Category Archive: Modern Music
This Is Spinal Tap
(Directed by Rob Reiner, 1984) (Special Screening at the Mercury Theatre featuring a Q & A with Harry Shearer, Adelaide Guitar Festival, 22 July 2022). Spinal Tap are the blond rock god David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean, who you already know well from Better Call Saul and other offerings), the bass player Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), who longs for St. Hubbins with big wet spaniel eyes. When Nigel learns that David’s girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone (June Chadwick aping Yoko Ono) is flying over from England to join the tour, his heart sinks. His crush on David…
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 →Sam Cooke – The Music
(Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 24 June 2022) Before his bizarre death on 11 December 1964, at the somehow apposite age of 33, and his subsequent apotheosis, Sam Cooke was already a key figure in modern music. He took elements of R & B, Gospel and Pop, and created Soul, which emphasizes vocals and venerates both God and the Ladies. In his short life, he made 29 singles that made the top 40. Gary Pinto (pictured, photo by Simon Upton) is a leading performer of R & B and Soul music. The Sam Cooke Tribute he has developed in recent years comes at…
Continue Reading →Otto & Astrid
(Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 23 June 2022) Come out, come out! In Adelaide’s cold, clear, calm, beautiful winter! And see this Festival before the tents are pitched. At the fabulous Spiegeltent on Festival Plaza (below), a large and appreciative crowd gathered to see and hear Otto & Astrid, the famous ‘dysfunctional, squabbling, co-dependent pair who are Berlin’s prince and princess of art rock and Europop, a lipstick-smeared, tantrum-loving, sonic collision between B-52s, The Pixies, Kraftwerk and early Ramones.’ Remember! What’s good or easy In your freezing sit? Come hear the music play, Life is a cabaret, you folks, Come to the…
Continue Reading →Davina and the Vagabonds
(Adelaide Cabaret Festival, 11 June, 2022) [Davina and the Vagabonds, late to town thanks to post-Covid chaos in international flights, appeared at the Cabaret Festival on Saturday night, drawing from the past 100 years of American music, from Fats Domino and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Aretha Franklin and Tom Waits. Reportedly, Davina has been compared to Etta James, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday and Betty Boop, but in order to verify, The Varnished Culture had 2 guest reviewers in attendance who know a thing or three about past and contemporary music in this Dawning Age of Aquarius….
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