On Lovesexy: “Prince: whatever.”

And am I correct that they’d often say Up the Irons, with most fans thinking that it referred to Maiden but actually was West Ham?

A reflection since the gig: Really heartening to see a room full of 50+ year olds in a standing venue still loving music, looking cool, growing older but still culturally engaged. Yes, nostalgia played a part, […]

There’s hope. Today as I pulled up to my staffroom in the NW suburbs of Sydney, a former student, dropping her younger sister off, said hello. “Off to Uni today?”, I asked. “Learn lots”. “Never as much as I […]

Looking forward to hearing this one. Apart from being a couple of songs too long, I thought they’d finally nailed it on Everything Harmony, and that the sheer musical skill (and joy!) silenced any accusations of […]

I’ve always noted a difference, but felt it ultimately unified by the production across the whole album, so I like that difference. That buzzsaw intro though has certainly broken the spell of a few late night listens.

Oh, I love it. Probably for the same reason. And that outro with the harmonies and chiming 12 string guitars is sublime.

ATM Robyn Hitchcock: I’m a late convert to Mr Hitchcock’s work (though I really liked Underwater Moonlight years ago without realising it was him). The self titled LP has remained on high rotation since it came […]

My local – Beatdisc Records in Parramatta if you’re ever Sydneyside – always do it well, and have other markdowns and such, different merch every year, and they’re really nice guys. It feels like a good […]

He’s a very interesting cat on record, and Gorillaz live look to be an entertaining spectacle. But I’ve never felt him to be much of a natural performer in anything larger than an arena with a partisan crowd. […]

One of my students died in a car crash last holidays. Loved driving fast cars, gym-junkie, you’d assume with non-descript sub-heavy doof-doof music blaring from a million speakers. The funeral cues were all […]

The ABBA comparisons are apt. The avatar thing is already underway. Apparently there was some grumbling by fans at the final Madison Square Garden show that it was a little perfunctory, then they ‘finished’ with […]

Probably 20 years ago now I saw an article in Q where an industry engineer said the technology was now such that you should expect a refund if you had bad sound at a live gig. (Friends tested this a few years […]

Not so much music vids becoming diminished on youtube as an art form per se, but many other types of video content being added at a greater rate and quantity. An educator said to me recently that youtube has far […]

I saw their last tour at the Opera House a few years back (a middle one since then being axed due to Covid) and, while I loved it – balmy night on the Harbour, positive reception of the Sleep Well Beast album – I […]

And, perhaps as a corollary to that, why Daltrey has received more favourable reviews for his forays into acting than Jagger. (I think even Sting has got better reviews than Jagger!) Even Townshend’s narrative of […]

I feel that, a’la Jagger and Richards, there was a long time in which we were encouraged to see Pete and Keith as the more ‘authentic’, the real spirit of the band etc, while the (admittedly very talented) singer […]

Oh, I’d always assumed it was an English, 50s or 60s, Golden Age of Air Travel thing. A civilised round of applause for the pilot whatever the difficulty of landing. In fact, our last flight to London my wife […]