Records

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" »

It’s “proof” to climate change believers, “just weather” to sceptics – but to everyone it’s the arrival of summer. In winter.

View The Punch - August weather in a larger map

Weather records are often trivial matters, a question of a few tenths of some obscure measurement here and there. Last month’s heat highs streaked away from the norms like Usain Bolt taking on a field of suburban club runners.

Unless you work for Channel 10, weather people typically aren’t an excitable bunch. But the Bureau of Meteorology is calling the August heat “highly unusual” and “exceptional”, and this week issued a Special Climate Statement, its first since the heatwave that fried the southeast in February. The interactive map above shows some – just some – of the dozens of records around the country that were burnt.

Continue reading "Interactive map: Australia’s scorching August" »

“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" »