Archive for the ‘’ Category

Concert Review – Neil Young

You know when it’s a hot night in Melbourne when 64 year old rock icon Neil Young saunters on stage at the Myer Music Bowl – in shorts! It was not the image that I had visualised when contemplating the concert – but any suggestion that Young was going to play a more casual concert in deference to the oppressive conditions was dismissed from the moment he struck the first crunching guitar chords... Read the full story

News On Springsteen Tour

With the release of his new album Working On A Dream (which will be reviewed on this site once the weather cools down enough to concentrate) Bruce Springsteen has announced another series of concert dates. And in response to the rumours that there could be a late summer Australian Tour we can say….there is absolutely no Australian dates listed. Oh well. Looks like a business trip to Europe in winter... Read the full story

Steve Harley

You could be forgiven for thinking that after he had a huge hit with the song Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) in 1975 that Steve Harley disappeared to forever live off the royalties. The surprisingly truth is that Harley and his band Cockney Rebel continued to have a viable career for several years after that and he continues to play and record today. South Londoner Harley had not surprisingly been... Read the full story

Brett Goldsmith

Every now and then a new artist comes along who causes you to wonder where he has been all your life. The songs talk you in a language you understand and the voice singing them seems immediately familiar. There’s something fully formed about the whole package that makes you sense that the artist is comfortable in his own skin and not the product of an urgent need to follow the latest trend or a desperate... Read the full story

Concert Review – Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen is about as enigmatic an artist as you will find on the world concert circuit. The fact that at age 74 that he is on the world concert circuit is in itself a mystery. Fated by a suddenly revealed financial necessity to return to touring after an absence of around 15 years he has found some of the biggest and most appreciative audiences of his career. In his hiatus he spent over half... Read the full story

Counting Crows Play Headline Show

As part of their Australian tour with The Who, Counting Crows will play their only side show concert at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre on Friday March 27. Headed by the enigmatic Adam Duritz, the seven-piece San Francisco Bay area band last played in Australia in 2004, but after a few dates the tour was cancelled due to the death of Duritz’s grandmother. Counting Crows came to global attention... Read the full story

Concert Review – Joe Henry

Attending a Joe Henry show is like walking down a series of dark alleys late at night. Each song seems to promise you a safe passage to a more comfortable place but each time you are drawn down that path you find yourself feeling a little more uneasy and a little further from home. Henry is a seductive songwriter – he’s a beat poet somehow trapped in the guise of a singer-songwriter. He’s a cross... Read the full story

Mott The Hoople Reform

The spate of extraordinary reformations, reunions and revivals continues. Following some amazing returns being announced from the likes of  The Faces, Magazine, Echo and the Bunnymen, Buzzcocks, The Saints and numerous others comes the news that Mott The Hoople are playing a series of shows later in 2009. Now for the uninitiated who or what was Mott The Hoople? The strangley named band was formed... Read the full story

Chinese Food and Pinball With Branford Marsalis

I don’t know much about jazz. I know I am ‘supposed’ to like jazz and seek to understand jazz and intellectualise about jazz and talk about jazz late at night in coffee shops and play jazz at grown up dinner parties. I know I’m supposed to deeply respect Miles Davis, Charlie Parker,  Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane and other jazz giants whose names presently escape me. But for some reason... Read the full story

Stephen Cummings Sets Fire To His Blog

Stephen Cummings is perhaps an unlikely survivor. That’s a bit of an odd statement I know but what I mean is that he is almost too good to be so enduring. To be enduring almost requires a certain level of populism or a degree of commercial malleability that Cummings seems to have avoided. He doesn’t have the huge money spinner (eg Down Under) to support his habit of making quality albums, he doesn’t... Read the full story

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