R.E.M. – A Personal Reflection

When R.E.M. made the typically dignified announcement that they were disbanding after 31 years, my first reaction was almost a sense of relief that they had managed to complete their career without ever embarrassing themselves, and by extension, without embarrassing me and the other fans that had made the journey with them.

Even allowing for one album that maybe didn’t reach the highest of standards that they had set themselves (Around The Sun, although it still has a couple of golden moments), they never really went through any extended slumps or released a series of albums that had me questioning the validity of my support. That’s a remarkable achievement in three decades of any creative pursuit.

My second reaction was a kind of bemused comprehension that I had been a fan of this band for over 28 of those 31 years. That was kind of scary.

Even as a card-carrying, rock music, fan-boy tragic, and someone for whom the “music industry” (or some version of it) has arguably provided a career for around twenty of the last thirty years, it came as a jolting realization that almost thirty years had passed since I had first become enthralled by the mysterious murmurings of Michael Stipe’s vocals and the irresistible chiming of Peter Buck’s guitar on those formative early records, Chronic Town (EP), Murmur and Reckoning. And it’s even more remarkable that my fascination is no the worse for wear.

My introduction to R.E.M. came at Monash Records, the on-campus record shop at Monash University, Clayton, where I was studying Economics and Law. I spent way too much time in that record store and way too little time in the library, although the subsequent path my life took probably makes a lie of that statement. It was at Monash Records that I bought those first three releases (at the urging of the black haired dude, who wanted so much to look like Robert Smith) and by the time 1985 and Fables of the Reconstruction had ticked around I was taking my first tentative steps into music writing with the Monash student newspaper Lots Wife.

In response to Fables of the Reconstruction, this is what I breathlessly came up with: “It is an album of magic and enchantment. Michael Stipe’s lyrics are spawned from the tales and fables of the mystical deep south and follow a thread that winds through America’s proudest and most honest history leading through times of betrayal and off into the unknown. Fables is overwhelming: from the disturbing melancholia of the haunting Rickenbacker guitars, from the intrinsic acknowledgement of the power inherent in the lyrics mythological roots.”

I ‘ve got absolutely no idea what that last line means but it was clear that I had found what might have been the love of my musical life! In that year I named Fables as one of my five best albums of the year. To carbon date that time emphatically, you’ll be interested to know that Paul Kelly’s Post was another of that select group. I still find myself talking about Fables of the Reconstruction. I recently interviewed the albums producer Joe Boyd who is about to curate a couple of shows celebrating the music of Nick Drake in Australia, and I couldn’t help but devote part of that interview to his work on that album.

The fact that I discovered R.E.M. when I was at university mirrored the experience of thousands of college kids all around the world. In America R.E.M. was the quintessential college band and in fact have been credited with stimulating the rise in significance of college radio, and with it, the rise of independent labels and the whole indie rock scene. “But for R.E.M. …”, has been the opening line of many an obituary and tribute in the last couple of weeks.

Parallel to the emergence of the indie scene, both in America and here in Australia came whole cottage industries of street press, community radio and other self-starting mediums that realized that you didn’t have to wait for the permission of corporate giants in order to dare to exist. Sound familiar?

There may not even have been InPress magazine if it weren’t for R.E.M. When I was writing for Lots Wife, I realized that I wanted to write about music on an on-going basis. I wasn’t going to let a pesky thing like such as a career as a lawyer stop me. My all-time favorite artist was Bruce Springsteen, but, by 1985, people like Dave Marsh and Griel Marcus and Robert Christgau had pretty much mined that territory, and really anything that came after them was simply piggy-backing on their words, and offering re-assessment. But R.E.M. came along and provided the perfect music for the nascent street press. They were the perfect soundtrack to the generational change that was sweeping across music and the media that rode that wave. This was music that was “mine” and I felt like it was my time to set the agenda and that my efforts as a tastemaker were grounded in a notion of how a new band stood up when compared to R.E.M. Starting InPress was my expression of my own little indie revolution and it’s no accident that the news pages of InPress eventually came to be titled “What’s The Frequency?”

R.E.M. also managed to soundtrack elements of my personal life as well. I vividly remember being on the wrong end of a painful (well, as a 20 something year old, it felt painful) relationship break-up and responding by changing my answering machine message to the chorus of The One I Love – to the extent that the song actually had a chorus. I felt like I was the only one in the world who realized that the first R.E.M. song to actually use the word “love” was in fact a bitter, anti-love song – and that they key line in the lyric was the brutally dismissive “another prop has occupied my time”. Of course I wasn’t the only one who realized that and all across the globe there were inner city romances disintegrating to the sound of Stipe anguished “Fire” refrain. I’m not sure whether the object of my angst ever realized that she had been smote with such a cruel sword. In all probability she never even called and even heard the message, let alone divined its hidden meaning! It wouldn’t have been near as effective by SMS!

But that ushered in a period where my romantic world was divided into two distinct camps – girls who liked R.E.M. and those who didn’t. For a period of time, only the former would have any hope of achieving a relationship of substance with this little black duck. I’ve seen other writers reflect on similar positions since the news of the bands break-up broke, and I have to wonder if the band themselves realised that they were responsible for drawing the emotional battlelines for a generation of young men trying to find a roadmap through the rocky paths of their indie-rock eighties relationships. It sounds like the kind of thing that Craig Finn, of The Hold Steady would write a song about – if he hasn’t already!

When R.E.M. signed that monstrous deal with Warner, that made them at least notionally the “biggest band in the world” there was a pervading sense of validation amongst the ‘street press’ generation – their heroes had come in from the cold, they had won and they had done it on their terms with their precious and hard-earned credibility intact. When R.E.M. won, we all had won. See, there was a way to beat the system by working within it. I don’t think its any accident that the bands last album Collapse Into Now was the final album of that deal. By choosing to disband after delivering that album, albeit to a much smaller buying public than that which had voraciously consumed Automatic For The People, Green or Out of Time, the band have again showed their sense of honor. They signed on, they delivered what they agreed to and they duly completed what was expected of them. I’m sure with the seismic shifts that have occurred within the industry in the last decade it would have been easy to try and remove themselves from a system that they could have declared to be broken and ‘go underground’ like Radiohead did, but it seems there was a morality about seeing that deal to its conclusion that informed their process.

R.E.M. have become synonymous with doing things correctly, tastefully and respectfully. In a business littered with glorious flame-outs they have become a beacon for longevity and respectability – not terribly rock n’ roll to be sure, but many young bands and their managers could still do worse than asking themselves “What would R.E.M. do?” when faced with difficult career decisions.

I met Peter Buck a couple of times. The first time was when the band toured Australia for the second time. In Melbourne they played at the Myer Music Bowl. I had interviewed Peter on the phone prior to the tour for InPress and in the course of that conversation he had expressed his love of Brisbane band the Go-Betweens and his interest in acquiring their early singles on vinyl. I had befriended Peter  Leak,the manager of R.E.M.’s touring support band Grant Lee Buffalo, and I’d given him my copies of the Go Between’s releases to pass onto Peter. Backstage with Peter after the show I was introduced to the R.E.M. guitarist, who politely thanked me for my gift and we chatted about music for a few minutes. Buck would always be comfortable chatting about music. Many years later I met him again as he leaned on the bar at the Central Club in Richmond waiting to play with Robyn Hitchcock, one of the many artists that he consistently plays with. He still had the Go-Betweens singles (amongst his collection of 10000). Nice bloke. Music Fan.

I’ve never met Michael Stipe or Mike Mills. Particularly in the case of the former I feel like I’ve known him for a long time from his songs….and not known him at the same time. Such was the intrigue of their music that there was always another nuance to be found, even on songs you’d listened to a hundred times. One frequently overlooked element was the humor of Stipe’s lyrics. Some of his asides and references were incredibly funny to me and the fact that he was able to come up with these gems and on the same album tear your heart out with a song of alienation or activate you with a statement of social or political discontent was a huge part of their appeal. Their evolution from the awkward but endearing guitar-pop shimmer of Murmur to a band capable of songs as subtle and majestic as Everybody Hurts, All The Way To Reno, Imitation of Life or Walk It Back is extraordinary.

There was always something completely genuine in the way the band and their support organization conducted themselves. From the mature way they dealt with the loss of original drummer Bill Berry, to their continued activism in their own local community and on selected global concerns, to Peter Buck’s frequent musical contributions to other favored artists (which showed he was still a record collector and a fan at heart) to Michael Stipe’s championing of independent filmmakers and his passion for the work of his multi-generational peers such as Patti Smith and Kurt Cobain, R.E.M. seemed to grow older with grace, aplomb and without a hint of desperation. They became adults in a youth oriented world but they did so without becoming parodies of themselves. Even when audience numbers dropped away, as was inevitable they would, there didn’t appear to be a need to panic. It was what is was and they would simply get on with it. The civilized way that they dealt with questions about Stipe’s sexuality was a example of their enlightened ways that should be a precedent for those who followed.

R.E.M. simply never let us down, and there’s not many band’s that can claim that over an extended period. And thankfully it didn’t take somebody dying to make us realize the significance of their body or work and the spirit in which it was made. That’s why their break up leaves me with only slightly mixed feelings. Their final album, Collapse Into Now was one of their best and it showed that they had plenty left in the tank; it wasn’t the album of a band staggering towards the finish line like a marathon runner with the jelly leg wobbles. The album left me wanting more, but isn’t that the most legitimate and best founded showbiz tradition? It was a clever album too- when I first heard it I thought it sounded like a self-tribute – there were songs on it that seemed to draw inspiration from just about every previous album in their catalogue. Whether this was intentional or not, it now works supremely well as a parting gesture. On All The Best, Stipe sings, “Let’s sing and rhyme/Let’s give it one more time/Let’s show the kids how to do it/ Fine, fine, fine/Fine. When the final song, Blue, draws to a close the guitar motif from the album’s opening track Discoverer returns closing the full circle on the album, in the way that the album perhaps closes the full circle on their career. A Perfect Circle indeed.

So now there is a full stop on this long, rambling, beautifully constructed and always meaningful sentence. They’ve chosen to stop at a time when stopping made perfect sense. There’s a Greatest Hits package due to arrive in November, and I’d imagine that for the record collector in Peter Buck there will be a temptation to mark the anniversary of certain albums with re-releases and the uncovering of lost recordings, demos and alternative versions.  There’s some wonderful live recordings available as audio and visual releases and I’m sure all three active members will remain active in other configurations. And if they don’t, that’s OK too.

I still want to name a racehorse Cuyuhoga, because I like the sound of the word and I still want It’s the End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) played at my funeral, whenever that might be. Those friends that show up to hear it will look kinda silly bouncing around on their walking frames. But that’ll be their problem.

 

The Dave Graney Multi-Media Experience

Dave Graney is one of Australia’s most iconoclastic contemporary music artists.  He works outside the mainstream and inhabits that region somewhere between the spotlight and obscurity, consistently producing a prolific stream of high quality work that sometimes sneaks under the guard of the gatekeepers and becomes briefly visible to the masses.

Graney is interesting and talented – but that’s the least of his problems. Recently Graney has fired a double-barreled salvo at the popular culture market. He’s released a very readable, yet definitely unorthodox memoir entitled 1001 Australian Nights and coupled that with an album of re-visited versions of some of his catalogue called Rock n’ Roll Is Where I Hide. And of course he continues to play live in various configurations.  And he’s a snappy dresser.

HHMM: What has bought on this sudden surge of Dave Graney revisionism?

DG: We’ve been pretty consistent with our output, almost an album a year over our past couple of decades, with a particular highpoint since 2005, with Clare Moore and myself doing Hashish and Liquor, and then We Wuz Curious, which was a real gelling of my band the Lurid Yellow Mist, with Mark Fitzgibbon on keys on that one. Then I did a solo album with some of the players called Knock Yourself Out, so it was one after the other. They were very good, but they weren’t quite getting to people in a way that I would like. They were very thrilling artistically but very hard to get people’s attention to them. Each one being in a way a different focus so I thought I should really try to get people focused on what we do, because we basically play live around Australia as much as we can. Our actual live band is actually quite up-tempo and fierce and ferocious r&b show, so I thought I should focus on trying to draw people attention to what we do. The record before this was a re-mix album of some of our earlier-in-the-decade stuff, called Supermodified and then I had the idea to do this one. It was basically because I liked the way Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters used to re-do their classic songs later on and it sounded really good. Waylon and Willie always used to do it too so there was a precedent for it. It’s always good to hear our band through familiar songs and they are all the songs that we have been playing for fifteen years or so in our live set, the songs that people always want to hear. They have been strong enough to take all that bashing around and different tempos and different feels. So Rock N’ Roll Is Where I Hide is a collection of revisited songs and we had the good fortune to have it mixed by VIctor Van Vugt in New York, who is an old friend of ours from Moodists days. He also did the Soft and Sexy Sound and we did four songs from that so he is re-visiting it as well. In my case I’m singing them a lot better than I did on the original recordings. It’s pretty live in the studio, there’s no overdubs, except some backing vocals and we sent them to Victor and it was the sound of the band in the room. I jokingly said it’s our third debut album because when  you do your debut album everybody’s been playing the songs in for a long time and you know what you are doing exactly and it goes onto the tape really sweetly.

HHMM: What you are describing reminds me of a line early in your book when you say that most rock musicians have to spend their time convincing people that they have content of interest. How do you reconcile that?

DG: I go on to say that I always had a problem that I thought my stuff was full of quite personal weirdness, but I didn’t want to put that out front and freak people out so I never came out as a brooding artist full of sadness to give to people. I always put on a bit of a show and I wanted people to come toward that music by making it an experience for them, but within the music itself it would have a lot of other stuff as well. In a way I tried to obscure my stuff and blow up a lot of smoke around it. I love all the songs I’ve written and they’ve always been pretty fresh to me. When I go and see the performers I like they come on and you are seeing a real dramatic thing and the performer has a story. It might be a new artist that you are seeing and they are so great that you see them so vividly or it might be an artist that you’ve seen a decade ago and you see them at a different time. Often its good if they are playing a few songs you are familiar with its good to see how they are able to do that. When I do a show I have a lot of songs within me and if people want to hear a song I always say they should yell out and I’ll have a go at it. They are all pretty fresh to me. I’ve never written songs for a youth culture type scene. I’ve always identified with country singers or R&B singers singing about adult kinds of things. I don’t feel any distance from any of my songs really.

HHMM: Listening to the album and reading the books leaves me with the impression that you are almost disdainful of the idea of musical genres. It’s more about creating at atmosphere than adhering to the parameters of a genre.

DG: I’ve had problems in the rock music area, because music is so full of precious little genres. It must be some ancient law of PR or something. It’s like invading an area, you take over a small town and radiate out from there. In what’s become known as the rock music scene its quite retro in a way. People have often talked about me as being ‘retro’ but I think my music has been informed by pop music in a way. I like to have choruses and snappy street language language and pretty short songs for the most part. I’m not into what people think of as dirty rock n’ roll. I’m more from the Steely Dan side of things, a bit informed by jazz and R&B. There are generic things I really like and I love people who work within small areas, but they are more personal. I like the songwriter Robyn Hitchcock and he works within this tiny area of recognizable British psychedelia in a way. He comes from the same area as Syd Barrett and I love the way he can find endless variations within a small scene. That Canadian singer Ron Sexsmith uses endless variations of a few chords. It’s very impressive when someone can do that. So I’m not really disdainful of country and things like that, more rock and indie-rock because its so uptight for the most part.

HHMM: Do you feel a responsibility to be shining a light on some of these dark corners of pop culture?

DG: I have enjoyed the way that some people who have read my book have picked up on some things that they like. As rock music gets more collapsed down – in Australian rock music they only talk about INXS and Cold Chisel and AC/DC – but there are so many other things that we’ve got and perhaps they were taking things from. All musicians take things from everywhere. But is collapses down into a very crude kind of story. I do like a lot of people who went off on little by-ways here and there. There are some things that were hugely popular but have now been forgotten in some ways and some things that were hugely popular in strange ways like The Grateful Dead. Acts like Ween. I love those things that sometimes sneak through.

HHMM: In the Appendix to the book you explain your music in terms of ‘tongues’, described as “identifiable licks, tones, words or sounds that artists insert in their work’. They might be references, nods or implied ideas. I don’t know what the collective noun for tongues is but would you say there is a common thread between all those tongues.

DG: I’ve always liked kinda occult things, meaning secretive, cliquish types of language where people recognize them and associate with each other within a larger world, almost like carnie folk. I love people who are kinda shady, but real at the same time. In rock music there is always a demand to be authentic and to be real and there’s a part of the book where I really go into the problems I had, and most Australians have , with being authentic and real within a music which is imported. They go through that in Aussie hip-hop too. I find that really excited. How can you be real and true when you are singing American music. You are wearing a mask, and I quite like that. When people wear a mask they say things that they cant normally. It actually makes a lot of Australian music very powerful.

HHMM: One of the other aspects of the book that I liked is that it is only loosely chronological and there are these random stories that pop up throughout. One of the stories I liked a lot was the one entitled I Cover The Belgrave Line.

DG: Well, the book is divided into two parts. One is me on the threshold of adult life, a teenager driving up the East Coast of Australia, getting into punk rock and feeling a sense of nowheresville and being excited by that. Having nothing to do and nowhere to go, but not in a sad way either.  I wish I could have that feeling again. Then the second part is me having been deep inside a music life and writing about things from that perspective. My language in the book is full of allusions to things. There’s an old song called I Cover The Waterfront and so I have I cover The Belgrave Line. I have little titles all through the book because I love 19^th Century newspapers have those titles that William Randolph Hearst kind of invented. With I Cover The Belgrave Line, I live in the outer suburbs, I’m not an inner city person. A lot of the talk about music is always focused in inner city cafes. I travel on the Belgrave line, an hour trip, and you go through all these suburbs  and its always an interesting trip with different characters.  You go through all those roughhouse areas and then you get into more genteel areas, it’s always a fascinating trip.

HHMM: The title chapter of the book, tells of a series of small incidents on a regional Australian tour and to me the whole book is a multitude of small incidents. Is that the way you look at the progress through your life and career?

DG: Everybody knows the feeling that life is very short and I’ve seen as few plays by Samuel Beckett and they are very simple – two people walking into a room and trying to talk to each other. Often it seems very abstract, but often life is just that. Over and over the same things. I’m trying to talk about being an artist and a player in the book and it’s eternally changing, but it’s the same argument over and over.  Young people coming in and changing it and other people trying to protect things and keep it the same. It’s the thing of chaos and order and I find it very repetitive, like Groundhogs Day.

HHMM: There’s almost a new genre in Australian literature and its populated by yourself, Stephen Cummings, Paul Kelly and Don Walker. How do you view the phenomenon of a set of people of a similar vintage and a similar set of life experiences all deciding to write their memoirs?

DG: We probably all had the urge to say something in a way. I’m not familiar with all the books you mentioned but I would imagine they would all be very different. I really enjoyed Mark Seymour’s book for very different reasons.  He articulated things that musicians would see in there, the very tedious parts of  being a musician, he tried to put it down on paper. It was very effecting – the bonds within his particular band that have dominated his life, the psychological, quite traumatic things. I found it an amazing piece of writing.

It’s such a chaotic world and live music has been and will continue to be such a big thing in Australia. It’s a big shared experience so it’s quite good that the players are talking because they have quite interesting perspectives.

HHMM: In Don Walker’s book he manages not to use the words ‘cold’ or ‘chisel’ together throughout the whole book. You also mange to not mention The Moodists by name until the end when you are giving a list of thank yous.

DG: I was trying to write in a more mythological style, an interior style. A lot of it is about things that might not necessarily be right in the importance I stress on some things  but that’s the way they are within me. Whatever a myth is , is the truth, is my kind of perspective. Also my experience is that I haven’t had the cultural impact that Cold Chisel had. He might have felt that he had a story to tell that was buried beneath this giant shadow over his life. But myself, I’ve lived in the shadows and I’m in a much more underworld place. I cant presume to try to talk to people and they will know the names and the dates I’ll drop in a more linear way, so I wanted to write in a mythological, non-linear way. People who don’t know all of the things but they might see it through this character which is ‘me’.

HHMM: You’ve survived the era of big omnipresent record companies to remain active in music. What sort of survival instinct was and is required to remain a working musician?

DG: I think you have to find a simple joy in the playing and hold that pretty close. And you have to find some comrades. I’ve been very lucky that Clare Moore and myself have been together the whole way. The two of us together, we only need one other person and we can make a show. We are like a band with a songbook ready to go, ready to put it out. We are lucky we have each other for that kind of thing and we have that constant thing in our lives.

Thurs May 5th The Bended Elbow, Geelong

Frid May 6th The Bended Elbow, Ballarat

Sat May 7th The Northcote Social Club, Northcote,

ALBUM LAUNCH “ROCK’N’ROLL IS WHERE I HIDE”

Sat May 14th The Republic Bar, North Hobart

Thurs May 19th Notes, Newtown, NSW

Fri May 20th The Vault, Windsor NSW

Sat May 21st Coogee Diggers, Coogee, NSW

Sun May 22nd The Clarendon Hotel, Katoomba NSW

Thurs May 26th Lizottes, Dee Why NSW

Fri May 27th Lizottes, Central Coast,

Sat May 28th Lizottes, Newcastle , Lambton NSW

Thurs June 2nd The Gollan Hotel, Lismore

Fri June 3rd The Jubilee Hotel, Fortitude Valley

Sat June 4th Sol Bar, Maroochydore, Sunshine Coast

Sun June 5th The Great Northern Hotel – Byron Bay

Friday 17th June Westernport Hotel – San Remo Victoria

Saturday 18th June- Baha Tacos – Rye Victoria

Friday 24th June the Loft Warrnambool Vic

Sat 25th June- the Wheatsheaf Hotel – Adelaide

Sunday 26th June- Semaphore Workers Club- SA

Thursday 30th June- Transit Bar – Canberra

Sunday 3rd July- Williamstown RSL

Paul Kelly A-Z Songs Tour

On September 27th Paul Kelly’s long-awaited memoir was released through Penguin Books, its genesis in a series of Spiegeltent concerts first staged in 2004.

Those concert performances shaped the now famous A To Z shows.  From the little stories he told in between songs at those shows grew the book ‘How to Make Gravy’, and from the songs grew the accompanying 8 CD Box Set ‘The A To Z Recordings’.

From November until April next year, Paul Kelly will tour The A To Z shows, performing 100 songs from his vast catalogue alphabetically over four consecutive nights in cities around the nation.

These intimate acoustic performances will take place in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Hobart, Darwin, Melbourne, Alice Springs and Adelaide. The tickets will be sold as either for individual nights, or as multi night bundles.

Expect nothing short of a playful and honest, insightful and intimate performance from Paul Kelly at these shows.

PAUL KELLY – The A To Z Shows touring nationally

Tuesday Nov 30th – Friday December 3rd – Powerhouse, Brisbane, QLD

Wednesday Dec 8th – Saturday December 11th – Astor Theatre, Perth, WA

Thursday January 20th – Sunday January 23rd – City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW (Sydney Festival)

Thursday January 27th – Sunday January 30th – The Playhouse, Canberra, ACT

Monday February 7th – Thursday February 10th – Theatre Royal, Hobart, TAS

Wednesday February 16th  – Saturday February 19th – Studio Theatre, Darwin Entertainment Centre, NT

Wednesday March 2nd – Saturday March 5th – Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC

Monday April 4th – Thursday April 7th – Space Theatre, Festival Centre, Adelaide, SA

Wednesday April 13th- Saturday April 16th – Araluen Theatre, Alice Springs, NT

Tickets on sale Friday October 8th 2010 from www.paulkelly.com.au

Leonard Cohen at Hanging Rock

How’s this for a very special, once in a lifetime, concert experience – the legendary and incomparable Leonard Cohen performing live at the iconic and beautiful Hanging Rock in Woodend, Victoria.

For one night only Leonard Cohen will perform under the stars at Hanging Rock on Saturday 20 November. In addition to Leonard Cohen the concert will also feature three of Australia’s leading artists – Paul Kelly, Clare Bowditch and Dan Sultan.

The Leonard Cohen date will be the first in a special series of concerts at Hanging Rock, which promoter Michael Gudinski has secured approval for.

Michael Gudinski said; “Hanging Rock and the Macedon Ranges have always been a very special place for me personally as I have a second home up there. Holding a concert at Hanging Rock has been something I’ve been working towards for years and I’m thrilled that we have secured approval for the series. It is fitting that the first concert we’re holding there is with Leonard Cohen, an artist as iconic as the location itself.”

In 2009 Leonard Cohen left reviewers and fans in awe of his phenomenal performances. His return in 2010 is set to be even more special, with the Hanging Rock concert the only outdoor performance of his fourteen date tour of Australia and New Zealand.

Paul Kelly’s lyrical musings are a perfect fit for the pensive serenity of Hanging Rock. The revered artist will reprise his critically acclaimed special guest role from Leonard’s 2009 tour, this time appearing with his full band.

Following the success of her fourth release, ARIA Top 10 album Modern Day Addiction, Clare Bowditch’s bright melodies and irresistible charm are sure to please whilst soulful rocker Dan Sultan’s smooth vocals and rousing riffs will fill the air as he serenades all in attendance at this remarkable event.

Tickets to Leonard Cohen at Hanging Rock with very special guests Paul Kelly, Clare Bowditch and Dan Sultan go on sale on Monday 4 October.

SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER – HANGING ROCK, WOODEND

TICKETMASTER 136 100 or www.ticketmaster.com.au

PRE-SALE TICKETS VIA FRONTIERTOURING.COM WED 29 SEP NOON AEST – THU 30 SEP NOON AEST

GENERAL PUBLIC TICKETS ON SALE MONDAY 4 OCTOBER 9AM AEDT

Paul Kelly & Friends – Hamer Hall

This concert was titled Meet Me In The Middle of the Air and featured re-interpretations of some of Paul Kelly’s lesser known songs by a collaboration of Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra, a six piece gospel vocal group led by Tina Harrod and of course lead vocalists Paul Kelly and Vika and Linda Bull.

This show was originally presented by the Adelaide Cabaret Festival back in 2006 and I’m not sure what the exact motivation for reprising it now actually was. Regardless of the impetus the result was always going to be intriguing.

The songs selected by Grabowsky for re-arrangement and re-interpretation were loosely themed around songs that had biblical references or in a couple of  cases a slight tangent into a broader good and evil theme which enabled the devil to gate crash the party momentarily.

It says a lot about the depth of Kelly’s catalogue that you could construct an entire concert of great songs around a theme and manage to do so without including even one song that even threatened to have ever been a “hit”.

The music meandered around around elements of calypso, jazz, gospel and funk with the superior musicianship of the AAO providing many moments of impressive improvisation. Vika and Linda reliably sang with soul and freedom and all in all the show offered a satisfying journey through some beautifully played music.

Paul Kelly himself was somewhat low-key, taking his turn at vocals in an unassuming manner and providing a visual highlight with a dance move that proved conclusively that he isn’t as self conscious as he once was! He adopted a persona not unlike that of Michael Stipe (the two of them look uncannily similar these days) – part ringmaster, part observer, part casual participant. He clearly was enjoying the show from the best seat in the house rather than feeling the need to dominate proceedings.

It must be said that as comfortable as we were in Hamer Hall, this is a show that would have been even more appropriate in a looser setting – perhaps like the cabaret environment where it was conceived. Obviously few venues exist that could house such an event in Melbourne (perhaps The Forum in a tabled mode?) but the looseness of the music seemed a little confined with an audience locked into rows of seats.

Nevertheless it was yet another worthwhile use of some gems in the catalague of one of Australia’s greatest contemporary songwriters.

Setlist

48 Angels
Be Careful What You Pray For
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Surely God Is A Lover
Love Is The Law
Coma
My Way Is To You
Glory Be To God
God Told Me So
Jump To Love
Passed Over
Meet Me In The Middle Of The Air
God’s Hotel
Gathering Storm

Rufus Wainwright Cancels Tour

The bad news is that  Rufus Wainwright’s upcoming tour will be cancelled due to an  illness in his family, reportedly that of his mother Kate McGarrigle.

Rufus Wainwright was scheduled to arrive in Australia next month to perform as part of the ‘A Day On The Green’ winery series, before a  scheduled performance at the New Zealand International Arts Festival  as well as two solo shows in Auckland and Christchurch. He was then  scheduled to perform at Verbrugghen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for two intimate solo performances.

The further bad news is that  the ‘A Day On The Green’ concerts in Victoria and  Tasmania, also scheduled to feature Paul Kelly and The Church, will no  longer go ahead as the promoters are unable to secure a suitable replacement of the same calibre as Rufus Wainwright in such a short time.

Patrons holding tickets to the headline performances are advised to  contact their point of purchase to arrange a full refund of their  tickets. Those holding tickets to the ‘A Day On The Green’ winery  shows are advised that all tickets purchased via the Internet or Ticketmaster phone line will automatically be refunded onto the  purchasing credit card.  For all outlet bookings, customers are  required to return to the point of purchase where a full refund will  be issued.

The only good news is that Wainwright has confirmed that he will  return to tour Australia and New Zealand before the end of the year. Once Rufus’s return tour is confirmed, patrons who had secured tickets  to these cancelled shows will be granted access to an exclusive pre- sale, allowing the first right to purchase tickets to the new 2010  tour dates.