Showing all posts about music
What becomes of rock stars when they’re no longer stars?
26 April 2022
What’s the worst thing that could happen to a rock star? It might be waking up one day and discovering they’re no longer as famous as they once were. For some, the awakening can be rude, as was the case for American musician Suzanne Vega.
Accustomed to her record company supplying a limousine to convey her between airport and home, Vega was forced to hail a taxi on returning from an ill-fated tour in 1990, after realising she no longer qualified for the perk.
Similar fates, it seems, have befallen other who were once household names, such as Kevin Rowland, of Dexys Midnight Runners, Terence Trent D’Arby, now known as Sananda Maitreya, and Bill Drummond of The KLF.
What’s interesting though, encouraging even, is most of these musicians, and likely many others who fell out of the limelight decades ago, are still recording and performing. Carrying on, sans the hype.
If being a musician is in someone’s DNA, what need is there for mass adulation? It’s all about the music, isn’t it?
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Vale Ken West, Big Day Out co-founder
9 April 2022
Ken West, co-founder of Australian music festival, the Big Day Out, died on Thurday 7 April 2022, aged 64. West established the festival in 1992 with Vivian Lees. The first event was a one show only affair, held at the iconic Hordern Pavilion in inner Sydney, and included Nirvana on the lineup. The event went onto play in other Australian capital cities, and Auckland, New Zealand, becoming an annual summer fixture.
The last Big Day Out took place in 2014. Soon after, American concert promoter and events management company C3 Presents took full ownership of the event, and cancelled the scheduled 2015 shows. While they intended to bring the Big Day Out back at some point, so far there has been no word as to when this might happen.
Update: Yeah, actually I put the bloody thing on… former Triple J host, writer, and TV producer, Marieke Hardy recounts a meeting with Ken West after one of the Melbourne Big Day Out shows in the late-nineties.
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RÜFÜS DU SOL win at the 2022 Grammy Awards
5 April 2022
Sydney based dance/electronic act RÜFÜS DU SOL won the Best Dance/Electronic Recording award for their track Alive at the 2022 Grammy Awards, held yesterday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vagas.
Other Australian musicians, and their work, nominated this year were The Kid LAROI for Best New Artist, Shot In The Dark by AC/DC for Best Rock Performance, Power Up by AC/DC for Best Rock Album, Mood Valiant by Hiatus Kaiyote for Best Progressive R&B Album, and Shot In the Dark by AC/DC for Best Music Video. Good to see AC/DC, who have been working for nearly fifty years, feature so prominently.
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Regurgitator, The Fauves, Phil Jamieson, in Lismore flood fundraiser
11 March 2022
Nine bands including Brisbane based act Regurgitator, and The Fauves from Melbourne, perform this evening, Friday 11 March, at The Brightside to help raise funds for flood relief efforts for the north-eastern NSW town of Lismore.
Regurgitator, Phil Jamieson, and The Fauves are among the artists banding together for a special fundraiser show in Brisbane this Friday night, raising money for the city of Lismore which has been so badly impacted by recent floods.
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Heardle, the musical version of Wordle
9 March 2022
Heardle takes the Wordle experience, and translates it to music. You have six attempts to guess the title of a snippet of music, which you can hear anywhere from five to thirty seconds of, to help you figure it out.
Heardle is one of several variations of Josh Wardle’s word game (I’m not talking about outright duplicates here), that have spawned since October 2021.
It’s the latest in a string of Wordle-inspired online games to have popped up recently, including Worldle, which tests users’ geography knowledge, Dungleon, featuring fantasy characters over words, and the battle royale version, Squabble, where up to 99 players can race to figure out the word correctly, losing health points if they guess wrong.
If you’re familiar with music released in the last ten years, then you should have little difficulty winning Heardle. But will it be the next big thing, behind Wordle? Possibly. According to its creators “Heardle was made for a small group of friends, then somehow gained millions of players overnight.”
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Studio 666, a film by BJ McDonnell
19 February 2022
Dave Grohl and the Foo fighters move into a nice old house in the country to record their tenth album, in Studio 666 (trailer), a film directed by BJ McDonnell. But things don’t quite go to plan. Grohl begins to lose his mind, and it turns out the house is a conduit, allowing maligned spiritual entities to cross from their world into ours. Ah, the trials and tribulations of the difficult tenth album…
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BJ McDonnell, film, music, trailer
Toto’s Africa covered by Sydney DJ Dave Winnel
8 February 2022
Africa, recorded by American rock band Toto in 1982, which against the odds surely, became an anthem for millennials three or four years ago, has been covered by Sydney based Australian DJ and producer Dave Winnel, for Triple J’s Like A Version. Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you…
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Joni Mitchell and Neil Young leave Spotify
31 January 2022
Veteran singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young in asking Spotify to remove her catalogue from the music streaming service, in response to concerns the company is playing a part in spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines to combat the virus, through some of the podcasts they host, including The Joe Rogan Experience.
On Friday, the singer-songwriter posted a statement, titled “I Stand With Neil Young!”, to her website announcing the decision. “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
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Joni Mitchell, music, Neil Young
The Wriggles top the Hottest 100 with Elephant
24 January 2022
Australian children’s pop group and entertainers The Wiggles have taken out the number one spot in Australian radio station Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 countdown, with a cover of Perth based act Tame Impala’s 2012 song Elephant. Topping the coveted listener’s poll is notable for two reasons this year, it is the first time a children’s act has been voted number one, likewise a Like A Version cover song.
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Nick Cave: Nothing you create is ultimately your own
21 January 2022
Is it possible to create something, be it music, literature, painting, an app, well, anything that can be created really, that is uniquely yours, that doesn’t contain even an iota of an idea from a person, or a thought, you consider influential? Probably not, says Australian musician Nick Cave:
Nothing you create is ultimately your own, yet all of it is you. Your imagination, it seems to me, is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence, and is not intrinsic to you, rather it is a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.
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