Peter Gabriel (b. 13 February 1950) Gabes grew up in public. Precocious and vulnerable, his relatively privileged upbringing (he schooled at Charterhouse) inured him from fear of failure. This gave him, for a time, freedom to make Genesis a really innovative group, who came up with several interesting albums before they morphed into a somewhat blander supergroup. He left Genesis just as it began to take-off, with a gnostic note to the world that said “I had a dream, eye’s dream. Then I had another dream with body and soul of a rock star. When it didn’t feel good I packed it in…” And…
Continue Reading →Dear Annabels, our beloved Stevie Nicks stomps a bit now and she really shouldn’t turn side-on to the audience but she is pretty as and still rocks it just fabulously. At Fleetwood Mac’s October 2015 concert, I was close enough to see up Stevie’s two (not one or three) nostrils and so I took careful note of what the lady wore. I don’t think I need to say that it was (almost) all black, but Stevie wore:- A skirt of (perhaps) microfiber, layered and good for lifting out at the sides A fitted long-sleeved velvet vest with points at the…
Continue Reading →[Adelaide, 28 October 2015] The Varnished Culture saw Fleetwood Mac last night, at Hindmarsh Stadium aka Cooper’s Stadium*. These ancient rockers sound magnificent and look marvellous, although the ravages of time, travel, art and their relationships show, especially if you are lucky enough, as we were, to have tickets that get you stalker-close to the stage. The by-play between them, borne of decades of love, hate, and indifference, gave joy to the dedicated audience, some of whom have been party to these shenanigans for their whole lives. We had seen the group a few years ago but this was our first time with the original line-up,…
Continue Reading →The final stages of this TV two-parter are a salutary reminder of that dreadful scourge of the homosexual world in the 1980s – the music of Peter Allen. Oh yes and that AIDS was, in those days, suddenly rampant and absolutely untreatable. This is a paint-by-numbers production. But that doesn’t mean it is bad – just mediocre, glitzy, watchable and non-threatening. Like Allen himself. The audience is told what to think at every stage, from the obligatory hard-scrabble childhood (cleaning Dad’s brains off a wall), to fame, fortune and an opportunistic marriage to American music royalty. Sigrid Thornton looks surprisingly like Judy Garland but is stretched by a script which…
Continue Reading →Elvis Costello (Declan MacManus) (b. 25 August 1954) He was at first, with the approval of management, tagged an “angry young rebel” as a result of more than a few brash words and deeds, and the coming of the New Wave in 1976. Add the reaction to him taking the sacred first name of Mr Presley, who would slide off his toilet to immortality just as his namesake was in the first flush of fame. Yet the label hardly stuck because Costello, though personally scratchy at times, is a dogged craftsman, a superb lyricist, a consummate performer and a lover of music in its many forms (witness, for example,…
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