Meshell Ndegeocello has been on my mind since her side-shows in Sydney and Melbourne were announced ahead of two dates at Bluesfest in Byron Bay. You couldn’t get me to Bluesfest if you paid me big wads of dosh – the idea of spending three days in the company of thousands of increasingly sweaty and [...]
Meshell Ndegeocello was at her go-to repository of auditory delights—Amoeba Music on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles last October showing off her tote bag of goodies as part of their irregular, funny and revealing "Whats In My Bag" sessions. The YouTube clip gives a pretty good idea of Meshell's catholic musical and artistic tastes - [...]
A couple weeks back I had a night out at Darwin's Railway Club with three young women hitting strings and skins and a coupla bunches of old(er) blokes doing the same but without a pair of decent trousers (or a full set of teeth) between them. Notwithstanding those apparent shortcomings (pun intended) it was great [...]
20 February 2024 It was a select but sold out crowd that saw a great show from Emily Wurramara at the Railway Club in Darwin earlier tonight. We were all happy to see her back on stage in Darwin on a hot February night. Emily was ably supported by local duo Reverie at what for [...]
By Mark Butler.* SOME time in 1970, while I was still pretending to be a student at Macquarie University, I gave a lecture outlining my belief that Bob Dylan would one day be seen as a great poet on the same level as Eliot, Yeats and Auden, at that time my touchstones for poetic greatness. [...]
Bob Gosford This post is the first in an occasional series looking at music that I’m … Spinning … on my recently acquired turntable. The following text is from the website of Fat Possum Records, where Mississippi Hill Country musician R. L Burnside recorded what for mine was his best work. His 1994 recording Too [...]
In his life and in his music -- most memorably as a member of Sydney bands The Original Battersea Heroes, later The Heroes, [1967-1973], then the band for which he is best known, Uncle Bob's Band [1973-77], followed by a brief foray with The Works [1978-79] -- Bob McGowan instinctively shunned the artificial and reveled in the real.
We were connected now, plugged into Dylan’s electric freedom and his voice rode with a rough edge over the tight music. ‘Concert’ was not quite the word for this performance, as words cracked in the air, I was aware I liked it more than any ‘singing’ I have heard before. When Dylan sang Pay in Blood (But not My Own) his voice sounded ancient, harsh and merciless.
I was lucky enough to know this charming funny and generous man who made incredible music, and who had a way of making me feel pretty damn special. Spencer was like a kid with a lolly jar around music and I found that irresistible in a man who’d written and played some of my all time favourite songs: Genevieve McGuckin on Spencer P Jones
I’ve been thinking about Chris Wilson a lot since I learned of his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. It’s very sad I probably won’t hear him play again, won’t get to watch him own a stage and destroy a room again. But I’ve been so very lucky to have these memories and many others to carry with me as fuel: Jeff Lang
