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
Aretha made me go looking for my own voice, whatever that was, no matter how white, how weedy, and I thank her for that and for so much more.
There are no winners in any of this—a group of women are (rightfully it seems) aggrieved by Walker's (admitted) failures in research and diligence, a respected author has suffered a terrible fall from grace and none of us (well, most of us) will get to read what is/was without doubt a valuable contribution to our shared musical history.
The Oils were in classic rock mode. No new songs, rarely testing the boundaries of tried and true winners, the audience wasn’t really challenged. Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey enjoyed the brilliant clarity of the sound and delivered most of the thrills.
Well there's floodin' down in Texas All of the telephone lines are down Well there's floodin' down in Texas All of the telephone lines are down And I've been tryin' to call my baby Lord and I can't get a single sound "Texas Flood", from the Stevie Ray Vaughan album of the same name.
The highest selling Indigenous artist in history, Dr G. Yunupingu released two subsequent top five studio albums Rrakala and The Gospel Album, achieved a swag of ARIA Awards, performed across the globe for audiences including Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Obama and released the first Indigenous language single to reach the top five, all the while continuing to call Elcho Island home.
The Darwin Festival has failed local visual artists. Spending money on a roving class of interstate creatives and acts is capital that gets drained out of the local culture making economy. There is no substantial quota for local engagement, there is no compulsion that local creatives get engaged and employed. The current festival model fails to connect with and engage the local culture makers. Even the influx of DF production crew in August are like carnies - here for the month then off again to fleece another community with their generic arts festival business model.
The recent call by the Australian Road Crew Association (ARCA)—including this piece on the ABC by Guy Stayner that highlights the appalling suicide rates in the live music industry—gave me pause to reflect on my previous career in music, mainly working as a roadie (doing FoH sound in the main) with rock ‘n roll bands [...]
Clearly built without the aid of an architect, Po' Monkey's Lounge crazy structure sat in the middle of a cotton field — a mile and a half off Highway 61.
