March Issue | 2020
Melbourne | Free
THE COMEDY ISSUE Steph Tisdell leads the laughs at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival How lol can you go: The Music’s top picks of the fest
Lou Sanders answers our Agony Aunt questions
Jessica Fostekew takes a punt at predicting the arts landscape of a post-Brexit UK
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Credits Publisher Handshake Media Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen
Workin’ for laughs
Senior Editor Sam Wall
I
’ve watched every episode of both the UK and US versions of The Office. I’ve never rewatched either. Yet somehow I’ve become completely enamoured with the ‘rewatch’ podcast Office Ladies. The podcast is affiliated with the US version only (though there are semi-regular references made to the British original), and it’s hosted by The Office actors Jenna Fischer (Pam in the show) and Angela Kinsey (Angela in the show). What makes this podcast so appealing is the comedic chemistry between Fischer and Kinsey. I first became aware of Fischer’s comedy chops from a little indie film she wrote and directed in 2004 called Lollilove (it was pre-The Office), a mockumentary about Cali hipsters trying to help the homeless which featured Freaks And Geeks stars Linda Cardellini and Jason Segel as well as Archer’s Judy Greer. And, while Kinsey utilised her background of comedic improv in The Office, it was her appearances on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (she clocked 19 spots) that really displayed her spark for hilarious storytelling: she has a knack making the ordinary sound outrageously funny. Together on Office Ladies, the pair display a rapport only lifelong friends share — they delight in each other’s information and jokes, they quibble and tangent off into conversations where they honestly seem to have forgotten they are recording a podcast (the moment where the swap frozen ramen tips is a real doozy). Each episode recaps an episode of their still-popular TV series (which finished back in 2013): both rewatch the episodes separately (and sometimes deleted scenes and commentary), they contact cast and crew for BTS tid-bits and then present ‘fast facts’ and deep dives into each episode’s plot line. They also bring in former workmates to talk about their memories from particular episodes, so far featuring Rainn Wilson (Dwight), director Paul Feig, Ken Jeong (he guested in season two), Melora Hardin (Jan) and Creed Bratton (Creed, who also has recorded the theme for the podcast). There were 201 episodes of The Office produced. So far less than 20 episodes of the podcast have aired, so this has some way to go (they were initially contracted for just 28 episodes, but the podcast’s success should surely see it go all the way through). Of course, there are laughs originating closer to home as Melbourne International Comedy Festival springs into action this month. We celebrate, as we do every year, by talking to some of this year’s most hilarious talent, including Australian comedy’s latest breakout act, Steph Tisdell (our cover star this month). We also welcome British comedian Lou Sanders to the mag as she answers all our agony aunt questions and local comic Claire Sullivan helps us navigate the in and outs of the annual laughfest.
Editors Daniel Cribb, Neil Griffiths Assistant Editor/Social Media Co-Ordinator Jessica Dale Editorial Assistant Lauren Baxter Gig Guide Henry Gibson gigs@themusic.com.au Senior Contributors Steve Bell, Bryget Chrisfield, Cyclone, Jeff Jenkins Contributors Irene Bell, Emily Blackburn, Joel Burrows, Sean Capel, Anthony Carew, Roshan Clerke, Cameron Colwell, Brendan Crabb, Guy Davis, Joe Dolan, Chris Familton, Guido Farnell, Donald Finlayson, Liz Giuffre, Carley Hall, Tobias Handke, Mark Hebblewhite, Keira Leonard, Joel Lohman, Sean Maroney, Taylor Marshall, Felicity Pickering, Michael Prebeg, Mick Radojkovic, Michaela Vaughn, Rod Whitfield Senior Photographers Cole Bennetts, Kane Hibberd Photographers Rohan Anderson, Andrew Briscoe, Stephen Booth, Pete Dovgan, Simone Fisher, Lucinda Goodwin, Josh Groom, Clare Hawley, Bianca Holderness, Jay Hynes, Dave Kan, Hayden Nixon, Angela Padovan, Markus Ravik, Bobby Rein, Barry Shipplock, Terry Soo Advertising Leigh Treweek, Antony Attridge, Jacob Bourke, Ben Di Donato sales@themusic.com.au Art Dept Felicity Case-Mejia print@themusic.com.au Admin & Accounts accounts@themusic.com.au Distro distro@themusic.com.au Subscriptions store.themusic.com.au Contact Us Mailing address PO Box 87 Surry Hills NSW 2010 Melbourne Ph: 03 9081 9600 26 Napoleon Street Collingwood Vic 3066 Sydney Ph: 02 9331 7077 Level 2, 230 Crown St Darlinghurst NSW 2010
Please enjoy.
Brisbane Ph: 07 3252 9666 info@themusic.com.au www.theMusic.com.au
Andrew Mast Managing Editor
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Our contributors
This month 16
Editor’s letter
This month’s best binge watching Guest editorial: comedian Jessica Fostekew
Stateless Giving a human side to the refugee crisis
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Not On Your Rider
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The Not On Your Rider team consists of Aimon Clark from The Creases, Patience Hodgson from The Grates and solo artist
22
Jeremy Neale. They were brought together by their love of trivia nights and figured that there is such a great music community in Australia these days, but nobody is really P ic : B ri an Ziff
Soccer Mommy On being in the spotlight and becoming a responsible adult
The Comedy Issue 24
Steph Tisdell Claire Sullivan offers her hot tips for getting through the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
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Getting laughs when the world is a dumpster fire
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Lou Sanders answers our agony aunt questions
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discussing it in a gameshow format anymore.
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Ocean Grove
The Merindas Sharing language and culture through mainstream pop music
42 Tayla Colley
Samm
yJ
Tayla is a Sydney-based illustrator, anima-
Musical madness Michelle Brasier, Sammy J and Andrew Hansen on combining comedy and music
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Our picks of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
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Finding a connection between shitposting and stand-up
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Chris Rya
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Bringing the laughs with taboos
Midlife crisis comedy Mark Watson and Chris Ryan on the changing nature of comedy as you get older
Examining the long-term environmental effects of the bushfires
Fanny Lumsden
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Album reviews
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Film & TV reviews
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Check out more of her stuff on Instagram, @tayla_colley.
Your Town Mad as a ... Find your own Wonderland with tea party tips and secret sites
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tor and underwhelming conspiracy maker.
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Jessica Fostekew An absolute powershed comedian, actor and regular host of The Guilty Feminist podcast, Jessica can be seen in BBC sitcoms
Your gigs
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Howzat!
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This month’s local highlights
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The end
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Motherland and Cuckoo and is a writer for Mock The Week and 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
AS SEEN ON ABC’S ROSEHAVEN & PLEASE LIKE ME
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MARCH 13–15 THREE SHOWS ONLY
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Sheer Mag. Pic: Marie Lin
Mag-nificent
The Welcome To Night Vale universe expands from podcast-land with the release of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home. The newest addition in a bevy of novel tie-ins, Night Vale creators Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink bring their paranormal prowess to the page once again this 26 Mar.
Elizabeth
After nabbing a support slot with Weyes Blood, the inimitable Elizabeth is heading out on her own this month. It all kicks off 6 Mar and culminates in Melbourne on 16 Mar for the official launch of her recent album, The Wonderful World Of Nature.
Feature-less creature fest
The National. Pic: Graham MacIndoe
Simply the ‘beth
The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home
Pennsylvanian punk-rockers Sheer Mag are heading back to Aus for the first time in four years. The group will hit up the east coast throughout the month, beginning in Melbourne on 19 Mar for Brunswick Music Festival.
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Stream dreams
Crossing platforms From its humble beginnings on the Nintendo 64 all the way back in 2001, the Animal Crossing series is back for its fifth official title. The anthropomorphic world builder hits Nintendo Switch with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, in stores from 20 Mar.
This month’s best binge watching
Castlevania, Season 3
Ok go For their second Australian tour, Japanese rock superstars One OK Rock are pulling out all the stops. Promising a high-octane and stadium-worthy performance, the band begin their Aussie run on 2 Mar.
Drac’s back, baby! Based on the legendary video game series, the dark horror fantasy picks up where season two ended. Alone with his legacy, Dracula’s son Alucard is left to grieve what he has lost. Meanwhile, Trevor Belmont has set off for a new series of adventures with Sypha Belnades, but it still seems all’s not well in Wallachia.
Streams from 5 Mar on Netflix.
One Ok Rock
Ozark, Season 3
Aussie audiences may have been disappointed in the lack of sea change teased in season two’s finale, The Gold Coast, after Marty Byrde fails to get the family Down Under, but season three of the tense Netflix drama promises more than enough compensation from stars Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. Streams from 27 Mar on Netflix.
Kwame. Pic: Zain Ayub
Westworld, Season 3
National international US alt-rock stalwarts The National are hitting our shores once again, gracing stages around the country with their smooth, melancholic vibes. It all kicks off 21 Mar in WA before the band stops in NSW, QLD and VIC.
Safe and sounds Celebrating the launch of his brand new single, Please, Get Home Safe, NSW rapper Kwame is heading out around the country this month. It’ll all begin in Melbourne at Corner Hotel, 28 Mar, before hitting the rest of the country.
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Following the shock revelations from the season two finale, the HBO sci-fi series promises more twists and turns than ever. With Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) and Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) exploring a new reality, the show has added a slew of fresh cast members including Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul and Master Of None’s Lena Waithe.
Streams from 16 Mar on Foxtel.
Beyond the blue passport: life after Brexit As comedy season looms, we can’t help but wonder what the future looks like for the contingent heading to our shores from a post-Brexit UK. British comedian Jessica Fostekew predicts blue passports and beige art. And queues. Long ones.
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t first when you asked me, ‘What’s going to happen in the future in a new political, social and economic situation which no one in the universe has a clue what the ramifications of are because it’s an entirely new position to be in?’ I thought, ‘How do I know?!’ But then I remembered, I’m a comedian. And us new, modern, current comedians don’t just tell jokes, we also pretend to know EVERYTHING. So why not? Sure. I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen in the actual future. I think a lot of post-Brexit artists will look like Meghan Markle: a strange mixture of systematically oppressed and necessarily wealthy. Dear sweet lord don’t expect them to look as smart and sexy as her though. Especially not the comedians. In fact, I’d go so far as to say NEVER TRUST a smart and sexy comedian. Why are they even doing it? They already had your attention. Greedy. Sorry. Back to the point. When I say that artists will be oppressed but also dripping in cash, I mean that a post-Brexit UK is one which has put its hands up and said collectively that its politics are of the pretty far right. Historically, a pretty far-right UK has usually meant little to no arts funding and greater and greater wealth disparity. So the only people who will be able to afford to be artists will be either the super rich or the super poor. Confusingly, these people actually dress quite similarly to each other. You’ll think you’ve spotted someone who lives in a skip, a white man with dreadlocks who smells of brie, for example. But then it will turn out his name is ‘Tiger’, his dad manages a hedge fund and no one ever needed to teach him to wash, because he’s still got a nanny to do that for him even though he’s 36. Tiger will be able to be an artist because he doesn’t need money. Tiger and people who are genuinely so below the poverty line that the creativity required of them just to survive will absolutely have to constitute as art. Yay Brexit! Quick warning, some of the artists are likely to pretend to not have been born into a cradle of soft dollar bills, because it’s not exactly endearing is it? Like that singer Seasick Steve who pretended to be a mad old homeless guy then once he’d sold out Wembley Arena he admitted it was a ‘character’ and he’d come from relative comfort? Expect even more of that. Fewer artists will be travelling, obviously. The downside of this is there will be fewer artists inspired by their adventures and cultural quirks and rounded compassionate intellect and more who simply makes work inspired by their own boring self. Upside: incrementally slower spreading of the coronavirus. The UK government has said that only people who are going to earn over £25,600 a year are going to be allowed to immigrate to the UK from
now on. Most artists earn approx £4,000 a year and that’s just the ones with their own Etsy pages. This means a lot fewer artists in the UK will have been born anywhere else. Obviously then you’ll have to expect British artists to become essentially Britisher and Britisher: uglier, ruddier, muddier and even more embarrassed. But don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be said for ugly, embarrassed art. It’s increasingly popular. Just look at cosmetic surgery. Or tattoos of people’s names. Timeless. Timeless art. Blue passports. People from the UK will have blue passports in the future. This is going to have a massive impact on us. Massive. Blue is actually the world’s most favourite colour. So on the one hand Britain’s artists will look more tasteful and popular than they’ve ever done before. We used to have blue passports and then when we were in the EU they became burgundy and now we’re going back to blue again. So our passports will look ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’. And we’ll like that. We’ll enjoy that. So while we’ll be more tasteful and popular than ever before, we’ll also be much more awful terrible dickheads. The fact that the UK won’t be in any union outside of itself means that we’ll be queuing for A LOT longer in airports. There’s an international myth that British people love queuing. Yeah, sure, go somewhere posh and elderly (so the edges of Britain) and yeah, there will be queues. Happy queues. People are so happy to be in some of those queues that they’re touching themselves. BUT, the majority of Brits, especially the artists, especially the young ones, especially-especially the young artist ones, actually hate queuing. Because they’re HUMAN PEOPLE. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried having to wait a really long time for something that could easily have happened quickly? It’s OBJECTIVELY HORRIBLE. And there’s a theory that frustration and rage lead to really excellent comedy, but there’s a comedian whose current show contains a woman screaming, gutturally, into a microphone, “KILL ME AND KILL MY BABY”*, so that’s debatable. I would say, however, that it’s probably, hopefully, slightly more fun than watching a calm, content and efficiently processed comedian, doing their inevitably smart and sexily turned out comedy. Why don’t they stick to presenting TV shows instead of calling themselves comedians? I’ll tell you why. So that people will ask them to write articles predicting the actual future. That’s why. *Me. I’m the woman who screams that.
“Obviously then you’ ll have to expect British artists to become essentially Britisher and Britisher: uglier, ruddier, muddier and even more embarrassed.”
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Jessica Fostekew plays from 26 Mar at Cloak Room, Melbourne Town Hall.
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WHAT’S IN A NAME? Any baby Beryls in the house? Steph Tisdell didn’t think so. This year’s historic Oxfam Gala host is getting to the bottom of the human condition with a “non-show” about babynaming trends. Story by Cyclone. Cover pic by James Penlidis. Cover design by Felicity Case-Mejia.
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teph Tisdell is challenging the conventions of comedy by realising her authentic self — and kicking off her shoes. Still, Tisdell describes her new interactive stand-up show, Baby Beryl, as “weird, surreal, wacky”. A proud Ydinji woman, Tisdell originally studied law and journalism to pursue a career in advocacy for First Nations communities and expand perceptions. “I was at uni — I wanted to change the world, you know?” she says. “I’ve always just been real passionate. I had all these ideas; all the things I wanted to do.” But, halfway through the course, the Brisbane pupil fell into despondency. “Honestly, I actually just had a breakdown, because there’s no justice in law. Law is about money and precedence and reading between the lines and paperwork — and that really threw me.” Tisdell’s pivot to comedy occurred “purely by accident”. She backpacked around the UK and Ireland. “I was really anxious,” Tisdell relates. “I was like, ‘I need to remove the safety net.’ That’s what I need to do with my life to feel more confident — just get rid of this safety net and see what I’m actually capable of and see how I go meeting new people and doing all of the things that I was scared of.” Tisdell encountered an experienced traveller at a hostel who gave her some life advice. “She said, ‘Anytime that you get the opportunity, the only thing you should ever say is, ‘Why not?’” Tisdell then accepted a dare to perform a comic routine in a “random” Dublin bar. It was a success. Back in Brisbane, she entered the 2014 national Deadly Funny competition on a whim and won — the first of successive awards. Nevertheless, Tisdell wanted to test her skills somewhere unfamiliar, away from family and friends.
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She relocated to Scotland — Edinburgh famed as comedy central. “After I won Deadly, I had so much fear and guilt about how little I knew about my culture. I’d always had this real fear of talking about it on stage. I didn’t want to be booked for any tokenistic gigs. So I’d never mentioned my heritage on stage, even though I really wanted to.” A year on from her return, “everything just went absolutely apeshit”. In 2018 Tisdell premiered her inaugural show Identity Steft, exploring identity while disarmingly joking about white guilt, at the Adelaide Fringe. Last year she achieved virality with an appearance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala. In March, she’ll be the first Indigenous comedian to host the prestigious event, broadcast on the ABC. A gifted storyteller, Tisdell has developed her voice, and mode of observational comedy, by both studying the form and following her instincts — considering mental health, First Nations heritage and social justice. Even early, she recognised comedy’s potential for truth-telling and empowerment — unlike law. Crucially, Tisdell has an ability to raise sensitive topics in the communal atmosphere of her shows. She often quotes the maxim “comedy is just tragedy plus time”, variously attributed to Mark Twain and others. “It’s so fucking true,” Tisdell exclaims. “The whole thing about comedy is building tension and releasing tension.” But the most fundamental aspect of her comedy is credibility, Tisdell not cultivating a persona. Indeed, she remembers having an epiphany when performing in a city mall. “This seems really silly, but this is such a huge part of who I am: I never wear shoes. I don’t like wearing shoes — it’s always been a thing. But I always
M E L B O U R N E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O M E D Y F E S T I V A L
“The one thing that I would love to give the people in the audience is just total authenticity.”
used to wear shoes on stage and put make-up on and try and present myself, just ‘cause I thought that’s what I should do if I was on stage. I almost remember the exact moment that I went, ‘Why am I doing this? That’s not who I am.’ The one thing that I would love to give the people in the audience is just total authenticity; just don’t be polished anything, anywhere, anytime.” Tisdell also decided that it’s ok to laugh herself. “I always cop shit online for laughing at my own jokes. I’m not laughing at my own jokes! I love laughing with an audience — it’s my favourite. When I see them laugh, I’m like, ‘Yes, fuck, yeah, I’m gonna laugh with them.’ It makes me feel good.” It has immediate benefits. “I feel like that, when you’re laughing along, you always think of more stuff — like off the cuff. It makes you way more present. I think that’s always been a struggle that I’ve had in my life — I find it so hard to be present. I don’t have the best mental health. I struggle a lot with anxiety. I think one of the big things with anxiety is you’re either stressing about the past or you’re stressing about the future. And so being present is super important. I think, with comedy, it’s all about being present. When you’re laughing with the audience, you’re totally there — it’s about nothing else, but that room.” Tisdell’s latest show, Baby Beryl, which launched at Perth’s Fringe World in January, is the culmination of her growth — and curiosity. Initially, Tisdell, who revels in deep research, looked into baby names, trends and asso-
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ciations. But the comedian’s approach to Baby Beryl then became something more spontaneous. It’s “a non-show, on purpose”: “The whole show’s just gonna be me being a dick on stage — just whatever falls out of my mouth, falls out of my mouth. It’s all about that authenticity thing; whatever happens in there, as long as we’re all connecting with each other.” Tisdell has introduced a chat show element, flipping celebrity culture. “I reckon everyone’s got a story to tell and so I’m interviewing strangers from the audience.” Tisdell acknowledges that Baby Beryl has its variables, including how “on” she is. Yet Tisdell values that unpredictability. She hopes punters come with open minds. “It’s not a normal comedy show,” Tisdell stresses. “It’s standup, but it is really just about yarns that you’d laugh at with your mates out the back.” Like other Australian star comedians, Tisdell has a presence in radio and television — and she’s easing into acting (she’ll voice a part in Jake Duczynski’s animated satire Cooked). However, Tisdell has one particular aspiration. “I would love to have my own chat show — that’d be my dream.” A morning talk show perhaps? Tisdell laughs, “Kerri-Anne, I’m coming for you!”
Steph Tisdell plays from 26 Mar at Acacia Room, Victoria Hotel.
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PRO TIPS FOR SURVIVING MICF Hardened festival vet Claire Sullivan is back with her new show Toast Rat, as well as the hot goss on how to live your best fest life.
T
he Melbourne International Comedy Festival is comedy Christmas for postcode 3000 and surrounds. Comedy Santa (the festival) comes down your chimney (takes over the city) and delivers presents (the presents are comedians). The most wonderful time of year kicks off when you flip open your MICF festival guide and start circling all the shows your little comedy-fan heart could desire to see. MICF is my favourite festival, but as we say here in the biz: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. In saying that, it’s not a race. But for some it is definitely a race as there are awards, but don’t think about the awards otherwise you’ll jinx your favourite show. There’s a lot going on. So let’s just call it a comedy festival, not a marathon. Even if it is. Here’s a handy list of tips on how to navigate the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as a punter.
TIP NUMBER ONE Snacks Think like a mum. Have you brought your jacket? Do you have enough water? Do you have a snack? It can be a little tiring being an engaging audience member, laughing, smiling, nodding, being moved emotionally (if it’s that kind of show), so to help make more energy to get through the gruelling process of having A Good Time™, eat a banana. Preferably before or after the show. Not during, as the vitamin-depleted comedian might ask for a bite of your banana. They need sustenance too.
TIP NUMBER TWO Book ahead
IN THE HOT SEAT WITH:
DREW LYNCH If you were going to start a feud with anyone else at the fest, who would it be and why? “Probably Randy Feltface because when I did America’s Got Talent I lost to a ventriloquist. Something about puppets really rubs me the wrong way…” Drew Lynch plays 17 Apr at Comic’s Lounge.
Comedian Geraldine Hickey has a great bit about a type of person called Nicole. Be a Nicole. Book ahead. Be organised. Leaving things to the last minute doesn’t guarantee that you and your girls from work will all get seats. It’ll just be Monica and Shona, because Nicole is on holiday in Vietnam so no one organised your group tickets. And your friendship will be forever split because of the differing in-jokes you’ve gained from all seeing different shows. Eventually you’ll stop hanging out as much after work, it just won’t be as fun. Someone will move on to a different workplace and then in 20 years time you’ll look back and be able to pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong: no one booked ahead for your group of eight.
TIP NUMBER THREE Go see something by someone you’ve never heard of
The newbies and the weirdos are fantastic! Don’t you want to be the one who proudly brags to your friends that you were the one who discovered Jimmy “Funnyman” Scoots? Also, you might find a new type of comedy you previously hadn’t known about! It’s a huge festival and all the comedians have worked so, so hard to get to the point of having a show ready. So if you’re a multiple show seer, go see the drag queen who hands you her flyer on the Town Hall steps.
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TIP NUMBER FOUR Don’t be weird around your favourite/famous comedians
Just don’t be. Be your normal, fun and polite self.
TIP NUMBER FIVE Be kind to the staff
If they are telling you to move off the steps of the Town Hall, it’s because they need you to move off the steps of the Town Hall. It’s not because they don’t like you. The staff are working long hours to give you and everyone else a positive experience and keep the mammoth-sized ship that is MICF smoothly sailing. It’s a small world, the MICF, and if you’re a rude patron word will get around and suddenly you’ll find yourself being refused service or being sat directly behind massive load-bearing poles.
TIP NUMBER SIX Go see something in a weird venue
Go see a show in a basement below ground level, or venture to the thick-walled vaults down by the Yarra, see a show in a national heritage-listed building, or kiss Gough Whitlam at the old trades unionist building. There are places all over Melbourne that get turned into venues, so stumble across a goldmine of laughs this MICF.
TIP NUMBER SEVEN Don’t be too drunk
Imagine if you got so smashed that you pissed yourself in the front row of your favourite comedian from telly’s show. That comedian will be telling that story for years to come. Perhaps next year their show will be called ‘Pisser’ and its climax will be the time an audience member pissed themselves because they were so drunk. So go slow on the proseccos.
TIP NUMBER EIGHT If you liked a show, yell about it
Word of mouth is actually the best way for a show to get traction. Tell your friends, tell your family. Tell anyone you think would genuinely like the show. Did you somehow end up with a discounted or free ticket? Well, tell double the number of people you normally would! Tell the retail worker at your local bookshop! Tell your dog sitter! Tell your nan! Tell anyone! Go to the top of a mountain and shout the names of the comedians and their show dates and times. Tell the rat that lives in your floorboards!
Claire Sullivan plays from 26 Mar at The Evatt Room, Trades Hall.
M E L B O U R N E I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O M E D Y F E S T I V A L
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MARCH
COMEDY OF TERRORS
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t can sometimes feel like the world’s an overwhelming and terrifying dumpster fire. The oceans are rising, Brexit happened, and the doomsday clock is 100 seconds from midnight. Worst of all, The Ferals hasn’t had a new season since 1995. Sami Shah believes there are a tonne of issues that are bewildering to the general public. “There’s no shortage of them, I mean depending on who you are,” he says. “If you’re a person of colour, then it’s about the rise of the far-right with their extreme racism. If you’re a white, middle-aged rich guy, then it’s the fact that all of a sudden you feel like you can’t say the N-word.” However, Shah thinks that not every societal concern is legitimate. “Some of them are real, like the persecution of minorities or the mistreatment of women. Some of them are bullshit, like everything basically One Nation or Pauline Hanson [believe].” Becky Lucas reckons that there are existential terrors that additionally stress us all out. She says, “Life in general’s pretty terrifying... I’m constantly gripped by panic that I’m going to die.” But in such a frightening world, what role does comedy play? Well, Shah feels like comedy’s responsibility isn’t to solve or comment on the big issues. “My goal as a comedian is to make people laugh. It’s not to give a TED Talk. It’s not to inspire them to change the world or anything. It’s just to make them laugh.” Lucas agrees that stand-up doesn’t have to address the complicated and scary parts of life. “People always come to comedians for big, big answers,” she jokes. “But I don’t know, I don’t know anything: that’s why I’m a comedian. There’s a very low bar to get into this.” Comedy might not have to explore those parts of life, but they do still pop up in Shah’s work: “I think about politics a lot, I think about race a lot, I think about culture a lot... So that comes out in my comedy whether I want it to or not. It’s not something that I set out to write, but it’ll always make its way in.” On the other hand, Lucas doesn’t usually broach political topics in her stand-up. She says most people see it every day on Twitter or on their Facebook feed. “Now Nike’s like, ‘Feminism!’ Everyone talks about this shit now,” she notes. “So for me, I feel like if I was to get on stage and talk about it, everyone would be like, ‘Yeah, we’ve already heard it.’” Lucas also doesn’t like cracking jokes when she’s legitimately scared of a subject. “Sometimes I just want to be earnest about that stuff. I think it’s kind of ok to have a serious conversation about that stuff. And the things I find naturally funny, I like to joke about. So for me, I think I’d be forcing it a bit if I was trying to joke about nuclear war.” But does an audience benefit if a comedian jokes about climate change or Scott Morrison? Well, Shah feels like it
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can provide them with a sense of catharsis. However, he also says that this makes a political joke no different to any other gag in his stand-up. “A lot of my stand-up style is about the process of getting married,” he says, “and how difficult weddings are to organise and things like that. The laughs I get from that are just as cathartic as the laughs I get from something more political.” Lucas believes that joking about serious issues doesn’t always provide that catharsis. It can sometimes make the general public feel awkward. “Who would have thought that the weather is now the edgy topic?” she says. “You mention anything like fires or bushfires or whatever [and] audiences get so uncomfy about it.” Shah too has found that some audiences are so uptight about specific issues that it negatively impacts his stand-up. “You talk about race as a person of colour, and they just find it too uncomfortable to deal with the context of the conversation, what it might say about them, and their attitudes. It kind of belies a certain lack of honesty,” he says. And sometimes people aren’t just uncomfortable, they can become outright hostile. Shah has found that discussing political issues has occasionally resulted in altercations with punters. “I used to talk about refugee issues a lot, particularly during the early Abbott years,” says Shah. “I would talk about refugee rights and refugee issues. And every now and then there’d be someone in the audience who be like, ‘Nah! That’s bullshit!’ And then you’d get into a debate with them.” There are times when the 2020 world feels terrifying and overwhelming. In fact, it can frequently feel like things are worse than ever before. But is that actually the case, or has the planet always been this daunting? Well, Lucas isn’t quite sure, but she feels like it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. “Imagine the feeling of every husband going off and dying in a war,” she says. “That would have felt pretty ‘end of days’. And then life keeps going. At the moment it definitely feels like this is pretty serious. But I just don’t know.” Likewise, Shah admits that the world has an end-times vibe, but he acknowledges that our always-online culture is affecting his perspective. “We have 24-hour news channels, we have the internet, we have the real-time repercussions of news and information... And it gives you a level of anxiety.” But whether this apocalyptic feeling is new or not, whether we deal with these problems earnestly or through comedy, there is always time for a joke. “It’s good to just go and have a laugh,” says Lucas. And is there any statement that’s somehow less daunting than that?
Becky Lucas
Sami Shah
The world is a scary place. Comedians Becky Lucas and Sami Shah tell Joel Burrows what that means when your job is trying to get a laugh.
IN THE HOT SEAT WITH:
STEPHEN K AMOS What conspiracy theory do you low-key believe in? “The Earth is flat. No one has ever walked around it, to it or over the edge of it. While I’m at it, sci-fi is a myth, propaganda designed to make us believe in make-believe. Now I don’t know what to believe.” Stephen K Amos plays from 25 Mar at Athenaeum Theatre.
Becky Lucas plays from 26 Mar at The Victoria Hotel. Sami Shah plays from 26 Mar at State Library Victoria.
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SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW AGONY AUNT Lou Sanders — world-class comedian and certified fount of wisdom — steps in as The Music’s very own Dear Dorothy.
Dear Lou, My boyfriend is very sweet, but completely rubbish in bed. What should I do? Alice
Hi Alice, don’t worry this is sortable. I know a couple and when they got together, she didn’t like his moves so they went to see someone who absolutely transformed their sex life. And then they got married! Sure, they’re divorced now, but only because he developed a cocaine problem. Good luck! And if you can’t find a therapist, there’s all kinds of videos on YouTube with people demonstrating on fruits, sucking off an orange and whatnot. Bit of fun! Also: communicate when you fornicate — that’s my motto.
Dear Lou, I never really learnt how to cook and now I’m in my 30s, my 100% take-out diet has become a bit of a secret shame. Am I a loser? Should I be embarrassed? Liam
Hello Liam. You are in no way a loser but you do deserve more. Also take-outs use loads of plastic containers a lot of the time, so if you can’t change for you, do it for the planet. Get a nice little recipe book called ‘Quick Cooking For Total Dumbos’ or something and away you go. I have a 15-minute recipe book and the stuff is QUICKER THAN WAITING FOR THE DELIVERY PERSON — have a think about that, lovely Liam. Also there’s companies who deliver everything you need for a meal with simple instructions for the week, and that’s probably cheaper than take-out and better for you, and you’re learning. Usually for two people, so a chance to get to know the neighbours.
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nlucky in love? Finding adulting a fool’s endeavour? Inadvertently committed canine manslaughter? Have no fear, Auntie Lou is here. UK comedian and Taskmaster champion Lou Sanders is heading to our shores this month to perform her latest show Say Hello To Your New Step-Mummy. In the meantime, she’s here to dole out the hard truths and essential life advice for taking on the modern world, one bad choice at a time.
Dear Lou, I had a bit of an accident backing out of the driveway that might just ruin my marriage. What’s your advice for discreetly disposing of something about the size of a mid-to-large labrador without raising too many questions?
Dear Lou, I joined Tinder a while back to make some new friends but nobody seems to want to come platonically bowling with me. What am I doing wrong? Dennis
Dennis darling, you’re going to have to go it alone and make friends with the staff. See if you can’t tap into their sympathies, and get a discount on the chips while you’re there. You march to your own tune, Dennis! Also, Tinder I think is mainly for fucking.
Dear Lou, I smell like crayons and I don’t know why. Is this normal? Robert
Robert, are you an artist or a paedo — I need more info?
Dear Lou, My sugar daddy has been getting a bit stingy lately. How do I politely tell him he’s cheap? Meital
Maybe he’s going through a hard financial time or he’s found another girl to ‘put through college’. I say two can play at that game, get another sugar daddy! Or a job! Good luck! xx
Dear Lou, Settle an argument for us; showering — everyday thing? Or as necessary? Jill
Jill you little rascal! Yes it is an everyday thing. Even if you don’t care about yourself, it’s a kindness to those around you. When people who can do something about it, still choose to stink, and they are sharing the same air as everyone else in the room, I think it’s a very selfish act. I’m harsh but fair here, I think you’ll agree. So tell Jack to get in the sea (or bath).
Siobhan
Siobhan babe! If he’s divorcing you over spacial awareness, you’re divorcing him over grounds of being unreasonable. Decorate the bastard car scar with a bow and say ‘voila’ as you unmask it. Take complete ownership and then blame the driveway. Also helps if you have a list of his mess-ups in hand when the discussion comes around.
Lou Sanders plays from 26 Mar at Melbourne Town Hall.
“Communicate when you fornicate — that’s my motto.”
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Sammy J
Andrew Hansen Michelle Brasier
STRIKING A CHORD
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or Andrew Hansen, Michelle Brasier and Sammy J (or Sam McMillan when he’s offstage), writing musical comedy is about so much more than putting a couple of gags over a few chords and calling it a day. There’s a complicated and demanding craft at hand, and one that can manifest differently between each and every comic. For all three performers, the mantle of ‘musical comedian’ is not necessarily an accurate one for their endeavours. While the entertainers are more than happy to be classified under that genre, they admit there’s more to their comedic personas than just jokes and tunes. “I probably consider myself a writer more than a performer,” says McMillan, who recently took up the role of breakfast presenter on ABC Radio Melbourne. “Or, at least, I try to put them on an equal footing because I’m really happy when I’m on my own writing a show or a book or whatever it may be. In that sense, the words are so important to me, and radio has been so interesting because I don’t worry about what I look like or what clothes I’m wearing
“That’s a nice little relief to remember: that the songs have a bit more lasting power than just the jokes.” — SAMMY J
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Michelle Brasier, Sammy J and Andrew Hansen sit down with Joe Dolan to chat about moulding jokes into clever and catchy songs.
or what my face is doing, I’m just really focused on the words. The biggest challenge I’ve found is actually just to concentrate. I have to focus for two and a half hours on every word, and if I don’t then the audience pick up on something that I haven’t and I just look like an idiot.” “I’m not a stand-up at all, really,” Hansen admits. “I’m not the kind of guy who can just stand there and yabber on, so my show has all these weird little bits and pieces: music, characters, silly voices - all that sort of stuff going on.” “I’ve put it together into a suite of different songs on different topics, but they’re all kind of related,” he adds of his comedic style. “I’ve got bits and pieces about things like that Ava Max song about being a psycho [Sweet But Psycho], I’ve got some children’s music in there... it’s not safe for children, mind you. It’s children’s music for grown-ups.” For Brasier, whose background stretches into the worlds of live music and stage theatre, setting the tone of the piece from the outset is vital. “I think it’s important to walk into a room, decide how you want your audience to feel, and completely pour your energy into that,” she muses. “You don’t want to make them feel confused, because then they can’t feel anything else. It’s hard to laugh or think if you don’t know where you’re supposed to be in the narrative of it all.” Brasier is also well aware that her new solo piece is quite a thematic throw from her previous MICF appearances. Perhaps best known for her high energy duo Double Denim (along with co-creator Laura Frew), the comic notes that her solo work takes a very different tone, stating, “We’re very specific about what we want to do as a duo. We want to create this party atmosphere and find people in the room and think, ‘How can we make this better for them?’ It’s completely about joy, and the only message is that it’s a feminist show by way of showcasing that women can be just as stupid as men. We’re absurd and gross but we just want our shows to be a little bit of an escape. Average Bear is obviously really different to that and it’s exciting to be able to have that different side come out.” Speaking of the contrast between solo and duo work, Brasier says, “I think all the Double Denim stuff is deliberately silly because it’s not really about using our musical skills for that stuff. It’s about just having a party and having fun, and this is more just about using my voice to really properly manipulate some feelings in the audience.” Hansen, too, is feeling a shift from his group work while going it alone. “It’s wonderful to be free of the dead weight of all those other guys,” he jokes of his time away from Aus comedy legends The Chaser. “I love working with other people, but I do like that when you’re on your own you don’t have to get anyone to agree... I think I’ve maybe learnt how to [do com-
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edy] a bit differently over the years. It’s nice to be able to have a lot of control over musical comedy, and one of the things that I’ve done with my show is that a lot of the songs have my own recordings of multitrack instruments. That way, I can have exact control over the sound and where the drums and guitars come in. I find it’s much easier and more effective to convey the jokes in that way, because so much of it is timing. I like to micromanage the songs, and I think they just kind of land better that way, I’m very fussy about the details of them and making sure everything is in the right place. Hopefully, the tech won’t fail me.” As for McMillan - arguably the most seasoned of the three when it comes to solo comedy - the introspection comes in seeing just how much his abilities have developed over the last decade of performing. “Ten years ago, the songs I was writing were all 90 seconds long, and sometimes quite terrible,” he laughs. “I’ve gotten a lot better musically and I’m enjoying trying to stretch myself a little more in that respect. I still consider myself very low on the rung of musical talent, but I know if I’ve at least made a catchy tune. It’s nice to back myself a bit more than I used to. I looked at this show with an eye on variety of the music as well, because one person sitting at a piano for an hour can get pretty repetitive if it’s not offering something different throughout that.” He also says of his growing fanbase, “I think I’ve learnt that I also had some anxiety about burning my songs too quickly. I’ll write a song, and then I’ll think that if someone has heard it once on YouTube, they’ll never want to hear it again. I’m slowly realising that this isn’t the case. Even in the trial shows, I’m doing some songs that I might have performed on TV two or three years ago, and people actually want to hear it. They’re familiar with it and they know how it goes, but they still want to hear it. That’s a nice little relief to remember: that the songs have a bit more lasting power than just the jokes. People start clapping when you do those first few chords of a song, and it’s exciting because they know all the jokes that are about to come but they’re still looking forward to the song. That’s a nice spot to get to.”
Michelle Brasier plays from 26 Mar at Lunch Room, Melbourne Town Hall. Sammy J plays from 26 Mar at Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse. Andrew Hansen plays from 26 Mar at New Council Chambers, Trades Hall.
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Charity Werk
Rosie Jones
TABOO OR NOT TABOO When somebody comes across something they find uncomfortable or unfamiliar, laughter can be a bridge. Joe Dolan talks to Rosie Jones and Charity Werk, two comedians that will help you get over it.
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here are few things a comedian won’t joke about, but every good comedian knows that best comedy comes from a place of truth. It has to be honest and real for whoever is performing for it to work because an audience will sniff out any insincerity at the drop of a hat. So how does a good comic balance the teetering seesaw of societally taboo comedy and real, personal experience? For someone like UK comic Rosie Jones, it was never an option to avoid the subject of her cerebral palsy - whether she wanted to or not. “It’s a joke I make, but I really do have to address the disabled elephant in the room,” she says. “For the first few appearances where I was on TV, about 90% of what I said was about my disability. I kind of didn’t have a choice, because for a lot of people watching, it was their first time seeing someone with cerebral palsy. I had to explain it and normalise it.” “I’m in a really great position where when I go onstage, or when I go on TV, it’s usually not the first time they’re see-
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ing me,” Jones adds of her burgeoning success as a stand-up. “They know what the deal is, so therefore I can talk about other things. I can talk about being a woman and being gay, because there’s obviously way more to me than just my disability. But, saying all that, being disabled is still a unique position, and it’s a unique voice. I think I’ll always talk about being disabled, but definitely now I’m in a lucky position where I’ve sort of broken through the disability barrier, and now I can talk more generally about being Rosie!” On the other hand, drag artist and stand-up Charity Werk says that her choice to present herself to the world this way is almost irrelevant to her comedy. “I want to be considered a stand-up first and a drag queen second,” she explains. “There’s no real allusion or character work to what I’m doing. Aside from the fact that I’m obviously in drag, all my comedy is true and about my life and even quite domestic sometimes. I think people often find that quite surprising at first, because they come in with this standard expectation that it’ll be character work or it’ll be catty drag bar humour, rather than actual life stories that they might actually be able to relate to. I like to have that contrast between a heightened exterior and then a very down-to-earth style of comedy.” Jones, too, is able to use the stereotypes associated with her disability to her advantage. Known for her jarring and often dark humour, and a calculated delivery, the comedian has plenty of experience when it comes to her unique performative style. “Long before I was a comedian, I still used comedy and I used jokes to break those preconceptions and show that I was actually intelligent. I had to show that there was more to me than my disability. So then, when I started doing comedy, I made sure that I used my words in a way to show that even though I am being funny, I can use intelligent language to be funny. I was adamant about this because I wanted to show that I am intelligent and funny. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about when I’m on stage, because I’ve got this under control.” Still, she has only recently come to terms with her own ingrained ideas about how she is perceived by others. “Because I’ve been disabled all my life, I had kind of normalised how some people treat me. I’d normalised the fact that when I walk down the street, people stare at me, and for a long time I thought that was my fault - I put that on me. Then, something interesting happened last year. When I started doing a bit of telly work, people started staring at me not because of my disability, but because they recognised me. And that was brilliant! It felt so amazing, and I love my job, so to get that appreciation was so amazing. People coming up saying, ‘I saw that thing last night, I loved it!’ It made me really reconsider how other people were treating me. Even now, in 2020, even now they stare at me because I’m quote-unquote ‘not normal’ or ‘different’ or ‘backwards’. So now, I’m in this very weird world where if I catch someone staring at me, I’m not sure if they’re a fan of me, or if they’re scared of me.” In the case of Werk’s comedy, the opportunity to change public opinion of just what drag can be was always part of her intentions as an entertainer. “I definitely feel I am aiding
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in turning the tide of how drag is considered,” she shares. “I think that what I do is so decidedly comedy first and drag second that I think people who come to my shows... there’s no prior knowledge of drag required to see it. All you need is to want to have a laugh. A lot of drag, I think, traditionally has only been for a queer audience, and even though I will curate and attract a queer audience - and I truly love that - hopefully putting the comedy first helps to make it more marketable and approachable for a general public. In doing so, hopefully it offers a more mainstream view into the everyday life of a queer person. My aim is that it’s softening the perception of what it means to be a queer person and a drag performer.”
Rosie Jones plays from 26 Mar at Cloak Room, Melbourne Town Hall. Charity Werk plays from 26 Mar at The Evatt Room, Trades Hall.
IN THE HOT SEAT WITH:
HARLEY BREEN What’s your favourite thing you’ve overheard at one of your own shows? “A lady once laugh farted in the front row. She larted. Then laughed at her own fart. It was better than anything I’ve ever done.” Harley Breen plays from 26 Mar at Merlyn Theatre, The Malthouse.
Claire Sullivan
Elyce Phillips
Stuart Daulman
Aurelia St Clair
Blake Freeman
s the Melbourne International Comedy Festival season rears its head once again, the overwhelming catalogue of stand-ups, sketch stars and so many more can be a lot to take in. So, if you’re not sure where to start, or need a bit of a push in the right direction, have a gander at The Music’s 2020 picks for shows that are well worth keeping an eye out for.
Amid the festival is an underlying excitement that pulsates around those acts just a few great gigs away from breaking into the mainstream. Take the incredibly affable Luka Muller, who has gone from playing backrooms to headlining shows around the country and judging heats at the RAW Comedy talent comp. Muller has been chipping away at the scene for a few years now and Old, New, Other could well be the show that skyrockets him into notoriety. After taking out the Best Newcomer Award at the end of MICF 2019, Blake Freeman should well and truly be on everyone’s watchlist. His laidback onstage demeanour makes him a thoroughly enjoyable performer to watch no matter your comedic preferences. Finally, keep Aurelia St Clair on your radar. One of three recipients of the 2020 Stand Up! grant initiative supporting women in comedy, St Clair’s Woke blends deadpan punchlines with brilliant observations on the world around her.
With the festival set to host over 500 shows this year, MICF 2020 is certain to stretch the limits of comedy far and wide. While the more traditional, mic-in-hand acts tend to take centre stage, the festival is brimming with weird and wonderful alt-comedy geniuses from all over the place. Want to see an immersive theatre piece about the modern plight of the bee? Stuart Daulman is your man with Buzz — a show he was already advertising in his 2019 MICF offering Masterclass. How about a show about a 1990s lifestyle TV host trying to bring her dwindling career back from the brink of obscurity? Elyce Phillips has you covered with Changing Hearts And Rooms: The Trajudy Stacey Comeback Tour. Not weird enough for you? Then take a punt on Claire Sullivan. After her stellar 2017 show I Wish I Owned A Hotel For Dogs, Sullivan finally returns with her prop, costume, sketch and surrealist antics with Toast Rat.
Wil Anderson
Aidan Jones
Claire Hooper
LEFT-OF-CENTRE LOLS
Geraldine Hickey
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCKIN’ ON STARDOM’S DOOR
Alice Tovey
Luka Muller
WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
David Woodhead
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The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is a big ol’ barrel of laughs. Joe Dolan dives in to find the best on offer.
FRESH-FACED FUNNY MAKERS
OL’ RELIABLES
It goes without saying that comedy gets better with experience, but there are plenty of young guns on the scene that are already making waves with their worldly wit and gags beyond their years. At just 22 years old, David Woodhead has already landed a spot as a triple j radio host and an ensemble spot on ABC’s Black Comedy. His new hour Take Care is set to showcase comedic viewpoints that belie his limited years. If musical comedy is more your thing, be sure to check out the incredible Alice Tovey. While still well and truly in the millennial bracket, Tovey has clocked in her MICF hours with numerous solo shows and ensemble pieces over the years. Armed with a back catalogue of hilariously snarky cabaret songs and an attitude to boot, she’s a talented human dynamo. Lastly, there’s the wonderfully congenial Aidan Jones. Known affectionately as Taco, his new show (named after his moniker) chronicles the comic’s transatlantic quest to meet his biological father.
Not quite ready to take a punt on the newcomers? Or just fancy a bit of the good old-fashioned stand-up style? Have no fear — the festival has the goods in spades. For every new wunderkind that nervously graces a MICF stage, there’s a seasoned veteran guaranteed to put on a well-crafted and slick gig. Returning for the umpteenth time is comic mainstay Wil Anderson — not only is he on the circuit with a new hour in Whatchu Talkin’ ‘Bout Wil?, but he’s also bringing back the sensational 2018 show Wilegal back for a limited run. Also returning is the fantastic Geraldine Hickey. One of the hardest-working comedians in the country, Hickey was a nominee for best show at the festival in 2019 with Things Are Going Well, and 2020’s What A Surprise promises even more from the stand-up powerhouse. Last but by no means least, the inimitable Claire Hooper is bringing her tales of motherhood, fame and cohosting The Great Australian Bake Off to the stage in the aptly titled Biscuits.
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MARY TOBIN PRESENTS
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CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF COMEDY
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ATHENAEUM THEATRE
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marytobinpresents
Tom Walker
“When you’re watching pages like Brown Cardigan you wonder, ‘Maybe I could do that.’” Leading up to her performance at RAW in 2017, she prepared by “binge-watching” YouTube as a way of learning the structure of a joke, naming Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong among those she watched for hours. When asked if there’s a connection between the kind of online comedy she watched and the jokes she does now, St Clair reckons “it all sort of goes hand in hand”. She sees the internet as a necessary way to reach audiences, and talks about the importance of establishing an internet presence alongside her early shows. “Now people don’t go to gigs if they don’t know who you are,” she adds. Speaking on the difference between online comedy versus off, she muses, “It takes away that shared moment where you’re sitting in a crowd... Sharing that moment in real life.” St Clair also points out the more temporary nature of in-the-flesh comedy, speaking particularly about jokes which bomb. “When you have that on stage, and you say it the first time, you can throw that joke out. Nobody will remember. When your joke bombs on Twitter... You delete it and start questioning your writing process.” St Clair stresses the importance of comedy IRL, as opposed to purely online where she actively curates her consumption: “I like things which make me think but aren’t numbing. Some of the meme pages that are popular are really dark and the humour is really morbid - it makes you laugh but it makes you sad. I unfollowed a bunch of people recently because, I don’t know, you just feel sad or dirty. It’s like watching porn all the time; you can’t have sex in real life anymore!”
MEMEBO NO 5
Aurelia St Clair
Man, the internet is a weird place. Cameron Colwell logs on with comedians Tom Walker and Aurelia St Clair to find out if there’s a connection between shitposting and standup comedy.
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or something to be funny, it generally has to be understood. So it’s weird that so much of what makes people laugh on the internet is because of its inexplicable, baffling nature. The Washington Post memorably asked ‘Why Is Millennial Humour So Weird?’ in 2017 and three years on, the jokes that get likes on Twitter and the memes that go viral are often things that don’t appear to make a lot of sense. It’s also context-dependant, meaning that removed from the internet, it often becomes even harder to clarify. So what relationship does the weird, shitposting form of humour that proliferates on the internet have with young comedians? Tom Walker, who won Best Newcomer at the 2016 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and has appeared each year since, recounts an adolescence marked by an attraction to weird comedy on the internet.
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He cites forum Something Awful and video site CollegeHumor as early favourites, and maintains an appreciation for the shoestring budgets of the things he watched, like B3ta: “People who are fucking around with fucking surreal looping GIFs... Entry-level humour. Cats with human hands. Almost oil painting-quality GIFs that was all [made by] about seven IT workers living in Scone.” He notes that a lot of the big Twitter accounts are inspired by this weird comedy but most successful online humour is still “big and brash”. “There’s a beautiful nerdy grove for us to frolic around in, but outside the grove, it’s mainly cruelty.” Is that cruelty new to online humour? While Walker maintains it’s not, “with the internet, it’s so much easier to be cruel when you only know one thing about a person, which is that they’re currently falling over, or they have eyebrows that are a little bit too thick. You don’t have access to the complex tragedy of a human life so it’s all, ‘Fuck that guy,’” he says. Walker describes his 2018 appearance on Tonightly With Tom Ballard as the one thing he’s gotten online hate for. “I wish I could scrub that. I haven’t gotten much hate but all of it was from that clip,” he says. “It wasn’t a considerable amount of hate... People seeing that and deciding it wasn’t for them. Why is that funny? Well, it’s not, and that’s why it’s funny.” The video is a baffling few minutes of Walker singing about being a cat, and we consider that a generational gap might have affected its reception. “Older generations don’t have that easy access to the word ‘cringe’ the younger generations have, where you write shit off,” Walker says. “Acknowledging something is embarrassing and shitty while acknowledging that’s the point. The thing about my comedy is that it’s fine to dislike that. I dislike that bit myself, I don’t know why I did it. It’s a bad bit! I like what I’m doing now.” Comedian, Tweeter, and self-described “meme queen” Aurelia St Clair started comedy in 2017 when she reached the state finals of the RAW Comedy competition. Before she considered stand-up, however, she was a frequent poster of “random shit” on Twitter and Facebook. “I feel like in the early teens it was [a] more ‘whatever comes to mind’ [style of humour],” says St Clair. “People reacted to it.” She lists online comedy publications like The Toast and Brown Cardigan as favourites, and as inspiration.
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Tom Walker plays from 26 Mar at Swiss Club, Melbourne Town Hall. Aurelia St Clair plays from 24 Mar at Crowded In The Vaults: The Middle Vault.
IN THE HOT SEAT WITH:
JOHN HASTINGS If you were going to start a feud with anyone else at the fest, who would it be and why? “Jimmy McGhie. He is a tit sofa and a potato wedge who is all day boy [sic].” John Hastings plays from 26 Mar at Mantra One, Mantra On Russell.
Victorian Music Development Office, AIR and AAM present
FastTrack International Career Development Opportunities
Applications Open to Victorian music artist managers and independent labels
Fellowship 2020
vmdo.com.au/fasttrackfellowship
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Mark Watson
COMING OF AGE
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ustralian Chris Ryan and Brit Mark Watson have both seen comedy, and life, from both sides now. They’re two very different comedians from different places with different styles, who approach their craft with a common experience. Specifically, talking about experience that comes with age and not pretending to be down with the kids (or indeed, kids themselves). The shows are personal but also largely relatable — inviting audiences to either empathise if they’re in the same position or project if it’s all to come — and there is heaps of stuff to laugh at too. Chris Ryan’s new show, I Thought It Would Be Nice, sees the Canberra-based comedian build on her existing profile. She’s known for being brutally honest (and funny) about the context of her comedy — age, stage, warts and all — but this time around she’s confronting the elephant in every Australian room: climate change and the extreme weather it has brought. “I don’t claim to know politics at all, ok? It’s not going to be, ‘Well this is what’s wrong with our Earth.’ It’s not going to be an earnest show. I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, I just believe the experts, that’s all I do. They’re doing
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their job, let’s follow what they say. But yeah, it’s not going to be, ‘This is the definitive fire season comedy show,’ it’s just my life. I’m not trying to be Hannah Gadsby with the environment,” laughs Ryan. “It was a terrible summer, it was a devastating summer. Quite honestly, I’m trying to write comedy about it and it’s a good way of getting over it really.” Ryan’s four or so decades of life experience includes motherhood and previous careers including journalism. It’s what contributes to her different view of comedy, and therefore, it’s a style different types of audiences can relate to. “When you’ve been through some stuff you can accept the chaos and that’s actually what we’re all doing. No one is in control, we’re all just pretending to be,” she says, matter of fact. While there’s no sugar coating, there is certainly lots to enjoy. “It’s really just a show about me and my ludicrousness, and if that encompasses what’s happened this summer, then so be it... Honestly, I think a lot of us have been quietly going mad in our own homes this summer. I think that’s a thing that has been happening, and I want us to be able to laugh about that or otherwise we will go mad, for fuck’s sake.” Meanwhile Mark Watson is broaching personal milestones with his comedy. Using his recent 40th birthday as something of an excuse to explore change in his life, his show, This Can’t Be It, considers how to spend what time we have left. “To formulate it in an Australian way, [when you get older] you just don’t have as many fucks to give. In your 20s you have what feels like an infinite number of fucks to give, so then there’s all that drama and excitement, but it’s also exhausting to live like that. “I did my first show [in Australia] in 2006 I think, which is starting to sound like a long time ago... pre-iPhone. When you start to measure out your life in technological advances, things pass you by quickly. I spent a lot of that period trying very hard to impress people, not always consciously, but that’s Chris Ryan
IN THE HOT SEAT WITH:
MAISIE ADAM What conspiracy theory do you low-key believe in? “The one about Prince Charles being a vampire. Have you SEEN him? He’s a descendent of Vlad The Impaler who inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he famously said “Transylvania is in my blood”, and — crucially — he turns into a bat at night. That’s BIG vampire vibes right there.”
Comedians Chris Ryan and Mark Watson impart some middle-aged wisdom on Liz Giuffre about realising no one is actually in control and learning not to give a fuck.
the life of the comedian. Trying not to care as much about what people think of you is an important lesson I’ve learned so far. Not the important people, of course, the important people you need to do everything you can for, but I think [when you’re younger] you can put too much pressure on yourself to be popular with everyone. I’m looking forward to not caring as much. I feel like you get to a certain age, and you think, ‘I haven’t really got time to please everyone,’ with the awareness of time passing and your time getting shorter. One of the things you can do is prioritise time, thinking, ‘Right, I’m not 26 now, I can’t just wander ‘round doing a bit of this and a bit of this.’ Earlier I used to think there was this endless realm of possibility which is what I used to talk about on stage. Now at this stage in life, I can say I’m not going to do that.” Previously Watson was known for his hilarious, legendary (and marathon) 24-hour comedy shows. A triumph for everyone’s stamina as well as just a bloody lovely spectacle, it is the type of thing he hasn’t ruled out doing again some time. Preparing for this new show though is obviously a bit different. “I’ve got to be fairly ruthless to cut 23 hours of material,” he says. “I suppose they’re two different disciplines really. The 24-hour show is kind of my party piece, and I’ve really enjoyed doing that. It’s been a really long time since I’ve done that in Australia, back of my mind I should revise that. It’s more than ten years since I took that to Melbourne, and Melbourne’s the only place you can do it apart from London and Edinburgh because you need quite a large collective of insane comedy fans and mad performers. It does mean that once you’ve performed something like that, the hour feels quite quick. It feels like going down to Twenty20 or Big Bash cricket compared to the test. Comedy is about crowd-pleasing, and particularly at festival time it’s about getting people hard and fast. So despite all these reflective themes and stuff, you still want the show to be as top-heavy with jokes as possible, and that hasn’t changed. As a comedian that’s what I’m always after.”
Maisie Adam plays from 26 Mar at Upstairs, The Forum.
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Chris Ryan plays from 26 Mar at Aphrodite, The Greek Theatre. Mark Watson plays from 26 Mar at Supper Room, Melbourne Town Hall.
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JOLT
LE SCATTERMAN JA M E S
H U L L I C K
embrace your inner crap dad
The splash of a solo concert; a dash of commedia dell’arte; with a twist of stand up comedy.
16-18 APRIL SOUTHBANK THEATRE, THE LAWLER book at:
southbanktheatre.com.au comedyfestival.com.au
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Illustration by Felicity Case-Mejia
Things we lost in the fire
The worst of the bushfire crisis appears to have passed, but with millions of hectares burnt, what are the long-term effects on Australia’s ecology? By Sophie Logan.
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ach fire season is an encounter with the unknown; a reality of living on the driest populated continent. Yet Australia is now facing a new landscape, one formed through the dramatic effects of climate disaster. As the current fires continue a destructive path into 2020, we are left trying to imagine the long-term ecological scars left in their wake and what bushfire seasons may present in the future. The current fires started in June 2019. A combination of extended drought, extreme heat, and the effects of global warming have led to an estimated loss of 18.6 million hectares across eastern Australia; for context, there are over 100 recognised countries in the world smaller than 20 million hectares. And the fires are still burning. It hasn’t just burnt land and trees. A conservative estimate of one billion animals and insects have also perished, and it is hard to fathom what this means for Australia’s ecology. “Australia has borne the brunt of a long and devastating summer,” says Dr Jody Gunn, Executive Manager for South East Australia of Bush Heritage, a national not-for-profit organisation committed to conserving Australia’s biodiversity in partnership with its First Nations peoples. “Species, already contending with habitat loss and fragmentation, may now be contending with entire swathes of habitat or food that are completely gone or significantly changed. This requires urgent action.”
Even as a fire-prone nation, the recent months saw Australia endure extreme conditions, leaving the question of whether the country will be environmentally equipped in the future for similar climate crises. “Fires have always been a part of the Australian landscape,” Gunn explains, “but the length and extent of this season, and the fact that they have been occurring all at once across such a large area — South Australia, NSW, Queensland and Victoria — has been unprecedented. Combinations of conditions, including the previous number of years of below-average rainfall combined with the Indian Ocean Dipole, have contributed to the fire season that we have just seen.” To mitigate these conditions’ effect on the Australian environment, the Biodiversity Bushfire Response Workshop was held on 10 January. This produced Victoria’s Depart-
pear completely from a certain area of their range, are a very real possibility. Local refugia will be crucial to maintaining unique Australian species. We can work harder to protect these critical patches of bush that will provide food and shelter to many animals.” Phase two actions, implemented for up to one year post fires, include herbivore control in both burnt and unburnt areas. This will enable vegetation to regrow while enduring sustainable levels of herbivory. Phase three includes medium-term actions carried out one to three years post-fire. These are planned more thoroughly once information is collected from the previous year — allowing for longer-term issues to manifest and be addressed — such as the release of soil-stored weed infestations initiated from burning. Phase four encompasses longerterm actions carried out beyond three years.
“This requires urgent action.” ment Of Environment, Land, Water And Planning’s Victoria’s Bushfire Emergency: Biodiversity Response And Recovery, a report that outlines four key response timeframes correlating to the current bushfire crisis. Immediate actions are those implemented while fires are still burning, including wildlife being taken to treatment centres and risk management for the expected repercussions of fighting the fires themselves — such as the impacts of dropping fire retardants. Phase one commences as soon as the fire area is safe to enter and includes translocation of wildlife along with providing artificial habitat and immediate supplementary food and water. Dr Gunn notes the Federal Government has listed 113 species as currently requiring urgent attention. “This is a preliminary and rapid assessment. It is still too early to know if any of these species have gone extinct but localised extinctions, where animals disap-
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These aim to sustain the relevant short-term and medium-term actions. Once habitats are restored to sustainable levels, animals can be reintroduced. Planning for managing the reduction of future high-severity fires can be implemented. Gunn notes forecasts for this summer period had indicated this was going to be a hard season, and that extreme flood and fire events have been predicted to be part of our ongoing future under different climate scenarios. “Improving our capacity to prevent the extent and severity of bushfires and protect Australia’s ecology will rely on robust science, technology and policy which recognises all the challenges and potential solutions. Bush Heritage’s role is to make sure we’re protecting the most important habitat for many different species.” This is the point of conjecture. We’ve never seen fires of this size or ferocity before in Australia. “When areas that don’t normally
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experience fire because they are too wet, like rainforest, burn, we need to take this seriously,” Gunn adds. “The megablazes, those huge hot fires that formed on the south-east coast and spread across the eastern seaboard leaving millions of hectares of burnt land in their path, are like nothing we’ve ever seen before.” There’s no longer a sense of removal living in the cities during these fires. In the past, there have been the occasional hazy days during peak bushfire burns, but nothing compared to the extremes seen this year and last. The slumgullion of ash and smoke has been relentless and apocalyptic — cloaking cities here and overseas. Carbon emissions from the fires, usually safely stored in biomass that has since been decimated, will itself impact climate change and, with it, future bushfire seasons. For now, Australians are faced with newly compromised ecosystems – and the compromised national psyche such catastrophic disasters bring upon a country. As yet there is no Ash Wednesday or Black Friday or single day to mourn the still unknown losses of this fire season. Megablazes and modern climate feedback loops require us to remain vigilant. This crisis proves there’s no disconnect between cities, countries or continents - we need to support each other and those willing to adapt to our changing world. “Australia’s bush and its people will need time and space to recover. Our habitat restoration efforts will be greatly enhanced by listening and shared learning with Aboriginal people, who have deep understanding and knowledge of the land and care for landscape function.” Dr Gunn continues to remain positive: “The bush will bounce back from these fires. It may be different but it will recover.”
To find out more about Bush Heritage follow @bushheritageaus on Instagram and Twitter, and @bushheritageaustralia on Facebook.
State of play The character of Ameer who Fayssal Bazzi plays in Stateless will be with him for “a long, long time”. Guy Davis finds out why.
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t takes some heavy hitters to bring to the screen an issue as complicated and fraught as refugees and asylum seekers who, looking to begin a new life in Australia, find themselves enmeshed in a bureaucratic limbo of red tape and detention that’s frustrating at best, dehumanising at worst. Fortunately, the new six-episode miniseries Stateless on the ABC, had no shortage of such talent on either side of the camera. Co-created by Tony Ayres, Elise McCredie and Cate Blanchett, whose credits and accolades include The Slap, Glitch, Jack Irish, Ride Like A Girl and, oh, two Academy Awards, Stateless deftly intertwines disparate stories of people fleeing persecution — eager to start over, keen to make a difference in society or simply desperate to provide for their loved ones — into a vivid and compelling mosaic that brings humanity to a topic often dominated by statistics and rhetoric. Stateless has gathered an all-star cast to do so, with Blanchett, The Wire’s Dominic West, The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski, Jai Courtney, Asher Keddie and Marta Dusseldorp. And while he may not be as immediately recognisable as his co-stars, Fayssal Bazzi makes perhaps the most powerful impression of all with his impassioned performance as Ameer, an Afghan refugee whose efforts to give his family a new life in Australia result in betrayal, heartbreak and tragedy. The subject matter of Stateless and the role of Ameer struck a personal chord with Bazzi, whose own family fled conflict-torn Lebanon for Australia when the actor was only three years old, and when he first read the script, “what struck me was how real it was”. “Coming from a Lebanese and Syrian background, I know these people,” he says. “Every person in this show stems from a real human being I have been in contact with. Every character has the same heart, the same needs and desires, whether they’re a refugee, a guard or whatever else — everyone is trying to make a better life for themselves. So the thing that I connected with so greatly was that underlying similarity of all the characters. Only their circumstances are different.” That feeling of connection does underpin Stateless — whether a character is seeking asylum in a new country, wrestling with personal demons or struggling to bring humanity and dignity to a system where such things are in short supply, a sense of powerlessness, of being cut adrift from society, pervades every situation. “The fact that it is set in a detention centre in the middle of the desert speaks to that,” says Bazzi, whose recent credits include the black comedy Down Under and the dystopian miniseries The Commons. “You couldn’t be further removed from life — even natural life, like trees or water. So you’ve been turned into an afterthought, something to be dealt with later... maybe. Everyone was trying to figure out what to do with this issue as they went, and the easier thing to do is put things out of sight, out of mind.” Bazzi’s own family history informed his performance as Ameer. “I always talk to my family about the roles I’m going to do and what they entail, but I didn’t speak too much about Ameer because Ameer is everywhere I look in our community,” he said, adding, “There’s a lot of his heart in my father, so that was easy to tap into.” Equally vital in giving the character life and authenticity were co-workers on the Stateless set who had actually experienced the situations and circumstances faced by Ameer and his family. “Some even more heartbreaking,” he says. “Listening to their stories every day, it showed how important it is to represent
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these poor people and put a human face on their tragedies.” Representation of people frequently misrepresented or denied a voice at all was a key concern for Bazzi, who knew going into Stateless that the project had the potential to be viewed as social and political dynamite. “I know that Cate Blanchett had been trying to get this made for a number of years, and people had been hesitant to deal with the refugee issue,” he says. “No one wants to look like they’re taking sides, and I don’t think Stateless does take sides. It’s putting a human face on the matter rather than tossing buzzwords and statistics around the place.” It’s easy to forget these are real people, Bazzi adds. “We get so caught up in the fear that’s been spun around refugees and why they’re coming here. For a lot of these people, leaving their country is the last thing they want to do. But because of persecution and trying to ensure a future for their families, they have to. It’s not a case of trying to queue jump; it’s a case of people looking for a safe way to raise their families and lead normal lives,” he says. “You or I, would we want to leave Australia for any rea-
“His is a human story, and he is a man trying his best for his family, trying to keep them safe from danger. “
son? If war came and we were in danger, we would have no choice. No one would; everyone would be looking for a way out. It’s easy to forget that. But these people aren’t paying for a cruise — they’re putting themselves through life-threatening situations to [find] better their lives. “My aim for it was never to make Ameer political at all. His is a human story, and he is a man trying his best for his family, trying to keep them safe from danger. That was my mantra, my focus, and I feel anyone would do exactly the same thing. Take away the politics and that’s what it is.” There was plenty of emotional and psychological heavylifting that went into Bazzi’s performance, but he admits with a laugh that the greatest challenge was a more practical one. “Well, the thing about Ameer is that most of his dialogue is in Dari [a variety of Persian], and I don’t speak Dari,” he says. “But I was lucky in that the beautiful young actor who plays my eldest daughter, Soraya Heidari, her father is a translator and interpreter, and he was my Dari coach. He was on-set with us all the time, and he was amazing — I couldn’t have done it without him. He told me I was his best student, so if you want to put that in writing I’d appreciate it! “I did have an advantage in that I speak Arabic fluently and read it, and Dari is written with the Arabic alphabet. So I could read it but I didn’t know what I was saying. I’d learn it slowly, and he would say the intonation wasn’t in the right place or whatever. But when I would act it for him, say it in character, he would say, ‘Yes, you got it!’ Once I finish a job, I’m pretty good at erasing all the dialogue from my head. But with Ameer, I still remember all the Dari, all the speeches, and I think he’ll be with me for a long, long time.”
Stateless screens 8.30pm Sundays on ABC and ABC iview from 1 Mar.
Paint it black
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s she begins the promotional cycle for her second studio album, Color Theory, Sophie Allison, who performs under the moniker Soccer Mommy, is pondering exactly how to talk about her songs. “When people want to hear what it means, I can tell them,” says Allison. “But I also think it’s important as an artist to not just bullshit your way through [...], or try to make it seem like you have some crazy depth, because it gets kind of fake.” Since entering the spotlight in 2018 with her debut album, Clean, Allison has had to adjust to other peoples’ perceptions of her. “Sometimes people want you to be this really interesting enigma of wisdom,” she says. “And it’s like, I’m a 22-year-old girl. I’m not a genius. I might have important things to say, but anyone else can say these things as well. People are just liking how I’m saying it. I just think it gets kind of stupid when people act like they are some godly creature that is nothing like any of the people who listen to their music. Like they’re way above them and those people could never be like them. I was just going to shows and being a fan of stuff a couple of years ago — as were many people who are big musicians now. And it’s just like, anyone who’s listening could also be doing this — they just aren’t yet. It gets kind of silly when people act really grandiose about it. Just a little bit ridiculous.” Allison has done her share to demystify musicians, and push against their portrayal as rarefied people. She says the perceived distance between musicians and fans is narrowing, but not everyone treats her like a normal human being. “I think it’s been a move in the right direction,” she says. “But I still feel like people don’t really view artists as people. Even at this stage, where I’m not some big star. I think a lot of people just don’t think of you as a person. And I get why, I have been in that position. But it’s kind of terrible for artists, because I just want to be a person.” Allison says that it’s not only criticism that can feel dehumanising or feed into her slightly paranoiac tendencies. “It’s not just the mean stuff that you see,” she says,
Soccer Mommy, aka Sophie Allison, was just a music fan going to shows a couple of years ago. Now she’s released her second studio album. She talks to Joel Lohman.
“when people are shitting on you for basically no reason. It’s also people talking about you constantly. Personally, I have a big problem with paranoia of people talking about me, and this does not help. In fact, it makes me worse and go off the deep end. Because I think most people can’t imagine having hundreds of random strangers talking about them every day, saying stuff about them. What would that make you feel like? It makes you feel like an exhibit or something, more than a person.” Allison is unusually frank about the impact living a public life has had on her psychologically. She has long been open about her struggles with mental health. Does she think becoming indie-famous has affected her men-
“I still feel like people don’t really view artists as people. Even at this stage, where I’m not some big star.” tal state, for better or worse? “I would have anxiety and depression and some of the shit that’s going on regardless of whether I was making music for a living,” she says. “I would still have these problems, they might just be manifesting in different ways. When I was really young I didn’t see problems in my life as much. I had a loving family and friends. As I grew older those problems personally stopped me from thinking I could do this for a living one day. So I wasn’t really thinking, ‘Once I’m a rock star, things will be fine.’ I was playing music and thinking, ‘I wish I could do that, but I know I can’t because it’s unrea-
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sonable.’ I definitely didn’t see doing music as a solve-all for my issues. By the time I was doing music I was old enough to know that’s not real.” Even if being a prominent indie musician is not a panacea for a perfect life, Allison says it provides her with meaning. “I think it’s given me purpose in my life that makes me happy, which is great,” says Allison. “I don’t know that it really fixes any of my issues at all. I think it’s maybe heightened some of my problems because of the stress of the job and the spotlight and shit like that. I think it’s worsened some things, but it could also just be time, just getting older and deeper into it, but who knows.” Was Allison concerned about the so-called ‘sophomore slump’? “There’s a certain awareness because obviously that’s part of what’s going on,” she says. “But it’s not something that affects what I’m doing at all. I don’t really think about that, I just write more songs and they change based on what I’m being inspired by at the time.” While the relatively lo-fi Clean was written during the last of Allison’s teenage years, the more richly produced Color Theory captures the beginning of life in her 20s. “I guess it kind of felt different,” says Allison. “I was living a totally different life by the time I was writing this album. I was living a much more adult life where I have employees technically and I’m paying people and I have to make money.” She’s a business owner! “Yeah, exactly,” says Allison. “Which I hate. So it’s just becoming an adult and having to do shit you hate all the time, on top of stuff you love. But I don’t feel like my writing changed that much, it just kind of grew. I think that I learned a lot more and I became wiser. Maybe. Or maybe I’m still stupid, I don’t know,” she laughs.
Color Theory (Loma Vista/Caroline) is out now.
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Catch you on the flip side Bassist Twiggy Hunter tells Alasdair Belling that Ocean Grove “feel fucking great and more confident than ever”, thanks for asking.
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
A place in the sun Rod Whitfield speaks to Candice Lorrae and Kristel Kickett of The Merindas about the importance of staying connected to country and culture.
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rom Darwin and Tammin respectively to now supporting the likes of R&B legend Craig David, Candice Lorrae and Kristel Kickett of The Merindas have come a long way from the college where they met. “We first met at Abmusic, which is a college for Aboriginal musicians in Perth,” Lorrae shares. “I was teaching and Kristel was a student, but it wasn’t until a couple of years later that we caught up. I’d seen Kristel sing on YouTube and I asked her if she wanted to come and do this thing with me: we’d started this group called The Merindas and it was on the launch of [2012 film] The Sapphires.” Things started to take off from there, the group getting regular bookings performing Motown classics. “We opened up for the film that night,” she continues. “It was a one-off show, but it became this full-time job because it was so popular. We had to do a line-up change because some of the girls had to go back to work. So I got Kristel on board and we really started to connect as soul sisters.” While their early Sapphires success certainly helped things along, it wasn’t long before the pair emerged from Motown’s shadow and the whole thing started to take on a life of its own. “We’re actually songwriters,” Lorrae states. “We said, ‘Let’s do original stuff. We can only do covers for so long, that’s not what’s in our hearts.’” What was in Lorrae and Kickett’s hearts was a desire to express their own stories and heritage, as well as to bring them to a more mainstream audience, and generally convey a deeper message about who they are. “We want to tell our stories,” she says. “We want to share our language, our culture, and we want to do that through music. I think what we’re doing is unique, and if people support it, it’ll be a total game-changer. “Even though we’re on this massive journey into this mainstream pop thing, we wanted to share our culture and we wanted to keep grounded as well, keep connected with our culture, and that’s something that we want to teach the young Indigenous kids coming up. Whatever it is that you’re doing, keep connected to country and keep your culture alive. “And it’s in the music,” Kickett adds, “and music is forever!” The duo are about to release their debut album, We Sing Until Sunrise, and will tour Australia extensively in support of it. At the same time, they have a definite eye on markets beyond our shores. “I feel that we’re going to do a lot better in overseas markets,” Lorrae states. “Australia is a really small pond, and there’s a lot of gatekeepers and a lot of resistance to certain genres and artists. “What we’re offering is a little bit more worldly in the way of our costuming, body movement, our stories, our music and our genre.”
O
ne of the most iconic symbols of the technological revolution, the flip phone also brings to mind some of
the old-school charm of the colourful late’90s, early-’00s era. Speaking to us from Poland where Ocean Grove are touring ahead of the release of new LP Flip Phone Fantasy, bassist Twiggy Hunter reminisces, “It was like the realisation that we were in the centre of the technological revolution. “It’s only now that it’s become this thing that almost anyone has and you have the world at your hands and in your pocket... If you’d have asked me back then if we had such easy access to anything that we wanted, I would think that you were pulling my leg!” It’s this sense of sci-fi wonder from yesteryear that the band have channelled into Flip Phone Fantasy, something dubbed by the group as “retro-futurism” — and it’s just as deep as it sounds. “Our past is always there to either complement the present or remind us of how bad things have gotten in other ways... In a way [the album] represents what the past per-
The Merindas tour from 5 Mar.
ceived the future was going to be,” explains
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Slow and steady
Hunter. “This record references a lot of different time stamps for us that were very shaping of our current selves. We kind of went back to those moments to choose sounds to play around with — there’s a lot of late-’90s and 2000s references here, be that in the undertones of the melodies or the full-body rock sound
Fanny Lumsden’s third album Fallow sees dealing with the loss of loved ones and the joy of bringing new life into the world. As she explains to Chris Familton, it’s an album that represents possibility and new beginnings.
in some of the songs. It’s all a representation of what we feel shaped us, so we tried to embrace a lot of that.” Of course, embracing shelved sounds isn’t anything new for the band. Their last record, 2017’s celebrated The Rhapsody Tapes, combined elements of nu-metal and skate-punk with metalcore and a smattering of hip hop, earmarking them as one of the more interesting bands to rise out of the surging Aussie metal realm. However, after signing a worldwide deal with BMG, the band lost both their frontman Luke Holmes and founding gui-
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tarist Jimmy Hall. It was in this period of transition, with bassist Dale Tanner stepping up to frontman duties, that Hunter came in, and what follows is undeniably the band’s finest artistic work to date. “I was involved here and there creatively on Rhapsody
Pic: Ed Mason
Tapes... some of the outfits that Dale wore were my creations,”
Hunter recalls on how he came to be involved with the group. “Nothing really changed from how it was — we’re all mates, and we’re still mates with our past members. I came in, added my own spice and gave them a refreshing kick up the arse and just went, ‘Let’s write a fucking album.’ Dale and I were spending five days a week sometimes with Sam [Bassal, drummer and producer] in his studio, doing this while paying bills and rent, but we weren’t at home, so we were really giving it our all.” It might have been a rollercoaster 18 months for the band, but they’ve come out of it with something incredible to show, and Hunter assures us that confidence is running high as they kick off a new decade.
t her Tooma Valley home, near the southern NSW border, Fanny Lumsden thinks back to last winter when she recorded her new album Fallow there. “It looked like a picture book. It doesn’t now, it looks burnt,” she reflects grimly. As with much of the country, it’s been a hellish summer with fires raging and destroying or threatening huge swathes of land. Lumsden’s career is intrinsically connected to the country communities she visits on her annual Country Halls Tour and indeed her album launch show is a fundraiser for Tooma bushfire recovery. That connection to the land was one of the key factors in recording Fallow, with producer Matt Fell, in her country home. “I wanted to do it in a different space and it was the third album I’d done with Matt. If you limit things then creativity comes out of that and so we took away some of his tools and put him in this new space and I hoped that would inspire him to be creative in a new way,” explains Lumsden. “Because the songs were so inspired by the valley, the only way I could translate how it made me feel was to put him here. I remember when I was explaining how I wanted a theme song and an introduction to the record I wanted it to be like driving into the valley and setting the scene and mood. Matt just walked outside and looked down the valley as we were playing it and said, ‘Right, I know what we’re going to do!’” In the wake of her previous album Real Class Act, Lumsden reached a point late in 2017 where she felt the need to write with a greater sense of optimism and emotional depth. “We lost Dan [Freeman, her husband and bandmate]’s mum and then had a baby a few months later. It was such an intense emotional period and I think I just wanted to talk about those feelings. So many people around me were having a hard time that I just wanted to
create something that was about green grass and running water and beautiful valleys. I think people just want to have an escape, me included, and then the songwriting started to happen after that.” Managing parenthood and a professional career is always a juggling act and, for Lumsden, it was something she threw herself headlong into. “I just kept going, and looking back it was so full-on,” she says. “I starting gigging again three weeks after giving birth and we toured in the car with my brother, Dan and I doing house concerts every weekend for the first six months of my son’s life — and he didn’t sleep!” she exclaims. “There were so many moments of breastfeeding, putting on make-up and crying because I was exhausted. I’ve had the most amazing support from family and my band though. There’s a level of understanding from them all,” Lumsden says, the gratitude clearly evident in her voice. Lumsden has always been able to create a personal connection with her audience, while still putting on a high energy and entertaining live show. It’s like she’s harnessed the greatest attributes of Gillian Welch and Dolly Parton and she’s adamant that’s exactly how she is, on stage and off. “I wanted to create a world that I wanted to be a part of. I’m pretty manic and I love colour and I love performing but then the depth of songwriting is really important to me as well. Finding that balance is always something that is important to me and that I strive to achieve. I think it holds me back in lots of ways as I can’t be pushed into certain genres — which I’m fine with,” she emphasises. “Dan and I have always said we’re here for a slow and steady climb and we want to be doing this for a long time!”
Fallow (Cooking Vinyl) is out this month.
“We all feel fucking great and more confident than ever,” he exclaims. “At the start of the process we all sat down and put our goals on the table and put all our feelings out there to discuss what we wanted to get out of the writing process. This is something that we’re all willing to give our absolute all; we’re confident that people will love the album, we’re confident it’s the first of its kind in this kind of mixtape form... We think it’ll translate well to people.” Only time will tell how it’s received — but with the recent resurgence in popularity for the ‘90s nu-metal sound and aesthetic, things could be peaking at just the right time for Pic: Dan Freeman
Ocean Grove.
Flip Phone Fantasy (UNFD) is out this month.
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Emerging from a turbulent few years, which included the departure of frontman Luke Holmes and guitarist Jimmy Hall after the band signed a worldwide deal with BMG, Ocean Grove sound as fresh, optimistic and weird as ever on their second album Flip Phone Fantasy. This new-look Ocean Grove combine the skate-punk adrenaline of the ‘90s with the excitement and ambience of the early ‘00s technological boom. Things come screaming right out of the gate on Superstar, with new frontman Dale Tanner, who had previously handled all clean vocals, powerfully leading the charge, adding a blast of fresh, melodic air into the band’s sound. Elsewhere, cuts like Ask For The Anthem and Neo showcase the band’s vastly improved grip on the songwriting craft, and they show extra maturity when peeling back the layers to reveal the raw souls underneath the baggy pants and hairspray on acoustic standout Baby Cobra. There’s always been something more to Ocean Grove than just a good riff and breakdown — something that album closer Freaks, a dynamic and experimental shift for the band, can attest to. Rather than stick to their (tattoo) guns, Flip Phone Fantasy takes all the risks that many groups looking to capitalise on success tend to avoid. New sonic influences and lyrical direction (self-growth and the benefit of hindsight
Ocean Grove
Flip Phone Fantasy UNFD
HHHH
rule the roost here) mark this as the most unique and potentially polarising release from the band yet. However, hardcore kids from the Black Label days won’t be left out. Junkie$ and hooky earworm Sunny mix the band’s signature darkly reflective melodies with a healthy dose of moshable riffage to keep things anchored for the true believers. True to their self-proclaimed “Odd World” music, things are as mish-mashed as ever, with savage guitar tones sharply contrasted by house soundscapes, as heard on sweaty cuts Thousand Golden People and Guys From The Gord. There’s a greater emphasis on hip hop than their past work too — no doubt a result of newbie Twiggy Hunter, of electronic duo The Beverly Chills — but those sounds are blended with metal roots smoothly, creating a wonderfully dense texture, unearthing new thrills at every turn. Things may have threatened to go pear-shaped for the band at the beginning of last year, but Ocean Grove have risen to the challenge and redirected the winds of change into their ever-expanding creative sails. Great heavy records are those that are different from the pack, and Flip Phone Fantasy is a fiery beacon in this regard, one that excites as much as it surprises. Alasdair Belling
Circa Waves
Fanny Lumsden
Kingswood
Lauv
Prolifica Inc./[PIAS]
Cooking Vinyl
Dew Process
AWAL
HH
HHHH
HHH
HHH½
In 2013, infectious singles shuttled Scouse lads Circa Waves onto the airwaves. Second album Different Creatures in particular enjoyed many a spin, but those fuzzy, wayward guitars and general diversity in melody and subject matter seemed to go by the wayside in 2019’s tepid What’s It Like Over There. Latest LP Sad Happy paints Circa Waves in an even more lacklustre light, offering very little to pull the band back to where they started. Catchy here and there, it’s a neat and tidy listen but by the end these 14 squeaky clean tracks just wash over the senses, leaving barely a footprint on the psyche.
Fanny Lumsden’s work covers the best of contemporary country music — acoustic story bases that reward close listening to the lyric sheets. She has a gift for matching the familiar with the unexpected in a chorus. Single Peed In The Pool is a case in point — not where you thought you’d be as a listener, but damn it works. The album’s title track makes a perfect driving song, while opener Mountain Song sets up a soundscape ideal for a listener looking for an excuse to daydream for a bit. Overall this album, Lumsden’s third, works well for the track hopper or those who like to listen from top to tail.
With each album, Kingswood all but wipe clean the slate. Juveniles starts with a return to their roots — You Make It So Easy has all the fuzzy guitar lines and Fergus Linacre’s trademark wail that their first singles sported. It continues as Ready Steady and Say You Remember tick along, but by midway through it feels polished and fairly straight in terms of melody and structure. Dotted throughout, however, are downshifts into swaggering Josh Homme territory which is cool, but somewhat diverting. Juveniles feels like a wet blanket pegged to a Hills Hoist — the middle sags but the ends are taut and do all the heavy lifting.
If you were to throw relatable emo lyrics, pop melodies and hip hop basslines into a blender you’d end up with the sweet taste of LA pop singer Lauv’s debut album. There is so much to digest in this 21-track release. Loneliness is a common theme but Lauv also navigates heartache, love, family and the general ups and downs of modern millennial life. Whether it’s the soft guitar plucks in Sims, the heavy bass of Lonely Eyes or the piano ballad that drives Changes, How I’m Feeling lays everything out on the table. It’s emo-pop at its most vulnerable, where if you don’t dance you’ll cry.
Carley Hall
Liz Giuffre
Carley Hall
Emily Blackburn
Sad Happy
Fallow
Juveniles
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How I’m Feeling
For more album reviews, go to www.theMusic.com.au
Margaret Glaspy
#1 Dads
US Girls
Silverstein
ATO/[PIAS]
Pieater
4AD/Remote Control
UNFD
Devotion
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Golden Repair
Heavy Light
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A Beautiful Place To Drown
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Margaret Glaspy continues to produce competent three to four-minute bops about love that ache with longing and desire. Her innocent and compelling warble dissects relationships with lyrical poetry that slides between storytelling and more personal reflections. Glaspy wears her heart on her sleeve and the sincerity of her delivery suggests that she’s singing lyrics borne of nothing but hard-won experience. A hugely talented singer-songwriter, Glaspy is hopelessly devoted to producing some powerfully beautiful music.
The return of Big Scary frontman Tom Iansek’s solo spin-off #1 Dads comes with the wonderfully added irony that Iansek has become a first-time dad himself. The reflectiveness triggered by such a life-changing event shows on this sensitively composed collection of songs. From the opening of the piano-led 4bit, it’s clear that this will be a more strippedback affair than previous outings and while it takes a few listens to come to life, once it’s nurtured and given some attentive love, it becomes a beautiful yet fragile addition to Iansek’s growing catalogue.
The feel-good pop of latest single, 4 American Dollars, is a delightful introduction to US Girls’ latest album Heavy Light. This time around the project, led by Meg Remy, has crafted a collection of almost instantly likeable songs that teem with hooks. At once depressingly heavy and yet unbearably light, Overtime is an amusing song about working hard and drinking harder. Originally featured on 2013’s Free Advice Column, it’s reworked here to pay homage to the sounds of Motown. Overall the album is a deep dream guided by memory, reflection and acute observation.
With the release of their tenth studio album, A Beautiful Place To Drown, Silverstein celebrate a stellar two-decade career. With the help of some guest talent, the Canadian post-hardcore outfit have compiled an album that bottles up their long journey into one cohesive, intricate and outstanding release. This album is Silverstein’s best release to date. It supports the idea that Silverstein are a pivotal band in their genre, and if they’re playing as well as this 20 years in, imagine how incredible they’ll be with another 20 years’ experience.
Guido Farnell
Alasdair Belling
Guido Farnell
Anna Rose
Zoe Fox & The Rocket Clocks
Body Count
Overcoats
Waxahatchee
Independent
Century Media/Sony
Loma Vista/Caroline
Merge
Clockwerks
HHH½
Carnivore
The Fight
Saint Cloud
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Self-described as “space-pop”, this indie debut does sound beyond this world at times. Don’t be fooled though, even spacepop is toe-tappy, a mix here of Daft Punk and Blondie if Debbie Harry had a spacesuit. Singles Shiny Car and Mr Gravity give a good indication of the approach — some shameless play among the tide of pop seemingly focused on “he said/she said” at the moment. Overall it’s catchy and light, which makes it the kind of thing that’s ideal if you’re in the need of a good audio escape. For a particular trip give Tiny Little Robots a burl. It’s the kind of thing The B-52s would easily have made if still going today.
From the stomping, mid-paced groove and down-tuned chugs of the title track, you know what you’re getting with Carnivore — Body Count aren’t doing a U-turn into jazz fusion anytime soon. Ice-T rails against someone who’s crossed him in graphic, almost comical fashion on No Remorse, while elsewhere he promotes strength in unity as he proclaims, “We ain’t asleep no more, we’re woke.” His attack is complemented by a hard-hitting band and punishing production from metal aficionado Will Putney. Ice-T, now in his 60s, and cohort still deliver socially conscious, street-level observations with hunger and conviction.
Brooklyn duo Overcoats have stepped out guns blazing for their second album, The Fight. The latest from Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell steps more into the realm of blasting guitar and drums — a new direction to the band’s debut release, Young. While Mitchell and Elion’s harmonies are an aural delight, the constant dual vocals admittedly become predictable and overused after just a few tracks. All in all though, there is a lot of fun to be had and it is clear that the duo had plenty of fun themselves in making the record. It’s uncomplicated, untarnished pop music from a forgotten era.
Katie Crutchfield is back for a fifth time under the moniker Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud an apex release for the artist. While previous Waxahatchee offerings have featured knowing nods to Crutchfield’s southern US upbringing, Saint Cloud is a full-blown love letter to her Alabama roots. Singing about arid dustbowls and ramblin’ by her man, the album is awash with toe-tapping rodeo saloon vibes. Waxahatchee diehards may find Saint Cloud a harder pill to swallow, but give into the Old West veneer and it’s obvious that the good old Crutchfield magic hasn’t gone anywhere.
Liz Giuffre
Brendan Crabb
Joe Dolan
Joe Dolan
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Devs
HHHH Screens from 8 Mar on Fox Showcase
Reviewed by Guy Davis
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echnology has become so intrinsic to the way we live — our commerce, our communication, our everyday organisation — that there’s sometimes a tendency to view the people who dream up and deliver the next leap forward as geniuses, even gods, rather than people with a knack for arranging ones and zeros. (I know, I know, that’s a reductive way of describing the tech industry.) This seems to be an area of interest for writer-director Alex Garland, who examined it in his 2014 film Ex Machina and delves deeper still with the eight-episode miniseries Devs. In his first venture into television, Garland’s precision as a stylist and rigour as a thinker are as evident and sharp as they have been in his big-screen projects. He’s at the helm of all eight episodes, however, the pacing verges on glacial and the storytelling is a little opaque at times, so patience and focus are recommended. In the early stages of the series (two episodes were made available for review), it’s not made clear what kind of technology the Silicon Valley company Amaya actually develops in its top-secret ‘Devs’ division, a compound as ornate as a palace and alien
as a spacecraft, but rest assured it’s cuttingedge enough to drive to tears those people exposed to it. Within a day of being recruited for the Devs team, Sergei (Karl Glusman) is dead. His lover and fellow Amaya worker Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) is told he died by suicide, and even shown video footage confirming it, but she’s sceptical and suspicious enough to start investigating on her own, which puts her on a collision course with Forest (Nick Offerman, who is excellent), the Amaya boss whose mellow benevolence runs parallel with his messianic ambition. A somewhat conventional industrial espionage plot is the engine driving Devs from the beginning, and it’s engaging enough, but it’s clear that Garland is far more interested in posing questions and exploring ideas about the junction — and possible collision — of technology and human nature. Everything the Devs team is working on hints at something transcendental, even mystical, and the series is clearly so intrigued by its world and characters that its fascination can’t help but rub off on the viewer. This is an alluring and disquieting peek behind the curtain.
Queen & Slim
HHH In cinemas 12 Mar
Reviewed by Anthony Carew
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hen Bokeem Woodbine pronounces Queen & Slim’s titular characters “the modern day Bonnie and Clyde”, he’s speaking the obvious aloud. Melina (Beyoncõ¿‰’s Formation) Matsoukas’ beautifully photographed debut feature — which moves through surreal-social-realist, Edward Hopperesque neon/nocturnal wastelands and along sun-scorched highways — sets Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya as a pair of outlaws on the run, road tripping across an equally blighted and beautiful US South as their celebrity grows. They’re not lovers, at least not initially: in fact, the film opens with them on a Tinder date, making diner-booth small talk, the air between them notably chilly. That thaws as they hit the road and head south, on the lam after shooting a racist cop, in self-defence, at a routine traffic stop. They’re unlikely honeymoon killers: she’s an attorney, he’s a gentle soul. “I’m not a criminal,” Kaluuya exhorts, even with police blood on his hands. “You are now,” Turner-Smith rejoinders; Queen & Slim written — by Master Of None’s Lena Waithe — in the knowledge white Amer-
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ica views Black men as guilty until proven nnocent. Waithe’s episodic, at-times-clunky screenplay makes for a handsomely mounted powderkeg of a film. Within its narrative, the leads become mythical, almost folkloric figures. They are subjects of media hysteria and social media lionising, at once reviled and celebrated; made symbol and talking-point, heroes and villains. Hoping to anonymously escape to their freedom — Cuba or bust — they find that everyone they encounter, on the road along the way, knows who they are, and has an opinion on what they’ve done. Queen & Slim’s strength, and resonance, comes in the conflict and complexity of these conversations; the way their Bonnie and Clyde status is depicted without moral clarity. Of course, complexities be damned, the audience is primed to cheer for their escape, knowing all too well their inevitable blaze-of-glory fate.
A MASSIVE WEEK OF LIVE MUSIC AT P.J.O’BRIEN’S FRIDAY 13 MARCH
THE BAD PENGUINS FROM 6.15PM ZEON LIVE IRISH PARTY BAND 10PM TIL LATE
SATURDAY 14 MARCH
SÁSTA LIVE IRISH PARTY BAND 10PM TIL LATE MONDAY 16 MARCH - PADDY’S EVE LOST BACKPACKERS 5PM-8PM THE BAD PENGUINS 9PM-12AM ST.PATRICK’S DAY - TUESDAY 17 MARCH LIVE MUSIC ALL DAY FROM 8AM FT. THE COOGANS, ROESY,
PAT MCKERNAN, LIVE IRISH PARTY BAND ZEON, MARTY KELLY DUO, BAD PENGUINS TRIO GROUND LEVEL, SOUTHGATE RESTAURANT & SHOPPING PRECINCT, SOUTHBANK / LIVE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT / PJOBRIENS.COM.AU / T:03 9686 5011 Set in Stone - The Music - Half Page FINAL.pdf 1 28/01/2020 12:49:19 PM
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jeff martin set in stone - australian tour
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tour info + new single www.jeffmartinofficial.com
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bar & live music venue
303 high street northcote
on in march W E D N E S D AY 4 T H M A R
KOI KINGDOM + PROFESSOR PEEL
7 : 3 0 P M , D O N AT I O N T H U R S D AY 5 T H M A R
KICKIN THE B AT 303’ THURSDAY HAMMOND SESSIONS: SORCHA ALBUQUERQUE TRIO 8PM DOORS, $10
F R I D AY 6 T H M A R
SPUZ + DUNCAN WOODS 8PM
S A T U R D AY 7 T H M A R
RHYME SLAYERS 7:30PM, $6
S U N D AY 8 T H M A R
SHAYARI + LOZ + MARIGOLDEN 7PM
M O N D AY 9 T H M A R
BIENIEK, RILEY & PANTAZIS 7 : 3 0 P M , D O N AT I O N
T U E S D AY 1 0 T H M A R
THE GUITAR LAB
8 P M , D O N AT I O N W E D N E S D AY 1 1 T H M A R
ENTROPY QUARTET + GUESTS 7 : 3 0 P M , D O N AT I O N
T H U R S D AY 1 2 T H M A R
THE SOCKETTES 8PM
F R I D AY 1 3 T H M A R
OPA! 8PM
S A T U R D AY 1 4 T H M A R
MELBOURNE UKELELE FESTIVAL 8PM
S AT U R D AY 1 4 T H M A R
LOVEBONER 8P M
S U N D AY 1 5 T H M A R
KIMMY AND CREW 7P M
M O N D AY 1 6 T H M A R
303 YARRA BANKS JAM NIGHT 8P M, FREE
T U E S D AY 1 7 T H M A R
MELBOURNE POLYTECHNIC MUSIC 7P M, FREE
W E D N E S D AY 1 8 T H M A R
ENTROPY QUARTET + GUESTS 7: 30P M, DO NATI O N
T H U R S D AY 1 9 T H M A R
MOPOKE + FILM SCHOOL + SOUNDSCAPE CREW 8P M
F R I D AY 2 0 T H M A R
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MARCH
7: 30P M, DO NATI O N
T H U R S D AY 2 6 T H M A R
KICKIN THE B AT 303’ THURSDAY HAMMOND SESSIONS: RAMBAL 8P M DO O RS , $10
F R I D AY 2 7 T H M A R
OPA! 8P M
S AT U R D AY 2 8 T H M A R
HOMEBASS 8P M, $10
S U N D AY 2 9 T H M A R
BOHJASS + LO-RES + SHOL + OSCAR FRANCE GROUP 6P M, $10
T U E S D AY 3 1 S T M A R
SMILING POLITELY COMEDY 7: 30P M, DO NATI O N
303 TURNS 20 PARTY FEAT: SPOONBILL + OPA!
W E D N E S D AY 1 S T A P R
S AT U R D AY 2 1 S T M A R
T H U R S D AY 2 N D A P R
8P M
SUBLIMINAL SOUNDS FEAT: SAWCE VS SYRINOX + EASY + SUPLANTER + MADMATTER + GORILLA GROOVE + CYMASCOPIC 8P M, $10/$15
S U N D AY 2 2 N D M A R
PINKO COLLECTIVE 4P M, DO NATI O N
T U E S D AY 2 4 T H M A R
WEBEINDIEPOPPIN’ VOL.1: CHARLIE LANE + THE CLEVER REFERENCES + ASTROHYM + VERY EARLY 7: 30P M, $10
303 net au
THE MUSIC
W E D N E S D AY 2 5 T H M A R
ENTROPY QUARTET + GUESTS
BOHJASS + GUESTS
7: 30P M, DO NATI O N
KICKIN THE B AT 303’ THURSDAY HAMMOND SESSIONS: ARTIE STYLES QUARTET 8P M DO O RS , $10
F R I D AY 3 R D A P R
THE PEANUT BUTTER CRACK BABIES (ADL) + THE QUINTON TREMBATH BAND + THE LUKE SEYMOUP BAND + REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE 8P M
S AT U R D AY 4 T H A P R
ACID SLICE 8P M, $15
Brunswick Music Festival
Pic: Naomi Lee Beveridge
Celebrating another mammoth year, Brunswick Music Festival 2020 boasts a sprawling span of bands, artists and creators from all over the world. Across a slew of venues throughout the 3056, BMF runs from 9 to 22 Mar, preceded as always with the epic Sydney Road Street Party on 1 Mar. Events set for the fest include Kevin Morby, Pinch Points, Eilish Gilligan, and a Bedroom Suck and Music In Exile showcase featuring Ajak Kwai and Mindy Meng Wang, pictured left to right, at this year’s hub, Mechanica at Brunswick Mechanics Institute.
Mad as a…
It’s not just the ides of March you’ve got to be wary of. The year’s finally in full swing and the whole month can get a little hare-y. We suggest you hide out somewhere with a stiff drink, or if that’s not your thing, stay in with a nice, calming cuppa.
Chalice in Wonderland Joe Dolan rabbits out Australia’s secret bars.
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e all need a little escape from reality every now and again, especially when it feels like everyone around us is mad as a hatter. Our solution? Head down the rabbit hole and find something that says ‘Drink Me’ in these hidden bars around the country.
Pinball Paradise
Downstairs@lab
Employees Only
For as long as there have been secret rooms, there have been secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves. The nondescript library at the back of Island Somewhere, a little hidey-hole on Melbourne’s Franklin St, houses the entryway to Pinball Paradise. A bona fide pinball museum and drinking spot, the bar is a living tribute to old-school gaming at its finest. The best part? All the machines are playable.
By day, Little Lonsdale St’s Games Laboratory is a hub for Warhammer enthusiasts and Magic The Gathering players alike. But, by night, the downstairs room becomes what was formerly known as The Alchemist’s Refuge — a melting cauldron of bubbling brews and fanatical feeds, where a weary traveller can drink away his sorrows with a fresh pint of ale. The bar is open Wednesday through Sunday, and regularly hosts games nights, trivia, and large-scale Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
A blaring neon sign flickers the word “Psychic” onto Sydney’s Barrack St, but head downstairs and past the requisite tarot reader to find Employees Only. Part of an international franchise with humble beginnings in the Manhattan bar scene, this spot boasts countless signature cocktails and a world-class food experience. The chain is often ranked as one of the best bars in the world.
Level 1, 213 Franklin St, Melbourne
328 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne
9a Barrack St, Sydney
Uncle Ming’s
Legends Speakeasy Bar
The Boiler Room
Walking into Uncle Ming’s you’d think you were in a tailor’s shop. Head downstairs, however, and you’ll be in a Chineseinspired drinks den that goes all out on the decor without ever feeling kitschy. Bathed in red light with terracotta warriors and incense, the bar is a hidden gem in the plain sight of Sydney’s York St.
The secretive allure of 1920s prohibition has inspired a slew of password-protected bars and speakeasies far beyond the origins of ‘86’ in New York. With no signage or discernible features from its Ann St facade, the password-protected tavern Legends Speakeasy Bar is keeping this flame alive. Not only is it a challenge to find, but the password changes every week — accessible only on the bar’s social media pages.
It’s a bar inside a bar. It’s bar-ception. It’s The Boiler Room. Heading to Fortitude Valley’s Tomcat on a Friday or Saturday will promise a great night out in of itself, but the Brisbane hotspot is holding a delicious little secret. Head through the door obscured by a mural of Bill Murray, and find a cocktail bar that is guaranteed to keep patrons from being lost in translation.
Basement, 49 York St, Sydney
Cnr Ann St & N Quay, Brisbane
Level 1, 210 Wickham St, Brisbane
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To a tea Complete mug Sam Wall’s top tips for your next tea do.
Alice in other lands Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is unequivocally one of the most important pieces of literature from the 19th century. While we’re on the theme, here’s where you can see its influence today.
Jam tart jams Aside the obvious candidates of Jefferson Airplane and The Beatles, Alice In Wonderland has been the bedrock for a number of famous tunes across the years. Perhaps the most surprising in the list goes to Radiohead’s Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors. A staggering blend of industrial drums and autotune vocals, the song reportedly takes heavy inspiration from the depiction of an endless corridor and infinite locked doors in the clas-
T
here are so, so many guides to throwing a tea party online. This is probably true of everything. If you’re reading this article it’s a good chance you know how to wipe your own arse — gripping a sturdy piece of paper is half the battle — but there’s probably at least 20 dudes with blogs happy to explain the process. Still, there are endless videos and articles, and those articles have comment sections and those comment sections have questions — and there’s a portion of the populace struggling with their own tea troubles. We can’t abide that. A nice cup of oolong with some mates shouldn’t be cause for stress. We want you to be able to tea it up like the Hatter himself, so here are our answers to some anonymous questions that have been legitimately asked at least once.
How many guests are invited?
This feels like it’s less about tea and more finding your centre. What is the sound of one hand clapping? How long is a piece of string? When’s dinner? These questions have no meaningful answers. Don’t let the things you can’t control, control you — it’s not the destination that you seek, friend, it’s the journey.
Should I make the food myself?
We hate to answer a question with a question, but are you any good at cooking? Because it’s not that you ‘should’ make food, but if you’re a dab hand at homemade scones and have the time then we’d very much appreciate it. If you’re someone Gordon Ramsay would scream at on the telly then store-bought’s fine, please and thank you.
Where can I throw a tea party that’s not in my home?
It’s hard to explain why but this question is deeply unsettling.
sic text.
What should I do if the tea is spilled? This is a complex situation and we highly recommend you refer to the five Ws and lonely H: who, what, when, where, why, and how. We know the ‘what’ is tea, but your reaction should be heavily dependent on these other factors if it’s going to be appropriate. If your lovely gran’s just jostled her mug of Earl Grey because she’s got nickel-thick cataracts and the shakes, go get a tea towel. If you’re an agent of the British East India Company and some Yankee’s just tipped your shipment in the Boston Harbour, maybe drop the musket and talk it out. The Revolutionary War does not go well for you.
Playing cards Whether it’s the psychedelic imagery or the constant threat of beheadings, Lewis Carroll’s creation has inspired an onslaught of
Is it possible to have a tea party without tea? Absolutely not.
horror-themed reincarnations - particularly in the video game world. Most notable in the genre is Alice - the first in a series created by US game developer American McGee. The slash-fest was first released in 2000, with
How much does it cost to throw a tea party for 25 people?
Good, solid question. At the time of writing, a hundred pack of Twinnings English Breakfast tea bags is on sale for $6.60 at Woolies and six-packs of hot cross buns are going for $3.50. Nobody needs more than four cups of tea and cut 12 of those buns into quarters and you’re laughing. So that’s your bottom end — $13 and change for the event of the season. Premium Da Hong Pao tea from the Wuyi Mountains on the other hand can reportedly go for up to $US1.2 million a kilogram. Decide how much you’re willing to spend and then bend your elbow not your budget.
music by former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna.
Carroll’s cameos Throughout pop culture history, other Wonderland characters have shown up in the most unlikely of places, from the allusive
So do you prepare the water in a teapot then let the teabag sit in the kettle?
We’re pretty sure that’s back to front. Go with your gut though. If it feels right then who cares what the world thinks?
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“white rabbit” in The Matrix to an episode of Star Trek which brought that same character to life. More recently, the classic Batman villain Mad Hatter was brought to the small screen in the Fox series Gotham - portrayed expertly by Aussie actor Benedict Samuel.
For the latest live reviews go to theMusic.com.au
Methyl Ethel @ Melbourne Zoo. Photos by Joshua Braybrook.
As Zoo Twilights enters its, um,
twilight period for another year,
we managed to catch Methyl Ethel with Hatchie in support. Strong
sets with an enthusiastic crowd
response made for a memorable
Hatchie
night in the unique gig setting.
Alice Cooper @ Rod Laver Arena. Photos by Kikki MacLeod
“Methyl Ethel on stage are a fully cultivated experience that seems as organic and fresh as it is well-practised.”
Alice Cooper returned to Australia with his all-new Ol’ Black Eyes Is
Back tour and had local hard-rockers Airbourne in support alongside MC50. Cooper’s set, accompanied naturally by an extravagant stage
– Harry Bain
design, featured not only classics but some deep cuts for longtime fans and delivered everything
the crowd wanted in a stadium rock show.
“After half a decade in the game, Cooper hasn’t lost a single atom of that ferocious rock star capability for which he has become known.” – Joe Dolan
Ziggy Alberts @ AO Live. Photo by Monique Pizzica.
In amongst the Barty Party, there were plenty of sidelights to the
Australian Open this year and once again live music could form your
soundtrack to the tennis. This year
Ziggy Alberts was the entree to the
men’s final, with a sunny afternoon
and chilled vibes the perfect entree for the main event.
– Michael Prebeg
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REVIEWS
Airbourne
“The audience shares [an] emotional moment with Albert as he pours his heart out for a song written in response to the recent bushfire crisis.”
GORGON CITY (UK) W/ TORREN FOOT EVEN FLOW THE AUSTRALIAN PEARL JAM SHOW ENUFF ‘Z’ NUFF (USA) RECKLESS LOVE (FIN) WHAT SO NOT & FRIENDS W/ CHOOMBA, MONTELL2099, NINAJIRACHI & TISE JONES. BOMBE VIA FEAT JORDAN BRANDO THE IRON MAIDENS (USA) GOOD SIZE GOOD FRIDAY EVE
28 FEBRUARY
JOHN 5 & THE CREATURES (USA)
29 FEBRUARY
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4 MARCH
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5 MARCH
6 MARCH
16 APRIL
17 APRIL
THE WHISTLIN’ DONKEYS (IRE) QUEEN FOREVER
18 APRIL
26 APRIL
1 MAY
QUEENOLOGY TOUR 2020 FEAT. SPECIAL 2-PART
12 MARCH
70S 80S CONCERT
3 APRIL
EXAMPLE
9 APRIL
PRINCE BANDROOM 27 FITZROY ST, ST KILDA
‘SUN HITS YOUR EYES’ TOUR
BOOM BOX BAND BOOK
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MARCH
22 AUGUST
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HOWZAT! Local music by Jeff Jenkins
Happy birthday, Things Of Stone & Wood
Milestones and memories
H
owzat!’s friends joke that I can link every part of my life to my all-time favourite band, Horsehead. And it’s true of Things Of Stone & Wood — their very first gig featured Horsehead’s Cameron McKenzie on guitar. He joined singer Greg Arnold, bass player Mikey Allen and drummer Tony Floyd to play some songs at the 21st birthday of Helen Durham, Greg’s girlfriend. Birthdays have been a big part of the Things Of Stone & Wood story. Of course, their biggest single was Happy Birthday Helen, which hit the top ten at the start of 1993. And now the band is touring to celebrate their 30th birthday. Written for Helen’s 22nd birthday, the song was a summary of Greg and Helen’s first three years together. “The drive along the Yarra [lyric] is all true,” Greg explains. “We’d been at Agapi, a Greek restaurant in Richmond, and we were driving back to Helen’s family’s place in Eltham.” Many people mistakenly thought the line, “We kissed on that bridge that fell down,” was about the Westgate, “but it was actually London Bridge [now Arch] on the Great Ocean Road”. Then the song relocates to India (“While we held hands at the Taj”) and South Australia (“We’ve been stuck in a cave with that bloke who says ‘Oi am’”). “That was at the Princess Margaret Rose Cave, where the tour guide had this great shtick, and saying ‘Oi am’ was one of his big gags.” The final stop is Nepal, before returning to Melbourne: “We ate bread on the lake and yearned for the seasons.” “We were at Lake Pokhara in Nepal and were homesick, thinking of the Melbourne seasons.” Greg never thought Happy Birthday Helen would be a hit. Indeed, he didn’t plan to record it. “The song was just a gift for Helen... but when I played it to Mikey, he said, ‘This is a ripper, we’ve got to do this song.’” Happy Birthday Helen is joyous, though Greg admits, “I remain perplexed by the universality of the response.” The song was still in the charts when Greg and Helen were married, and they were on their honeymoon when Things Of Stone & Wood won an ARIA for Best New Talent (beating Rick Price, Tiddas, Girlfriend and Caligula). Greg was also named APRA’s Songwriter Of The Year. But the flip side was not pretty. “I had a major meltdown,” Greg revealed in his book What Was I Thinking?, which was written for his PhD studies at the University Of Tasmania. “I was irreconcilably conflicted by our success. I loved being recognised when walking down the street and I hated it as well. I was uncomfortable with celebrity but was resentful whenever it was not duly noted.” Greg says he was “racked with self-loathing”. Things Of Stone & Wood’s next album, Junk Theatre, was the epitome of the Difficult Second Album. “I now find the strange self-destructive rage unknowable [and] I dragged the band down with me.” Their record company, Sony, was expecting a blockbuster, following the top ten success of the band’s debut, The Yearning. But, like the band, the label was
One year ago
Gurrumul is posthumously awarded the Australian Music Prize for his album Djarimirri. Ten years ago
Lisa Mitchell’s Wonder wins the AMP.
She is the first female solo artist to win the award. 30 years ago
Kylie receives the Outstand-
ing Achievement Award at the ARIA Awards.
Sherbet and Percy Grainger are
inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
going through a crisis of confidence. Daryl Braithwaite’s third Sony album, Taste The Salt, had stiffed, and the label wanted sure-fire radio hits. And when they heard Junk Theatre, the A&R man uttered the words that no band wants to hear: “I don’t hear a single.” The irony is I reckon the record is filled with singles — and, indeed, the first single, Wildflowers, became one of the year’s most-played local songs on radio, despite its references to Nazis. Then there’s Churchill’s Black Dog, the grungeinspired but melodically magnificent Hello Crazy Shadow, the gorgeous Fingertips and the dynamic title track. I would argue that the label seriously misunderstood Things Of Stone & Wood. They were a folk-pop band and should have been treated like Weddings Parties Anything — an act with a hardcore following who would have the occasional hit — not a hit-laden pop machine. Despite being another top ten album, Things Of Stone & Wood exited Sony after Junk Theatre. They should have become much bigger. But they continue to make great music — a new album, The Final Forest, is coming soon — and they still have a hardcore following.
40 years ago
Lost In Love becomes Air Supply’s first US hit. It will peak at number three.
Hot album
Top five things you might not know about Things Of Stone & Wood 1. They took their name from a cooking hut at the Cumberland River campground near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. 2. Greg and Mikey had previously played together in the goth-rock band 13 At Midnight with Juke music journalist Byron Smith, releasing the album Warring Tribes, featuring a cover of The Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary. 3. James Black from the RocKwiz Orkestra was Things Of Stone & Wood’s manager and producer (and “Yoda and father”, as Mikey called him at the ARIAs). He is now a touring member of the band. 4. Mikey has released two fine solo albums, Aeroplane and Softness Isn’t Admired Enough. 5. Greg and Helen are still together.
Allison Forbes — Bonedigger
“Where did the music go?” Tamworth’s Allison Forbes ponders on her debut album. “Ain’t no use bringing back rock’n’roll, ain’t nothing left to hear now but broken radios.” But this record is a celebration of what makes music great. Produced by Shane Nicholson, Forbes reminds of the passion
Things Of Stone & Wood play the Port Fairy Folk Festival on 6 & 7 Mar and the Corner Hotel on 20 Mar.
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and earthiness of Melissa Etheridge’s finest work. “Give me poetry, a little more real,” she sings. “Give me colours that I can feel.”
FRIDAY, 29 MAY 2020
SATURDAY, 21 MARCH 2020
THRASH BLAST GRIND 2020
WACKEN METAL BATTLE GRAND FINAL
KING PARROT, EXHUMED KING & THEORIES
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS TBA
FRIDAY, 05 JUNE 2020
SLEEPMAKESWAVES
FRIDAY, 24 APRIL 2020
POLYCAT X INK LIVE IN MELBOURNE
SATURDAY, 06 JUNE 2020
SATURDAY, 25 APRIL 2020
DON’T CHANGE – ULTIMATE INXS
MASSIVE
TUESDAY, 03 MARCH 2020
UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS
THE 2020 TOUR
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
SATURDAY, 13 JUNE 2020
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
SUNDAY, 26 APRIL 2020
THURSDAY, 05 MARCH 2020
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS INGESTED
CHELSEA WOLFE (USA)
NILE
JINJER
WITH THE BLACK TIDES & MASON
THURSDAY, 30 APRIL 2020
FRIDAY, 06 MARCH 2020
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
WITH SPECIAL GUEST EMMA RUTH RUNDLE SATURDAY, 11 JULY 2020
DEFINITELY OASIS (UK)
CLAIRO
MONO - 20TH ANNIVERSARY
(OASIS TRIBUTE)
SATURDAY, 18 JULY 2020
WITH SOLKYRI & JO QUAIL (UK)
FRIDAY, 01 MAY 2020
SUNDAY, 08 MARCH 2020
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE ASCENDED
THE CURE: HEAD ON THE DOOR
UNEARTH
PEARL JAM 1995 TOUR
SATURDAY, 01 AUGUST 2020
LETZ ZEP (LED ZEPPELIN TRIBUTE)
FRIDAY, 15 MAY 2020
25TH ANNIVERSARY
FRIDAY, 13 MARCH 2020
FURNACE AND THE FUNDAMENTALS FURNAPALOOZA TOUR 2020
WITH ROLO TOMASSI
CRASHDIET & JIZZY PEARL’S LOVE HATE
SATURDAY, 15 AUGUST 2020
THE SPECIALS LIMITED
WITH SISTER DOLL
(THE SPECIALS TRIBUTE)
SATURDAY, 16 MAY 2020
SUNDAY, 15 MARCH 2020
TYR & ARKONA
CHERRY POPPERS SHOWCASE
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
FRIDAY, 20 MARCH 2020
FRIDAY, 22 MAY 2020
ROCK KO FOL
DAVID ELLEFSON MORE LIVE WITH DETH AUSTRALIAN TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUEST CHRIS POLAND
F R I D AY M A R 6
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OPEN FROM 4PM TILL 3AM MOST NIGHTS
EARTH ROT CHRIST DISMEMBERED, SUNDR, R I T U A L S , V E X AT I O N
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SHOTS EVERY D AY / N I G H T (EL JIMADOR)
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WO FEST (UKR)
F R I D AY J U L 1 0 (USA)
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MASTER
NO CLASS,
S AT U R D AY M A R 2 5
N O C T U R N A L G R AV E S , C O N TA M I N AT E D E V O K E R
SULDUSK
P L A N O F AT TA C K , T H E C L I N C H
BURDEN MAN, MYRIAD DRONE, AQUILUS
S AT U R D AY M AY 2 (SG)
S AT U R D AY J U L 1 1
POTION
DEATH STRIKE (USA)
MARIJANNAH
F R I D AY M A R 2 7
REMAINS, REAPER
NABERUS
T H U R S D AY M AY 7
TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET
A R M O R E D E A R T H A N D , AW O L , DEADWEIGHT 80
T H E E R A D I C AT O R
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(USA)
F R I D AY M AY 8 (USA)
THE QUARTERS
NEBULA
S AT U R D AY M AY 9
ESPIONAGE
ATOMIC RITUAL FEST
‘ARROW OF TIME’ VINYL LAUNCH
– NEBULA
H A R L O T T, P A R T Y V I B E Z , T U R R E T
+ HEAPS MORE
THE MUSIC
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MARCH
(USA)
, F L A N G I PA N I S
F R I D AY J U L 3 1
BLACK CLOUD MASS
TRANSGRESSOR (JPN), INFERNAL EXECRATOR
(SGP)
+ HEAPS MORE
ARROWHEAD
F R I D AY A P R 3
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F R I D AY M AY 2 9 (USA)
SECRET HEADLINER
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WHORES
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WAX THURSDAYS (TILL 8PM):
A CELEBRATION OF CHRIS CORNELL 2020
S AT U R D AY A P R 1 1 (USA)
S U N D AY M A R 8
T H U R S D AY M A R 1 2
HAPPY HOUR
S AT U R D AY M AY 2 3
UNHOLY BLACK FRIDAY! OBSIDIAN MONOLITH, IN MALICE’S WA K E , D E S T R U K T O R + M O R E
GARLIC NUN, DROP B SHARPS [DR C], T H E B A L L S , W O L F PA C K + M O R E
1 2 5 J O H N S T O N S T, C O L L I N G W O O D
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BULLET
, ABIGAIL
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This month’s highlights Sweet freaks and sneak beats
I spy
Stock up on earbuds and toothpaste if you’re planning on heading down to Melbourne Showgrounds for Sweetstock 2020. The 28-29 Mar event is the ultimate indulgence in taste and sound, with sweets from around the globe and music from the likes of Sneaky Sound System.
Espionage
Sneaky Sound System. Pic: Nicole Cooper
Espionage are heading to The Bendigo Hotel on 3 Apr for the first time in nearly two years to launch the vinyl release of their latest single Arrow Of Time. Heavy metal delivered with speed and power is their MO and Harlott, Party Vibez and Turret are supporting.
Brand awareness
Alana Wilkinson
Robbie Williams
British pop megastar Robbie Williams will play Melbourne’s Lakeside Stadium on 14 Mar. His only show in the country scheduled for 2020, Williams is in town to kick off the annual Australian Formula One Grand Prix.
Russell Brand. Pic: Ki Price
Russell Brand — one of the biggest names in the history of stand-up — has gone from a life of addiction and destruction to one of love and spiritual wellbeing. Recovery plays at Hamer Hall this 6-7 Mar, and details Brand’s journey into enlightenment.
Prix cheers for Robbie
Away with the fairies
Ribs for your pleasure
Blast off
The 2020 annual Meatstock festival is set to take over Melbourne Showgrounds this 14-15 Mar. The carnivore carnival celebrates the best in BBQ and butchery, with live music from Jebediah, Freya Josephine Hollick and more.
Local art-pop young guns Zoe Fox & The Rocket Clocks are setting their phasers to stun this 21 Mar, as the band hit the stage to celebrate the launch of their brand new album. It all goes down at Northcote Social Club.
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Zoe Fox & The Rocket Clocks
Freya Josephine Hollick. Pic: Ryan Downey
From 6-9 Mar, the legendary Port Fairy Folk Festival once again takes over the coastal Victorian town. A celebration of local and international jazz, folk and blues, the festival features a stacked line-up including Alana Wilkinson, Archie Roach, Chitra and many more.
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out 28 Feb THE MUSIC
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MARCH
the best and the worst of the month’s zeitgeist
The lashes Front
Back Pic via SiriusXM’s Youtube
Pic via Braulio Amado’s Instagram
Pic via Quaden Bayles’ Instagram
#MeToo
Croc’n’roll
Good as hell
Time’s up
Chill out
Be kind
A moment for the women
Forget the February fashion
Break out the yarn, the
The system has once
Grimes, babe, we need to
Words matter. From the
who testified in the Harvey
week schedule, there’s only
friendship between Lizzo
again failed women. Han-
talk. We get those “Global
deeply distressing video of
Weinstein case. Your brave
one event of sartorial signifi-
and Harry Styles has
nah Clarke and her three
Warming Is Good” billboards
nine-year-old Quaden Bay-
actions in speaking out at
cance we were concerned
reached adorably whole-
children were brutally
are all part of an elaborate
les pleading with his mother
great personal risk mean
about last month: the KFC
some peaks. From the duet
slaughtered and we still
marketing campaign for
to end his life to Caroline
some justice was seen and
and Crocs collaboration.
at the start of the month to
have media referring to the
your new concept album.
Flack’s tragic death, it’s clear
you have done an immense
Move over Christopher Kane
Lizzo knocking back Styles’
murderer as a “star” and
It’s cool. Let’s just remem-
our society has a systemic
public service for sexual
and Balenciaga, the new
glass of straight tequila at
“dedicated family man”
ber your BF and future
problem with bullying. It’s
assault survivors. We stand
clogs feature charms that
the Brits (drink responsi-
while reporting what the
baby daddy is Elon “Horny
time to stop tearing each
by you.
smell like fried chicken.
bly, kids), maybe the real
victim was wearing. Gen-
For Space” Musk. Give us a
other down.
Engage sports mode (aka
treasure was the friends we
dered violence has
heads up if he’s planning
strap the fuck in) and
made along the way.
become normalised in our
something we should be
country Enough.
aware of, alright?
run, don’t walk to buy a pair immediately.
The quiz 1.
Which two very famous Pauls did Thelma Plum collaborate with on her album Better In Blak?
2. Which Qld singer-songwriter born in 1969 had their first three full length label albums reach number one on the ARIA charts?
Cartoon by Tayla Colley. Curated by Chris Neill
3. In one year, Pharell Williams had three number one songs in Australia — what were those songs? 4. What was the name of Linkin Park’s first album?
With guest quizmasters from Not On Your Rider! 7. Which two artists have both had a top ten hit in Australia with different songs called Maneater? 8. Which song from the ‘60s is referenced in Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It? 9. What is the first woman’s name mentioned in the song Mambo No. 5? 10. Which Australian song from 1998 begins with the line “I don’t go to parties baby, ‘cause people tend to freak me out?”
Not On Your Rider! runs monthly at Brisbane’s The Triffid.
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Answers:
6. Which car brand is mentioned in The B-52s song Love Shack?
1. Paul Kelly, Paul McCartney 2. Pete Murray 3. Happy, Get Lucky, Blurred Lines 4. Hybrid Theory 5. Rhiannon 6. Chrysler 7. Hall & Oates, Nelly Furtado 8. You Really Got Me – The Kinks 9. Angela 10. ! (The Song Formerly Known As)
5. The first Stevie Nicks-sung Fleetwood Mac song to hit the charts in Australia was named after a girl – what was it?
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THE HOTTEST COMEDIANS AT MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL COMEDY FESTIVAL!
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chelsea lately my name is earl ‘Prodigiously entertaining’ Super No Bueno (US)
‘Unbelievably funny...’ Speakeasy (NZ)
Sat 18 Apr at 9.45pm The Comic’s Lounge
Christian Hull
ROSIE WATERLAND
WHAT A MESS
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FRI 17 & SAT 18 APR AT 7PM THE COMIC’S LOUNGE
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BOOK NOW