MUSICIAN BEST OF
FAVE 2021 BOOK
I tried James Joyce’s Ulysses three times and chucked it away around page 400 every attempt. I guess it would be Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It’s like a road trip through 1948 USA. Of course, the narrator is a disgusting paedophile and his voice is right up there in your face as well. I also read two books by Rose Macaulay – They Were Defeated and The Towers of Trebizond and look forward to discovering many more. Unique. I tried more Nabokov but couldn’t get into them. I read some short stories and a novel by Doris Lessing, who is one of my favourite authors, and another by my absolute favourite, John Cowper Powys. FILM Can’t say I kept up with much. There was a great 1980 film called Nijinsky on YouTube. Starring Alan Bates as the impresario from the Ballets Russes. Great film. TV SHOW Survivors A 1975 BBC TV series about a pandemic that wipes out most of human life. There are three series of it on YouTube. REDISCOVERY My Maton Alver acoustic guitar. It’s been an ornament in the corner for decades. I had it fixed a while ago and started to fool around on it with different tunings and had a pickup put into it. It sounds lovely. HIGHLIGHT I quite enjoyed the whole lockdown experience. I still hope that it changed people’s perspectives in a permanent way. It’s awful when people talk of life “snapping back” to what it was, because that was hardly perfect. I hope people have seen through the Liberal National Corruption for what they are. Getting our album Everything Was Funny together. Recording and releasing it. On Compact Disc. PLANS FOR 2022 We are going to record the album we had ready to drop with our band the mistLY, which is an up-tempo
22
rock set of songs. Also planning for Clare Moore to continue work on a solo album and I am halfway through an album of weirdness songs. I also did an album with UK electronic artist Scanner which may come out at some point and there is also the album I have been working on for a few years with Will Hindmarsh as WAM AND DAZ which should also be coming out in some form. Clare Moore and I have also been working on a track with Catherine McQuade which we are doing a clip for very soon.
JACK HOWARD
ALBUM Sympathy For Life Parquet Courts Under These Streets - Emma Donovan & The Putbacks Scratchcard Lanyard Dry Cleaning
PERRY KEYES
SHANE O’MARA ALBUM From Dreams to Dust The Felice Brothers SONG ‘We All Need to Know There’s Someone Out There In The Night’ – The Aerial Maps BOOK Cherry - Nico Walker (published in 2018) FILM The Many Saints of Newark TV SHOW NRL Preliminary Final - South Sydney V Manly Warringah REDISCOVERY The Commodores’ Machine Gun from 1974. HIGHLIGHT OF 2021 Died Pretty live at The Factory in Sydney. PLANS FOR 2022 Finishing an album or two. Maybe a show at some point.
ASHLEY NAYLOR
SONG ‘The Metrologist’ - Liz Stringer BOOK The Rain Heron - Robbie Arnott On The Plain Of Snakes – Paul Theroux The Bass Rock - Evie Wyld FILM The Dig, I Called Him Morgan, Shang-Chi TV SHOW Mr Inbetween, Money Heist, McCartney 3,2,1 REDISCOVERY The trumpeter Lee Morgan after watching the film I Called Him Morgan – the warmest and most beautiful trumpet tone ever. HIGHLIGHT A brilliant month of gigs in Feb/ March before it all went to Covid shit again. Losing 13 kgs! PLANS FOR 2022 The release of a new record, Lightheavyweight 2, in May; H&C doing the Red Hot Summer Tour; watching Carlton make the finals!
album with Even, Reverse Light Years, and seeing it chart. Exciting times. Oh, and Mason Cox signing a new contract with Collingwood. PLANS FOR 2022 Play shows with Even, PK, The Church, Vika & Linda, release new music with The Ronson Hangup, Monterey Honey and more instrumental releases.
ALBUM Do Androids Dream Of Electric Beatles - Bagful of Beez SONG ‘Please Walk Away’ Bagful of Beez BOOK The Beatles: Get Back The Beatles FILM The Beatles: Get Back TV SHOW Antiques Roadshow repeats REDISCOVERY ‘Do You Feel Like We Do’ – Peter Frampton HIGHLIGHT OF 2021 Releasing my first ever double
ALBUM Simulation Ride - Merpire I was drawn in by the thoughtful lyrics and memorable melodies. I love Rhiannon’s voice; she draws the listener in to every word she sings. ‘Easy’ was a real standout – a gorgeous stripped-back intimate moment. SONG ‘Those Stories’ - Brandon Poletti Brandon Poletti is a brilliant WA singer/songwriter. His countrytinged folk-rock style is so endearing, and this song has a chorus that is etched in my brain! BOOK The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo -Taylor Jenkins Reid
ALBUMS Wonderful Oblivion Charm of Finches First Time Really Feeling Liz Stringer Outside Child - Alison Russell SONG Victoria - Liz Stringer True Love’s Face - Erin Rae BOOK Beeswing - Richard Thompson Unstrung - Marc Ribot FILM 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything The Velvet Underground Get Back REDISCOVERY Blue - Joni Mitchel Talking Book, Innervisions - Stevie Wonder Magical Mystery Tour HIGHLIGHT Listening to Off The Record RRR Saturday morning 9-12 : essential listening Performing ‘Murder Most Foul’ with Tim Rogers with me band ‘The Luminaries’ for the annual Dylan celebration - Tim was simply extraordinary. HOPES/PLANS FOR 2022 A change of Federal Government …. FFS !
HELEN SHANAHAN
This book took me by surprise! I had no idea what to expect – but then it played out like a Hollywood film. The characters were so complex, and the world she created was so detailed. There were so many twists and turns, but ultimately it was a story about love – and the lengths you’ll go to keep it when you’re in the spotlight. FILM Girl Like You This is hard, as I am a new mother, and I don’t think I sat down once to watch an entire film! I just watched an insightful documentary called Girl Like You on the ABC, which I highly recommend. A deep (and at times heart-wrenching) insight into changing genders and navigating relationships because of it. TV SHOW Ted Lasso I have just jumped on the Ted Lasso bandwagon – it is wonderful. There’s so much I love about the protagonist’s positivity and infectious humour, paired with his troubled past. REDISCOVERY Powderfinger. When I was driving the other day, ‘Love Your Way’ came on the radio. It made me listen to their album Vulture Street on repeat, and I fell in love with it again. HIGHLIGHT OF 2021 Getting to sing backing vocals for Tim Minchin, then supporting my biggest inspiration, Missy Higgins! It didn’t get much better for me than that. PLANS FOR 2022 I am excited to release my sophomore album, Canvas, in March 2022. I recorded it remotely with producer Brad Jones in Nashville. I have also started a monthly night called ‘The Songwriters Café’ in Perth – emulating the Nashville “in the round” format. I’m excited to have quality WA acts play and hopefully some touring acts (thinking positively for 2022!).
MICK THOMAS
ALBUMS No-No Boy - 1975: a record that grew from a project inspired by the classic American novel No-No Boy. Beautiful songs exploring a whole heap of issues to do with Asian/ American identity. Lovely to hear a project record that is still compelling and basically musical. Full Power Happy Hour (self titled): Jangly indi countrified pop music out of Brisbane (of course). Great songs and a really joyous delivery. Can’t wait to see them play. SONG Dan Tuffy - Eternity (from the Letters of Gold album). Somehow writing from his long-time home in central Holland Dan has been able to hone in on Australian subject matter in a way that is incredibly potent. Love the way he sings the opening line - My old mumma, my old poppa, all my sisters and all my brothers were alcoholic wrecks..... BOOK Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. A beautiful imagining of the life and inspiration behind one of literature’s most enduring pieces of work (Hamlet). There’s so much in this novel for anyone who sets out to write or perform from a position of emotional honesty. Or for anyone who has found themselves involved with the arts on any level. FILM The Mystery of Henri Pick - a partial farce that explores the vagaries of publishing and posthumous fame. Entertaining, amusing and weirdly thought provoking. REDISCOVERY The Broken Road Patrick Leigh Fermor. This is the third book in the trilogy that began with A Time of Gifts. Far from being the inferior piece of work many judge it to be (it was cobbled together from his notebooks after he died) I increasingly find it instructive as a treatise on memory itself. The first two books of the series were written from extensive notebooks years after the journey that is their subject matter had taken place. They are crafted, detailed and considered - the timeline of them is logical and linear. This third book jumps forward and back with the author eventually
questioning his own recollections and methodology and the general youthful world view of his former self. It is the uncertainty of it that I find so compelling. I intend to re-read it (along with the two companion books) a few more times before my journey ends. HIGHLIGHT Managing to get a second album in two years - City’s Calling Me released somehow and then the couple of full band shows we played at the end of July were special but bittersweet. We got to play Kangaroo Island and do a few on a riverboat on the Murray early in the year which were great - but we lost a lot more than we ended playing and I can’t believe how frustrating it has been. It’s drawn some blood. HOPES/PLANS FOR 2022 On the eighth of March 2020 we ran into Tim Rogers and Steve Cummings in the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane. A couple of days later it all went belly-up. Since then there’s been so much extraneous stuff to deal with and I’d just like to run into either of those fellas and not talk about fucking pandemics or vaccination. Preferably in the Brisbane Virgin Lounge. Mick Thomas & The Roving Commission’s latest album is City’s Calling Me.
MATT WALKER
MUSICIAN BEST OF
Very entertaining book from one of my all time favourite artists. I would’ve been devastated if it was crap, but of course I knew it wouldn’t be. FILM I don’t think I watched a movie made in 2021....so I’m gonna say The video clip for Catching Smoke King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, by Danny Cohen. REDISCOVERY Undercurrent - Bill Evans and Jim Hall (1962) Unconventional in the jazz tradition, this album of piano and guitar duets was a 2021 revelation to me. The ascending guitar melody at the 4:53 mark of the piece titled Romain harnessed so much emotion I almost couldn’t cope, over and over again. Thanks to my friend Jimmy Dowling for turning me on to this album in 2021. HIGHLIGHT It’s complicated. HOPES/PLANS FOR 2022 I don’t plan that far ahead.
ANDY WHITE
ALBUM Bittersweet Demons - The Murlocs Game changing album for these lovable lads. They’ve hoisted their familiar jangle aloft, to find their new stomp in a more poetic world of thought that leaves one feeling an instant nostalgia perceived from an unknown future. ”Live out of love, not reward, you’re the angel I adored Lionized through the eyes of the ones left behind” From the title track ‘Bittersweet Demons’. SONG Dangerous - Liz Stringer Why Liz is not a worldwide superstar is a mystery to me. Perhaps the feeling is mutual, and I am a mystery to the world. Yeah, that must be it. BOOK Unstrung - Marc Ribot
ALBUM Collapsed in Sunbeams - Arlo Parks SONG ‘Zu Asche, Zu Staub’ - Severija BOOK Frankenstein - Mary Shelley FILM Gomorra (the TV series) REDISCOVERY Plastic Ono Band - yes!!! HIGHLIGHT OF 2021 St Patrick’s Day Show, March 17. The only gig I played Dec 31 2019–Dec 12 2021 unbelievable!!! HOPES/PLANS FOR 2022 This garden is only temporary.
23
