1996

Fairport Convention

Royalty Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Fairport Convention are a bit like the family axe. It has had so many replacement heads and handles that it is hard to know whether you recognise it after all these years. Twenty six albums later-more than forty if you add up all the solo ventures- Fairport continues to lay claims to being at the still centre of the turning world of British traditional music. They run their own record label, …

1996

Simply Red

Entertainment Centre

Adelaide, 15 April, 1996

Murray Bramwell

The last time I saw Simply Red they were touring the second album Men and Women. Their mix of reggae, soul and Brit pop had, even with their debut Picture Book, made immediate impact. The band was on its way and they knew it. Singer Mick Hucknall set the pace;  brash, cocksure and blessed with vocal gifts to rival Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. Like other UK …

Simply Red
Entertainment Centre
Adelaide

The last time I saw Simply Red they were touring the second album Men and Women. Their mix of reggae, soul and Brit pop had, even with their debut Picture Book, made immediate impact. The band was on its way and they knew it. Singer Mick Hucknall set the pace; brash, cocksure and blessed with vocal gifts to rival Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. Like other UK stylists such as Eric Burdon, Joe Cocker, Paul …

1996

Adelaide Festival

Living Yesterday Tomorrow

Malcolm McLaren

Her Majesty’s

The speaker for the evening takes the stage. Strolling towards the lectern in a baggy black suit and a peach coloured open-neck shirt, shuffling papers and lugging an attache case, he looks like a dotty art theory lecturer. This is Malcolm McLaren ? The Fagin of punk, Alfred Jarry of the Kings Road, bagman for the Sex Pistols ?

With his tousled Harpo curls,  his languorous eyelids and drawling delivery …

1996
Joan Armatrading
Festival Theatre
Adelaide

Murray Bramwell

There are few singer/songwriters as singular as Joan Armatrading. Over seventeen albums she has not only put a patent on her lilting vocal, she has consistently explored themes where most other lyricists fear to tread. While she can write perky tunes with the best of them, it is her investigations into the telltale heart which have made her an audience favourite. She writes grown-up pop: about jealousy and betrayal, about women who …

1996

Paul Kelly

with Paul Brady

Governor Hindmarsh

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Paul Kelly has played here four times this year and each time he’s been full of surprises. The January gig at Heaven brought a five piece line-up plus a set from the Blackeyed Susans. Then, fresh from the Womad train, he played a full house at Festival Theatre with fabled pedal steel player and national broadcaster, Lucky Oceans. The Norwood Town Hall show featured Renee Geyer, whose fortunes …

1995

Her Majesty’s
Adelaide

Murray Bramwell

Just when you thought nostalgia isn’t what it used to be- along comes Ray Davies. Except that this one-Kink show, which has been touring the known world since its acclaimed debut at the Edinburgh Festival, is much more than a greatest hits fest. Drawing from Davies’s recent “unauthorised autobiography”, X-Ray, the two hour show is an intelligent, wonderfully wry mix of music and memoir.

Raymond Douglas Davies is the exceptionally talented leader of …

The Blackeyed Susans
Crown and Anchor

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

“You realise you are about to hear the best band in Melbourne.” I am lip-reading a friend’s emphatic prediction while G.T. Stringer wind up their set in the bonsai confines of the Crown and Anchor. Led by sax player Trevor Ramsay the band is sharp and accomplished. More evidence of the depth in the batting in Adelaide. A plug for their new CD and the crowd gives them a well-deserved …

1995

Festival Theatre

Adelaide

Murray Bramwell

It was once just a Lennon and McCartney throwaway. With a Little Help from My Friends, a Ringo song that George Formby might have written. Then, out of nowhere , came  a version that transformed it into a soul gospel classic. Joe Cocker, gas fitter from Sheffield, had discovered some serious pipes of his own and was being hailed as the rival of Ray Charles and Otis Redding.

Celebrating twenty five years in …

1995

Larry Adler with Issy Van Randwyck

Musical Director- Kelvin Thomson

George Golla (Guitar) Craig Scott (bass)

David Jones (drums)

Festival Theatre, Adelaide.

Murray Bramwell

George Gershwin is quintessentially the American artist of the twentieth century. His music distilled the mood  of his time,

first  mainstreaming the bluenotes and syncopations of jazz into Tin Pan Alley then transmuting them into such Modernist classics as Rhapsody in Blue and his opera, Porgy and Bess. Gershwin’s music, like the Marx Brothers, Scott …