2003

The Go-Betweens

Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

I don’t know what The Go-Betweens went between when they started out in the late Seventies but now they are marvellous emissaries for a period when popular music really got its mojo back. It began in 1977 in New York and London with punk and power pop, but Australia was also in the hunt with bands such as Nick Cave’s Birthday Party, The Saints, Laughing Clowns, Radio Birdman and, Brisbane’s answer …

2003

Music DVDs reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The arrival of the DVD has been rapid in Australia. We are well-known for our speedy take-up of new technology but the saturation of the market by the digital versatile disc has been particularly swift even by our standards. Probably it is due to the fact that  DVD players, which cost upwards of seven hundred dollars three years ago, now cost less than a quarter of that now. And Dolby digital sound systems …

Bob Dylan
with Paul Kelly

Entertainment Centre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

This time he blew in from the West. Still on the Neverending Tour, and back in Australia – three years on, and sixth time round – Bob Dylan has turned his Sisyphean treadmill into a victory lap. At least, that is the report of messengers, posting news of sightings and setlists on Bill Pagel’s Boblinks website. The intelligence has been promising since his European dates last year. England had …

2003

The Blind Boys of Alabama

Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is ten years next month since Brian and Vivien Tonkin took over the licence at the Governor Hindmarsh hotel on Port Road. And in that time it has become one of the busiest, and certainly the best loved, of Adelaide’s  live music venues. Week after week it programs every kind of music – blues, jazz, old rock, new pop, Scottish and Irish music, garage bands and electronica. …

James Taylor
Festival Theatre

Bob Dylan
with Ani diFranco and the Waifs
Entertainment Centre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Perhaps no-one epitomises popular music at the beginning of the 1970s more than James Taylor. Along with Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon he was the prototype of the singer-songwriter, not a cult figure like Bob Dylan and the other folkies, but a confessional soloist the way John Lennon had become. By the end of the sixties no-one was supposed to sing other …

Faithless
The barton Theatre
Dirty Three
Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

It is three years since Faithless were last through and they were also a late scratching from the 2002 Big Day Out. So there is a strong sense that the Wednesday 9.15 show at Thebarton is overdue. The Faithless faithful certainly think so as they pack in, moving close to a stage bathed in thick red light – drum kit, percussion rig and a double stack of keyboards …

Billy Bragg
with Dave Graney Show
Norwood Concert Hall

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The prospect of The Dave Graney Show on the same card as Billy Bragg made this event doubly appealing. But I am sorry to report Mr Graney ‘s opening set is a disappointment. Perhaps he is diligently not wanting to steal the show. If so, I for one would not have been sorry if he’d taken that risk. Instead he’s looking uncertain and understaffed, even his raffish …

Roger McGuinn
Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

I first heard of Roger McGuinn when he was known as Jim. He was the serious young ectomorph in the houndstooth coat and little black lozenge spectacles on the cover of the first Byrds album. Foppish in their American Carnaby gear, singing harmonies four and five deep, the Byrds swooped on Bob Dylan songs and showed there really was another side to them. They layered and enriched the sketchy sound of early …

Emmylou Harris
with Buddy Miller and Kasey Chambers

Thebarton Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Emmylou Harris is surely one of the true Daughters of the American Revolution. And she has been at the centre of not just one, but several, musical insurrections. The first was in the early seventies when she teamed up with Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman and others of their Burrito brethren to make what soon came to be called country rock. After Parsons’ death, it was Emmylou …

CDs reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Electronica et al

Anyone who knows their polypeptides will tell you that endorphins are a little gift from your brain to you. And because he offers a beguiling equivalent  in musical analgesia,  Endorphin aka electronics composer Eric Chapus, is well-named. Skin (Columbia/Sony)  is his second album, follow up to his debut work, Embrace.

Chapus, born in France and widely travelled, has been based in Kuranda in Northern Queensland before recently relocating to Sydney. He …