..subject to the fashions of the day and it’s only the occasional performer who manages to transcend fashion. Dutch’s pithy advice to Geoff Achison to ‘play what you know’ is all you really need to know, but Dutch’s bigger-than-life personality surely played a part in his becoming the quintessential expression of Aussie blues. It’s a…

..for somebody who is not my uncle, my aunt or my uncle’s client. I have friends who have permanently separated but still go out together, even sleep together, although presumably only on cold nights. It all seems very modern and, as divorce impacts at least a third of all marriages, nothing unusual. It may be…

..such a hideous social faux pas that I’ve been known to clench manfully and sit on it for the entire evening, squeaking surreptitiously, no doubt.. But, back to Sleep. At a dinner party the other night I was obliged to pitch my rock opera, The Jellabad Mutant. It’s a palpable deficiency, given the business that…

Robbo’s blah cont. .. after the game. Anyway the gig went well – I wore a TONY SHAW mask during the 1st set and after the gig rushed home and watched the replay and partied on! I’ve also been there the last two GF’s – OUCH! I had a gig on with Spectrum after the…

Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. David Porter was at all the TF Much Ballrooms, he was at the Sunburys – in fact David was at everything that was going on in this town. I think that was perhaps what distinguished David from some of the other photographers of the era – he was a fan….

.. from the ‘New York Post’ and ‘The Wall Street Journal’, he runs controls six community newspaper groups. Internationally he controls Dow Jones, ‘Barron’s’ and ‘The Far Eastern Review’ amongst other news organisations and enterprises. But it is the media assets that are the jewels in the Murdoch empire crown, providing cash and increasing influence….

.. been levelled and replaced by a housing estate. We’d played the gig, which was bizarre enough, with our performance being repeatedly interrupted by stinking trucks laden with doomed cattle driving in between us and the workers listening to us stony-faced in their blood-spattered work clothes, when we were asked by a union official if…

When I was much younger (which of necessity was a long, long time ago) these values and their importance were drummed into my impressionable skull by a vast array of the minions of the state from parents, grandparents, school, church and children’s literature. This brainwashing was both overt and covert but as an outcome of…

It’s not that the female characters aren’t fleshed out either, but very few of them even attempt to challenge the male dominance that was an accepted part of life in the early sixties. However, they do get their own way by various ways and means, mostly sexually, an arena where the men positively flounder. As…

Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. .. that it was the background music for the show that really gave her the creeps. Now, the background music for Doctor Who is not to be confused with Ron Grainer’s theme music, which is one of the all-time great TV series’ themes. No, this is the background music, the…

.. I mean the advent of the Howard and Pauline Hanson years- the conspicuous flaunting of the flag was not a common vice. Overt patriotism as a method of cultural division was not an established d practice Unlike the United States where one of the first thing that a visitor notices is the constant display…

..religiously writing down your every dream, especially since dreams are by their nature exceptionally elusive and easily forgotten, and you really have to do it hot off the press. But the writing down or relating of it is the important part – because another thing I’ve noticed is that the dreams are often visual puns,…

..global political domination. Or to hide their affairs with attractive members of either sex, dreadful schemes with the tobacco industry or some financial skulduggery. These ‘terminated with extreme prejudice’ people may not have stood before any tribunal to have their crimes weighed in the balance of Justice, but extinguished they are with the single bullet…

.. Pepper could well have used Bill as their model and I’m sure you can think of many more examples. He was actually once asked if he’d consider playing the role of Derek Smalls in a Spinal Tap musical – or was it a Spinal Tap tribute band? Either way he wasn’t interested – in…

..some sadistic minion of the state. Even given the intermittently risible state of our politicians it is still worth voting as your vote does count. The opportunity to vote early and often for the highest bidder is no longer an option – we have long traded $2 and all the beer you can drink for…

..a priority for humankind since the year dot. Wikipedia tells us that: ‘The first mirrors used by people were most likely pools of dark, still water, or water collected in a primitive vessel of some sort. The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of…

Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. ..without advertising their presence to the hapless motorists gliding below. I’m not absolutely sure what the thinking is – I’m pretty sure the traffic would more obediently slow down if the cameras’ presence was advertised, because I’ve seen this working in Auckland, and I believe it operates this way in…

Dick’s Toolbox cont. ..too expensive to make. And they were still seriously, seriously good. So when I returned this year, once again with Elizabeth, to find ‘For Rent’ signs in the window and the view inside of an overturned table and scattered newspapers on the floor; I felt desolated. The world, my world, was diminished….

At the moment multiverses and string theory are the ’go to’ explanations of the world as we don’t know it. Intermittently I console myself with the thought that we are a young species with that has only recently confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson so perhaps there is a way to go yet in…

..Love. Perhaps it is fitting that in 2009 Spector was convicted of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson and is serving a prison sentence of nineteen years to life. There was a dude who surely changed the perception of popular music but just as surely believed his own publicity citing him as a genius….