There's nothing like the afternoon rays of the sun. Like country roads and their turning. The AM radio pushes me on into a rising curve, into an Elton John song from the 1970s, 'Where to Now St Peter?' It reminds me of being 15 years old; of being 47 now: "I took myself a blue canoe and I floated like a leaf".A cemetery swings into view as I enter Millthorpe. White crosses and granite tombstone...
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Birds are shrieking through the trees all over Rushcutter's Bay in Sydney. It is as if something violent and tuneful is going on at once as we sit on a hotel sundeck and take in the riot around us. "Birds are cool," says Joan Wasser in an accent that fairly drips with New York tang, "but your Australian birds, o my god, I've never seen or heard anything like them. I mean, look at that… thing," .
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Barack Obama stands in the torrential rains of Chester, Pennsylvania, addressing an 8000 strong crowd that has stood ankle deep in mud for hours waiting for him to appear. It is one of the great moments in the American election campaign, and a confirming symbol of the Democratic candidate's seemingly assured place in history when those elections are decided this coming Tuesday, November 4th: I...
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Anyone witness to a recent [2002] solo live tour by the rock musician Steve Earle would have no qualms telling you about the greatness this aching bear of a man exuded on stage. Drawing on elements of folk, country and blues, this 'roots' performer summoned up a peculiarly troubled form of American heroism and its troubadour, protest spirit, echoing a lineage from Lightning Hopkins to Woody Gut...
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DIED PRETTYED KUEPPEREnmore Theatre, Sydney, Australia08.02.08Have you ever experienced that moment in a performance when it feels like the band in front of you has peeled away its own skin to reveal an entirely more intense and grander being? Great musicians strive to get to such places. And during their encore rendition of ‘Winterland’ Died Pretty did just that. Proving – if there were any
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I did the following interview with Nick Cave over the phone in 1994 for the now defunct Juice Magazine in Australia. He was just about to release Let Love In, still one of my favourite records by him. It's full of vitality, even joy or at least humour, in a typically skewed and erotically dark Nick Cave way. Our conversation was free and easy, almost careless at times. I'd been up all night bef...
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I was made aware that the Western was dead when I visited a junk shop recently. Looking down at a collection of cowboys and Indians just like the ones I had played with as a boy, I began talking to the shop owner about the fort they came with. She smiled at me and said, “Not many kids these days have an interest in a set like that. They hardly even know what cowboys and Indians are. It’s just
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You know the old Oscar Wilde saying, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’? The meaning behind it seems to get grimmer and more perverse as we continue to watch train wrecks like Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears careen along in their lives – and into ours. The more voyeuristic our culture gets the less compassionate we become as a society. It takes a death t
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We ride like birdsour heads are feathersour face is bloodour thoughts are weatherwe lay in skywe talk like songsour plans in darknesscan float like swansour friends are branchesour loves are leaveswe pray for moonlightthe wind it breatheswe’re black in snowfallwe’re death and laughterwe scavenge silverhave seen here afterour dreams are mothersour tracks are smokewe whisper childrenwe smell the
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With 'Just A Song About Ping Pong' the Brisbane, Australia teen band Operator Please might have seemed like a joke band. One song with a catchy title, gimmick done, MySpace career over and out before they even got an adult kiss. I sure made that lazy assumption. Big mistake. Because their latest single 'Get What You Want' confirms they're the real thing - a great young band with a sound reminis...
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