Category: Melbourne

Categories
Melbourne Music

Time Since Britpop

Can it really be 10 years, since I ended a blog post on this very site with the statement

Can it really be 10 years since the day Blur and Oasis released Country House/Roll With It on the same day…

Well there’s still nothing that highlights the passing of the years to me quite like Time-Since-Britpop™. Those heady mid 90s days when any group of lads with a couple of guitars who’d been to The Good Mixer at least once could bag themselves a record deal, a Melody Maker cover and get their CD single digipack catapulted to the dizzy heights of one week at number 18 in the charts.

Today the Maker is gone, the NME is being given away, and I can’t remember the last time I bought music on CD (“Granddad? What’s a CD?”) The Good Mixer survives, apparently…

I was transported back on a wave of nostalgia last week when we went to see Blur play a predominately Greatest Hits set at Rod Laver Arena for a generally appreciative Melbourne crowd (who clearly hadn’t really listened to The Magic Whip…)

Part way through This Is A Low I suddenly had a very clear memory of listening to them being interviewed by Simon Mayo on Radio 1 in the week before Parklife came out. 1994. Gosh, doesn’t 1994 all seem like such a long time ago now? I didn’t even own my own copy of Parklife — although I did record my sister’s CD onto tape so I could listen to it without having to steal her copy from its prized spot in the 3 CD changer thingy at the top of her stereo (this of course was back in the days before home taping killed music).

I was also struck by how dated many of the references in the songs were — there’s something very late 90s about The Universal, for example. All lottery references and “satellites in every home”. Damon even introduced Trouble In The Message Centre as their “pre-internet” song (come to think of it, I’m not sure “message centre” was a particularly current reference in the 90s either…) But luckily those songs still sound as majestic as ever, dated or not.

Oh, and they played bloody Trimm Trabb again. Seriously lads, why are you doing this to me?

Categories
Australia Melbourne Politics

I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

I Am So Angry I Made A Sign

We heard them before we saw them.

We were cutting through Parliament Gardens on our way to the city when we heard the muffled sound of a loudspeaker.

“Is that the Grand Prix?” I wondered aloud to Sal. A reasonable assumption I thought, given that the bee swarm like buzz of the cars whizzing around Albert Park had been clearly audible across much of inner Melbourne for the last few days. But as we turned the corner into Spring Street and saw crowds of photographers on the steps of the Parliament building and the police holding the traffic at bay, it was clear that some kind of protest was taking place on Bourke Street.

It wasn’t immediately obvious what the focus of the protest was: I could see signs attacking brown coal and promoting solar power but mixed in were some asking us to “Save Australia Post” and, quite wonderfully, “Stop Being Awful”. (Although no Down With This Sort Of Thing, sadly).

Stop Being Awful

As we walked down Bourke Street it became clear that the crowds were heading straight for us, so we ducked back onto the steps of the Palace Theatre to let them pass.

Teh internets tell me this was the #MarchInMarch. How have I not heard of this before? It seems you can turn up and march for whatever you like, and thousands of Melbournians young and old had chosen to do just that.

Despite the disparate causes, there were some common themes.

People before Profits. Gina Rinehart. Tony Abbott.

I can’t imagine that the “save our posties” guys, or the small group rather bizarrely asking for adoption to be made harder (no, me neither), or the “solar power” crew would necessarily hold the same views on everything, but everyone in that crowd could agree that Tony Abbott is a massive dick. If it’s possible to take a positive out of a negative, then the one thing you can say about last year’s election result is that at least it’s given us something we can all focus on. In many ways he is our George Bush. And I can’t quite imagine Malcolm Turnbull evoking the same sort of collective anger.

I Am So Angry I Made Another Sign

After a few more minutes of watching, we somehow made our way across to the other side of Bourke Street (it’s a bit like crossing the road in Thailand–you’ve just got to go for it…) and found a table at the Mess Hall, where we sipped lattes and perused the brunch menu while the crowds of thousands continued to stream past outside.

“What did you do in the revolution, daddy?”

“Er, well, I kind of missed it. But I did have the most delightful free range organic scrambled eggs on sourdough while it was happening outside…”

Categories
Melbourne Music

I’m Not Doing Requests

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Palais, St Kilda

This is a bit weird, innit? You all sitting down like that…

So says Mr Gallagher, three songs into his set, to his hitherto entirely seated audience at St Kilda’s The Palais theatre.

Do you have to sit down? I mean, have they told you that you have to sit down?

<pause>

Well stand up then…

<audience rises en masse…>

Thanks Noel. Someone had to say it. Thus began an entertaining hour and a half of old Oasis songs, stuff off his new album, and the occasional spot of banter. I was pretty happy with the mix of songs — including as it did, acoustic versions of Whatever and Supersonic, as well as a smattering of those great early B-Sides (Talk Tonight, Half The World Away, It’s Good To Be Free…), although it apparently wasn’t good enough for some of my fellow audience members, who started yelling out song titles at random in between tracks.

I’m not doing requests, says Noel. I didn’t spend 20 minutes last June working on this setlist for you lot to shout out random shit.

…Especially if you’re not wearing any merchandise, you cheap bastards…

One person who was wearing the merchandise was the kid sitting a couple of rows in front of me with his mum and dad, wearing his brand new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds T-Shirt. He must have been about 14, and therefore wouldn’t even have been alive the first time I saw Oasis live (back in December 1994 at the Liverpool Royal Court…) Sheesh. That makes me feel old. Where did all that time go?

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Palais, St Kilda

Categories
Australia Festivals Media Melbourne New York TV US

MWF 2011

As someone was pointing out in The Age the other day, this city sure loves a festival. Pick any time of the year at random and you can be sure that a festival of some kind will be taking place at that very moment. Just as some world cities are on a permanently heightened terrorism threat status, Melbourne seems to be on perpetual risk of festival. Careful where you stand now–some culture might break out at any time.

Clearly we have neither the time nor finances to attend them all–you’d literally never stop–but every now and again we somehow find ourselves at a disproportionate number of events attached to a particular one. A few years ago it was the comedy festival; another year we binged on short film at the St Kilda Film Festival, and this year we ended up “doing” the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Somewhat surprisingly, every time I would mention to someone that we were seeing the festival’s big international name, Jonathan Franzen, in conversation at the beautiful BMW Edge theatre in Fed Square, I was mostly met with only blank stares (seriously? He wrote The Corrections! He said no to Oprah! He’s, like, really famous…) Well, I’m a big fan whether you’ve heard of him or not, and although I still haven’t found the time to read Freedom (the curse of walking to work means that I’ve lost my novel reading time), I’ve read everything else. He was an entertaining and articulate speaker and the hour flew by. Even the audience Q&A segment (which can sometimes be excrutiating) was very entertaining. I particularly enjoyed Jonathan’s rather endearing habit of pausing to think before answering a question. Clearly this is a man who does not fear an uncomfortable silence. Maybe I’ll start adopting this strategy in job interviews. Or maybe not.

The following night we were back in Fed Square to see the live recording of the ABC’s Q&A (the Aussie version of question time), hosted by the always entertaining Tony Jones–a sort of cross between Dimbleby and a slightly friendlier Paxman. As the producer assured us before it kicked off, it really is live–not for them the luxury of a 10 second delay. Perhaps one might have come in handy, though, judging by the fact that they accidentally put this to air:

That was supposed to be a short pre-show promo in which Tony Jones introduces the panel, but unfortunately someone put the audio feed live just early enough for the unfortunate punchline to the warm up guy’s joke (“…85 year old Sudanese woman”) to be broadcast to Australia’s living rooms. I can’t imagine what people at home must have thought (the setup that they didn’t hear was something along the lines that the makeup artists who were at that moment dabbing foundation on the panel are so good that underneath it all Tony Jones is actually that aforementioned 85 year old Sudanese woman…)

Oops.

Still, all of that did mean that I made my second appearance on Aussie telly: many years ago I randomly switched on Channel Ten to see my stupid laughing head in the audience of that year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala. This time with the aid of the pause button, a bit of Where’s Wally type fun backed up with the knowledge of exactly where I was sitting and what I was wearing I was able to locate myself in the crowd pulling a stupid face. Between the two of us we’ve now appeared on three of the five terrestrial channels–Sal was with a group of girls interviewed by Channel 7 at Flemington many years ago–so that just leaves Nine and SBS. I wonder if we can make it onto the other two? Channel Nine is probably achievable if I hang around on Dorcas Street in South Melbourne for long enough in October while they’re filming the next series of The Block, but SBS could be tricky: I guess I’d either have to go on Countdown or get my kit off…

Our third writers festival event in as many days was an evening of foodie indulgence at the new Vue de Monde up the top of the Rialto tower in the company of chef and owner Shannon Bennett talking about his new guide to New York. It was enough to make me really want to go back to New York–just a shame it’s not quite as accessible from here as it was from London. Still, a lovely evening with some great food and wine. We even got to shake the man’s hand as he signed our book for us.