1991

The Black Sorrows
Tivoli Hotel, December, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The crowd at the Tiv waited a long time for the Black Sorrows to arrive but not as long as Joe Camilleri has. He’s made a lot of music in his forty two years. From the King Bees to Adderley Smith, from Lipp to the Pelaco Brothers he started on the ground floor of Australian music and has now elevated himself to the top of the heap. After …

1990

Eric Clapton
Festival Theatre
November, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Eric Clapton has always set the standard. After the music papers announced that Clapton used a banjo string on his guitar, the shops sold out of banjo strings. Curiously, he has followed traditional American music and become an innovator in the process. Starting in the Yardbirds in 1964, Clapton has always been a purist. Just when the band was starting to get a bit fab he was off to …

1990

Marianne Faithfull
with Barry Reynolds
Old Lion, June 1990

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

I bought my first Marianne Faithfull LP. in 1964. I’d gone to the shop to buy the Stones’ Aftermath and somehow got distracted by As Tears Go By. It was a pretty feeble album really – breathless, nylon-string folk songs with recitations of Full Fathom Five and Jabberwocky to fill up the second side – but I had made a choice for Art (and the fetching …

1990

Harry Dean Stanton and the Repo Men
Tivoli Hotel

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

With a distinguished list of flakey, downbeat movie roles to his credit, Harry Dean Stanton has moved from screen to stage for a whistlestop tour with his band the Repo Men. Comprising Jim Leslie on bass, drummer Stephan Mugalian, Jimmy Intveld on lead Fender and Nashville cat, Billy Swan as frequent lead singer, songwriter and general factotum, Harry Dean’s band is more like the Wild Bunch …

1990

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra: Traditional Associations and New Departures

The ASO is moving into the Nineties with even more vitality than before. It is the “on” year for the Adelaide Festival, the orchestra is moving permanently to a handsomely refurbished Town Hall and for the first time they will have
their own composer-in-residence with the arrival of Canadian- born Neil Currie.

Over the past couple of years the orchestra, under the stewardship of General Manager, Michael Elwood, and Chief …

1990

Tracy Chapman
with Paul Kelly

Thebarton Theatre
February, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Every now and then you hear a new single that you just know is going to be a big noise. Like Rickie Lee Jones’ Chuck E’s in Love or Michelle Shocked’s Anchorage – or Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. The interchange of guitar riff and lilting vocal is captivating – and the lyric, like Paul Simon’s The Boxer, is a miniature movie so perfect that it doesn’t …

1989

Murray Bramwell talks with General Manager, Bill Gillespie, and singers, Marilyn Richardson, Michael Lewis and Geoffrey Harris about State Opera’s latest production, La Boheme.

Not only has State Opera been moving out of the red, but with La Boheme, which opens at the Festival Theatre on Thursday, it appears to be in the pink. After the upheavals of the past several years,the company radiates a sense of calm and pleasing confidence. Just over a year after his arrival from …

Billy Bragg
Dom Polski Centre

John Hammond
Tivoli Hotel

A lot has happened for Billy Bragg in the two years since he toured last. He has performed in the Soviet Union, toured the US with Michelle Shocked, and his latest album, Workers Playtime, has everywhere sold well at its user-friendly budget RRP.

It is only to be expected that the one-time busker and all-time prolo model would be smoother and more urbane this visit, presenting a set designed for …

UB40
Thebarton Theatre

UB40 have always been a very democratic band. Apart from taking their name from no less of a leveller than the English unemployment benefit application form and holding the thin multi-coloured line against the doughy racism of National Front skins and oi’s at the turn of the decade, UB40 have worked well as a unit. There have been no line-up changes since they began more than ten years ago, song royalties are credited to the whole band …

Schnell Fenster
Adelaide University Union

It is the sacred duty of university unions to promote bands before their time. In 1975 an unknown band called Split Enz played to thirty-seven people in the Matthew Flinders Theatre and in December 1988 Schnell Fenster, presently the wrong half of the Enz, played to little more than a hundred punters at the Adelaide Uni Union.

None of this would ruffle the confidence of Phil Judd, composer, singer, guitarist, trumpeter and photo- realist painter. …