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Robert Forster
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When is Tasmania going to produce some great bands? It must be soon, if only through the converging of cultural forces, time and the fact that both Brisbane and Perth have had a fruitful past decade of breakthrough artists and bands and the frontier needs a new place to shift to. Writers such as...
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The Beatles were formed in 1957 when John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join The Quarrymen. Soon after, McCartney got his mate George Harrison into the band too. It’s important to remember, and Lennon never let the others forget, that he asked Paul and the others to join his group. Lennon is...
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David McComb, who passed away in 1999 at the age of 36, was the lead singer and songwriter of The Triffids. The band began their career in Perth in the late 1970s and broke up in 1989, and although McComb released a solo album, Love of Will, in 1994, and wrote and played with other musicians over...
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She’s a restless soul, Sarah Blasko, three albums in her recording career done: one in Los Angeles, one in Auckland, and now her latest from Stockholm. Each has been shaped by its location. From LA came the neat, crafted pop of her debut, The Overture & the Underscore (2004); from Auckland...
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"When did you write that? How did you happen ... to ... uh ..." The nervous and incredulous male voice stops there on the tape. It's 1954, and Connie Converse, the singer and songwriter who has elicited this response, has just recorded one of her songs onto the reel-to-reel. Fifty-...
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Robert Forster | May 2009 | Arts & Letters | Music | Society & Culture
It's lonesome out there on the prairie. There are eagles up in the sky, and birds, lots of birds, and lakes, and wolves, plenty of wolves, and rivers, branches and trees, and even the odd bee. The songwriters that describe this landscape are urbanites who may not feel comfortable in nature, but are...
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It can seem futile trying to chase down biographical material on Paul Kelly because, just as he's ducked the glare of mainstream pop stardom, his self-effacement and unease with his past have left the songs to sketch the details, a situation he probably feels comfortable with. The bones of the...
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First there was First Take, one of the best debut albums of all time. It was recorded by Roberta Flack in 1969 for Atlantic Records, produced by Joel Dorn, with a backing trio that included jazz giant Ron Carter on bass. Flack was 32 when she cut it, coming late to a recording career after years as...
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Four years ago, while on a promotional tour for the last Go-Betweens record, I came across Antony and the Johnsons' second album. I was in Amsterdam and had asked our local record-company rep how our album was being received, to be told, in typically abrupt Dutch fashion, "Well - but the...
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In the beginning, back in 1966, there was Harry Vanda and George Young. They were the songwriting team in The Easybeats, responsible for such riff-heavy pop classics as ‘Friday on My Mind', ‘Good Times'. George Young had two younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus, who in their early twenties...
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Robert Forster | The Nation Reviewed | November 2008 | Society & Culture
At 17 I could have become a hairdresser. In Brisbane in the early to mid '70s, the only places offering any kind of interesting shopping experience were in the inner-city arcades. Elizabeth Arcade, in particular, had a string of shops that not only offered goods found nowhere else in town, but...
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Put yourself in Glen Campbell's shoes. You're 72. You've sold 45 million records. You've been married four times, most recently back in 1982. You have eight children. Your time is spent primarily on the golf course - there was the Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open on the pro-golf...
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Who knew the different ways to sing "Louis Vuitton", and that the French designer's name would appear twice in songs from young bands in the first half of the year? Susannah Legge, from The Hampdens, drawls and drags her Louis Vuitton, as she does many of the lyrics on her band's...
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There are cult stars and then there are cult stars. Will Oldham, born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970, is one of the great enigmas of music. His first five records, appearing from 1993 onwards, were released under variations on the Palace moniker - Palace Brothers, Palace Songs and Palace Music -...
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Less-is-more is an edict that has never gained much leverage in rock 'n' roll. More-is-more is the preferred option, with record companies (the majors, traditionally) willing to bankroll artists' excess in the studio and on the road. The change usually comes with the downturn of an...
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The best description of Hunters and Collectors' music, especially in their first incarnation, comes from their percussionist, Greg Perano, who when asked by a suspicious English customs officer to describe the band's sound replied, "Reggae-funk fusion with rock roots and a tinge of New...
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Brisbane is in the middle of its wettest summer in more than ten years. The rain started well before Christmas and there have barely been three days of straight sunshine since. Other cities further south swelter in the high thirties while in Brisbane it's hardly touched 30, and here we are well...
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Sometimes I play a game in my head: name the five best American rock bands of the '60s. My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band - although they're mostly Canadian. Simon & Garfunkel? Jefferson...
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The first three album titles of Delta Goodrem's career provide a narrative of where she has come from and where she is now. Innocent Eyes to Mistaken Identity to Delta: the arc from birth to trial to arrival. It's a script she has written herself as she has progressed through a teenage pop...
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The first Rough Trade record store opened in 1976 at 202 Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill. It was a good year to open a record store, and a good address given the area's association with late-'60s hippie culture, its Jamaican reggae community and its proximity to the centre of town. In...
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