Category Archive: AUSTRALIANIA
The Descent of Comedy
Oh dear. Shaun Micallef was once a genius of the Theatre of Embarrassment. But if you’re going to “go political” in comedy, you need to visit a plague on all houses. Not merely pander to the cognitive elites, smug in their infallible bubbles. Alas, he’s now the Australian Stephen Colbert.
Continue Reading →La Voix
(with apologies to Arthur Rimbaud and T.E. Eliot) The pale Man trudges along by the flowery paths Dressed in mourning, a cigar between his teeth: The pale Man recalls the corridors of Canberra – and sometimes his lustreless eye becomes keen… For the bullhorn user is drunk with his 250 year orgy! He said to himself: “I shall blow Liberty out Very neatly, as if it were a candle!” Liberty lives again! His back is broken! He has been forsaken Ah! What word trembles on His silent lips? What regret does he feel? We shall never know. The pale Man’s…
Continue Reading →Let Me Be There: Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John (26 September 1948 – 8 August 2022) The quintessential girl next door sang like the girl next door: no screeching, no vocal tricks, no auto-tune. A mellow, pellucid delivery in the fashion of Karen Carpenter. At one stage, in the 1970s, country fans thought her a country poseur but listen to songs like ‘Jolene’, ‘Banks of the Ohio,’ ‘If You Love Me, Let Me Know,’ and ‘Let Me Be There,’ and she more than justifies the mantle of country singer. Her apple-pie purity was used to great effect in the hugely commercially successful film Grease (1978), and when…
Continue Reading →The Black Sorrows
Photo by Tania Jovanovic
(…play Saint George’s Road (and more), Adelaide Guitar Festival, 15 July 2022) Joseph Camilleri (b. 1948 in Malta) formed the seminal R & B / Rock band, Jo Jo Zep And The Falcons, in 1975, that crafted several classic songs (So Young, Hit And Run, Shape I’m In, we even liked the faux-disco Sweet) that would have been monster hits in any parallel universe. Real success didn’t come until 1983, when Camilleri created The Black Sorrows, with hits such as Hold On To Me, Harley and Rose, Chained To The Wheel, Never Let Me Go, Mystified and the Chosen Ones….
Continue Reading →The King is Dead
Neil Kerley after the 1973 Grand Final
Neil Kerley (20 February 1934 – 29 June 2022) Tonight, Saint Jude (the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes) is having dobs with Neil Kerley. ‘Knuckles’ specialised in taking football teams from despair to triumph, or at least respectability. West Adelaide, a good team, could not win Grand Finals. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Bloods to the 1961 Premiership in the “The Turkish Bath Grand Final.” South Adelaide, eating its gruel with 1963’s wooden spoon, was talented but clueless. Until Kerley took over and captain-coached the Panthers to the 1964 Premiership. The Glenelg Tigers had descended…
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