Published in Read About It·Jun 23It’s only rock & roll, but I like itFor Jagger and Richards, the challenge is not which songs to put on a set list, but which to leave off — EVEN after six decades of playing together, the Rolling Stones still have the capacity to surprise. When they hit the stage for the opening night of their 60th anniversary tour in Madrid on June 1, the Stones stunned their audience by dusting off a song that had been recorded 56…Music14 min read
Published in Read About It·Mar 21You can’t always get what you want — or can you?Counting down to see the Rolling Stones play Hyde Park in London on July 3 — ON July 5, 1969, an estimated crowd of up to 500,000 people gathered in Hyde Park, London, on a balmy summer afternoon for a free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones. Held a month before the Woodstock festival, the concert was touted in advance as the London hippie culture’s greatest…Popular Culture6 min read
Published in Read About It·Jan 13Oh Manchester, so much to answer for*Four decades of musical excellence continues with latest addition to the lineage — ONE of the best new bands to come out of Britain in the past year or so is an outfit from Manchester called Afflecks Palace. You only have to listen to the first few seconds of the opening track of their debut album to immediately know that they are Mancunian…Music10 min read
Published in Read About It·Oct 30, 2021Sound as everGrowing up and growing old with the music and words of Tim Rogers — I’VE lost count of the number of gigs I’ve seen Tim Rogers perform live, either with You Am I or solo, but I clearly remember the first time. It was the 1995 Big Day Out at the Melbourne Showgrounds. Sound As Ever had been out for a while and Russell…Music9 min read
Published in The Walkley Magazine·Jun 18, 2021Stories of humour and pathos from the final days of journalism’s golden ageA review of Upheaval: Disrupted lives in journalism WHEN Fairfax Media announced in June 2012 that 1900 staff would be made redundant, it was only the beginning of a decade of carnage which has seen up to 5000 Australian journalists lose their jobs. A group of Australian academics quickly recognised…5 min read
Published in Read About It·Jun 4, 2021Lay down your weary tuneA celebration of Bob Dylan’s brilliance on his 80th birthday — DID William Shakespeare’s contemporaries realise that more than five centuries after his death, his plays would still be performed in dozens of languages every year, constantly reinterpreted and reinvented but never less relevant than when he first wrote them, their words and characters now ingrained into the English language? Most…Music12 min read
Published in Read About It·Mar 28, 2021Heroes or villains?Inside the CFMEU — Dare to struggle THEO Theodorou’s week has started off badly and is only going to get worse. The previous Friday, Theodorou woke to find his name in print in Melbourne’s two daily newspapers as the latest CFMEU official to be charged by Fair Work Building and Construction. The CFMEU organiser is alleged to…Unions20 min read
Published in Read About It·Mar 24, 2021House ArrestOriginally published in ‘Lockdown: Melbourne Writers’ Group and Friends Respond to Isolation in 2020‘ — THE instructions were explicit: Ring or knock twice, and if there is no answer, leave the package with a note on the doorstep. Deng waited half a dozen heartbeats at the front gate of the Brighton mansion, the second buzz on the intercom still sounding in his ears, then turned…Fiction11 min read
Published in Read About It·Jan 20, 2021Good riddance to the criminal-in-chiefIt was inevitable that Trump’s presidency would end this way: in scandal and ignominy, fear, loathing and shame — THE surprise isn’t that it ended this way, but that it took so long. From day one way back on 20 January in 2017 — when he ordered his press secretary to lie to the media about the size of the pitiful crowd at his inauguration — it was written…Trump Administration16 min read
Published in Read About It·Jan 7, 2021Is America now a failed state?Trump lit the fuse, but scenes from the Capitol on Wednesday are the culmination of an unraveling of US democracy over 40 years — IN the end, even the most rusted on Trump loyalists could bear it no more. “Count me out. Enough is enough,” Lindsey Graham said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. Graham was speaking once order had been installed in the Capitol building, hours after a wild mob in red MAGA…Politics8 min read
