After John Schumann agreed to help me launch ‘My Back Pages’ in Adelaide, I asked if he could recommend any friendly media types for me to contact. ‘I can try Graham Cornes for you,’ he said. ‘He does a thing called Conversations. He’s excellent.’ I knew Cornes as a footballer with Glenelg and a former coach of the Adelaide Crows. Probably the only time I had seen him in the
So many of my back pages were written in, or about Adelaide, that it seemed obvious to kick off any promotional activity about my book of the same name in the Festival City. I called my old mate John Schumann. Would you be willing to do a ‘conversations with …’ thing? No worries, he said. The last week of October would suit, as he’d be in town rehearsing with The
You can get a copy of ‘My Back Pages’ at the following retailers. Click on links for details. If you’re going into a bricks and mortar store, it’s always wise to check that they haven’t sold out and are awaiting new stock. New South Wales GLEBE: Gleebooks, Glebe Point Road NORTHBRIDGE: Book Face, Northbridge Plaza SYDNEY: Abbey’s Bookshop, York Street SYDNEY: Redeye Records, York Street Australian Capital Territory WESTON CREEK: Songland,
My new book, an amalgam of memoir and anthology, is now available to order (link below). There’s the experience of emigrating to the steel town where the desert meets the sea; the escape to Adelaide’s nourishing airs; the return to Britain to fathom why the family left; and the realisation there was no future in England’s dreaming. Then the plunge into publishing. Rock ‘n’ roll stories of course; Springsteen, Split
I was delighted when Rob Hirst accepted my invitation to contribute a chapter on drums to Roll Over Beethoven. As editor of Roadrunner and Countdown magazine in the late 70s and early 80s, I’d covered and written about the steady and uncompromising rise of Midnight Oil to the top rank of the Australian music industry. Describing a March 1981 open-air concert at Adelaide University I wrote: ‘It was awesome, brilliant,
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Bruce. First, I saw the film, Deliver Me From Nowhere. Excellent. Shortly afterwards, I read Bruce, the authorised biography by Peter Ames Carlin. Pretty good. Then I realised it was coming up to fifty years since I travelled from Bath to London to see the man. I got to reminiscing. Dug out some old letters and clippings. Hit the internet. And came up with this
The core of this playlist is a) songs recorded and released by No Fixed Address and b) songs performed live by No Fixed Address but recorded by others (i.e., Joe Geia, Bart Willoughby and Mixed Relations). It also includes songs by people the band played with, people they met along the way, and other significant songs mentioned in the book ‘No Fixed Address’. ‘The Vision’, No Fixed Address, Wrong Side
A playlist of singles reviewed in The Big Beat: rock music in Australia 1978-83, through the pages of Roadrunner magazine. The playlist, first published a year ago on this site—and updated in the past few weeks with new tracks added to Spotify in the past 12 months—contains 583 songs and runs for 35 hours and 17 minutes. The Roadrunner years were a golden age for the single and The Big
Losing Greedy Smith this year was a big shock. A shock that reverberated through the Australian music community. A shock that reminded everyone from the late 70s/early 80s glory years of Australian rock of their own mortality. If Greedy has gone, who’s next? It’s enough to send a shiver down your spine. The massive turnout at the Macquarie Park crematorium on 9 December to celebrate Greedy’s life was testament to
There was a lot of love in the room for Roadrunner magazine and its anthology The Big Beat at Readings book store in St Kilda last night. A crowd of around fifty gathered to hear Pierre Sutcliffe (ex-Models) lead Phill Calvert (ex-Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party), John Dowler (Young Modern) and myself discuss the Australian post-punk scene and the role that Roadrunner played in it. Among the former contributors in
The soundtrack to the book of the magazine. One song from each issue of Roadrunner magazine, as featured in the book, The Big Beat: Rock music in Australia 1978-1983 (Roadrunnertwice, 2019).
When I returned to Adelaide in late 1977 after two and a half years away in the U.K., I brought home with me about twenty-five singles. I proceeded to do the rounds of my rather puzzled university friends to show them and play to them these artefacts from the sonic revolution I had just experienced. Most of them smiled politely and poured another cup of tea, but one old school
Around three years ago, David Nichols, a former writer at Australian Smash Hits, interviewed me on the phone for a book he was doing on that magazine. He asked about the rock mags I used to read growing up, how I got into the game and my impressions of Smash Hits. He was kind enough to send me a transcript to check, but ended up only using a small part. The
‘The public for pop in the years 1954 to 1964 created a new social order which changed the fabric of life and the course of the century … ‘It was not merely a case of roll over Beethoven, more the almost entire rejection of an inheritance of style, taste, manners, behaviour and ethics in the pursuit of change.’ — Bob Rogers with Denis O’Brien, Rock ‘n’ Roll Australia — the
