Clannad
Festival Theatre

As their name suggests, Clannad is a family affair. Paul, Ciaran and Maire, the Brennan siblings, combined with their twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan in 1970 to form one of Ireland’s foremost folk outfits.

A lot has happened to Clannad since they first started winning the battle of the bodhrans back in Gweedore, Donegal. Maire’s husky vibrato lead vocals, harmonised with the choral voices of her near and dear, have made the Clannad sound distinctively, sepulchrally …

Miles Davis
Thebarton Theatre

Miles Davis is unique. His forty year career in jazz has been spent at the most avant part of the vanguard. As a teenage prodigy he was, after Dizzy Gillespie, the most distinctive trumpeter in New York, or Paris, or anywhere. At the age of sixty-one he still presides over a band which is bursting with invention.

Inexplicably, on his first Australian tour, Davis attracted a less than full house for his one Thebarton concert. But …

Elvis Costello and the Confederates
Thebarton Theatre

In his warm-up set Nick Lowe, King of the rockpile, warned that Elvis Costello’s concert in Adelaide would be no ordinary gig. After months on the road from Atlanta, Georgia through Europe, Japan and Australia, Adelaide was the band’s last stop before heading, variously, home.

Lowe obliged with a modest draught of his bubbly pop – Cruel to be Kind, Without Love and, befitting an erstwhile son-in-law of Johnny Cash, he …

Celt Following
The Chieftains
Festival Theatre

Even when they’re just tuning their instruments the Chieftains sound better than most bands. Their mellifluous harmonies have been generating journalistic blarney for more than twenty four years, in which time the group has produced some fifteen albums including some very successful music for films.

In their time the Chieftains have rubbed tin whistles with just about everyone- Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Mike Oldfield for instance. They even played the curtain-raiser for the …

The Pretenders
Thebarton Theatre

In many ways Chrissie Hynde is soul companion to songwriters Ellie Greenwich and Carole King, who between them produced most of the definitive popular music released in the early sixties by Liberty Records and Phil Spector’s own Philles label. Like Leslie Gore, Sandie Shaw and Dionne Warwick, Chrissie Hynde’s music is Aching Pop – soulful, histrionic and bitterly aware of the chains of love.

The last time the Pretenders toured in early 1982 they gave one …

Simply Red
Billy Bragg
Le Rox

Billy Bragg is the busker who turned busker. He used to wander the streets performing with a fifty quid electric guitar and a 60 watt amp on his back. Now he tours the world and performs at Le Rox with a fifty quid guitar and his 60 watt amp on the ground. There is much to be pleased about with Billy Bragg. At a time when record production takes an expensive month of Sundays …

The Eurythmics
Memorial Drive

Last time the Eurythmics were in Australia they were Tourists. The
Tourists, it must be said, were never much chop. One of their singles scraped into the Top Ten but no one would have thought that Gorbals rocker, Dave Stewart, and the singer in the Mary Quant tat, Annie Lennox, would do more than sink without trace when the band dispersed in 1980.

Instead, with five hit albums in a row, the Eurythmics are here again …

Joe Jackson
Thebarton Theatre

When Look Sharp, Joe Jackson’s first album appeared in 1977 all manner of sobriquets were bandied about his distinctive sound – “powerpop” and “spiv rock” among them. Like Graham Parker and Elvis Costello, he offered a churlish wit and a tight rock sound – urgent, knowing and non-sectarian.

Of the three only Jackson has conquered America. Parker sounded too much like a New Yorker to begin with and nobody ever got over Elvis Costello’s ironic …