Category Archive: MUSIC
African Reggae
Songs in Our Heart # 2 African Reggae (Nina Hagen) (Written by Reinhold Heil, Bernhard Potschka and Nina Hagen; released 1979) [Best pop yodeling ever.]*
Continue Reading →Molly: The Real Thing
Not dead yet
Channel 7 followed up its two-part drama Molly (reviewed here) with a short, oddly premature obituary-feel documentary about Ian “Molly” Meldrum the following week. Molly’s brother Brian tells us that Molly loved music from day one. He moved in with Ronnie Burns’ family when his just wouldn’t do, he was a journalist at GO SET magazine, then on the television music shows The go Show, Kommotion (1966). Uptight (1968) and Happening 1971. Again, like Vivienne Westwood, Ian Meldrum was a young person with nothing but passion and a lot of nerve who blazed a trail through a wood that no-one…
Continue Reading →Our “Great Classics: Carter & Wagner” Review in ASO eNotes
It takes something special to get folks in Adelaide to stand
In their latest electronic newspaper, our friends at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra linked to our review of a recent function held by our friends the Richard Wagner Society of SA and a concert under the auspices of the ASO’s new Principal Conductor Nicholas Carter. Scroll down!
Continue Reading →Molly (Channel 7 Miniseries)
Photo by Jeanie McKinder
(Channel 7 Mini-Series) Ian “Molly” Meldrum named his house “Luxor” and hung out with cross-dressers. But Molly was also a brawler and a football fan. While having a genius for television, he could barely string two words together. These contradictions raise questions about this quixotic man, but there was no question for those of us who grew up in the Countdown days. Watching Countdown for 25 minutes on the ABC was what you did on Friday, and then Sunday evenings. Young people today won’t believe it if you tell them that until Countdown, the only tv music shows for the young were occasional all night “Rockathons”* which my…
Continue Reading →Valkyries
Painted by Emil Doepler
PREMIERE: 26 JUNE 1870 in MUNICH. It was done as a ‘stand-alone’ piece, not part of the Cycle, and reaction was mixed. But Wagner wasn’t going to allow 26 year’s worth of work down the drain and ultimately, as both part of the Ring cycle and alone, it stands atop the operatic ramparts. Discussion: February 10, 2016 at Adelaide Symphony Orchestra Performance: February 13, 2016 at Festival Theatre, Adelaide Die Walküre shows Wagner blossoming as musician and dramatist. In the words of Ernest Newman, “he abandoned himself luxuriously to the sheer joy of music-making, both enlarging the scale of his…
Continue Reading →