It’s a helluva long way from the grimy streets of Sydney’s Newtown to a balmy evening beneath the stars in Darwin’s Civic Park, a transition I made more than twenty years ago. Stories about heroin and amphetamines and train stations and rugby league are rarely part of the discourse in this part of the world.
In the Territory the stories are all too common...backpackers in vans swerving to avoid a wallaby of a basking lizard or a stubborn eagle feasting on roadkill, losing control in the dirt, over-correcting, rolling over and over 'til they come to permanent rest in the the scrub...
Michael Loyd Young, documents the 150 miles of Highway 61, the famed blacktop road snaking from Memphis, TN down to Greenville, MS. At the halfway point, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, sits Clarksdale, MS, the city considered the birthplace of the blues and the location of Robert Johnson’s famed “Cross Road Blues” intersection of Highway 61 and 49. The Delta has been home to blues legends such as Charley Patton, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Cadillac John Nolden, B.B. King, T-Model Ford, Mississippi Slim, Big Jack Johnson, and Willie King, among countless others whose music has become the glue that holds these communities together as they struggle to survive.
By the way, I'm only moving into a different house because my sweetie and I want to buy one together that is truly 'ours' if you know what I mean - Roger Stolle, Cathead Music with a new twist on why you'd sell a house
From the dim recesses of memory I recall that Mandawuy turned up one night while we were on tour in Sydney with an old battered guitar, a swag of great songs and a keen desire to get them heard by as many people as possible.
The first five notes of the Pied Butchebird's call reminded me very much of "La Cucaracha"...
Over the last few years, Paul Kelly has performed a series of unique shows under the banner ‘A to Z', whereby he sings 100 songs from his catalogue in alphabetical order over 4 nights.
$5 entry, $3 beer - no fire or liquor licenses or other permits or authorities - and Po' Monkey vigorously enforces his own strict set of rules - no baseball caps, no guns, no baggy-ass pants - this effectively excludes young teenage gangsters from the lounge - no fighting, no beer bought in and no dope smoking.
This is a song from the Saltwater Band from Elcho Island in north-east Arnhem Land from a couple of years ago - Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was an obvious standout in the band and destined for the many great things he has recently achieved.
