one fellow's political coverage, music ramblings and general hijinks across decades under a range of guises at several locations often in a state of awe.
Burswood Superdome, Perth
One would have thought that Gloria Estefan had far outgrown the Latino strut and golden shimmer of Miami Sound Machine. Still technically their lead singer, she has overshadowed the big Florida party band sound with her solo accolades and through the synthesiser-swelled conservatism of love balladry and tales of broken hearts.
Continue reading “Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine, Monday March 31, 1997”
McGilvray Oval
Through the tiny window of opportunity that ‘grunge’ opened for simple youth bitterness, Newcastle’s silverchair (mind the non title case punctuation, they like it that way) was Australia’s gift from the great Kurt Cobain in the sky. Recorded while the members were just fifteen years of age, frogstomp, silverchair’s debut album, went on to platinum sales in the US, Australia and New Zealand. With album number two, Freak Show, already following the former’s trajectory, their motives and talent became blazingly clear during their sermon to 6,000 kids in Perth last week.
Metropolis Fremantle
With the demography of their audience swinging wildly between conservative listening-led folk canoodling their partners and dancefloor-bound style councillors hip to the remix craze sweeping the Anglo world, Everything But The Girl could hardly please everyone all of the time.
Continue reading “Everything But The Girl, Friday March 7, 1997”
Metropolis Concert Club, Fremantle
Let us take a fleeting glance back to those high-rolling mid-1980s, a time of teen magazines like Countdown and Smash Hits, lime green shirts and a paisley power-pop outfit from Perth called The Stems. Their simple yet unassailable songsmithery endeared them to a huge European music public, propelled them on to play the final Countdown and, as 1987 brought down piles of Perth’s entrepreneurs, so too did The Stems tear each other apart in a messy split which many thought irreconcilable.
Although their dark cloud didn’t float across to this side of the continent on their brief, two date Australian tour, the impact of Marilyn Manson on the popular youth psyche reaches further that the splash of blood and sweat that you may have felt at front-of-stage in Melbourne.
Sandpit hail from the thriving Brunswick Street live circuit of Fitzroy, Victoria, but their coy little lilting tunes are usually the stuff found bouncing between the Merge label in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and New Zealand’s Flying Nun roster. Theirs is the sound of sweet discordance, born of bedrooms and really cheap guitars which go out of tune half way through a three-minute ditty.
Continue reading “interview | Sandpit (1997) – Interview with vocalist/guitarist Brendan Webb”
“Monday I go to watch Sumo wrestling/It’s an easy day to get a good ticket” (One Week from Brand New Knife, 1996)
Their songs bounce from jangling, smiling pop all the way through bashing, smashing punk. They are Shonen Knife, three Japanese grrrls who mix topics of buying Barbie dolls, drinking beer and watching Sumo wrestling with frontal, crunching guitars. With the biggest question being ‘how the heck did these three break from the purely conservative Japanese music mould’, the answer can somewhat be found in their lyricism – it’s still cutesy Japanese youth culture, but the instruments virtually yell with the same excitable fervour of these three battling it out on the Twister board.
Continue reading “interview | Shonen Knife, Interview with Naoko Yamano”
A compilation of reviews for a bigger coverage assembled from several writers.
For several thousand music fans, ravers and simple masochists, the first belly laughs of this final Big Day Out were to be had before reaching the ground. Note the frantic screams of the woman station guard as hundreds of kids tried to pile into the two train carriages graciously provided by Westrail. Note the bouncers pouring out the day’s liquid gold – water – at your feet. And note the impenetrable labyrinth of mazes inside the ground which stood solidly for WA’s aggressive liquor licensing laws.
Continue reading “Big Day Out 1997, Bassendean Oval, February 2, 1997”
Moore Park Sydney
For iZine, 20 January 1997
The event had already been described weeks earlier as “the must-have ticket in Australia today”; the venue: a peculiar tent and paddock arena where the Circus Oz gymnasts set each other alight each night; the cost of it all: the gross national product of several African states.
Several reviews which went into a bigger piece.
erm, it’s a bit brief ain’t it! maybe we should all pool resources and buy some ad space for the actual text in this thing … adm.
Following a week of face-melting temperatures, Saturday proved to be just the day to break out the long socks and general Maths teacher attire for the inaugural Mudslinger, the Murdoch Uni pitch splendid for this one day knock and mosh. With food, good vibes and Beaverloop t-shirts all the rage, the University’s new Guild building was the perfect amphitheatre for the few thousand assembled, a spectacle which will be hard to follow already in 1997.
Continue reading “Mudslinger, Murdoch University, January 4, 1997”
