1994

Graham Parker
The Office

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

When, in 1975, he sent a demo tape into Charlie Gillett’s show on Radio London, an unknown service station worker named Graham Parker helped jump-start English music. Weary with disco and reeling from lugubrious concept albums, listeners were suddenly swept by a New Wave. Short songs with sharp lyrics and pumped up rhythm were back. Power pop somebody called it, others called it punk. Whatever it was, it unleashed a burst …

1994

Jim Rose Circus Sideshow

Old Lion

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

O Rose, thou art sick. Blake didn’t know the half of it. From Seattle, Washington, grunge mecca of the New World, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow returned to Sunday night Adelaide to bring worms visible and invisible from his garden of unearthly delights. Too big for Heaven this time, Jim packed us into the Old Lion for the gawp of our lives. Looking around we looked normal enough. People …

Alan Posselt
and Aneesh Pradhan

Elder Hall

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Derived from the Persian “seh-tar” meaning three stringed, the sitar- multi-stringed, long-necked lute from Northern India- has been a featured instrument of the classical Hindustani tradition since at least the sixteenth century. Apart from musicologists and Indianists, Western audiences only began turning ears to its ineffable cadences in the late 1950s when Ravi Shankar gave his first recitals in London and New York.

By the early sixties folkies like …

Murray Bramwell

Further details have been announced for the Honda Adelaide Music Festival which opens on September 10 – 26. The classical program has already been released and word is that tickets for headliners Roger Woodward and the Australian Chamber Orchestra are already moving fast.

But Fiesta is nothing if not diverse as the just-released Dance and Country programs indicate. The dancers of the Australian Ballet will present a mixed offering of well-known favourites with new work from the younger …

Murray Bramwell

From September 10 -26 Adelaide and environs will be alive with the sound of fiesta. The Honda Adelaide Music Fiesta will be getting into gear on a number of fronts- jazz, country, popular, rock, dance, choral and a broad classical program. There will be a variety of international and interstate performers but the focus for Fiesta is also in showcasing and promoting local talent.

The Music Fiesta originated in 1991 with a festival of more than 140 events …

The Blues Brothers Band
Thebarton Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

There is a scene in the Blues Brothers movie when the eponymous Jake and Ellwood are putting The Band back together. They go to an empty dinner club to find a remnant of the group in musical purgatory -dressed in mulberry velour playing easy listening kitsch nobody wants to hear. Billed as Murph and the Magictones they epitomise the fate of all has-beens and nevers-were. Sadly, they also prefigure the …