Category Archive: Modern Music
Daisy Jones and The Six (by Taylor Jenkins Reid)
Cobalt Blue Eyes? Call the Doctor.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a fictional 1970s Fleetwood Mac style-ensemble fronted by a bewitching, raspy voiced woman (the eponymous Daisy) and a handsome, brooding guitarist-singer. The number is made up by a less ravishing woman on keyboards and a couple of other people not worth bothering about. Don’t bother reading Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel either, just wait a while and you can watch it. The front cover declares deliriously that Renaissance Woman Reese Witherspoon “devoured” this book in a day, and you can bet that she’s put it on her shelf marked Miniseries? Netflix? Role for Ava? We…
Continue Reading →Eurovision Australia 2019
[Eurovision Australian Heats, February 9, 2019.] Since Australia’s first Eurovision entry in 2015 Guy Sebastian’s “Tonight Again’, we have cheered Dami Im (second in 2016 (she was robbed)) and have cringed at Jessica Mauboy, notably referred to by ‘The Spectator’ magazine as a ‘vast caterwauling aboriginal‘. Finally we antipodeans have had the opportunity to vote (as if it hasn’t all been decided beforehand) on our entrant. The final, from the appropriately kitsch Gold Coast, Queensland, was shown on SBS and hosted by a chipper Joel Creasy (“trilingual” in English, Millenial and Drag-Queen) and an uncomfortable Myf Warhurst in unflattering hot pink. Each of the…
Continue Reading →Bohemian Rhapsody (by Lesley-Ann Jones)
“Bohemian Rhapsody. The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury” (by Lesley-Anne Jones) (1997; recently re-issued) This biography (not to be confused with the 2018 film Bohemian Rhapsody – click here for our review) is a sympathetic look at the life of the Queen front-man, from his lonely boyhood as Farrokh Bulsara, diligent Parsee schoolboy at an Indian boarding school, to his lonely death at age 46 as Freddie Mercury, adored British rock star. Some of those from his Zoroastrian background do not see this as an upward trajectory – his cousin Diana said, “He gave up his family name. He did not…
Continue Reading →Bohemian Rhapsody
(dir. Bryan Singer) (2018) (Click here for our review of the book of the same name by Lesley-Ann Jones.) If you don’t get a shiver down the spine during the opening scene of Bohemian Rhapsody, as we follow Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) onto the stage at Live Aid, you don’t deserve Freddie, or this terrific film – a goose-pimpling, foot-stomping bio-pic with heart. Yes, it follows the usual trajectory of ambitious boys putting their all into their music, despite evil managers and uncaring music company execs. Yes, we know the story, and the film may not be entirely historically accurate, but…
Continue Reading →Look Now
COSTELLO.25
By Elvis Costello and the Imposters (2018) Elvis Returns! With a typically eclectic record containing hints and echoes of the grand past. There’s a little spirit of Painted From Memory, Imperial Bedroom, and Mighty Like a Rose, but the material is still starkly new. We’ve only had time for about 10 spins so far, but at this early stage, we particularly like his #me-too classic, “Under Lime,” about a louche, washed-up star waiting in the Green Room, which is both hip and wise, and witty. Likewise his re-working of “Unwanted Number” is terrific, and we love the melody of “Dishonour the Stars”…
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