate DRUNKY. Martin also had a fabulous crooning voice.

Continue reading "Here’s to drinking songs, they’re true blue…" »

Hysteria. Queues. Outragious fashion. Prince Charming. We had it all on Friday night - in Homebush.

An hour before Kate swept gracefully into Westminster Abbey, I made my own dramatic entrance, swept off my feet by some moss and down my friend’s front steps in Balmain, taking out a large pot plant and fracturing my toe (now purple).

Sprawled across the damp pavers - a potted azalea in my lap, bits of me hurting but I wasn’t sure which yet - I took one look at my 12-year-old and saw that she had crowned me, in that moment, the Most Embarrassing Mum Ever.

Continue reading "An un-Belieber tells: Why I missed the Royal Wedding" »

A few weeks back, Adam Baidawi took to the online newsstands with a statement befitting most thirteen year old girls: “Back off, haters. Justin Bieber’s Got Talent.”* 

Baidawi’s main statement was that the world of social media perpetuates unfounded assumptions, especially those related to taste, and I’m inclined to agree: We jump on the bandwagon.

But there’s more to it than that – Adam’s argument ends up here: “For those curious, the sample principle should be applied to poor old Rebecca Black … who has endured a lifetime of ridicule … despite bands like the Black Eyed Peas pumping out lyrics that, frankly, read like OUTTAKES from ’Friday.’”

Continue reading "Bad lyrics: Oooh baby, oh girl, hit me. Please. Hit me." »

Yesterday afternoon, Kanye West put an emphatic punctuation mark on one of the most rapturous comebacks the music industry has ever seen.

Performing to in excess of 100,000 spectators at the Coachella Festival—and millions more worldwide, thanks to a generous and remarkable live YouTube stream—West’s finale was as fantastical as it was endearing. 

Though West often describes himself as a designer—of music, of fashion, of aesthetic—yesterday he proved himself, more than anything, a curator. A man of impossibly varied influence and complexities. And he couldn’t have crafted a more grandiose stage to celebrate the completion of a fascinating, awkward, gritty metamorphosis.

Continue reading "Kanye stages a beautiful, dark, fantastic comeback" »

Earlier this week news.com.au took a look at dastardly filmclip deeds. We decided to jump on the bandwagon and asked Robert Burton-Bradley to get us started. Because, after all, it is Friday. Friday. And you’ve gotta get down on Friday.

(Hate Rebecca Black? You’ll love this.)

Long before Ms Black burst on to YouTube with her auto-tuned delusions of pop success people were creating music videos they’d probably wish were forgotten forever.

The most surprising thing about this hapless girl facetiously bleating “Today it is Friday, Friday” is that people think it’s the worst film clip ever made. I beg to differ. Thousands of other shockers are now just a click away.

Continue reading "Name and shame: Worst music video ever?" »

Suicide among musicians is, sadly, far too common. Artistic temperaments, self-medication and substance abuse, depressive personalities and the ease with which musicians slip across to the dark side of life are all contributors.

That these people are often celebrities and write about these circumstances and tendencies – or have things written about them by others – draws greater attention to this cohort than is the case for many others who also suffer from the demons that can lead to self-loathing and harm.

On Christmas Day, 2009, the American singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt took his life after 26 years enduring the catastrophic consequences of a paralysing car accident (an event marked on this site). At the time news spread about Vic’s sad death, fellow singer-songwriter and friend Lucinda Williams (he wrote a song about her for his West of Rome album) was writing material for her latest record, Blessed.

Continue reading "Blessed by the presence of Lucinda Williams" »

Remember when you first felt old? I do. It was Thursday night, watching pop star Rihanna playing at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

What’s old? ‘Old’ is being astonished that people pay up to $150 a ticket to stand up all night. ‘Old’ is when the doof-doof of insanely loud music plays havoc with the chicken schnitzel that can’t seem to settle in your stomach. ‘Old’ is wishing that you could go back in time ... exactly three nights earlier when the same stage was commanded by 70-year-old singer Neil Diamond.

It would be unfair for a reasonably conservative woman of 41 (a simple country lass, no less, whose teenage pin-up was Cliff Richard) to compare and contrast Neil Diamond and Rihanna. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Continue reading "I’ll take Sweet Caroline over screechy Rihanna any day" »

Pressure might mount on older drivers to get off the roads as they approach 80, but it’s nothing compared to the pressure to get off the dance floor once you’re approaching 40. 

Though the precise cut-off is elusive, the social convention is clear: if you’re dancing your way into middle age, you’re courting tragedy.

Of course no one’s stopping you busting a move – but there’s this question of dignity.  Perhaps it’s best to just cede the floor.  But while that might be gracious it seems unwise.

Continue reading "Can you be too old to dance?" »

There is a great moment in The Simpsons where, after mounting a successful grassroots crusade against the violent Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, Marge is called upon to lead a group of concerned citizens who feel that Michelangelo’s statue of David is also not suitable for children (due to his exposed genitalia) and should not be displayed in Springfield during a nationwide tour.

Much to the frustration of Helen Lovejoy – the gossipy, ultra-conservative Reverend’s wife famous for the phrase “won’t somebody think of the children!?” – Marge does not want to participate in this campaign, because she thinks the statue is a renaissance masterpiece that all children should be encouraged to see.

It is a clever plot twist that highlights how slippery the slope of censorship really is, and how inconsistent we as a society tend to be when assessing the relative merits of art and popular culture: that one person’s art is very often another’s filth.

Continue reading "PUNCH: Kanye’s twisted fantasy is art, not filth" »

How convenient to caricature someone whose work you oppose by reducing them to a cartoon parody. Like I haven’t had enough Helen Lovejoy clichés to last a lifetime? Oh, and look, another media studies academic watching The Simpsons. Are we impressed yet?

Warning: Contains graphic violent and sexual images

Where Stephen Harrington sees “a graphic critique of post-feminist female sexuality”, I see Kanye West holding a woman’s decapitated head. Where those like Harrington see ambiguous, complicated narrative and linear narrative fantasy, I see semi-naked dead women swinging from ropes around their necks.

When I see Rick Ross in the ‘Behind the scenes’ You Tube clip tucking into a plate of raw meat before a spreadeagled dead woman on the table, I see the brutalization and degradation of female sexuality. I don’t think ‘check out that satire!’

Continue reading "Counterpunch: women aren’t playthings, slaves and bitches" »

I was browsing iTunes this week, searching for distractions to avoid whatever I was actually supposed to be doing, when something caught my eye and revealed I had apparently grown old overnight.

It was the music charts, featuring sex. And lots of it.  At 1—“Dirty Talk” (Wynter Gordon),  At 3—“S&M” (Rihanna), At 9—“Tonight (I’m F****n’ You)” (Enrique Iglesias, clearly reluctant to beat around the bush).

Continue reading "Sing-a-long sex: talking dirty on iTunes" »

Australian singer and song writer Paul Kelly was born today in 1955.

It’s Thursday at The Punch. What’s on your mind? Share it here.

It’s a universally (at least I hope so) accepted truth that the best song EVER does not actually exist.

It simply can’t. It’s pretty unlikely your best song will be my best song, mainly because songs are subjective and all that, but also because everyone has had different life experiences, so songs speak to each of us in different ways.

Much the same for the world’s worst songs.

Continue reading "What’s your favourite worst song?" »

So bumpy grindy dry-rooting on a dance floor is now acceptable fodder for openly Christian artists’ video clips. Fine. Not for me to moralise. That was done here in this piece and most of you said “Pffft. Who cares?”

What I’m wondering is where the outcry is from the huge flock of Guy Sebastian fans who wear their Christianity on their sleeves.

Look at the photo above. It’s G-Seb schmoozing in Sydney the other week with American rapper/singer Eve, a woman not known for her modesty, who has previously collaborated with the likes of Gwen Stefani.

Continue reading "Can Guy Sebastian have it both ways?" »

Every year it’s the same.

The chanting starts. Rum. Rum. Rum. Rum. I pull my pillow over my head and try to drown it out, to no avail.

Cue the angelic singers… and a mere 20 seconds into my day the phrase I’ve been dreading all year is heard: ``Come they told me, parum pum pum pum’‘, delivered in the svelte motown tones of Boney M’s Liz Mitchell.

Continue reading "Oh Come All Ye Crappy Christmas Songs" »

About 15 years ago, Nick Cave’s The Ship Song became the preferred Australian bogan wedding waltz.

The song entered the Australian public consciousness, but the artist behind it remained lesser known and considered something of a fringe dweller, kicking cans on the outskirts. 

His gentle song Into My Arms, from 1997, has likewise slowly grown into a national song which can be played on any radio station and will see grandmothers pausing briefly to remember a personal moment from long ago.

Continue reading "Harry Potter and Australia’s Prince of Darkness" »

What time is it in the world? When U2 launched the Australian leg of their 360 tour last week in Melbourne, this seemingly nonsensical question was repeated and alluded to throughout the show. 

As the apparent motif of their tour, the question begs consideration. 

Over the years U2 have consistently encouraged their fans to develop a political and social consciousness, in stark contrast to the spiritual vacuity promoted by most mainstream musicians. 

Continue reading "In defence of Bono and U2" »

Just days after the official release of his new album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s been given ten out of ten by Pitchfork and five stars from Rolling Stone.

For those of you who don’t subscribe to the music bibles, that’s unheard of. Critics are acting like it’s the second coming - and for hip hop, it basically is.

Hip hop used to be that stuff only the naughty kids listened to… the kind of music your mum used to ban you from buying… and the sort of album you’d put in your collection if you wanted people to think you walked on the wild side.

Continue reading "Firearms be damned, he’s got Brand Kanye" »

U2’s 360 degrees tour has touched down in Australia and is in full swing. Much like the main feature of the tour, stories have been coming from every direction on how extravagant the concert is. How the big scale, big vision, and big cost have lead to the biggest concert event ever.

You have to admit, the numbers are pretty impressive.

U2’s two year world tour has run up an $850,000 dollars daily running cost, and last year took $123 million as the highest grossing tour of 2009. ‘The claw’ stage that dominates the band as they play towers at an impressive height of 164 feet. It is so large that it took six 747 jets to get it to Australia.

Continue reading "U2 isn’t exactly practicing what it preaches" »

The grimmest master songwriter shares something with the shiniest, tiniest pop princess.

Both would struggle to explain how they came to produce a set of words which intercepted with a tune and then took off to become property beloved by the world – or, at least, someone in the world.

I’ve asked a number of acquaintances, colleagues and friends to hit me with their best-ever lyrics – just a line or two, and the reason they like them.

Continue reading "The songs remain the same: the best lyrics of all time" »

There are billboards all over Sydney right now claiming that a band by the name of Guns and Roses is playing this weekend. This is a lie. A bandy-legged, lank-haired fellow dressed in spandex dacks and a gay headband is playing. His name is Axl Rose and he has not left the house in 20 years.

There is no Slash, no Izzy Stradlin, no-one to blow the sports whistle which heralds the thumping start of Paradise City, just a few session musos and a chap who spent the past two decades penning the anti-masterwork Chinese Democracy, a concept album so crap in design and execution that it makes Roger Water’s Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking seem intelligent. It is unclear whether the relevant sections of the Trade Practices Act covering false and deceptive conduct can be applied to foreign entites - Punch columnist and competition crusader Professor Frank Zumbo would know - but whatever the case the billboard advertising the Guns and Roses concert should bear a large asterisk reading “Actual band may not match band shown.”

Which brings us to INXS.

Continue reading "It’s time for the ACCC to act on crap bands" »

There are some top 10 lists that should never be written because they will always start a fight. This is one of them.

With reports that The Beatles are about to release their catalogue on iTunes, here is the list of what are incontestably the top 10 songs by the greatest band that ever played together. It’s so definitive it could be carved in stone and hung on Abbey Road.

It’s not a list of the songs you should download, just a list of their best songs. And no, Yesterday isn’t on it, being possibly the most depressing song ever written. Nor does it include Let It Be which should be correctly titled Let It Be Over. So, in order of brilliance:

10. All Together Now

I’ve kept the left-field choice for number 10. This runs with the credits on Yellow Submarine, the movie, and every song on that film is a potential inclusion on this list.

Continue reading "A Punch list: The top ten Beatles songs" »

I’m lying in bed thinking about septagenarian Jewish men. 

Given I’m an agnostic in my thirties that can only mean one thing: Leonard Cohen is in town.

How do you break it to your middle-aged husband that you’ve fallen for a man twice his age? 

Continue reading "Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah!" »

Nobody wants to be a gatecrasher.

And for viewers of the Arias last night, it felt like we’d stumbled into some raging A-list party and we definitely weren’t invited.

Staged for the first time at the Sydney Opera House, in an ultra-casual outdoor telecast, the awards seemed to be a cracker, but only if you had the all-important gold lanyard around your neck.

Continue reading "Worst ARIAs ever?" »

Just when you think mainstream culture couldn’t get any shallower along comes the hipster.

No, I don’t mean the hipster sub-culture that beat writers like Jack Kerouac identified with in the 50s or low riding jeans most of us shouldn’t wear, I’m talking about the new breed of inner city trendy taking over small bars, laneways and cafe\bookstores everywhere.

Somehow draping yourself in ridiculous clothes and capering around while being deliberately ironic has become highly desirable for thousands of twenty and thirty somethings.

Continue reading "The hipster has no clothes" »

In these troubled times anything that makes your feet move involuntarily is a good thing. That’s what happened when I was flying to Canberra recently.

I put the earphones on and pushed play for the new Tom Jones record, Praise and Blame.

Jones is a transplanted Welsh singer who’s made Las Vegas home. He’s done pretty well everything in a 50 year career, including some more than passable country records in the 70s and some very unforgettable disco/dance efforts a decade later.

Continue reading "Throw your panties at the CD player, Tom Jones is back" »

Throughout my high school years I used to walk to Brighton High in Adelaide’s beach suburbs with my mate Andy Durant. Andy and I liked walking because we could smoke a ciggie or two and talk about music.

Andy went on to become, all too briefly, one of Australia’s most promising song-writers, penning tunes for a South Australian band, Stars, until cancer took him at the ridiculously young age of 25. There was a brilliant memorial concert for Andy in Melbourne featuring a stellar line up including Richard Clapton, Broderick Smith, Don Walker, Jimmy Barnes, Ian Moss, Glyn Mason … you get the idea.

Among Andy’s enduring legacy was helping a young kid who came from a home without much music discover the delights of rock, blues, folk and country songs.

Continue reading "The Band that holds under the weight of time" »

Wowsers sure had some great wins this week. The mid-life crisis now hits people in their mid-30s. The march of over-parenting continues.

The Heart Foundation wants us eating margarine instead of butter. Bikini races were cancelled on the Gold Coast (OK perhaps that’s a win for decency, but the reaction to it was way over the top).  And if all that wasn’t enough to make you cry, one of the most authoritative voices in world music, Britain’s NME, released a list of songs that is guaranteed to do so, at least if you’re a bloke. It’s a list of songs that make men cry the most. Top of the list is REM’s Everybody Hurts, which I would guess doesn’t make people cry because it’s sad, but because it’s so utterly rubbish.

Enough. At least for Friday afternoon. Punchers make excellent music lists, so with Stevie Wonder above and a bit of Jackie Wilson and others below to kick us off, try make a playlist that sticks one in the eye of wowsers everywhere. The only rule is that the song is a happy one: no heartbreak, tales of woe, or laments for injustice against puppies. Add your suggestions in the comments and we’ll build out the list.

Continue reading "Punch playlist: Songs to get back at wowsers" »

Well it looks like Katy Perry – pop chanteuse, novelty wig wearer, man-tamer and controversy stoker – has done it again. 

Entertainment news site TMZ reported yesterday that Sesame Street producers had pulled her recently filmed duet with Elmo. The charge? It’s too boobtastic.

In March, Perry filmed an ostensibly kid-friendly version of her hit song “Hot N Cold” with Elmo for the show’s upcoming season, to teach young viewers about opposites. Namely, up/down, fast/slow, stop/go, yes/no, human/muppet.

Continue reading "Reactionary boobs got Katy Perry pulled from kids TV" »

Neil Young is back in the ditch. Next Tuesday as our new paradigm Parliament shuffles towards getting stampy over who’s going to be Speaker, the old rock’n’roll paradigm will hit the music shops and internet stores.

A stunning and exciting collection of songs by Neil Young, very appropriately called Le Noise, is being released.

The album is Young’s first genuine solo record. He’s the only musician performing. There’s no band, no junk yard, indestructible rhythm section from then likes of Crazy Horse’s Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina. It’s the musician and his guitars, probably just two, the black electric Gibson Les Paul he purchased when he recorded Everybody Knows This is Nowhere in 1969 and one of his favourite Martin acoustics, perhaps a D-28 like that used by his favourite country singer, Hank Williams.

Continue reading "Bring Le Noise: Neil Young is back in the ditch" »

Great music cities don’t just suddenly emerge, although some have their genesis in rebellion or in the emergence of some artist or event.

Brisbane is known as one of Australia’s great music cities mainly by people who’ve grown up here over the last 40 or so years or the lucky blow-ins who’ve come to love the place.

Robert Forster, now an elegant elder statesman of Brisbane’s music scene, closed the 2010 Bigsound conference last week talking about his early connections with music.

Continue reading "Why Brisvegas totally rocks" »

Kayne West is unabashed. It’s why I like the guy, and it’s why many others don’t.

He’s the only superstar capable of the kind of outburst the world witnessed at last year’s MTV Music Video Awards — when he leapt onto the stage and announced that Beyoncé Knowles should have won Best Female Video mid-way through Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech — an outburst that also bestowed on him the title of being the only superstar who can claim he’s been called a jack-ass by the president.

Now, after the most damaging period of his career, West has attempted to resurrect his public image using Twitter.

Continue reading "Kanye West bypasses press by going berserk on Twitter" »

It was this statement that caught my attention: “There’s no band, but I got in there with my sonics. There’s nothing else out there like it.”

This was legendary producer, genius musician and all round studio super hero Daniel Lanois talking about the new Neil Young record – Le Noise – which is being released worldwide on September 28.

Neil Young fans are a tolerant bunch. The crazy, dope-smoking, song-writing and guitar-bending maestro is without peer for those who’ve been following his wandering ways since he first left Canada and headed for California – in a hearse – in the mid-1960s.

Continue reading "There is a guy from North Ontario" »

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?" »

It’s possible no-one under 25 will get this article. But the joy of side one, track one is one of my life’s great pleasures. It’s a hangover from the days of 12-inch vinyl when there were five or six songs on each side of a long playing record.

There’s plenty of these musical gems but here are my Top 25 starting with the indisputable heavyweight track one side one of the world: Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, recorded and released (on the LP Highway 61 Revisited) in 1965.

As US music genius Greil Marcus said in the best (and probably only) book written about a single song: “When drummer Bobby Gregg brought his stick down for the opening noise of the six-minute single, the sound - a kind of announcement, then a void of silence, then a rising fanfare, then the song - fixed a moment when all those caught up in modern music found themselves engaged in a running battle for a prize no one bothered to name: the greatest record ever made, perhaps the greatest record that ever would be made.”

Continue reading "Quality vinyl: the top 25 side one track ones of all time" »

Tex Perkins and his band made something special happen at the Darwin Amphitheatre on Sunday night, though for a while there I was worried. When Perkins turned up in a Darwin nightclub in 2008 with his band the Ladyboyz, doing covers of 70s songs – his filthy version of Jon English’s “Hollywood Seven” was the standout – some older folks were horrified by what they heard, and saw.

They had not done their research. They had imagined the purpose of the Perkins’ band was to leave untroubled the songs of Elton John, Captain and Tennille, Mondo Rock and Lionel Ritchie.

Perkins was loving the songs, but he was massacring them. Some people in the crowd were bewildered and revolted. How could he start wildly air humping to the gentle Dr Hook ballad, “A Little Bit More”?

Continue reading "Inspired tribute to a man who loved Jesus and cocaine" »

So Slash is playing one of the hits – it might have been Rocket Queen, the anthemic final track from Appetite for Destruction. The crowd up the front has the devil horns going. We’re a couple of dozen rows back, just standing around. I get a tap on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” says a guy who looks like he’s just come the trading floor, “but I can’t see a thing.” Pfft. Where are we? The Louvre?

But it’s to be expected of fans at modern rock concerts, attended as they are by middle-class tossers pretending they’re still as rebellious as when they first listened to an album by the ageing millionaire and recovering drug addict with the guitar on stage. I know this because I am one of those middle-class tossers.

Continue reading "Rock gigs are no place for middle-class tossers like me" »

Linda McCartney was cool. She wore pale denim jeans, faded floral caftans and waistcoats and cut her perfect blond hair into a long mullet and spiked up the fringe.

She took photographs of the Rolling Stones, married the best Beatle and gave birth to four children.

It was the late 1960s; the beginning of rock star mania and bohemian chic and Linda nailed it. Not only that, she passed it on.

Continue reading "Linda McCartney, the bohemian queen" »

“The internet’s completely over.” 

But don’t panic my Facebook friends – both of you – for this is the Gospel according to Prince who in the early 80s penned the hit ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, before he proceeded to do just that. 

The Prince of peculiarity, now a devout Jehovah’s Witness, revealed in a world exclusive interview this week with the UK Mirror that he’s closed down his official website and banned YouTube and iTunes from carrying or broadcasting his music.

Continue reading "The Purple Rain falls mainly on his brain" »

Beyonce was right. You’ve been a very bad girl - a very, very bad, bad girl Gaga.

The poplette inflicted senseless pain on British fans when her performance of the song Monster included her being “attacked” and “bitten” on her neck. She then sung with fake blood pouring down her neck before apparently dying in a pool of blood.

This, just hours after 12 people were tragically killed by shooter taxi driver Derrick Bird in Northern England.

Continue reading "Gaga’s gone ga ga, and not in a good way" »

With the excellence that is Eurovision upon us again, here’s a flashback piece from shortly after our Punch launch last year…

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 "Flashback:  Why Australia needs its own Eurovision" »

With the election drawing upon us our potential leaders must make a critical decision soon – what will be the campaign anthem that defines their run for office?

In a world where politics is pop culture, where debate is white noise, where voters make their choice on a whim, the tune they are humming on the way to the ballot box could just decide the outcome of the election.

Now in a national first, the major parties have asked the readership of The Punch to form a consultative committee to develop non-irritating campaign themes for the ALP, the Coalition and The Greens.

Continue reading "Election 2010 – Who will call the tune?" »

Huh? What? Or if I’m feeling a little more polite than usual, I beg your pardon. These have become my most-uttered phrases lately - you see, I’m going deaf.

Well technically, my hearing is still within the normal limits, but my left ear is a Big Day Out or two away from slipping below the magical line and the hearing test people are worried.

It seems I’ll need a hearing aid by the time I’m 50, or earlier if I don’t make drastic changes.

Continue reading "Please don’t stop the music, just turn it down a little" »

Lou Reed is a complete dribbler. I do not say this lightly. In fact, it hurts to say it. I’m one of his greatest fans - and yet it must be said. The once-great rock poet has been transformed into a blithering idiot.

Once, he lived on the fringe and wrote about heroin, alcoholism and trannies. Now he dabbles in experimental music with his wife Laurie Anderson, the self-titled “performance artist” (WTF does that even mean? Can you really call yourself that just because you married Lou Reed?)

The pair share a Manhatten “loft” apartment with their 11-year-old rat terrier Lollabelle. They have an electronic keyboard on the floor, switched on at all times because Lollabelle likes to step on the keys and make music. I’m not making this up.

Continue reading "Dork on the wild side - Lou Reed vanishes up his bum" »

Sydney barely averted a potentially violent mob scene last week that would have been caused by 5 foot 3 of trouble, namely the floppy-haired, permanently smirking boy-child chanteur, Justin Bieber.

While last Monday’s pheromone-fuelled fracas may have gotten all the attention, it’s another group of staunch Bieberites who are more a case for concern.

Peer a little closer and the Justin Bieber show isn’t all rainbows and hair gel. Somehow this boy with his ridiculous forward-swept mop of hair has, consciously or not, crossed into largely uncharted, sexually-confused territory in the popular culture maelstrom.

Continue reading "Bieber: underage boy and sex object for older women" »

“The trio give birth to an amalgamation of vintage keyboards”

Dear Music Critic,

I have a problem with your review.  You see the thing is… I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. To me, the above quote makes me conjure up a mental image of three people give birth to old rusty keyboards. Ouch. I can see you’ve given the album four stars… but the seven paragraphs between the photo of the album cover and the four stars reads to me like a mountain of musical gibberish.

Continue reading "I’ve seen the future of rock, but I just don’t understand it" »

The Mona Lisa is valued at over $500 million. I don’t pretend to understand why. To me, she’s an arch, witchy old man-lady with lanky hair. I find her smarmy. Uptight. I bought an Etsy print of an Edwardian couple to hang in my kitchen that I think is personality-plus compared to her. And they have artichokes instead of heads.

That said, I defer without hesitation to art experts who tell me Leonardo da Vinci knows more about form and composition and painting little smug secret-smiles than some hipster poster artist from Williamsburg. My artichoke people aren’t even smiling (in their defense, they’re artichokes).

And that’s why they set me back about thirty bucks where the Mona Lisa costs roughly the same as it does to plan then abandon a Sydney public transport initiative.

Continue reading "Just because you like a song doesn’t make it good" »

He hasn’t exactly reached for his pipe and slippers but some of the background to Saul “Slash” Hudson’s first solo album is decidedly befitting a man in his mid-40s. The stories behind the collaborations with a laundry list of rock ‘n’ roll legends aren’t littered with trashed penthouse suites, but as another ageing genre pioneer - Billy Joel - might say, it’s still rock and roll to me.

According to Music Radar Slash had sent a tape to Iggy Pop, hoping he would sing on it. Iggy rang Slash and, when he got the answering machine, proceeded to leave a message of him singing the track down the phone with the tape playing on the stereo in the background. “We’re all gonna die,” rings the chorus, “So let’s get high.” Old school, right?

Until you get to the next line. “We’re all gonna die, so let’s be nice.” All together: Naawww. (Note: not all the lyrics are this mainstream. Parental advisory applies, as in do not play in front of parents, especially the mother-in-law.)

Continue reading "Slash the album: a guitar hero’s return to form" »

There’s nothing wrong with the Beach Boys per se. The album “Pet Sounds” routinely shows up on best-of-all-time lists. But I’m feeling a bit less fondly towards them after recently having the chorus of “Help Me Rhonda” stuck in my head on a loop. It reappeared several days in a row. 

This experience is called an earworm. Germans first came up with the term ohrwurm to describe the musical itch that apparently affects almost everyone at some stage or another. Research into earworms has found that virtually any piece of music can become one. Most people have a particular song of their own that they find uniquely irritating. But more generally, there are factors that make certain songs more likely to become earworms than others. 

One of the world’s authorities on earworms is Professor James Kellaris, a marketing and music expert at the University of Cincinnati.

Continue reading "Well read-head: I’ve got worms" »

Micah P Hinson is a Texas-raised singer songwriter – although born in Memphis, Tennessee - who should have been on the cover of D.B.C. Pierre’s Booker Prize winning novel Vernon God Little.

He lived a hell of a life before he released his first album Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress in 2003 – his alienation from daily life in Abilene was a fast-track to skateboarding, drug taking and guitar playing. Teenage addiction, hooking up with a fashion magazine cover girl and one or two bad choices introduced Hinson to the inside of a prison cell.

The shock discovery there might be life after 20, a move to Denton, Texas and enrolling in university changed just about all of that and a record deal soon after provided the creative opportunities his father had seen a decade before when he bought Hinson a guitar so he could enter a grade school talent contest.

Continue reading "Micah P. Hinson: Don’t mess with this Texan" »

The thing about Alex Chilton is that he was a musician from the south of the United States.

The hardest part of that sentence was to put this brilliant, idiosyncratic, iconoclastic, genius singer, songwriter, musical innovator, guitarist in the past tense.

Chilton died in New Orleans on St Patrick’s Day from a heart complaint. He was on his way to Austin, Texas to play at the South by South West music conference and festival.

Continue reading "The boy who was better than the Beatles" »